1. As someone in this experience, tell your story.  Describe your experience. Tell us about the highs and the lows.  What were your major take-aways? What did you learn? How did you like it? Be sure to explain your answers. In my opinion, the economy was really fun even though I didn’t get payed a lot, I still enjoyed it. I think it was fun because it was kind of like being an adult, but you were more free, and their weren’t to bad consequences (besides for silent lunch).

2. How did your character’s role/situation in the game affect your ability to take care of yourself?  Think about your income, job, rent, the amount of money you had, any loans you took out, and your health situation. Well, it was kind of harder for the people that didn’t get paid a lot, especially if they ended up having health issues in the game. It was much harder for the to pay for their health care AND their rent because they didn’t get paid enough.

      3. What aspects of your character’s life encouraged success?  What aspects of your character’s life                brought about failure?  Explain how that process worked. I got other jobs in the game that also paid                  me. One of them paid me $100 per month, and another was $20 a month.

4. What attempts did you make to improve your character’s life?  How successful were these attempts? How difficult were those attempts and why? Getting the other jobs. Though they still didn’t appear to be too helpful. But they still might have been.

5. In bullet points, write a list of what you learned about poverty from this activity.  Be sure to include a brief description next to each item about what you learned, explaining your learning/thinking.

1. Taxes: Things that you have to pay that go to the government.

2. Rent: Money that you pay for your house (table, chair), etc…
3. Utilities: What we pay for water, and stuff like that.
4. And how to right a check.
5. And how to do more stuff on google forms.

1. How did you feel when you realized there was such an unequal pay amount between workers and bosses? I thought that it felt kind of reasonable. I thought this because it’s kind of like real life. Though some of the things like getting payed 400 bucks a week to make sure people wrote their homework in their assignment notebooks. Versus me and some other people get payed $210 per week to clean the room every day.

2. Why does unequal pay between workers and bosses happen? Because the CEO’s/bosses don’t have enough money to pay them all. I think that this might be because they have a lot of people to pay. And have a lot to deal with.

3. What is a realistic solution to prevent such unequal pay from happening in the future? I think that maybe we can protest. I think this because it might convince the bosses. Or annoy them so much that the bosses just give up.

4. What is one topic that has interested you thus far and why is it interesting to you (ex: evictions, utility meters, unequal pay, taxes, rent). Taxes. Because I don’t know much about them. And I’ll probably need to know about them later in life.

1. Now that the Sukkah is finished, what would you do differently next time. Explain in at least three sentences why you think that. 1. I would have tried to focus harder so I would help more. 2. I’d try to compromise more, because then I think we would get more work done faster. 3. 1st buy the stuff you need instead of buying the stuff you don’t need so you don’t go over budget.

2. Now that the Sukkah is finished, what are you most proud of and why! Explain in at least three sentences. I’m proud of the fact that we made it with a slanted roof, because most classes that have built the Sukkah in the past haven’t done a slanted roof.

3. What are three pieces of advice you have for the current 6th graders as it relates to their Sukkah? 1. Try to add color, and design in like we did. 2. Imagine that you have less days than you actually have. 3. Don’t argue with your group mates.

1. Explain how the Sukkah represents Judaism to you. If it does not, explain why. I don’t think that it represents too much Judeisum to me because it’s just building a big box in my opinion.

2. What part of the Sukkah building process are you most excited to share with families/friends and why? The MJDS out of the milk cartons, and the tilted roof because I think it’s kind of unique.

3. What aspect of the building have you felt most connected to and why? I’m not sure.

4. How has building the Sukkah as a class helped grow your sense of community?  I think that maybe it made us trust each other because we were carrying the walls, some of us were scared I think.

5. When your family comes to the Sukkah on Wednesday night, what is one thing you are going to tell them about and why? This is our Sukkah, because it is our Sukkah.

1. Sukkot represents impermanence (something that should not be permanent). Explain if you believe or disagree that our Sukkah, which is safely standing on its own, is violating that. I don’t think that the Sukkah is permanent because were gonna take it down.

2. Describe how this Sukkah project has changed your perspective (how has it changed, what has it changed about, has it changed for the better/worst). 1st it was was just a giant box, and now it actually has some color, and design.

3. Explain how you have used your body thus far to build this Sukkah. I’ve used my body to help hold up the walls, and carry the plywood.

4. How do you plan on getting guests into the Sukkah? By saying something on the loudspeaker, and say the order of who’s gonna come into the Sukkah 1st, 2nd….

5. What are some activities you wish to do in the Sukkah. Eat donuts, and Celabrate Sukkot.

1. What did you do today (describe the process of what you accomplished)? – minimum 3 complete sentences: Today we moved the last wall. We also helped stabilize the walls that were already up, by drilling 2 by 4’s into the walls. We also put the walls together.

2. What is one thing you have done so far you were initially scared/worried about, but now feel more confident in after all this practice? – minimum 3 complete sentences: Taking the wall back down after it was up, and Completely vertical as a team. And also kind of trusting other people.

3. Give a step by step account of what you have done so far to get our Sukkah up to where it is today. 1. Generated  ideas about what its gonna look like. 2. Chose what it’s gonna look like. 3. Planned out the blueprints, 4. Figured out what the materials are gonna be. 5. Got/bought the materials. 6. Started building walls separately. 7. Put them together. 8. Put stabilizers on the 3 walls we put together.

Today we worked on moving the walls. We also worked on putting the rest of the nails in. Tomorrow, what we have left to do is to put on the plywood, add some decorations, and then we can just help the other groups.

Here are some pictures:

1. Yesterday, we worked on putting the nails in, and finishing putting the screws in. It felt bad to do this because I kept missing the nail and ended up hitting my hand, and I knew we were still behind the other groups.

2. An example of when I worked well with a classmates is when one of them told me a better way to hit the Nail in.

3. We have to put finish putting  all the nails in, putting the Plywood on the frame of our wall left on our Sukkah wall, and moving it over to where we have to put the walls together. I am feeling bad about the amount of work left, because we still have a lot left.

Here are some pictures: