Category Archives: Staten Island

Mentor to Mentor

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Exterior of Port Richmond High school.

Today was the first day I was able to meet with my mentee from Port Richmond High School. It was actually quite fun so I thought I would write about my experience and give some advice to those that have yet to go from this program at Wagner or anyone that is about to mentor someone.

My first piece of advice would be to not go alone on your first meeting with your mentee. I went with three other mentors: Allison, Shannon, and Kim. Although later on you may want to meet with your mentee one on one, a bigger group at first can make them feel more comfortable and relaxed. One of the mentees was very shy so having more people around helped to get him to talk more. The four of us and our mentees were able to sit down and talk for a period and get to know each other. We learned so much about them. Where they live, their family life, sports they play, television shows they watch, and many other little facts. We also discussed their love for cooking, which brings me to my second piece of advice. Don’t assume they want to pursue a culinary career. Many of these students are in this program because they enjoy cooking as a hobby. So when mentoring them about college, make sure to talk about all possibilities and not just a narrow frame for culinary careers.

Whether or not you go alone, my last piece of advice is to think of some questions you’d like to ask them before going. Having the conversation flow easily will relax your mentee and make them open up more. Ask them a mix of questions about themselves and about cooking. For instance I asked them a question about their favorite sports team and then Kim asked about their favorite dish to prepare. We went back and forth with different questions. We also asked them if they had any questions for us about ourselves or about college. We told them about our college experience thus far and asked them what their plans are for the future so that we can help them prepare and give some advice. I believe it was a very successful first meeting and hope all of you have a similar experience.

Islands of NYC

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Recently I came across an article that seemed to be relevant to our class discussion, especially since it focuses on NYC geographical locations. A “New York City’s Top Ten” list, featured in issue 944 of Time Out New York and written by Joseph Alexiou, was a list of the city’s top ten islands. The list included some places which fit in with this month’s spooky theme such as Hart Island which has a deceased population of a over a million since it was the burial place for the area’s unclaimed dead.unnamed-5 North Brother Island came in second on the list. That was the place which housed Typhoid Mary for her last years of life. They also named some relevant places concerning oysters and clams such as Robbins Reef and Ruffle Bar. The oyster trade was something crucial to New York’s development and here we have some easy to see locations still being referenced in a modern magazine. Robbins Reef is very easy to see from afar, but not so easy to visit. If you take the Staten Island ferry, you’ll be able to see the small island just after departure, north west of the docks. It’s technically in New Jersey waters, but maybe they chose to ignore it. If you want a closer look, you can go on a virtual tour of the island here. The other destination they mentioned was Ruffle Bar. This sandbar in Jamaica Bay was one of the great places to harvest oysters before it was ruled too polluted for shellfish in 1915. There’s no convenient way to get to the island, but here are some pictures if you’d like to see what the island looked like in 1924, 1951, or 2008. If you’d like to read the whole list, let me know! I have a copy and will hold on to it for the rest of the semester for anyone who wants a look.

Shannon Bailey

Port Richmond Partnership

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The Center for Civic Engagement recently held a Q & A Panel discussing their mission. By attending this session I received a different perspective of Port Richmond. The night began when we were first introduced to the panel and each individual shared their mission for the future of Port Richmond. Everyone was so passionate in creating change through leadership and community building.

One of the main aspects that i enjoyed during the night was when the history of Port Richmond was told. It was interesting to learn how the influx of immigrants made Port Richmond a prosperous location. This area was the center for commerce and immigration.  Over the years, Port Richmond has become a poor neighborhood, losing most of its capital. This area now houses the impoverished people living on Staten Island. I can’t believe how fast this drastic change took place.

I left this presentation with one piece of information that really struck me. The Staten Island community is almost as diversified as Manhattan. I couldn’t really believe it until the professor provided statistics. Living on Staten Island for many years, I have never realized how many cultures make up our neighborhoods. Some of these nationalities include Italian, Asian, Hispanic, African, Philippine, Polish, and many more which can be seen here. After this presentation, I am excited to be working with the Port Richmond Partnership. I hope that through peer mentoring, I will help others but also have learn from my mentee.

Adventuring to Port Richmond High School

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Yesterday, LC 13 ventured outside the classroom to Port Richmond High School. We all received a walking tour of the culinary arts program. I couldn’t believe that the high school students are able to prepare meals together. The director of the program explained that the students learn about the meal they will be preparing on Monday. They start preparing and cooking the meal on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday, each group is able to taste the meal they have been working so hard to make. This sounded so interesting I wish my high school had this kind of program.

