School culture and community are a focus of Rotary’s high-impact EarlyAct Club at Sycamore’s North Grove School according to principal Ryan Janisch. Although somewhat limited by Covid-19 restrictions, the fifth-grade extra-curricular activity retains its 11-year run of helping build leadership and philanthropy.
Janisch said club participation generally runs between 50 and 70 kids with normally two club meetings per month. Activities center around 10 character-traits like collaboration, citizenship, honesty, integrity, etc. The club will choose a character trait upon which to focus and then create announcements, posters, game activities, service projects, newsletter blurbs, and even a video to highlight it. A recent “citizenship” focus included a bulletin board “mask” montage to promote good Covid-19 mitigation efforts. Janisch credits the club with making community service and character-trait learning “fun.”
The EarlyAct Club has an impressive record for service according to Janisch. One example was their Kazo Project in Rwanda. A Sycamore student heard about a school requirement that the students in Rwanda needed two pencils and a pencil sharpener to attend class. An aggressive collection effort took place with ten-thousand pencils (along with sharpeners) amassed followed by a matching donation from the School Toolbox Company of Sycamore. The result was enough supplies for students in two Rwandan towns. A highlight of the project was an exchange of videos between the Sycamore and Rwanda students. Other projects included help with “Feed My Starving Children” meal packing; building a bookshelf for a Habitat for Humanity home; Operation Gratitude that sends candy to troops overseas; visits to a city council meeting and WLBK radio; building a special recess buddy-bench; and problem-solving skits performed for the whole school. Janisch gave a shout-out to past and present Rotarians Brian Adams, Julie Sgarlata, and Riley Oncken for their special help with the EarlyAct club.
Our next speakers will be Jeff Keicher (with an update from Springfield) and Michael DeVito (with the club's "Year in Review").
Following is our schedule of upcoming speakers/presentations:
Wednesday, June 23 (Hybrid meeting: In-person at Blumen Gardens and online via Zoom): Springfield Update (Jeff Keicher) & Year in Review (Michael DeVito)
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SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, Region 1 has met requirements to move into Tier 1 of the state’s Restore Illinois plan, which allows indoor dining.
Region 1 includes the following counties: Boone, Carroll, DeKalb, Jo Daviess, Lee, Ogle, Stephenson, Whiteside and Winnebago Counties.
Indoor dining service had been forbidden in Region 1 since October 3rd, 2020.
According to IDPH, this is what is allowed under Tier 1 in Region 1:
Bars and Restaurants
Indoor service limited to lesser of 25% or 25 people per room
Establishment must serve food for indoor service
Reservations required and limited to 2 hours
No tables exceeding 4 people indoors
Bars and restaurants close at 11 p.m. and may reopen no earlier than 6 a.m. the following day
Meetings, social events, and gatherings (including weddings, funerals, potlucks, etc.)
Limit to lesser of 25 guests or 25% of overall room capacity both indoors and outdoors
Applicable to professional, cultural and social group gatherings
Not applicable to students participating in-person classroom learning, or sports
This does not reduce the overall facility capacity dictated by general Phase 4 business guidance such as office, personal care, retail, etc.
Organized group recreational activities (fitness centers, sports, etc.)
Sports should follow the mitigation measures set forth in the All Sport Guidelines, which outlines appropriate levels of practice and competition based on individual sport risk
Face coverings must be worn at all times in fitness centers, including while engaged in individual exercise regardless of person or machine spacing
In a statement, the IDPH said the lessening of restrictions on Tier 1 mitigations, to allow indoor dining, was partially predicated on the launch of a surge staffing program to support hospitals and expand capacity.
The IDPH announced a partnership with the Illinois Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Healthcare and Family Services to launch the program, which will create a staffing pool that hospitals across the state can draw from in the event of a COVID-19 patient surge.
“With this surge staffing program, IDPH and hospital leaders feel confident that metrics can safely move away from utilizing medical/surgical bed limits to move across mitigation tiers, allowing more regions to advance,” the health department wrote.
Regions 1 and 6 both moved to Tier 1 today. Regions 8, 9, 10, and 11 are currently in the most restrictive Tier 3.
A test positivity rate below 8% for three consecutive days, as measured by the 7-day rolling average, is required for a region to move into Tier 1, along with greater than or equal to 20% available staffed ICU and medical/surgical hospital beds for three consecutive days, on a 3-day rolling average, and no sustained increase in the number of people in the hospital with COVID for seven out of 10 days, on a 7-day average.
