Toast It! Melt It! Smother It!

“For almost fifty years, Emil’s Deli has been serving great food to the city of Cedar Rapids.”

          Do you know what that means!?  It means that their Hawkeye sandwich (oven-baked roast beef, cheddar cheese, & bacon, topped with sautéed peppers, onions, and mushrooms, toasted together and united with Thousand Island and grilled sourdough) is probably older than most of yo mommas!

          I (and my taste buds) had the pleasure of trying out this little gem of our fair town last week.  From the moment I opened the menu, the little voice in the back of my head was crying out in hunger, “I want it all!”  If you’re looking for a place that you will truly come hungry and leave happy (and maybe a little stuffed) then Emil’s is the place for you!

          Let’s start with the appetizers:  they’ve got your classics like wings, nachos, and quesadillas but with their own little twist.  Not in the mood for spicy?  Try Asian or BBQ!  Although, let me just say that with their portions, an appetizer could probably be your meal!  If it were me, I would get some queso dip and chips and get my sandwich to do.  Gotta have something to satisfy that 3 A.M. hunger!

          Now, they don’t call it Emil’s Deli for nothing!  The sandwiches are pretty much sexier and yummier than Channing Tatum and Anderson Cooper combined (and for my guy friends, imagine someone more beautiful and voluptuous than Beyonce’ or J-LO).  Anyway, my point is that the keyword here is deli!  From the classic Egg salad to their signature Apple Turkey Jack, you won’t be disappointed!  But, in the spirit of Marilyn Monroe, “some like it hot!”  And if you are a member of the “some” that I speak of, then sandwiches such as the Shrimp Bacon Club, Cuban, Meatball, or Reuben (my personal favorite) are delicious enough to bring you as close to heaven (or reincarnation, purgatory, etc) as possible!

          Not in the mood for sandwiching it up?  Trying to lose that stubborn belly bulge before summer?  Then, no worries!  Emil’s offers a bountiful selection of salads or wraps!  You can even “create your own!”  Oh, and the potato salad and baked beans are pretty much amazing too!

          So what are you waiting for!?  Get your keaster over to Emil’s and chow down!  Still not convinced?  Then I’ll put it to you this way:  if Emil’s were a Facebook status, then I guarantee that you would “like” it! 

Emil’s Deli

7037 C Ave. NE

Suite 200

Cedar Rapids, IA 52402

(319)-743-3123

Hours of Operation

M-Thurs.

10:30-9:00

Friday-Saturday

10:30-11:00

Sunday

10:30-7:00

Dine In, Carryout, and all your catering needs!

The Life of Elementary School

Often the highlight of an elementary school student's day is their recess break.  It provides a chance to run and play outdoors and to shed some pent up energy.  Nothing makes them happier, though, to spend that time with someone older, someone they can admire, which is one reason Recess Buddies is so fun and exciting.

Lately the kids haven't been able to play outside at Taylor or Johnson Elementary since the weather has been so cold (indoor recess often isn't as fun), but next week a warm spell will provide the opportunity to return to the outdoors.  Indoor recess can still be entertaining, however, as one of my friends found after signing 15-20 autographs because the kids thought he looked like Justin Bieber.

One of the classic playground games is kickball.  Usually that is one of the most popular games, although the kids love to throw around the football or frisbee, shoot a few hoops or even do a little jump roping.  Probably the most popular game to play, though, is soccer.  This game has become a fall and spring staple of many playgrounds in Cedar Rapids, but, sadly, we cannot play in the snow currently on the ground.

Another excellent opportunity to work with kids is at Johnson Elementary with the tutoring and after-school programs they conduct.  Throughout the day students can volunteer in the classroom or in some other capacity.  After school, fine arts programs like dance, art and music are held in which students may partake.  Johnson always welcomes new tutors and mentors so anyone is welcome to volunteer.

The kids are always excited to see Coe students come to play with them or read to them so there is never a dull moment.  They are often spontaneous and funny as a result of their natural curiosity so the conversation about their daily life never ends.  A better way to brighten your day does not exist past volunteering at Johnson or Taylor Elementary Schools.

--Jason

The Inaugural Cedar Rapids Dance Marathon!

Cedar Rapids Dance Marathon is an organization that raises funds 365 days a year for pediatric patients treated at the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital.  While there are more than 150 dance marathons across the nation each year, Coe College will be hosting the first ever dance marathon held by more than one school. The event is April 16-17, from 7 pm to 7 am with participants from: Coe College, Mount Mercy University and Kirkwood Community College.

This 12-hour event is a celebration of the culmination of an entire year of fundraising and features: a live DJ, dance team performances, a Best Buy game room and more!

