More than a month into Santa Clara County schools being closed — it’s Spring Break this week for many districts, if you’ve lost track of time — parents may be at their wits’ end keeping their kids engaged and occupied. If that sounds familiar, the nonprofit Resource Area for Teachers has a lifeline for parents before they surrender their kids to Roblox and Minecraft for the duration.
For the first time, RAFT is making its STEM learning kits available to the public instead of just to teachers. The kits contain materials and instructions for science-and-tech based do-it-yourself projects like making Alka-Seltzer-fueled rockets and tongue-depressor harmonicas.
“I’m going through it just like all the other families out there and the educators, trying to navigate the situation and continue our children’s education at home,” said RAFT CEO Jason Morrella, a former high school teacher who has an 11-year-old daughter at home. “That support is needed now more than ever.”
Through a partnership with the Santa Clara County Office of Education, RAFT has distributed 15,000 kits over the past three weeks at different sites. Morrella says the nonprofit would love to give out another 30,000 kits but needs significant corporate support to do that. The start of that support came Tuesday with the announcement that the Synopsys Silicon Valley Science & Technology Outreach Foundation was providing funding for 5,000 kits that will be distributed to the Evergreen Valley School District in East San Jose.
On top of that, RAFT also has created STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics) learning activity kits available for free download on its website, www.raft.net. And the best part, Morrella said, is the kits use common household materials so kids and their parents can do the activities at home without necessarily making a trip to a store.
THEATREWORKS DRAWS A CROWD: We’re all streaming a lot of entertainment these days during shelter-in-place, but TheatreWorks Silicon Valley drew quite an audience with its premiere of the Robert Kelley-directed musical “Pride and Prejudice,” which streamed for free last Friday night. How big? It was seen by 160,000 people — an international audience that included viewers in the United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil, Taiwan, Japan and Germany.
And just to put that in perspective, to hit that attendance number at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto would take more than 355 full houses — that’s eight shows a week for more than 3 1/2 years.
One viewer, a Boston-based anesthesiologist named Erin Loeliger reached out to TheatreWorks to share her sincere thanks for streaming the show, saying that immersing herself in the world of theater helped her feel less overwhelmed. “The work you do is incredible,” she wrote to the company, “and helps us to have a place to rest, laugh, smile, reflect and just breathe.”
If you missed the free show but still want to catch “Pride and Prejudice,” it’s available to rent or purchase through the website Streaming Musicals.
PEDESTRIANS CAN CROSS TOUCH-FREE: The city of San Jose has given pedestrians a potentially safer stroll by deactivating the crosswalk request buttons at more than 100 intersections in the downtown core. That’s one less thing to touch — and definitely something that isn’t being regularly sanitized. But don’t worry, pedestrians won’t be stuck on the corner waiting for a signal that will never come, either. Dozens of these intersections already had been on “automatic” weekdays from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., but now they’ll be in that mode 24 hours a day, seven days a week.