survival of the fittest

so every day i have to remind myself that i made a choice to be here and that everything is a challenge that will just make me stronger. it's not that desperate sounding, but its my positive motivational moment to myself before i get out of bed, to actually get out. for example, some days i forget to close my window before i go to bed so when i wake up its mad cold and i don't want to get out and i have to run to my clothes to stick them in my bed with me for a few minutes so they can warm up.

its only fall in boston and already the CRISP weather is getting to me. however, i am slowly staying in love with the city. the architecture in the downtown area is gorgeous and where i live in JP it is eclectic. i love the public transportation (which i mentioned before) but i also think it's soothing to go home on it, even when i have to wait a long time for a train or for a bus. it's not too bad. i think i have yet to establish my morning routine, so some days i almost have a heart attack on the way to school because i'm thinking that i won't make it.

it happened last week. i was approximately 3.5 minutes late and i got an ocurrence.

ocurrence - essentially, a three strikes, you're out system that keeps all corps members in check. if you're late, you get an ocurrence. and you get a verbal warning the first time. second time something bad happens (e.g. forgetting to turn something in, missing a uniform part, being out of line, jaywalking in uniform, more than one bracelet on each wrist, more than one set of earrings [and they have to be studs], etc) you sign off on it with your program manager. third time you have to talk to a site director. and fourth time really, you're gone.

this is my second ocurrence since opening day, which was september 28th. at this rate, i could be gone by december, but i am hoping that won't be the case. i know myself and my lateness so i am definitely taking care of business by not being late anymore.

this weekend, my baby brother came to visit for an hour on his way home from new hampshire to richmond, va. it was nice. then i walked from south station to forest hills station, near where i live. it took about 4 hours i think, but it was a good walk and i got to see a lot of the city. i'm going to add some of the pictures that i took on my long walk up here soon. it gave me a lot of alone time, time to not think and just listen to music and wander. as much as i love people, sometimes i need to get away.

then i went to the JP lantern parade, which was super beautiful. basically, a bunch of JP residents get together and bring homemade lanterns to the pond. the lanterns are usually made out of 2L soda bottles with the top cut off and covered in tissue paper designs and then there is a candle inside. so when it gets dark, there is a parade around the pond and it looks really pretty because it reflects off the water and its dark and there are tons of cute little kids every where and since its near halloween they come in costume (run-on).

after-school

andre spit on me and kicked me and slapped my glasses off my face.

it was the worst thing ever.

monday, monday

it's been a long time since i've written, and many things have happened. right now i'm at school again, but during the kids' special period which basically means its my down time.

a typical monday we meet as a whole corps in copley square to do PT and unity rally then we either book it back to the office to do our time sheets or we head out to the t station to get on the train and come to work. (which is where i am now). but we always arrive at a horrible time in the schedule and so now we're just sitting here waiting, so i am taking the opportunity to update a little bit.

(12:48) it's lunch time and sometimes on mondays i get a little frustrated because i am only in class for such a short amount of time that i never get anything done with my kids. i also hate being left alone in the classroom because i am not very good at getting them to do anything when the teacher is out of the room. half of the room disregards me entirely and you can't really do work with just half the classroom. i refuse to scream in the classroom and i just shut down when i can't get them to calm down. i'm not really sure what to do but i am glad that i am not thinking of becoming a teacher. it seems really hard and i think my teachers had it pretty easy because our classes were always very quiet/ready to learn/respectful -- but it definitely has to do with the school system and where i lived, etc.

now we have our weekly team meeting from 1pm to 3:30pm, then another meeting about conflict management within our team from 3:30 till hopefully no later than 5:30 and then i've got to book it back to the office for step practice. so mondays i wake up around 6am, get home around 8:30 or 9, go to bed at 11 and start again the next day. i should probably try to go to bed earlier.

i'm starting to think seriously about whether or not i should come back for a second year. i love the culture, i don't know about being in school again, i think that i would like to come back as either senior corps or staff. new england is great.

i was in vermont this weekend at a service site for concert corps -- it partnered with habitat for humanity and stephen kellog and the sixers for a fabulous service day building a house. matt and i went up and met with a bunch of people from the cynh 05-06 corps and a new cynh person, lee. overall burlington, vt was very pretty and matt's friend was gung-ho about showing us a lake and when i get home this evening i think i would like to post some pictures, etc

short week!

so because of the holiday, there was only tuesday, wednesday and thursday to be in school this week. and because the taekwondo instructor decided that he didn't need CY corps members in his after-school anymore, we didn't go to after-school, we just went back to the office after school every night. which was good for me because every night so far this week i have been there till 8. sad, but true.

well on tuesday, i was there for step practice. and yesterday and today i was in the office working on the daily briefing.