Region 1’s 7-day rolling positivity average: 7.1%
Boone: 11.2%
Carroll: 4.3%
DeKalb: 9.1%
Jo Daviess: 7.3%
Lee: 1.6%
Ogle: 6.3%
Stephenson: 5.9%
Whiteside: 5.6%
Winnebago: 8.2%
Regions 3 and 5 move to the less restrictive Phase 4 of the Restore Illinois Plan today.
In order to move to Phase 4, a region must meet the following metrics:
1) A test positivity rate less =6.5% for three consecutive days, as measured by the 7-day rolling average; AND 2) =20% available staffed ICU hospital beds for three consecutive days, on a 7-day rolling average; AND 3) No sustained increase in the number of people in the hospital with COVID-19 for seven out of 10 days, on a 7-day average.
Posted by Amanda Gorman, National Youth Poet Laureate on Jan 19, 2021
When day comes, we ask ourselves where can we find light in this never ending shade? The loss we carry, a sea we must wade. We braved the belly of the beast.
We've learned that quiet isn't always peace and the norms and notions of what just is, isn't always justice. And yet the dawn is hours before we knew it, somehow we do it, somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn't broken but simply unfinished.
We, the successors of a country and a time, where a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.
And yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn't mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect. We are striving to forge our union with purpose, to compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man. And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know to put our future first. We must first put our differences aside.
We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another We seek harm to none and harmony for all. Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true, that even as we grieved, we grew. That even as we hurt, we hoped.
That even as we tired, we tried. That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious, not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.
Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid.
If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won't lighten the blade but in all the bridges we've made, that is the promise to glade, the hill we climb if only we dare, it's because being American is more than a pride we inherit. It's the past we stepped into and how we repair it.
We've seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it, would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
And this effort very nearly succeeded. But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated. In this truth, in this faith, we trust. For while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.
This is the era of just redemption. We feared -- at its deception. We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour, but within it we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves.
So, while once we asked, “how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe?”, now we assert, “how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?” We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be, a country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free. We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation.
Because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation. Our blunders become their burdens. But one thing is certain. If we merge mercy with might and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change, our children's birth right.
So let us leave behind a country better than one we were left with, every breath from my bronze pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one. We will rise through the gold-limbed hills in the west, we will rise from the windswept northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution. We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states.
We will rise from the sun-baked South. We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover, in every known nook of our nation, in every corner called our country, our people diverse and beautiful, will emerge battered and beautiful.
When day comes, we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid.
The new dawn blooms as we free it for there is always light if only we're brave enough to see it, if only we're brave enough to be it.
January 17, 1706 – Benjamin Franklin is born in Boston. Considered the Elder Statesman of the American Revolution , he displayed multiple talents as a printer, author, publisher, scientist, diplomat, and philanthropist. He contributed to and signed both the Declaration of Independence and the U. S. Constitution.
January 18, 1782 – American orator and politician Daniel Webster is born in Salisbury, New Hampshire. He served in both chambers of Congress, served as Secretary of State to three Presidents, and argued more than 200 cases before the U. S. Supreme Court.
January 19, 1809 – Poet and mystery/suspense writer Edgar Allen Poe is born in Boston, Massachusetts.
January 17, 1942 – Muhammad Ali is born in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1964, at age 22, he knocked out Sonny Liston to win the world heavyweight boxing championship. His title was taken away from him in a controversy over his conscientious objection status to the Viet Nam War that was later reversed and then he regained the title in 1974 by defeating George Foreman. In later life he struggled with Parkinson’s Disease and devoted himself to humanitarian causes.
January 23, 1849 – Elizabeth Blackwell was awarded her MD by the Medical Institute of Geneva, New York, thus becoming America’s first woman doctor.
January 20, 1944 – Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated to an unprecedented fourth term as President of the United States.
January 21, 1954 – The USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear powered submarine, was launched at Groton, Connecticut. It shares its name with Captain Nemo’s ship in the 1870 Jules Verne classic “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”
January 21, 1976 – The Concorde supersonic jet began passenger service cruising at twice the speed of sound.
We recognize that several Rotarians are listed below with a January 1, 1900 join date. We are currently investigating the issue, and working to correct it. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