Once registered, dancers are encouraged to raise $100 each. 100% of the money dancers raise supports local families from Cedar Rapids that have been treated for various terminal illnesses at the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital. The goal of the entire event is to raise $12,000, all for the kids!

To find out more about the dance marathon buzz that is sweeping Cedar Rapids visit us at: www.helpmakemiracles.org/event/crdm. For questions about registration or donations contact Kaycee Reynolds at: crdm.executive@gmail.com.

Don’t miss out on your chance to be part of the inaugural Cedar Rapids Dance Marathon!

In the Spirit of Dr. King

Kohawks make our days off days on, and MLK Day 2010 was no exception.  In the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 150 people, including 8 faculty and staff, participated in the various events sponsored by the Office of Service-Learning and Campus Engagement.

            The morning began with an Issue Breakfast in the Clark Alumni house where over 50 were in attendance.  The breakfast featured excerpts from some of Dr. King’s most inspirational public addresses, performed by seniors Cassie Morgan and John Sherrod and Professor Barnett of the Theatre Department.  This year’s keynote speaker was Nancy Ziese, a local social worker and civil rights activist. 

            With the helping hands of 60 people, approximately 9,072 meals were packed for Kids Against Hunger.  The meals will be shipped off to Haiti to offer aid to families and children who are still suffering as a result of the devastating earthquake that struck the island nation in 2009.  Also, while the meals were being packed, some volunteers chose to try their hands at sewing and made a total of 7 fleece blankets that will be given to local shelters.  In addition, the Coe Crafters are still working on some t-shirt mats that will hopefully be completed in the coming weeks.

            The day concluded with the annual Spring Poverty Simulation where 27 students participated and 20 volunteers helped facilitate the event.  This event has always been one my favorites because it really gives participants a first-hand experience of what it is like to live a month in poverty.  While some students start off seeing the simulation as a game, they soon catch on that for many families nationwide, it is reality. 

            Dr. King’s dream was simple:  that people would not be judged by their appearance, but rather by the “conflict of their character.”  It is in this spirit that we come together to spread a little bit of love and offer our hands to the service of others in the world who, unlike many of us, have tasted the bitterness of poverty, hunger, discrimination, and selfishness.  Let the dream continue.

-Tyler Heisel

My Service at the Alzheimer's Association

I chose to fulfill my 20 hour service-learning requirement at the Alzheimer's Association. They are a non-profit organization which works to advance research and awareness of Alzheimer's disease and dementia. I had never heard of this organization until I attended the Service Fair. Jill Carlson explained to me that they were looking for individuals to serve with clerical duties and any other miscellaneous office needs. Initially, I wasn't sure it would be that enjoyable. I had never done a desk job before, though, so I decided to give it a try. I was assigned to organize their monthly newsletters which had been deemed undeliverable for various reasons. I used their database to either change or delete addresses that were incorrect. During my time at the Alzheimer's Association, I prepared newsletters for delivery, organized donation envelopes and created Excel inventories, first for envelope sizes and then a large inventory of their library. The library inventory involved taking a Word document of titles and organizing them into an Excel file, a project that took four weeks.  

To my surprise, I found my service at the Alzheimer’s Association to be a good change of pace from my classes and campus life at Coe. I worried that all of the clerical duties would be boring, but instead I found the projects exciting and rewarding to complete. From my work in the library, I got to learn more about the purpose and goals of this organization. I also experienced their purpose first hand when I got to interact with a lady who came in one afternoon concerned about her aunt’s dementia. This showed me the importance of this service beyond just a requirement to fulfill. I felt appreciated there, knowing that the things I was doing were projects that they didn’t normally have time for. As I got closer to finishing my service requirement, I began pondering if this would be a good career for me. I entered Coe planning on being a music teacher. However, my experiences with office duties have made me think that a music secretary might be a better fit for me. This way I can combine my love for music with my office skills to serve others. As all of these thoughts were swirling in my head, I was approached by my new supervisor, Paige Knebel, about if I would like to participate in an internship with the Alzheimer’s Association next semester. Starting in January, I will be doing an internship there focusing specifically on office work and computer programs. I will be more active in putting their newsletters together rather than just stuffing them to send. Service-learning has been a good experience for me as it has revealed a potential career for me. I have enjoyed my service-learning experience at the Alzheimer’s Association this past semester, and look forward to my internship with them next semester.

