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2020-06-25
Hats Off: Finding Closure Amid Uncertainty
This screen recording, a small snippet taken from a live video posted on the Richardson High School Eaglettes Facebook page on June 25,2020, takes place in the back parking lot of my former high school. The fixture in the middle of the video is a "stick chick", and just beyond the stick chick is the stadium where I performed at every football game for the last three years as a member of the Richardson High School Eaglettes, a Texas style dance team. What you witnessed was the senior hat-hanging ceremony, meant to be performed in our big auditorium at the end of our final show that is usually held in April. This moment is meant to be the pinnacle of the drill team experience, a last bow in front of your teammates, family, and friends as they celebrate and applaud you for your hard work and dedication. Every early morning, every sore muscle, every tear of frustration was meant to be justified in this moment, when I could finally hang the heavily sequined hat that carried the makeup, sweat and troubles of my three-year experience and inwardly declare "I did it". But that moment never came. When school closed indefinitely in March amidst the raging global pandemic, our final show was the first event to be cancelled, followed shortly after by prom and graduation. The disappointment was crippling. I felt my world cave in as every important moment I had waited months for was stripped from me, and soon sadness made way for anger. Then one day I received an email, announcing the date of an outdoor and socially distanced closing Eaglette ceremony. And funny enough, the moment you see here almost didn't happen. I was so content with my anger that I contemplated not attending the ceremony, controlled by the belief that denying myself of this moment would show the pandemic that it could no longer hurt me. But with some motherly encouragement I gathered myself up at the last minute, making it just in time to hang my hat. I recieved honks instead of cheers, headlights instead of stage lights, and the ages old concrete of the parking lot as my stage. But I wouldn't have had it any other way. What you witnessed was my moment of victory, my realization that good can spring forth amid bad, and the moment that I decided I would not let the pandemic defeat me. -
2021-03-03
Tossing for the First Time in a Year
This photograph was taken on the one-year anniversary since the last Providence College Club Ultimate Frisbee practice. I had sent a message in the team group chat about it being one year since we had been able to practice together. The school had not yet allowed club sports to practice again out of safety concerns. Varsity athletes were still practicing and competing, but club athletes had no indication of when they could gather again. We had already missed our spring 2020 season and our fall 2020 season, and it seemed like we were going to miss most, if not all, of our spring 2021 season as well. One of my teammates responded to the message with a burst of enthusiasm and rallied some of us to the field. It was an unusually warm day for the beginning of March, and even though there were only six of us who answered the call to toss and we were spread out and masked, something felt normal for the first time in months. We felt the joy of sharing Ultimate with each other and let the world of stress, anxiety, and worry melt away for a few blissful moments. -
2021-01-22
My Messy Desk
I choose to use this as my picture because over the past 7 months I’ve spent a lot of time on my desk, this year I’ve spent more time on my desk then I have outside, usually I’m a really athletic person who enjoys a good game of basketball, soccer or of tennis. But this year, we haven’t really gotten to go anywhere, I haven’t gotten to see my teammates in person since late April. My desk is really messy because it’s been awhile since I’ve cleaned it, but also because I kind of live on my desk. -
2020-09-23
Jewish Melbourne: CCare Buddy Program
Around Rosh Hashanah, CCare established a buddy program during Melbourne's lockdown: "Shana Tova! Are you looking for a way to make a positive impact from the comfort and safety of your own home? This Jewish New Year, pledge to spend 30 minutes each week chatting to a new friend! After an incredibly successful pilot, The C Care Buddy Initiative is ready for official launch! We can’t wait to welcome our next group of Buddies into the program. *So, how does it work?* We’ll match each volunteer with a C Care recipient (or more, if you’d like) and take you through a short training session where we'll provide tips and guidance to make you feel comfortable going into your first call. Then, we’ll send both you and your buddy a ‘Buddy Welcome Box’ complete with tea and treats, and you’ll be ready for your weekly shmooze!" -
2020-08
The beginning of the end of COVID for me
When things began to open back up again around August there was talk of a new lacrosse travel team being made(Although not much traveling would be happening). Because no other team had really talked about opening I jumped on it. I was so happy to be back out playing spots although it was not the same. When I showed up for first practice I was a sea of masks from my car to the field. After stretching we got suited up and took off our masks. It felt so nice to finally have my mask of it was 10 times easier to breathe. But the practice was not like it used to be with groups being made and you could not get to close to anyone, as well as coaches had masks on so all of there words were muffed and when they tried to yell at you to change what you were doing it was hard to understand. But moving into October there was talk about a tournament that we were going to play in as well as teams within our club were made so we could practice with our whole team. But there was still the sea of masks at the begging of each practice coaches still wore masks. But at least my sport opened back up it has made each day so much better even if we don't have practices just going out and getting exercise puts a smile on my face. -
2020-10-26
Sports? What's That?
March 13th was the day that everything changed. My social life, school, activities and especially sports, were gone. I remember the last day that we were in school before getting the email that schools were going to be shut down for what we thought was only going to be two weeks, I had open gym for volleyball. I remember me and my team being super excited because we haven't played in moths and we were all excited to get back on the court and to all be together. My team and I all meet after school to get ready for practice and as we were walking to the gym in all of geer that took 20 minutes to put on, out team captain told us that our open gym was canceled. Everyone was in shock and mad at the same time because we all wanted to get back on the court, plus we had already changed and that took a lot of work! After we all said our goodbyes not knowing how long it would be until we saw each other again and even how long until we were able to get back on the court. Finally after months of being away from volleyball and my team we started conditioning. It was so fun to each my team and to get to workout together. We are not sure when we will get back on the court but at least we have conditioning which is a huge step forward. -
2020-10-05
The Weird Reality of Pro Sports during Covid-19
The main point of this article is to simply address the odd time that we are currently in. It points out things in sports that were unheard of before this 2020 season. I chose this article because first of all I love watching sports, and was excited for them to come back. But, also I think this article does a good job of pointing out the obvious things that everyone is feeling and simply addressing that these times are simply just weird. This article reveals the difference of watching sports now, during the pandemic, compared to a year ago when you could physically cheer on your teams or even just eat a hot dog at a live game. This article is important because it documents the way many people are feeling about sports in 2020. I think this is important to showcase because sports have taken so many drastic measures in order to keep going. The author of this article is definitely a sports fan, but he doesn’t seem upset at the current situation of sports. He is simply stating the differences between then and now. The media is responsible for providing accurate information about the state of the pandemic itself but also providing uplifting content that will help people who are struggling through these times or content that will bring people together and uplift the community. -
2020-08-23
Chris Twing Internship Portfolio
I had planned to take the summer off from classes but when I saw an opportunity to be part of real time archiving in relation to the crisis I was living through I eagerly jumped at the opportunity. While I was initially worried, we, as interns, would get stuck doing the repetitive tasks no one else wanted, I was thrilled to be part of the creation and problem-solving process of a real time archive. While most students in my program focus on American or Global history my focus has been on public history. One of the tenants of public history is involving everyone. The archive became a place to see this in real time. We weren’t collecting only around famous people, important people, or large movements. We wanted to collect the stories of everyday people and also took the time to figure out whose voices were missing and attempt to remedy that problem. To that end I took on an extra project to add Black voices to the archive. I collected a list of all the historically black colleges and universities and also searched for museums and cultural or heritage centers across the country that we could contact in hopes they would want to work with us to add those voices to the archive. In addition to curating and adding items to the archive each week we focused on learning a particular skill set related to the archive. The one I struggled with the most was oral history. Though I am fine speaking in public and am not an introvert, I found conducting my first two oral history interviews exceptionally unnerving. However, I also discovered how important they are and what an incredibly rich source of information oral histories represent. What I learned from oral histories was so impressive that I have plans to conduct an oral history program in conjunction with my local historical preservation commission in the future. I am also no longer nervous about conducting oral histories. By the end of our fifteen-week internship we had become even more than a team, we had become a family. I believe this was partially due to a shared crisis. We were living through the Covid-19 pandemic together. For many of us, our weekly Zoom (online meeting platform) was nearly the only face to face contact, though virtual, we had with anyone. This was the case for me. Another intern joked he was going to rename his journal about the project, “The Summer I Distracted Myself from a Pandemic by Thinking about the Pandemic”. I realized that is exactly what happened. The pandemic really started in mid-March for me. I spent the initial month or so sewing face masks and that was how I kept myself focused and sane. Once the internship began in May I began processing my experience of the pandemic by working on the archive. I believe this summer will have been one of the defining moments of my life. -
03/02/2020
Fremonts First case of Covid-19
This was a series of pictures that My football team posted at the Special Olympics basketball tournament that my football team volunteered at. No less than a week after this event, an article came out in the Fremont tribune saying that there was a player at the event who had just tested positive for Covid-19. Following this news me and the rest of my teammates had to self quarantine for a week. This was tough for us players and our coaches because many of my teammates lived on campus and did not have access to a kitchen to cook food. But thankfully our coaches were able to bring everyone quarantined food one a day during our week long Quarantine. -
