Michael R. White & the Case Farm

It’s so crazy to know that the semester and our capstone experience are coming to a close. I feel like we got started on our capstones forever ago, so it’s weird to imagine them ending and how our lives will be afterward. This semester has been so different than any other semester at Case so far.

During the third and fourth weeks of October, we went to the vision clinic for which we had been screening so many CMSD kids (our CMSD contact estimates we screened over 1,000 kids) all throughout the semester. The clinic was set up in a community center near Tremont and the first thing we saw when we drove up every day was the huge OneSight bus, which is very distinctive because it’s white and blue and green and plastered with their logo and pictures of smiling children wearing their brand new glasses that were provided by the organization.

On days that we walked into the building after the first round of CMSD kids had already gone through the full gamut of eye tests (muscle control, glaucoma, dilation, visual acuity, color and depth perception, and autorefraction) is a hallway chockfull of kids sitting with the funny black glasses you get after having your eyes dilated. There were OneSight people running all over the place because every day was just a tiny bit understaffed. The main exam room was an absolute madhouse, and was lit with weird orange lighting that you eventually got used to but which was very jarring when you first walked into the room. It was very cool to see kids get shuffled through the entire eye testing process (some were super nervous and uncertain, some could barely contain their excitement about getting glasses) and pick out their frames, especially since we had screened so many beforehand. It was awesome to see the final product. We helped out in the lab a lot as well, especially in the afternoons. OneSight had all of the materials with them right there every day, and we all got to learn and do one or two steps in the process of physically making the glasses. The last thing was boxing them up to send to the schools, which had a nice sense of finality to it.  

Our second farm trip with the Michael R. White 6^th graders (we’re going once more at the end of this month with the 5^th graders) was today and we had so much fun preparing for it and carrying it out. The kids were even better behaved today than they were last time, so the whole thing went off without a hitch. Because it’s starting to get very chilly out in Cleveland and we’re well into November, we decided that a lesson about growing winter crops with some Thanksgiving tie-ins would be fun, appropriate, and educational for the kids.

The first time the 6^th graders came to the farm, they seemed excited to be there. There was minimal misbehaving and a large number of the students were enthusiastically actively participating in the lessons and activities. Because we ended up with some extra time during the last field trip, we planned and created a bingo game based on today’s and our previous lesson plans, in order to serve the dual purpose of keeping the kids engaged and occupied and also reviewing the material with them.  

Like last time at the farm, we brought a healthy snack for them to try that pertained to the day’s lesson. The last time we came (at the end of October) we fed them apples and honey, because part of that day’s lesson was about honey. Today we gave them carrots and hummus, because carrots are a cold-weather crop and we wanted to introduce them to a vegetable dip that is healthier than ranch dressing since our project is about healthy eating. They also got to tour the hoop house, mushroom cellar, and greenhouse, and even help harvest some sweet potatoes, carrots, and onions! The kids had a great time and everybody left the farm on a good note.