Kristen Fabick's Blog
math dare / Apr 17, 12:12 PM
last friday all 6 of the urban promise after-school programs gathered together at the campus in east camden (where the up schools—the k-8 forward school and the 9-12 academy—are located) to participate in the 15th (?) annual math dare competition.
this event is based of the popular 90’s tv show double dare in which two teams—red and blue, usually two families) answered trivia questions to earn points and to earn opportunities to compete in physical challenges to earn more points.
we created teams by pairing a younger kids program (grades 1-4) with an older kids program (grades 5-8) based on geographical location in the city. the teams were South (my team), East, and North/Downtown. each team was represented by a different color. for every math question, two people from each team sat in the “hot seats” in front of the rest of their teams (who were cheering them on). So three teams…two people from each team….so six people total were working on the same math problem. whoever finished correctly first would wave a flag. their team would win points. each grade had 2 math problems to complete. after every two grades, there was a physical challenge.
the physical challenges included an intern smearing peanut butter all over their face and trying to “catch” various food items (sunflower seeds, cheesy puffs, popcorn, etc.) on their face. in the physical challenge i partook in, kids used only their mouths to fill a pitcher halfway with pasta salad. the pasta salad was in a large bowl across the gym, and i had a piece of paper wrapped in a circle to put on top of my head to “catch” the past salad. then i would dump the pasta from my “head bucket” to the pitcher. other physical challenges included making a human pizza (an intern got flour, water, pizza sauce, cheese, and pepperonis scattered on them) and kids spinning around a bat (with their head on the bat and the bat on the ground) 10 times and then running across a 2×4×10 laid on the ground. the catch was that there was shaving cream all around the board, so if you slipped off…you really SLIPPED off.
there were two big highlights of the evening for me. first, though east side has won this competition 12 out of the 15 years it has been held, south (my team) won this year!!! not only did we win…we totally blew out the other two teams. the real competition was for second place. i was so proud of our kids who competed, and i know that winning an academic type competition really boosted their self-esteem and self-concepts of their abilities to excel academically. (east is notorious for having “better students”.)
the second, and best, highlight for me was when the emcees reminded the students of urban promise’s “as one” philosophy (see recent newsletter about the urban promise olympics) in which the leadership at urban promise is trying to get the students to embrace kids from all over camden, instead of just their immediate neighborhood, as their friends and partners. in keeping with this philosophy, the emcees started giving out points to teams that were cheering loudest for OTHER teams. it was so heart-warming and awesome to see kids that usually just crack jokes on other camps and try to compete with other neighborhoods for “who goes hardest” actually cheering those same kids. i know they just wanted the points, but it was an awesome picture of the body working together to spur one another on to good works.
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