2020-04-13
Corporate Financial Response for C2 Education due to Continuing Pandemic Difficulties
Fellow Associates, In my emails to you over the past few weeks, I have thanked and applauded the whole C2 Team on how we have adapted so fast into Virtual, while I have also been writing that we might need to adjust as we learn more about the situation and the economy. I had hoped that we would not need to make adjustments. We have held off as long as we could and frankly longer than many companies. However, the environment has further deteriorated and so the time is now. I want to share with you some critical adjustments we now need to make in the face of these challenging unprecedented times. First, I want to reinforce how proud I am of the C2 Team in how we have responded to shutting down our centers with skillful, innovative and hard work by so many. C2 Virtual was developed and launched in an extraordinary fast timeline. We already have about 60% of the sessions per day as we had before we shut our centers, and about 40% of our students in February have already been in a Virtual session. Our surveys are now showing high satisfaction with Virtual by our students and parents. Thank you to every single one of our 2,000 associates for embracing the change with Virtual. However, these times are so uncertain for so many of C2 potential customers and many are just not willing to decide to spend money on our type of services right now. This results in our revenue being only about 25% of a normal level. By continuing to serve our students with our teachers, we are spending money to pay teachers but with only 25% of the revenue coming in. That means we are losing cash and that is not sustainable. Over the past 3 weeks the leadership team has been trying to secure funding to make up for these losses. Our main shareholder and investor, Serent Capital, is being very supportive with extra capital and we are trying to get a loan from the SBA and the Cares Act. However, those efforts will not be sufficient to weather the current storm. We now need to temporarily adjust the numbers of our associates to enable C2 to get financially through this COVID -19 period. These are planned to be temporary COVID-19 adjustments and to be in place for the next 3 months. I will refer to “furloughs" and I want to first explain a furlough. Someone who is on furlough has their pay suspended temporarily but can keep benefits such as health. Importantly they are still employees of the company. They are NOT “Laid off”. They can be asked to come back into the workplace again at any time. While on furlough one can get unemployment benefits including the higher amounts from the two trillion dollar Cares Act. These adjustment plans have been carefully worked on by the ESC leadership team and the RVPs. We have had two overriding goals: - to be sure we continue to serve our existing students and are as well positioned as possible to regain momentum once the centers can open and the environment improves. - to take care of our employees as much as possible. So we are adjusting with furloughs rather than layoffs, enabling the continuation of everyone’s C2 benefits. Here are the broad details. -The ESC will reduce costs by 60% with half of the associates being furloughed, and with salary cuts for all the remaining ESC associates and RVPs in amounts ranging depending on salary... starting with myself at 50% and then down in percentage tiers from that. -We will keep all our centers open in the Virtual world. Some centers will move into combined lobbies, but with no changes in experience for our students or teachers. -We will have to operate with many less associates spread across the virtual centers. -For District Managers, half will be going on furlough or changing their duties. -For our Center Directors and Education Coordinators, 40% will be going on furlough. -Our teachers will continue as per the student schedules. Even after these cuts, we will be losing cash each month and this cash loss difference will be supported by our investors until we come out of this period when we can re-build with our re-opened centers and returning associates. Over the next few hours, the leadership team will be sharing with each one of you how this impacts you. These adjustments will be effective at the end of tomorrow. The rest of today and all of tomorrow will be considered Hand Off Days to ensure we can continue to serve our students. To minimize the impact on our students and their families, I trust we will all act as One Team over these two days with a high level of professionalism no matter how we are each impacted. In all my years as a leader, I could never have imagined that I would encounter such a situation in such unprecedented times. It’s never easy making changes like furloughs but it is especially difficult personally in such a great engaging, inspiring, values-driven and growing company as C2, and when it is of this magnitude, being in response to something that is entirely out of everyone’s control. C2 is so personal to us all. This really hurts all our hearts. It is all of our hope that once the centers can open we will be able to ramp up our business and bring associates back to engage again in C2. As the environment and confidence improves, families will find ways to pay for C2’s great services. I know the next days and months will be very tough. I wish all those going on furlough well and I thank those who remain and who will often take on a different scope of responsibilities. As we go though our different journeys, drawing on courage and resilience, I wish that you and your families stay healthy. In closing, whether on furlough or still working at C2, we are all connected in the C2 spirit. It runs through our veins. In spirit, we are still ONE TEAM with ONE PURPOSE. Best,