After a tour of the various kitchens, we we taken to a little garden that is located outside at the end of the hall. I found it extraordinary that this program really takes a hand-on approach to teach students good eating habits. Port Richmond High School is investing in this program so students could take what they learned in class and apply it to everyday life.The teachers focus on teaching recipes that are easy to make, yet good for you.FullSizeRender

When the bell rang for the next classes, Genesis and I decided to mentor together. I was  finally going able to meet my mentee. Rebecca is a sophomore at Port Richmond High School and she hopes to go to culinary school after graduating. I realized how this program has influenced her decision to pursue a culiarycareer. Over the next few weeks, I hope to build a friendly relationship with Rebecca and learn more about her. This experience will be very rewarding.

My Port Richmond Experience

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On October 8th, a beautiful Thursday morning my class and I ventured into Port Richmond. For our experiential learning in our LC’s, our class is going to take on the task of being suitable mentors for the students in Port Richmond High School. More specifically, the students a part of the schools’ culinary program. I remember first walking into the classroom and thinking, “Oh god, how am I going to mentor someone and help them out when I was in their position merely a few years ago!?” I was nervous but, at the same time excited. I enjoy helping other people out in whatever way I can. I get a sense of satisfaction from simply being able to put a smile on someone else’s face. Thus, when we first walked into the room to meet our mentees, it appeared to me that both classes just awkwardly stood their for a while just looking at each others apprehensive facial expressions. Then one teacher called out “Okay guys just introduce yourselves to someone and make friends.” With that said, everyone began to socialize with one another. I, still confused and nervous, just stood their for a few moments just thinking who am I going to mentor? Then, with some encouragement from my friend, went up to a girl in front of me to simply get to know her. Her name was Rebecca. Rebecca and I instantly clicked. She was a sweet, enthusiastic, and funny girl with a strong passion for cooking and baking. We spoke about all the foods she’s made as well as her experiences in the culinary class. We even shared a few laughs about my lack of cooking skills. By the end of the class, a friend from my class needed a mentee and decided to join Rebecca and I. Now that the three of us have been placed together for the rest of the semester, we will get the opportunity to get to know each other, learn from each other and grow from each others experiences. I’m excited to see what this mentor-mentee relationship will bring about for I have truly enjoyed my trip to Port Richmond High School. 🙂

Freshman Fifteen

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For tonight’s post I thought I would talk about the infamous freshman fifteen. First things first, I would like to begin with the new knowledge I’ve recently learned about and that is that the idea of the “Freshman Fifteen” is simply a myth. There is no study that actually proves that new college students gain 15 pounds their freshman year. It is actually shown that students gain a natural 2.5 to 6 pounds over a gradual period of time. However, although there might not be an excessive weight gain, there is indeed an excessive amount of unhealthy food options that do make bad eating habits easy to form. So, although this freshman fifteen may be false I have noticed a change in since I first started college.

Growing up I was never big into eating out or eating fast food. Whenever my mother would have a busy week at work and didn’t have time to make a home cooked meal, I would genuinely get upset by that. I would ask, “When are we going to eat home food again, I don’t want to eat at McDonald’s!” I don’t know what 8 year old did not want McDonald’s all the time but apparently, I was that kid. Thus, my eating habits, by choice, were never that bad. Long story short, I never indulged into bad food much when I was younger. Now a month into my freshman year at college I find myself constantly eating burgers, chicken tenders, fries, pizza and everything else that is just absolutely not okay! The worst part of it all is we do have the option of fruit, vegetables(although they don’t taste fresh at all), and chicken(that is chicken that is not deliciously fried into chicken tenders.) Before reading the article that I linked above, I believed that the freshman fifteen was bound to happen to me since all I have been eating is junk. Thus, recently I have made the promise to myself that I would attempt to eat the healthier options provided to me. One day at lunch I was looking at all my choices and on my plate that so far consisted of pizza, a slice of turkey and some potatoes. Then my friend grabs a piece of broccoli and I remembered the promise I told myself to keep.

