Spring break seems to have accelerated us headlong towards the end of the semester and preparing for our mini-presentation on Thursday has provided a useful moment to summarize where we are, how we got here, and what’s next. That’s the frame we’ll use for our presentation on Thursday. A few reflections in the meantime:

• every single group meeting we have had has been hyper productive – this is no small thing and warrants continued acknowledgement, I believe
• Amanda is right that shifting to something other than email as a primary communication channel 100% makes clear sense for the next phase
• I feel more confident than ever that there will be a next phase – the group’s confidence in that is something I deeply appreciate
• It is an amazing feeling when a new submission comes in
• Over the last few days, we did at last get our instagram up and running. And we have 3 international submissions (our first) from a school in Peru.
• negotiating the politics of outreach in personal networks on a project with such emotional vulnerability involved has been a big learning experience – to put it lightly
• speed and haste have had surprising benefits in certain ways with this project but they are difficult for kids, teachers, and parents right now in this particular year and at this particular time of the school year – I hear a lot of chatter about everyone being done, beyond the point of tired, and this weighs on certain outreach efforts

We currently have ~30 submissions total. Some come through and are essentially ready to go right on the site. Others won’t necessarily work in the model of the site we’ve currently imagined but we will figure out how to include and honor all of the submissions while curating them appropriately – it’s one of the primary tasks we’ll have to figure out in the next few weeks. The students Vallerie has connected us to have been generous, gracious, and in many ways profound. They continue to affirm the real “why?'” behind our project – while also surprising in the most meaningful of ways too.