blog written about a nonprofit.

I need one blog written about a nonprofit.

The goal of the blogs is to create awareness surrounding the various extracurricular activities (programs and grants, athletics, arts and music, field trips, uniforms, and award ceremonies)offered through Activities Beyond the Classroom (ABC). The articles should speak to current donors, potential donors, partners, potential partners, and staff — NOT parents and students. The purpose of this particular article is to showcase the after-school wrestling program at Mt. Airy and Roselawn elementary schools. Here is the information I was given for the article: We have wrestling at two schools, Roselawn and Mt. Airy. We’ve done it in the fall in the past, but this is the first year we are doing it in the spring. At Roselawn, wrestling is during the ABC Club on Tuesdays from 5-5:40pm, and runs through May 10. At Mt. Airy, it started March 12 and runs for 10 weeks, 2:15-3:15pm on Mondays. Don Jones manages the wrestling program. We will have a wrestling scrimmage (Roselawn vs Mt. Airy) in April, plus possibly scrimmages with teams outside of CPS. Don can give you details on those. There are about 35 kids total who participate in wrestling. Here is an interview I had … Don Jones, Wrestling Program Manager We do a Monday program at Mt. Airy School and we go from 2:30-3:30, so we just do it for an hour. Then we do a program at Roselawn Condon Elementary School from 5-6 p.m. on Tuesdays. At both places, we have a good group of kids and my goal is to get the kids moving their bodies. So we do a little bit of tumbling warmups before we start wrestling, and then my goal is to just teach them the basics – good takedowns, defense and there’s a top and a bottom position in wrestling that we’re teaching them as well. We have second graders up to fifth graders. At Roselawn we have 8-15 kids and Mt. Airy is anywhere from 3-7 kids coming to the program. We actually didn’t do the scrimmage wholeheartedly because of the numbers, but we’re looking to do something a little bit bigger here in the future. My fear was that some of the kids are still understanding the sport and are just cautious about their temperament. We’re really working hard to teach the kids to say hey it’s a takedown and only one person can get the takedown, so he may be considered the winner, but it’s not the end of the world. In some cases, they are getting a little upset about getting taken down. So I’m just trying to change that mentality a little bit, so I just need to give it a little more time until I think we’ll be effective and have fun with the scrimmage. In the future, I’d like for the teachers to come and for parents to come out as well. So I just want to make sure we have the proper discipline before we do that. Wrestling is a little bit different from other sports, like soccer where it’s a team, but wrestling it is you against one other person, so they have to understand that although someone is taking you down and they are on-top of or behind you it is just a take down it doesn’t mean that they’re mad at you or trying to hurt you. There is always going to be one winner and one loser. It’s just trying to get them to understand that a little bit more. They’re coming along! We’re going to wait until next year to start scrimmaging with other schools. We’re setting up a summer program at a couple of the schools, but we have another week or two at these two schools. By participating in the wrestling program students are learning discipline – it’s understanding that there is one winner and one loser, but just having the discipline to say hey I lost that match and what ways can I get better so next time I wrestle that person how can I get closer or beat them. A lot of it is just discipline. A lot of it is also temperament – teaching them that they can’t get upset when they lose. Two things happen, a lot of times kids will be upset and think hey I lost, I’m not that good or in some cases ready to cry, or they have some anger. So just trying to work on their temperament. And wrestling teaches, I wrestled all through high school and college, and have been coaching for 20 years, it teaches you that you’re out there by yourself and it’s the same in life. Sometimes you’re on a job interview and you’re there by yourself, so you have to make certain decisions. So wrestling is one of those things where you can fit off your back not get pinned or you lay there and just get pinned. So it’s teaching those lessons to never give up and things can happen. The ABC program, the goal is if we can keep kids doing extra curricular activities they’re going to want to come to school, they’re going to want to stay in school and I think that is kind of the goal. I’ve seen it over the years, kids will say I really hate school but I love wrestling. So they come to school because they love wrestling, and all the sudden that equation changes where they are really starting to enjoy school. Then when they get to high school they say hey I really want to wrestle in college and in order to wrestle in college you have to be a good student and get good grades. So hopefully we can capture some of these kids at a young age and have them fall in love with the sport. And with that comes falling in love with going to school. We’ll have the wrestling program again in the fall, and we’re looking to add 10 schools to the program.