Support thus far!

If you are interested in donating, look here first!
We have had a few people show interest and one person purchased the parachute, and some puzzles and a game or two are on their way. I would love to send more GAMES. Cards and Dominos even.
Thanks so much!!

How can we help?

I have had an enormous outpouring of comments and requests to help these kids, and this school. I spoke at length with the P.E. Teacher, as she openly expressed some concerns about her supplies "floating away" and the challanges she faces.

She indicated wanting games. Lots of games. Games that enrich and explore. Games like Yahtzee, Scrabble, Jr., Monopoloy, Jr., Checkers, Cards (Old Maid!), Chutes & Ladders, etc. She also really was eager to have some jump ropes and hula hoops.

If you are feeling enormously generous, she is very sad about the loss of their parachute. Parachute games encourage cooperative, noncompetitive play and reinforce turn-taking and sharing. Parachutes also encourage children to work together to make the parachute billow. They would need a 20-24' Parachute for the purposes of working with an entire classroom and because they are smaller children. Some balls for the chute would be nice, too! :-)

Here's a link to the play parachutes:
http://www.tinkertots.com/playparachutes.html

She has plenty of playground balls and sporting equipment.

Because the school is still rebuilding, we determined to use her home mailing address to send the items. I am not interested in coordinating and sending everything at once. Anyone wishing to send something can merely have them shipped directly to her.

Since this is a public blog, just post a comment or e-mail me and I will send you all the information for the gifts!

Heather in New Orleons

It's a photo.

It was fun.

A City Destroyed

I didn't take all these photos, but the destruction was so common and so consistent...it didn't matter.
















Bird Baths stay put.















I love this photo, so I messed up the chronology by posting an example of rebuilding. This roof is new. The chimney is new. Things are looking up for this family, as they have a frame for their home.









Generally this is rubble. The rubble was so confounding and stupefying that I felt emotionless. It became part of the landscape.

















This is pretty amazing. The photo on the left was a home. I am not sure how to describe where the home stood, but it did. The items in the branches is fabric related debris from the water covering this entire area.

The smells and the visuals in this beachfront community was impossible to capture on film, digital or not. It just seemed like the ocean had been here for months and it just decided to leave, on it's own accord, and this is the stuff it left behind.



There was a lot to grin about. Honestly, I laughed more than I cried. This was another beachfront community home that likely was fancy enough for these treasured lions to sit on their gates or in front of some southern porch. One can only imagine what the home must have looked like, but we can see that the owners have a great sense of humor.

These lions and a birdbath down the street remained relatively unharmed. They join the bathtubs and sinks that decorate empty lots.


This home was actually in the road. Can you tell from the photo? People have to clean up the mess, but insurance adjusters and FEMA personnel were flagging, tagging and marking homes with information pertaining to their whereabouts. This home moved from the right side of the street, on it's cement foundation, across the street - well nearly across.

We met the owner's son. His home was destroyed, and his Dad is out of town in another home his Dad owns, so the son is in a trailer on the lot where the home was.



This is the back of the home above. It bashed into the home across the street, and it pushed the neighbors off their foundation as well. The home with the roof (on the left) used to sit where the home with the green shingles (right) plowed in.










This is another example of a home on tour. It landed in the middle of a shell station.

What's an eBus really?

This is the eBus. It's a bus with computers, software and kids on board. It's driven to the school each day by a wonderful bus driver, Mitchel. He prepares the bus, links us up to the dish, and keeps us honest. He's great with the kids, too!

This is a shot of the bus from the inside, with the teacher popping her head in to say hi! Students are busy working on Waterford Early Reading and one little guy was waiting his turn reading a book from Penguin.







The teachers didn't have computers at home, and with the cable and the telephone lines still down, it was pretty exciting for them to use the internet. When we had a free desktop, they hopped on! Family and friends had sent e-mails and the school was on the MSNBC website, so they were eager to get surfing!



This teacher was going through some photos that had been downloaded by someone prior to me...they were of the school, and the destruction that Katrina inflicted on the classrooms. These students were THRILLED to see what had happened, and shouted out names and places when they recognized the classroom. "That's Ms. X's room!" "That's the Nurse's Door!!!" It was thrilling for them because they weren't allowed back into the school, it was all fenced up (and mostly cleaned up) by the time we got there.

This is me. Reading to them. It was so fun!

It's the Kids

Welcome to North Bay Elementary School. This is the first day of school since Hurricane Katrina. We have the new modular buildings, and a free form parking lot, and now we are working out a routine for the "parent pick up" to allow the traffic to flow in and out of the school, admist the debris, the workers, and the neighborhood piles of rubble.






The kids skip across the field (turn around and look at the photo above) to get to the huge football field and the corresponding track. It's just like you might imagine, except they aren't allowed to play with the leaves, sticks, or grass. They have to wash their hands to avoid getting any bacteria from the flooding.













The rest of these photos are somewhat just a collage of kids...like my week in the bus! :-)

North Bay Elementary Rebuilds

This is just a neat photo. Kids are playing, the temporary school is in the background, next to the old school that is being rebuilt.











These are kids walking across the playground into their temporary school classroom.
















This is a closer shot of the old school being cleaned out and the debris is being piled up. They had dozens of workers do this the week we were there.









This is another great shot of the school being cleaned up.













The eBus was parked on the basketball courts, and the alley where the debris from the homes and the school was being cleaned up. You can see that this is a huge project. They appeared to be doing this daily, all over the city.

North Bay Elementary Destruction

This is the front of the school, North Bay Elementary School, after they had fenced it off and began the process of rebuilding.

The parents used to pull up in the parking lot on the left, and this alley was filled with debris day after day, but it was done every morning. The efforts and the focus of these folks as they worked was incredible.








This was a series of classrooms along the alley above, that have lost all their walls and windows as a result of the water that caved everything in.










Student Cafeteria







































This was a shot of the sports complex behind the elementary school that was used by the district. I found it intriguing that not a single pole was in alignment or straight.

North Bay Elementary in Bay St. Louis, MS

On Monday, November 7, 2005, North Bay Elementary students and teachers returned to the first "official" day of school since Hurricane Katrina. I was there that day, with my associate Danielle and the eBus Driver, Mitchel. It was crazy busy, and terribly neat, to experience this moment.

North Bay Elementary was one of many of the Bay St. Louis-Waveland School District schools to be hit hard by Hurricane Katrina. The school was entirely condemned, and the homes of most the students have similiarily been destroyed. Families are still not back from their evacuations, and many of the students are living with relatives across town or in FEMA trailers on the lawn in front of their homes.

Monday these students and teachers began their journey back to "normalacy" in these altered conditions, admist the rubble and despite the emotions that lie to closely beneath the sruface of everyone we meet. These students are attending school in prefabricated modules linked by a series of boardwarlks that keep them off the mud and sand, and lingering reminents of mold and bacteria, that still plagues the grounds.

Before the school opened, our bus was parked a few yards away near a grassy area that used to be a sports complex and served as a temporary "school" until this official re-opening. That was called "tent school" and brought similiar smiles and excitement to the faces of the students at this elementary school.

I am told the old school, just behind the mobile classroom village, awaits demolition. When I was there it was a zoo of workmen cleaning everything, at the school and across the community. There is audio show and articles linked to this website addy: http://risingfromruin.msnbc.com/2005/11/an_emotional_re.html#posts