You could not have asked for a more beautiful morning with perfect, slightly cool weather, for getting out and doing a little bit of volunteer work. My wife and I grabbed a few garden tools and headed just down the street to Timberwilde Elementary where we joined several members of the GNW A-Team along with teachers and students from the school for a little bit of yard work.
The outdoor classroom was actually created several years ago as part of a project for a local GNW Eagle Scout. It is located just in the southeast part of the school in a greenbelt. With trails outlined in rock and covered in crushed decayed granite, the teachers can take their classes outdoors to see the various plants, xeriscaping and different garden areas.
In the center, large boulders have been brought in to create a classroom set-up. It really is a great idea and just needed a little TLC to keep it up.
With assistance from NISD, new landscaping material was brought in to refresh the trails, but they still needed the manual labor to spread the material, weed-eat the over grown weeds and mow some of the heavier grass.
With teams of students and adults pitching in, the entire area was covered with people working to get the classroom ready for use by the school.
Some students created little tasty bagels for birds, covered in peanut-butter and topped with birdseed. When the classroom isn't in use, I'm sure the little birds and squirrels in the area will appreciate the area too.
The Great Northwest A-Team participates in events like this in an effort to show our support for local schools like Timberwilde, Knowlton, Connally and Zachry. The schools make an effort to teach students about the value of volunteering in the community, and by having A-Team members support them, it demonstrates to the students that volunteerism is a great way to have fun and give back to the community, even when you are an adult. If you'd like to learn more about the A-Team, send me a note and I'll put you in touch with the right folks.
Slipping into Public Service Announcer voice: if you happen to live in The Great Northwest area of San Antonio, the following items may be of interest to you:
- Thursday, 15 October @ 7:30pm - Meeting of the GNW Board of Directors at the Lodge. They will be presenting the Independent Auditors report.
- Saturday, 17 October @ 8:00 to noon - The A-Team will assist Timberwilde Elementary students in doing a clean-up of their outdoor classroom. If you have ever thought about giving the A-Team a try, this would be a good chance. 8am at Timberwilde Elementary.
- Saturday, 17 October @ 10:00 to 3:00pm - The Great Northwest Library celebrates the 15th Anniversary. The new Friends of Great Northwest Library will be there to give out information on their new group. Please stop by and check them out.
- Saturday, 17 October @ 8:00PM to midnight, the GNW will hold the Adult Halloween Party (for GNWCIA members only) at the Lodge of the Great Northwest. BYOB. See Passages for more info.
And there you have your community announcements...
On Saturday, members of the Great Northwest A-Team, a volunteer group responsible for many of the projects that help keep the area looking nice, along with students from Mr. Shawn Vidal's Gifted and Talented program at Timberwilde Elementary School, donned reflective safety vests and took to the bridges, fences and other tagged surfaces in The Great Northwest, to give a fresh new coat of paint.
Several dozen students, parents and A-Team volunteers met at the school, mixed buckets of paint, donated by the City of San Antonio Graffiti Task Force and the office of outgoing District 6 Council Member Delicia Herrera and her staff. Incoming District 6 member Ray Lopez stopped by to make sure the efforts Councilwoman Herrera started will continue.
Mike Yager, head of the A-Team, said that "When you get a group of good kids like this, the work goes by fast and everyone has fun." And thanks to the great weather on Saturday, it wasn't oppressively hot, but just in case, Andrew Solano from District 6 delivered cases of water to the busy painters to make sure everyone stayed hydrated.
Splitting into several groups, the volunteers, young and old covered areas in Ridge Creek, Silver Creek, Timberwilde and areas near the GNW Library.
There is no doubt that the tagging of fences and bridges and utility boxes is a problem in our area. A handful of vandals with nothing better to do than destroy the community is really pitiful. But to see the energetic kids from Timberwilde get out in force and demonstrate what real community service is all about is certainly heartwarming.
When the painting was done, the group headed back to Timberwilde where volunteers enjoyed hot dogs and refreshments.
Would you like to get involved with projects like this? You don't need to have any special skills, just a willingness to come out and meet your neighbors, do some easy labor for as little as half an hour if that is all the time you have, and appreciate your community beyond the confines of your front door. Learn more about the A-Team here.
Can you use a little good news about middle school students? I think you can. Around here, it is not uncommon for people to draw negative conclusions about many of the kids they see, especially when they don't know them personally. With the obvious signs of taggers along fences and reports of shenanigans of all sorts, I can see how you might just, as that snooty waiter in Ferris Bueller's Day Off says, "Weep for the future". Well here is something that might cheer you up.
This past weekend, my wife and I had a hankerin' for some donuts but we didn't want to eat them alone. So, we headed off to Kuwamura Park in Emerald Valley where a dozen National Junior Honor Society students from Zachry Middle School were performing a little community service project. Now this isn't the kind of community service that you get when you are in trouble for something, this is the fun sort of project you do to show pride in the community and demonstrate some of the responsibility that comes with being a good citizen.
These kids, their NJHS Sponsor Mrs. Linda Bullard, and several parents joined Mike Yager and Richard Garcia from the A-Team at the park to clean up picnic tables, trash cans and playground equipment that had been badly defaced by vandals doing the opposite of community service.
The volunteers painted, scrubbed and scraped, then picked up trash and generally cleaned the park up. The least we could do was offer them a few of our donuts, right?
I spoke with Mrs. Bullard about these great kids. I know that there is more than just good grades to being in NJHS since both our our kids were privileged to be members. In fact, the students have to maintain a high grade average (above 90% I believe, they must not have any trips to the office for discipline problems and of course, they participate in community service projects like the park clean-up.
Chances are, with the good habits these students are demonstrating at the middle school level, they will continue on to shine in high school and beyond. And that is some good news we can all appreciate.
Would you like a chance to shine in the community? Why not consider demonstrating a little community service of your own (and have a whole lot of fun) by joining Mike Yager and the crowd that make up our own A-Team. We plan to work with another great set of students from Timberwilde Elementary on Saturday, 30 May. Need more info? E-mail me and I will put you in touch with Mike.
Fellow Silver Creek resident and Five Oh correspondent Gus sends us a picture he snapped while sitting at the 4-way stop near Timberwilde Elementary and staring at the marquee. 
I've been accused of not being as smart as a 5th grader, so I don't want to really speculate as to what the real message is intended to be. Maybe you know.
Gus on the other hand is at least as smart as a 5th grader, and suggests that what they meant to say was, Thanks for a Good Start - as in, start of the school year. I was so hoping that Staring Contests had become a sport, and that's why Timberwilde was a Texas Recognized School.
Ask anyone who knows me or has witnessed the results of my handy work, and they will tell you with precise and accurate detail; I am not a painter.
But, for a good cause I'll dip the roller into a bucket of latex and cover a graffiti tagged wall like a fat guy slathering butter on a freshly boiled cob of sweet corn. Okay, that just described me eating lunch last weekend, but nevertheless the point is, I will gladly do some sloppy paint work when needed.
So on our last outing with the A-Team, you may recall that we joined up with some wonderful kids from Timberwilde Elementary to do some painting in the area, and a contractor stopped by and offered to donate some excess paint. He called Monday to follow-up and another A-Team member and I headed over to get the donated goods.
I may have mentioned before that we are able to obtain 5-gallon buckets of a mixed, recycled paint through the city of San Antonio, but in this case, the donated paint had to be mixed --- by me!
I told my wife I would have these cans out of my garage by the weekend, so I've been mixing away!
You'd be shocked at the colors some people paint their houses. Orange and purple stand out in my mind as definite no-no's. But who knows? In the end, when it all gets mixed together, I'm shooting for a beige or grayish color just to cover graffiti.
Wanna help? You should join the A-Team. Learn more here.
Saturday morning was a perfect day for a little painting, some volunteering and a whole lot of fun for a group of over 50 kids, parents and members of Great Northwest's A-Team.
The A-Team Coordinator, Mike Yager, kicked things off with a few important words about safety while Timberwilde Elementary teacher Shawn Vidal, made sure the students were ready to get started. 
And then it was a painting frenzy as volunteers young and old(er) made quick work of the main bridge near Timberwilde Elementary.
This bridge has had small patches of paint covering graffiti for almost a year, but with large group of painters, it was quickly covered in a single color.
Several of our more experienced painters gave their younger assistants quick on-the-job training and these students were eager to learn.
From the bridge, the group moved over to an area that has become an eyesore and a favorite target for taggers; a large cement wall behind the shopping center near Oscar Perez Memorial Park.
It was incredible to see how quickly a large group can dispense with months worth of tagging. Astonished residents drove-by wondering what was going on as the transformation was taking place. It was also nice to see that a painting contractor driving by stopped to offer the A-Team some additional paint for future projects. That's the spirit!
Following the wall project, the group caravaned over to the Great Northwest Library to paint a long section of privacy fence next to the library that had been another target of taggers. 
Once again, the enthusiastic group grabbed their paint brushes, spread out and in no time at all had cleaned up another eyesore in the area.
As the group finished up, Mike thanked Mr. Vidal and all the volunteers from Timberwilde, and all the A-Team members for their efforts to make the Great Northwest a better place to live and go to school.
After all the brushes and buckets of paint were loaded into trucks, the students were off to Timberwilde Elementary for a picnic lunch.
And A-Team members headed back to the maintenance shop for clean-up. The A-Team continues to seek interested residents of The GNW who can give an hour of their time on projects like this. As demonstrated by the fine students from Timberwilde Elementary, you don't have to be an expert to make a great impact on a community.
We were pleased to have paint and rollers donated by the City of San Antonio but welcome donations of paint, paint brushes, bottled water and things that make events like this a success. If you want to give it a try, e-mail me and I'll put you in touch with Mike.
The outdoor classroom was actually created several years ago as part of a project for a local GNW Eagle Scout. It is located just in the southeast part of the school in a greenbelt. With trails outlined in rock and covered in crushed decayed granite, the teachers can take their classes outdoors to see the various plants, xeriscaping and different garden areas.
In the center, large boulders have been brought in to create a classroom set-up. It really is a great idea and just needed a little TLC to keep it up.
With assistance from NISD, new landscaping material was brought in to refresh the trails, but they still needed the manual labor to spread the material, weed-eat the over grown weeds and mow some of the heavier grass.
With teams of students and adults pitching in, the entire area was covered with people working to get the classroom ready for use by the school.
Some students created little tasty bagels for birds, covered in peanut-butter and topped with birdseed. When the classroom isn't in use, I'm sure the little birds and squirrels in the area will appreciate the area too.
The Great Northwest A-Team participates in events like this in an effort to show our support for local schools like Timberwilde, Knowlton, Connally and Zachry. The schools make an effort to teach students about the value of volunteering in the community, and by having A-Team members support them, it demonstrates to the students that volunteerism is a great way to have fun and give back to the community, even when you are an adult. If you'd like to learn more about the A-Team, send me a note and I'll put you in touch with the right folks.
