Written By: 7th & 8th Grade Students of Maria L. Baldwin’s Behavior Classroom
At
the beginning of the 2011 school year we, the students of Baldwin’s
Room 303, were considered a laughingstock. On day one we were up to our
old tricks: testing teachers and staff, running away from our problems,
starting trouble, and not caring about consequences. We were stuck in a
position all too familiar to us of not progressing as students and
people of our community.
As
September came to a close we made an important realization: Our future
success is dependent on hard work and achievement in the classroom. We
learned about setting goals, earning trust, working hard, and gaining
respect.
It was in late October when we actually started putting
those important lessons into action. We focused on changing our poor
reputation, that had been established through years of misbehaving and
not caring about anyone but ourselves, by helping out around the school
and doing tasks like mentoring kindergarteners at school assemblies and
helping set up for school events. We also got serious about our
schoolwork. We read the book
Hatchet by Gary Paulsen as a class
and had a contest to see who could build the sturdiest model shelter
out of materials we found on the playground—sticks, rocks, etc.
These
initial accomplishments helped us understand how it feels to set,
follow-through, and achieve goals, and made us hungry to achieve more.
In
order to take our budding reputation as serious students and
contributors to our school to the next level we felt we needed to do
something completely selfless. People of the Baldwin community had
recognized change for the better in our behavior and attitude, so we
wanted to prove their thoughts to be true. Our idea of how to do this
was to raise money for the less fortunate people in our community. What
we decided to do was start a café.
The
idea, though, was the easy part. The hard part was trying to persuade
the Better Business Bureau, a.k.a. our Principal, Mr. Leonardos, that
Baldwin truly needed a café. We took two weeks at the beginning of
December to prepare what would truly be a life-changing presentation. We
broke into three groups of two (there were six in our class at the
time—we now have seven) and each pair was assigned a different portion
of the presentation—content, visual, and choreography. Over the course
of about the first week our presentation started to come together. We
had a PowerPoint visual, a rap recorded with Garage Band, and a specific
routine all laid out. The second week was dedicated to rehearsing. A
good portion of our school days that week was spent memorizing our parts
and refining our production.
The big day arrived—we called it
our Super Bowl—and though everyone was nervous because our classroom was
filled with spectators (not just Principal Leonardos as we initially
thought) we gave a mind-blowing performance. There was barely a dry eye
in the audience of teachers and staff that showed up to see us present.
Principal Leonardos said our presentation was the best he’d seen in all
the years of his teaching career and gave us permission to start the
café. In an amazing act of kindness our school janitors donated $100 to
our capital for starting the business. The Men of Baldwin Café (M.O.B.)
was born.
Since that proud day in December the M.O.B. 303 still
has its ups and downs, but we continue to strive to reach news goals and
be successful in school and in life.
We invite all in the
Cambridge School District to stop by the Baldwin and visit the M.O.B.
Café, it would be our pleasure to serve you and give you more detail
about how we’re on the road to becoming men.