In our psychology class we learned that more often than not the reason why people eat is not because they are actually hungry.There are many factors that influence why people eat when they do. One of these factors includes social influences. This is the idea that how much someone eats and what someone chooses to eat is altered depending on who they are with. Hence, if I was eating alone for lunch that day I probably would have stayed with my pizza on my plate and nothing more. However, watching my friend grab a healthier food option made me want to do the same. So although everyday that walk past the pepperoni pie is extremely difficult, I am highly successful in grabbing a more nutritious plate for dinner…most of the time. 🙂

Reunification of Families on Staten Island

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This past Thursday, October 1st, Wagner College held a seminar titled “Transnational Families: Staten Island and San Jeronimo de Puebla.” This was a touching event in which families shared their emotionally moving stories of being reunited with each other after ten, fifteen, or even twenty years of being apart. This project allows the family members of the families left in Mexico to come to America for a week or more to be reunited with the family for a short period of time. The family members coming from Mexico had to learn a dance in order to come to the United States and the family members here in America worked hard for a year, attending meetings, in order to make the reunification possible.

The first speaker spoke about how the world now is not the way it should be and that nothing can be changed by just building giant walls between two countries. He emphasized that young people are the ones that must make the change in the world. Following his beautiful words, another family was able to tell their story of being reunited. A mom and daughter gave a beautiful statement on what it was like to be away from each other for such a long time and how great it felt to be reunited. When the mom came to America she left her three daughters behind (ages 4, 5, and 8) in Mexico and tried to do everything to be able to make them happy even though she was so far away. She talked about how difficult it was to come to somewhere where she did not know the language and did not know anyone here. Following her words, her daughter spoke about how wonderful it was to see her mom after so many years. Her mom left when she was four years old and now she is nineteen. She continued to say how she was raised by her grandmother and the only relationship she had was through photos and telephone calls. Thanks to her mom coming here she was able to get an education and was able to pay for her college. This would not have been possible if her mom wasn’t working in the United States and although it is very difficult there are some positive outcomes of it.

The rest of these immigrant’s stories are very similar. They all touched my heart in a special way because I realized how hard it must be for these people to be able to stay in the United States without having their families around.

The families that were reunited through the "Nani Migrante" project.

The families that were reunited through the “Nani Migrante” project.

Personally this event touched my heart because at the age of 19, my mom left her entire family in Poland in order to come to America to work and create a life here for herself. After a long twelve years she was finally able to be reunited with her family. The stories my sisters and I have heard from her are almost identical to those told by these Mexican families on Thursday evening. They all came here not knowing the language, worked hard in order to support their families back home but most importantly they left the people they loved the most back in their home countries. This inspires me because I know how much dedication and work my mom put in into being who she is today. She came with nothing many years back and now has created something of herself. This was only possible through the endless hard work she put in and the mindset she had of achieving her dreams. I think we can all learn from immigrants today because most of them come not knowing anyone in the United States and not knowing the language but through believing in themselves their dreams become a reality in this beautiful country.

Food/Social Cues

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These past two weeks we have discussed hunger, satiety, taste and smell in psychology.  We had also briefly discussed certain cues like food cues and social cues. I never realized how much these cues affect my life on a daily basis until I actually started paying attention to them. Food cues usually occur when we spot a familiar logo, scent, or conjure up an image and suddenly have a craving for that food or beverage. This almost always happens to me during the winter. I always had a habit to buy a hot beverage whenever it was a rainy or cold day before class started. So this past week, while the weather has been on and off I’ve had a craving for a hot latte, which I definitely indulged myself in. Social cues are defined to be “verbal or non-verbal indicators that give people an idea of how they are being accepted or rejected in any given situation.” Usually, this includes facial expressions, body language, and tone, but not always. On Wednesday, a group of us were having lunch at the dining hall before class. We had all eaten and were just talking when one of us decided to go and get some dessert. When we all saw her coming back with the dessert, we all got up to get dessert ourselves. I did not have a craving for dessert until she got up and came back with it and I wasn’t the only one. It was not until after we had all finished that I realized this was a social cue. In conclusion, cues are ingrained in our daily lives and most of the time we don’t even realize it.