daily briefing- (straight from the handbook) "serves as a tool to communicate any relevant, pertinent and timely information to the entire site. -- it is our daily newspaper -- keeping us, literally, on the same page. It is both an internal and external civic engagement tool (means we could potentially hand it out to people interested in CY; did it on the T today).

it is a tool to announce major events, share ideas, introduce visitors, and communicate about what's going on at our sites. It also serves as an engagement tool because external people can obtain a copy and learn more about service, culture, and events. remember: 'if it's not in the daily briefing (DB), it doesn't exist.'"

so i am on the DB team and every three weeks, kevin and i get together for a couple nights and hash out some ridiculous DBs because we love to set the bar high. so our DBs this week are so amazing that i might even make PDFs of them and get them up here on a link sometime when i get back into the office.

today in school i made a contract with two kids. they have been picking on each other since i got there and today i was finally like, let's be adults about this. it was hard to get them to listen to each other because they were really busy accusing each other instead of listening, but it worked out alright. they are being held accountable by themselves, their peers, myself, their teacher, and the vice principal. hopefully it will work. today was beautiful at lunch though. one of the kids bought a chocolate chip cookie, gave me a little and gave his rival a little. i wanted to cry at lunch, but i didn't. its things like that that make me think it is possible to change the way kids think, they way they look at solutions to problems and the way they can come up with their own viable solutions instead of resorting to violence. that is my goal this year. i am not there to make these kids smarter. i am there to let them see that they have the power to make a change in their lives and that are making choices that will affect them every step of the way. to a larger extent, there is a system and that does affect them as well, but they can either work with it, outside of it in a positive manner, or against it negatively. city year is a social change organization (from PITW#99) "seeking to shift attitudes, values and resources towards the common good -- with youth as its greatest resource. in everything that we do, we need to think about how we can release the power of young people."

pitw (putting idealism to work)- over 180 pieces of collective CY wisdom that guide our serve and serve as a reference for ways to implement our mission in our daily work.

in school, :)

so here we are in school. it is my so-called planning period. in which i am actually going to plan thirty minutes of team-building activities for my class. which is approximately two or three fun activities for this afternoon. i hope the test doesn't go too long. matt and i both have special periods at the same time so we are both sitting here working on random stuff, he is checking his cityyear e-mail and i am updating the blog.

we're good city year corps members, i swear. but sometimes we need a few minutes off. back to planning for the day. today, i was surprised, we had a pop quiz and some other things changed in the classroom, like now we have the agenda for the whole day up. that certainly helps me out a lot.

also, i dont think they were ready for the pop quiz, but a surprising number of them got all the answers right. it's getting cold in boston for sure because i am wearing the fleece vest part of the uniform and matt is wearing his quarter-zip and a fleece vest under it.

long week

right so i went to rhode island last night with anthony perry (wm '05) to go to st. georges because we had the day off today (yay for día de la raza). we had opening day, and i have pictures of that as well, but the photo to the right is a building from the st. george's campus.

opening day was incredible. there was so much energy in fanueil hall that it was ok that i didn't get any sleep in the days leading up to opening day because of step and all of our other commitments. but it was great. the rush was so fabulous. it was the first day that we were all in full uniform almost (except for a few people, like 2). our step was amazing, we got rave reviews, our PT crew was on point, fanueil hall's bottom floor was packed and i was smiling the ENTIRE time. my team repped a lot, since i was in the step routine and matt received the hammer of service from his brother and then we were clearly the BEST TEAM EVER. our team sponsor representative came from upromise came and i got to hang out with him at the champions reception before the opening day ceremony. good times were had by all.

my parents came out to the service day. my dad has a thing about bugs and etc, but my mom came out to the service site all the way to the place where we were painting railings. we had the best service site, the view was incredible and it was really gorgeous.

so overall, opening day was great, really tiring. we had a party to celebrate opening day that next night after i got back from being in springfield, mass with my parents and that was also really tiring.

then we had our first full week of service. i was not prepared. at all. for the terror of fifth grade. i looked forward to the field trip we had this week (apple picking somewhere in massachusetts that reminded me of the outskirts of where i live) because it meant i wouldn't be holed up in a classroom with them. as crazy as my kids are, they really are my kids, and that realization truly hit me this week when i was helping brian with long division afterschool on wednesday. brian is a fifth grader in my class at the trotter. he has very neat handwriting and he knows a lot about sports history. he claims that he forgets things easily, but i did so many practice long division problems with him that i hope he doesn't. my hope is that i have a few starfish this year. starfish are like stories that demonstrate lots of progress in a life. i'll have to come up with a better explanation than that but for right now that's all i got. alright, so i am working on translating some starfish corps documents for the starfish working group, so i better get back to that.

starfish corps- our afterschool program for second through fifth graders that runs mid-october through the beginning of june and focuses on developing literacy and civic values through hands-on service projects and building community awareness.