-Amy Smith

A Student's Perspective on Service

Sandy Krueger

McKinley Reflection

I’ve known for a while now that children account for most of the joy in my life. How could they not? There is nothing more amazing than watching them just be. There is no shame in their questions, no judgment in their eyes, no hatred in their hearts. In the educational world there are conflicting ideas of what we are born with. Are we, as Jean-Jacque Rousseau suggests, flowering seeds? Should adults steer clear of the developing child and let them interact with their environment? Or did John Locke get it right in his theory that we are born as blank slates, waiting to be molded and shaped by the whos and whats that surround us. Probably we are closer to what Piaget has named the “interactive generator transformer”, in that children interact differently with the environment at different ages. As we age our brains age with us, we come not only to learn more facts but we are able to think about what we learn differently. We move from sensory, goal-directed behavior to being able to think in the abstract and hypothetically. We advance from “Where’s mommy?” to “’Human rights’ is a term frequently used but seldom defined. What rights should belong to every human being?” The unanswered question of the 21^st century. Maybe we aren’t as intellectually developed as we like to think.

            Over the last few months I have had the opportunity to work one-on-one with a boy named Tiodene. Tiodene is thirteen years old. He is a small boy who doesn’t carry much weight. He wears glasses. He has a younger brother. He likes math, but not as much as gym class. His favorite color is black. He doesn’t like the cold. He likes to play rock, paper, scissors. He usually goes for paper. Tiodene is one African boy in Ms. Armstrong’s third period ELL class of about fifteen students. His peers are Mexican, Kenyan, American, Ghanaian. In ELL they work with the complications of the English language. In my hours there I’ve seen review of contractions, compound words and spelling. All of the students seem to grasp the material and do quite well with it, warranting at least one “Aww, Ms. Armstrong, we know this stuff! What are we stupid?” Except Tiodene doesn’t know. And what’s worse, he doesn’t even feel embarrassed when he hears his classmates complain that something that he doesn’t know is so easy for everyone else to grasp. He doesn’t feel embarrassed because he doesn’t hear the complaint.

 Tiodene’s world is chaos. Everyday he is pushed through the hallways of McKinley Middle School, thrown into one room where he is expected to sit quietly and stare at a book filled with symbols and maybe a picture. Then it’s off to a different room where this time he is expected to copy more symbols from the whiteboard and into a notebook. Sometimes in this room the man writing the symbols on the board calls his name. Quiet-then laughter. The man looks at Tiodene like he is sad and so Tiodene asks why he looks like that. The man just shakes his head at Tiodene and resumes speaking the harsh, ugly sound everyone in his new habitat screeches at him. Next its another room. Here he gets to play on the computer and he likes that. Sometimes he is again forced to decipher those symbols and those days aren’t as fun. Sometimes he sits with a girl who is not his teacher, and they draw pictures on the whiteboard and she makes him repeat what she says. Sometimes he remembers what they drew last week and says those words to her, and she smiles and he feels happier than he has all day. After that Tiodene gets to eat. He doesn’t understand why all of the people he goes to this school with are so happy when its time to eat. Tiodene doesn’t like the food. After he eats Tiodene’s day dramatically improves, he gets to go to gym class. Gym class is always fun because he gets to run and play games. First he had to wait until everybody else was picked to play before he got picked. Now he is always chosen first because he is so fast. After they are done playing its time for the room where Tiodene understands. Math class makes sense to Tiodene and he is a top student. He always knows the answer, but doesn’t raise his hand because it takes him too long to remember how to say it. The teacher knows he knows though because she is always smiling at him and nobody else does that to him as much as she does. Except maybe that girl he draws pictures with sometimes…

For me, the bottom line is that the service learning is what you made it. I’m going to make an educated guess here and say that for a lot of my peers it was an inconvenience. Maybe that comes from the required aspect of it? I can see where they’re coming from, how can it be considered volunteering if we are offered something in return (a diploma)? Of course, there isn’t any way around it and certainly it is better to require it than to not have it at all. I’m assuming that for some kids they’re attitudes changed through the process and while they may have grumbled in the beginning they reflect back and are happy with twenty hours well spent. I loved it, but I knew I would. I hope in Tiodene I have made a mentee that will continue to turn to me for a smile when he needs one.

It's Almost Christmas!

With the approach of finals and Christmas break many freshman are finishing up their service learning requirements.  When I look back over the semester we have accomplished alot as an office. Directly, I have helped pack bags of food for students at Polk and Taylor, but the experience has been extremely rewarding.  This simple activity makes a life changing difference for some students. I have also got to meet alot of the incoming freshman that I probably would have never got to interact with if it wasn't for the OSLCE. Also as an ICAPer we have been working on raising money for Kids Against Hunger. There are many simple little things that we can do that will make a big difference on someone's life. 
In the holiday season try and share something with someone that needs it: A meal, a shelter, a hug, or even a simple smile can change someone's day.
Merry Christmas!!
-Sarah :)