Nick & Whitney Williams Host New Canaan Connections!
Register Today for Carver's Boys & Girls Basketball!
Boys & Girls Basketball
December 4, 2017 to March 4, 2018 (includes playoffs)
One practice per week (Monday-Friday)
One game per weekend
George Washington Carver Community Center, 7 Academy Street, Norwalk, CT
K-9th grade - $105; Early Bird - $65 (until October 13th); Registration deadline November 20th
There are a limited number of spots per team. Additional registrants will be placed on a waiting list once the teams are filled. We offer financial assistance and scholarships.
Contact Shannon Bates to register or for more info shannon@carvercenterct.org or 203.838.4305
The Carver Youth Basketball League is dedicated to teaching the fundamental aspects of the game and promoting team play while building self-confidence and life skills that foster good citizenship, responsibility, respect and the pursuit of excellence.
There are 200 players (5th through 8th grades) organized into 20 teams. Each team is named after a favorite college. Each team has a sponsor whose name is printed on the back of the respective team’s uniform t-shirts.
The league philosophy focuses on participation, sportsmanship and creating an atmosphere for all players to succeed. This is not a traveling or ultra-competitive league. Carver staff, players, volunteer coaches, parents, and skilled referees continually reinforce the attributes of good sportsmanship, hard work, and positive thinking during the season of this in-house Carver league. Those students who excel go on to play competitively in high school and beyond.
Today is Character Day 2017!
Today, there are now over 130,000 Character Day events (in universities, K-12 schools, companies, libraries, homes, and more) happening in 119 countries! It will be an amazing day of millions of perspectives and global thinking around one theme: the importance of developing character.
Character Day (4th annual this year) is a global event for people to screen films on the topic of science as it relates to character development. Events are happening in everything from K-12 school districts, to universities including UCBerkeley, Harvard, and MIT, to The U.S Airforce, to companies like Intel, to individual families across the country and world, all engaging in conversation about the importance of developing character (qualities like empathy, curiosity, grit, humility, bravery, social responsibility, and more). Participants review printed materials and resources for discussions linked globally online about their own character, who they are, who they would like to be, and how to develop these character strengths, based on evidence-based research.
Character Day was created in 2014 by Tiffany Shlain, the co-founder of the non-profit Let it Ripple: Mobile Films for Global Change, founder of the Webby Awards, and the co-founder of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, to launch a global premier of the short film The Science of Character, which explores the social science and neuroscience behind character development. Shlain and Let it Ripple produced Character Day, and invited schools and organizations around the world to premier the film and discuss its ideas about character development all on the same day via a simultaneous online video conversation. There were over 1500 events in 31 country on March 14, 2014. The State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs also selected The Science of Character to be part of their American Film Program.
STEAM Education Thrives for Carver Kids After School
Science, technology, engineering, art and math (STEAM) skills are in high demand among today’s workers, and one of the best ways to equip future employees with these skills is to start early. Carver programs help Norwalk students with these skills. After-school is a vital part of the solution for bringing more educational opportunities to kids, particularly for low-income kids and for kids who are in underserved populations. This study from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation found that 70 percent of students who participated in after-school programs such as those offered by Carver experienced positive gains in those subjects.
The study found that 80 percent of students reported a positive gain in their science career knowledge, 78 percent said their interest in science had increased, 72 percent reported an increase in their perseverance and critical thinking skills and 73 percent reported an increase in the personal belief that he or she can do well and succeed at science.
The WeR1 Voice initiative involves every discipline within the STEAM acronym. Presently, WeR1 will be transformed into a song that will be professionally produced and distributed worldwide. Read all about the project at the crowdfunding site The Impact Vine that made this wonderful project possible.
Many area companies, volunteers and donors make STEAM education possible at Carver, and for this we are deeply grateful.
The Charlotte Naomi Horblit Technology Center at the Carver Community Center
Remembering 9.11.01
Sunday, September 10th is ADL's VOICES Concert!
WE ARE 67% OF OUR GOAL AT THE IMPACT VINE!
CLICK HERE TO THE LEARN MORE ABOUT THE WE R 1 CAMPAIGN AT THE IMPACT VINE!
Help us complete the campaign to produce our We R 1 Song!
Happy Labor Day!
Labor Day: What it Means
Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.
Labor Day Legislation
Through the years the nation gave increasing emphasis to Labor Day. The first governmental recognition came through municipal ordinances passed during 1885 and 1886. From these, a movement developed to secure state legislation. The first state bill was introduced into the New York legislature, but the first to become law was passed by Oregon on February 21, 1887. During the year four more states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — created the Labor Day holiday by legislative enactment. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories.
Founder of Labor Day
More than 100 years after the first Labor Day observance, there is still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers.
Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those "who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold."
But Peter McGuire's place in Labor Day history has not gone unchallenged. Many believe that Matthew Maguire, a machinist, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday. Recent research seems to support the contention that Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. What is clear is that the Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.
The First Labor Day
The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, 1883.
In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a "workingmen's holiday" on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.