NY Cares Day

Saturday was Cares Day and I was a site captain at PS 144Q. For those of you that don’t know about Cares Day, it’s a day where 8,000 New Yorkers go to 115 public schools across the city to help revitalize and beautify them. Some trivia about my school - the 5th grade class is the focus of the documentary Mad Hot Ballroom.

The cards were stacked. Earlier in the month the site contemplated dropping out entirely. It was the first year that it rained on Cares Day which eliminated some of the outdoor projects. The site was slated for 45-60 volunteers and I think we got more like 100. That meant I ran out of shirts, didn’t have enough snacks, and had no idea how to leverage twice the number of people with less projects. I sent some of the overflow to a neighboring school, utilized as many volunteers as I could, then sent the rest home by lunch.

But at 3PM, when all was said and done, it was really easy to see the impact a day can have on the busy lives of these teachers. The volunteers had removed weeds and planted bulbs in the garden, organized teaching materials, levelled books by reading level, organized closets, and painted murals in the kids’ bathroom to remind them to wash their hands.