Beans and leaves

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For those of you who do not live on staten island there are many different places around her to get a delicious breakfast. My favorite place, Beans and Leaves, just opened up this year. It is located on Forest Avenue, about 6 minutes away from Wagner. It is a little shop with about 10 or so tables. Sometimes there might be a bit of a wait but it is definitely worth it. If you are someone who enjoys waffles, this is the place to go. Here they have variety of different breakfast waffles that you can make yourself. You can add your own assorted fruit like, bananas, strawberries, and blueberries. To make your waffle ever more delicious you can add chocolate( dark or milk), peanut butter ,caramel, Nutella, powered sugar or their home made whipped cream. My personal favorite would have to be the s’mores waffle. This is a waffle with dark chocolate, crushed gram crackers and melted marshmallow on top. It out of this world! A waffle with bananas and whipped cream and a waffle with Nutella and strawberries are also customer favorites. b and l 2smores b and l 1

 

Everyone needs a coffee to get them going in the morning. At beans and leaves you can try things you may have never even thought existed. They have your regular coffee, frappuccino, cappuccinos, lattes  and smoothies but also a variety of different drinks you may have never tasted. Some of these include but are not limited to cake batter, s’mores, pumpkin spice, Cinnabon, Vanilla hazelnut, white chocolate almond, sugar cookie, Jamaican me crazy, coffee cake and amaretto. Unlike usual breakfast places, at Beans and Leaves you order before you sit. There is also no menu, so your food choice is whatever you’re feeling when you go up to order. From my experience being there, I see that everyone always has a full plate with an assortment of toppings. Seeing this, it makes me realize that it is okay for me to eat as much as I want without people looking at me.

This correlates to what we are learning in class about how others determine how much they are going to eat depending on the people they are with and the people around them. When I see my friend eating more on her waffle , I tend to eat more. Sometimes when I hear someone order something I remember that I want that too so I get more on my waffle. The atmosphere of the cafe cues a person to eat more because there are so many delicious options that its hard to resist. There is also a visual aspect to it, seeing only a waffle on my plate (a small portion) it makes me want to fill it up with all the different toppings.This makes me eat more than I expected. After I eat, I am so full I can go until dinner time without eating.

Just a fact, their busiest days are usually Saturday and Sunday mornings so if you go prepare for a line!

Food Deserts Are Everywhere

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Food deserts are something I never really thought was a problem, but after witnessing and learning about how it effects everyone in the community, it is more then just a community problem. Food deserts are most common in low income and low access communities. The USDA found out that there are nearly 23.5 million people in the US are living in food deserts and more then half of them are apart of low income families. To be considered living in a food desert you have to be more then 10 miles away from available and afordable fresh fruits and vegetables. The price of fresh fruits and vegetables in local markets or grocery stores are not cheap, instead of buying a bunch of grapes for $3 why not buy a bag of chips for only 50 cents. However, some people do not even have a choice, they can only buy those bags of chips or cookies. But with food deserts becoming more common and it being harder for families to get fresh foods it is challenging to keep a healthy diet. Not being able to afford or get to fresh fruits or vegetables caused the obesity rate to double in the past 20 years. The USDA is always trying to find new and healthy eating habits to lower the obesity rate in america but with food deserts becoming more frequent it is more challenging to have everyone try to follow their guide lines to a healthy diet.

Touring Port Richmond over the week made me see and notice things I would never get to see. There was one store that was completely empty that used to be a supermarket that now closed down. Even though there are a lot other supermarkets and farmers markets on the block that is just the first of many to close down. Instead of opening more farmer markets or grocery stores that provide fresh foods I also noticed that more and more chain fast food restaurants have been opening, in Staten Island especially there is a fast food restaurant on almost every other block. When I was on vacation this summer in Aruba, we had to pass the towns where the locals lived to get to our hotel. The airport was on the opposite end of the island so we had to drive through almost the whole island which is only 20 miles long. On the way to the hotel I noticed there was not a lot of grocery stores or farmers markets, I only saw about 3 or 4 farmers markets and 2 local grocery stores that sold fresh food. Even in Aruba there is fast food chains everywhere rather then more grocery stores.

In 2008, New York’s Mayor Bloomberg opened up the idea of Green Carts to help put an end to New York’s food deserts.The Green Cart is a stand on a sidewalk corner that only sells fresh fruits and vegetables in places with little access to them. Most of the costumers that shop at the green carts are from low income families that make under $25,000 a year. Since Mayor Bloomberg established the Green Cart over 500 permits have been issued to owners running Green Carts in New York. 350 opened in the Bronx and Brooklyn, 150 in Manhattan, 100 in Queens and 50 in Staten Island. Since the Greens Carts opened there has been a 71% report increased consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables.