Raimondo teaches dollars and sense with financial literacy program

Cranston Herald
August 6, 2010
All text and photos by Jen Cowart

MAKING IT COUNT: Democratic candidate for General Treasurer Gina Raimondo gives a presentation on fiscal responsibility at the Kelley Gazzero Post in Cranston.

Gina Raimondo, Democratic candidate for General Treasurer, has made good on one of her first campaign promises, and the election hasn’t even taken place yet.


Determined to make Rhode Islanders more financially literate, Raimondo held her first “Money School” workshop last Wednesday night at the Kelley Gazzero VFW Hall in Cranston.

In front of a full room of guests ranging in age from high school to retirement and beyond, Raimondo introduced herself and her platform.

“I never ran for office before, and many ask why I am running,” Raimondo said.

“My answer is that the time is now in Rhode Island for change, and we need leadership that is honest and capable, and we need someone who knows what they are doing.”

Raimondo explained that in her life, she has seen a tremendous benefit from her own parents’ good financial planning and responsibility with money.

As one of four children, all of whom went to college, Raimondo’s family managed to live on one modest income, with her parents scrimping and saving from the moment their children were born.

“Today, it’s not that simple. We’re dealing with things like foreclosures, bankruptcy and adjustable rate mortgages,” she said.

If elected to the General Treasurer’s office, Raimondo, whose campaign slogan is, “New Leadership, A Fresh Approach,” promised to create a program, a Financial Empowerment Institute of sorts, which will arm the public with financial information and tools to stay out of debt and in control of their finances.

“We’ll go to senior centers, VFW halls and libraries and teach people what they need to know to take care of themselves,” she said. “These are programs to help people help themselves.”

Raimondo discussed issues affecting the finances of her constituents, which weren’t necessarily an issue in the past, such as the fact that people are living much longer than they are financially prepared for. Long-term care is just one of the topics that Raimondo has planned for future workshops.

She emphasized that good financial sense helps to keep the peace within a family.

“It helps young people think about what they need to do to be sensible with their money,” she said. “If the credit card companies are on college campuses, then the State of Rhode Island’s Treasurer’s office should be on college campuses too, teaching students not to sign up for credit cards because the interest rates are too high, or not to ruin their credit ratings at 19 years old.”

One parent from the audience expressed concern about her child making smart decisions on their college campus.

Raimondo said that parent is not alone; noting that 55 percent of parents with children aged 16 to 24 questioned their children’s ability to be financially independent without assistance from them.

She began going through a PowerPoint presentation about setting financial goals.

“There is a huge amount of power in the facts,” she said as she discussed assets and liabilities.

She continued on through topics such as preparing a budget, planning for college or retirement and managing credit cards and debt. Her biggest emphasis, though, was on saving.

“I’m big on saving,” she said. “You’d be surprised how small things can add up. Start saving today. Drink your coffee at home versus at Dunkin’ Donuts and you’ll see $500 a year in savings.”

Raimondo issued her audience a challenge: to try to go one week without spending any money, stating that such a challenge would allow people to see where their money was going and if they can uncover a savings technique that they could live with forever, to help them save money.

“Start now, start small,” she said as she closed her presentation. “I feel strongly that it is the government’s job to educate the people so that they can have the information to protect themselves.”

Lauren Poplaski, a sophomore at Wheeler School, was struck most during Raimondo’s presentation about how much the littlest things can count.

“The little things are just extremely important now,” Poplaski said. “I have to think twice when I go to Starbucks.”

Carriage House teaches 'future scientists'

Cranston Herald
August 6, 2010
All text and photos by Jen Cowart

The students at the Carriage House Day Care in Cranston recently completed a weeklong robotics camp.

Created and run by Assistant Director Tammy Donohue, the camp was one of several themes planned for this summer and was done in two phases.

“The first part of the week was the construction of the dinosaur, crab, mouse and scorpion using K’nex pieces and a battery operated pack,” Donohue explained.

“The second part of the week was utilizing the skills they had attained to engineer a car using a spring motor.”

The students participating in the camp were between the ages of 5 and 9, and they worked both individually and as teams to complete the projects. At the end of the week, demonstrations were held so that students could show their family members what they had been working on so diligently all week.

“Everyone worked in teams for the more challenging, more complicated projects,” Donohue said, stating that the younger students would look to the older ones for help on particularly tough parts of the projects.

Daniel Wong, age 9, found the hardest part to be snapping the pieces together, but was always willing to help a younger student with that very same part.

“There was great camaraderie and support for each other during the project,” Donohue said. “It was great to see.”

Using the directions sent by K’nex was beneficial, given the age range at Carriage House. The directions do not contain words, but rather are illustrated in bright colors for each step, and then in grayscale for steps that have been completed.

“It’s kind of like a wordless book,” Donohue said.

Phoebe DePerry, a former Carriage House student and current summer volunteer, was instrumental in overseeing the robotics projects. DePerry noted that many of the students do not often get to play with these types of hands-on building toys, living in such an electronic world.

“They spend a lot more time on Xbox and things like that, than I did when I was little,” DePerry, said. “It was very rewarding for them to see that they could make something move. I’m 13, and even I was excited when I got mine to move.”

Donohue explained that the students learned a great deal about physics and problem solving during the camp.

“Some added extra pieces to their turbo racers, and they found out that this made their cars too heavy,” she said.

Donohue said that participating in the camp allowed the students to not only construct and build, but to build their focus and concentration skills and to learn how to assess their progress during a multi-step project.

Director Marion McGrath was proud of the students’ work during the robotics camp.

“They’re amazing children; future scientists,” she said.

Glen Hills gets a taste of Rhode Island

Cranston Herald
July 29, 2010
All text by Jen Cowart

COOLING OFF: Caleb Radoccia and Sean Conley catch a break with some Del’s Lemonade.

After spending many weeks studying the United States and doing shoebox project presentations featuring the different states, the students in Amy Gearing and Sara Muschiano’s fourth grade classes at Glen Hills spent most of the month of June focusing their research on their own home state of Rhode Island.


Each student was given one of Rhode Island’s businesses, landmarks or locations to research. After getting their facts straight, they had to create a 12x12 card stock “quilt” square showing the information that they had learned about their little piece of Rhode Island, and present it to the class. Some of the topics included Hasbro Toys, Del’s Lemonade, the Rhode Island Flag, the University of Rhode Island and the Block Island Northeast Lighthouse.

The squares were collected and will be made into a giant quilt, which will be on display at the school.

As a culminating activity, the students were treated to a true Rhode Island feast. Sporting Rhode Island Day T-shirts that they decorated themselves, the students munched on clam cakes, red chowder and white chowder (with white being most popular) from Iggy’s Restaurant, followed by pizza from Minerva’s Restaurant. Dessert consisted of doughboys from Iggy’s and a Happy Rhode Island Day cake. To wash it down, five pounds of Del’s Lemonade was brought in.

Oak Lawn makes a prehistoric discovery

Cranston Herald
July 29, 2010
All text by Jen Cowart

Although everyone knows that dinosaurs have been extinct for some time now, the students in Dianne Stebbins’s first grade class got some hands-on archeological experience with dinosaurs at the end of the school year.


Stebbins, with the help of her science teacher husband, “Mr. Hank,” created an archeological dig in the park adjacent to the school for her class, allowing them to hone some of their scientific skills learned this year.

According to Principal Linda Stanelun, Stebbins was the primary representative from Oak Lawn School for a larger group of Cranston teachers studying the Cranston Public Schools’ science curriculum as part of district training through the University of Texas’ Dana Center.

The archeological dig was the culminating activity following an extensive science unit about dinosaurs.

“The students learned about dinosaurs first. There was a technology component as well, where they had to research a dinosaur on kidsdinos.com and find out if it was a meat-eater or a plant-eater and write three facts about the dinosaur,” said Stebbins. “We use technology in here a lot. Even though we’re only a first grade, we use it often.”

Stebbins’ husband, “Mr. Hank,” went over different types of dinosaurs with the students as well, and then he created the archeological site for the students by hiding models of dinosaurs in the sand.

Marking each dig site with a popsicle stick allowed the students, who went out to dig in pairs, to easily spot their site and get right to work.

Once they found their dinosaurs the students had to then write about what they found using “Mr. Hank’s Ancient Reptiles,” which was a checklist and picture chart of many different varieties of dinosaurs.

The final photo on the chart looked conspicuous, with Hank Stebbins head Photoshopped on it and the name “Hankosaurus” underneath it. According to the guide, it is “a bipedal creature often found wandering around the Oak Lawn School in the vicinity of Mrs. Stebbins’ room.”

“We had to go out and find dinosaurs, and then when we came in, we had to write about it,” said Abby Shellard, a student in Stebbins’ class. “They asked us what the name of our dinosaur was, what color it was, and the number of legs it had.”

Shellard said she enjoyed the archeological dig very much.

“It was fun because we were outside and we got to have fresh air and we learned about dinosaurs,” she said. “I really like to learn about dinosaurs.”

Edgewood Highlands opens Y2K time capsule

Cranston Herald
July 22, 2010
All text and photos by Jen Cowart

EDGEWOOD TIME CAPSULE: Principal Marlene Gamba and Walter Jeschke pull out letters addressed to the students from the class of 1999 inside the time capsule.

In the year 2000, the students and staff at Edgewood Highlands Elementary School created a time capsule, which was to remain closed until 2010.


To end the 2010 school year, the Edgewood Highlands Elementary School staff, students, and alumni, gathered once again. The time capsule was opened, and a new time capsule was on display, which would be closed for another 10 years.

As a sign of the passing decade, class photos from each classroom were on display from the 1999 school year.

Principal Marlene Gamba welcomed the evening’s guests, especially returning staff members Walter Jeschke and Carol Mitola who returned for the opening.

“I’m so excited to be here. I have a lot of fond memories of this room,” said Mitola. “We held a lot of programs in here for both staff and students.”

Mitola was a first grade teacher and music teacher at Edgewood Highlands and spent a total of 30 years teaching in Cranston Public Schools before her retirement.

Jeschke, who was the student council advisor at the time, served as emcee for the evening, reaching into the tall time capsule over and over to pull out one piece of memorabilia after another.

“I have no idea what we even put in here,” said Jeschke. “We did so many things, we loved this school so much.”

Jeschke first pulled out a faculty list from that school year.

“There were a lot of special people on this list, a lot of special memories,” he said.

He pulled out several more items including a cell phone and a list of the best children’s books of that time that included “Maniac Magee” and the “Goosebumps” series.

Jeschke next withdrew a stack of envelopes addressed to the students of 1999. Each one had written a letter, which was to be mailed to them in 2010. Gamba and Jeschke noted the difference in the cost of a postage stamp from 1999-2010.

Music CDs were pulled out, including ones by the Backstreet Boys, Enrique Iglesias and Brittney Spears. Cassette tapes were also removed from the capsule, which are now almost obsolete.

Other objects included Beanie Babies and Barbie dolls.

Another piece of memorabilia that drew a response from the audience was a Providence Journal newspaper. The headline of the day at that time was “Day of Drama,” the Eric Gonsalves case.

Following the opening of the time capsule, several groups of students provided entertainment for the audience, singing and dancing as a teaser for the school’s upcoming talent show later that week.

The items from the time capsule, as well as the new time capsule waiting to be sealed, were on display until the last day of school. At that time, the new capsule was closed officially until 2020.