city year for kids aka winter break aka camp

alright, so the last week was CYFK -- the spring break we don't have as a corps because we are putting on a winter break vacation camp for kids at four sites around boston.

my team got placed at a largely spanish-speaking site, which was a blessing for me because i was beginning to feel useless at city year. not to say that i don't contribute in other projects, but i felt that my impact with children was no longer existent. i'm glad i got placed at that site because i got to use my skills that i am most proud of (making lessons entertaining, speaking spanish)... the lesson part came from city year and the spanish part has to do with my background.

i miss the spanish at this job, something that i hadn't realized would happen. in my previous work experiences, spanish was always something that was highly valued and utilized constantly. at city year, sometimes i translate applications, surveys or other documents but there is rarely an opportunity to speak. there are only a few corps members that speak spanish fluently, so for camp confirmations, i got tasked with making most of the spanish phone calls with 3 other people.

the theme at camp was superheroes, and we had superhero PT ready for the kids, which they definitely enjoyed once they realized everyone was going to look a fool doing it. i got to be a service activity leader with a fellow co-worker (nice to interact outside of my team) and we had a blast. our curriculum included recycling, planting seeds in cups, learning about plant parts, and brainstorming reduce/reuse/recycle ideas. the kids loved it for sure and the team leaders got involved because we asked them to and i think that it rounded out the experience for the kids. it was a service-learning curriculum, which made for an interesting interpretation from the rest of the corps... we usually think of service as painting, building stuff or landscaping.

something like a breakthrough

so, once upon a time, i trailed a kid around school for an hour and a half because i was worried about him. and every once in a while he would turn around and scream in my face "I HATE YOU! WHY ARE YOU FOLLOWING ME?!" and other variations of that sentence. and it hurt my feelings. i am a very sensitive person, and i have cried every day i've been back since january 7th. it's a personal record, i think. i'm not upset about me crying at all, its just how i get things out.

so this kid, he's mine. as in, he's from my fifth grade classroom and he is a pretty wonderful human being regardless. when i slipped and smacked the ice with the back of my head, he was the first one there saying "yo, that's my teacher, get your hands off her, help her sit up!" and i think sometime this month it clicked that i'm actually NOT leaving. i'm actually going to come and stay until june. until they all graduate and move onto the sixth grade at their respective middle schools. and that gives me mad legitimacy in his eyes. he told me about how last night at taekwondo afterschool some kid dislocated his thumb and his teacher popped it back in. then he leans in and whispers, "but don't tell anyone, cause i don't want them nagging on me." and i'm like, alright, this could be good. we're reading a book together and today he asked me if i wanted to take it home.

i love them all. they are all incredibly ridiculous, but they are so bright and wonderful when nobody is screaming at them. even the tiny skinny one that pulls on my hand all the time, regardless of how many times i've asked him not to pull on my sleeve anymore because i can't handle all that closeness. and the girls with the fifth grade attitude. sometimes it makes me want to laugh, but i can't because these are super serious things for them. super serious. and i try to keep it all in check and later i just smile reliving the day that i had in service.

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.

back at the office

my street has a little too much action at night. which is why i can't sleep.

but back to BTR. basically, i thought i would be able to write about every day, but i am going to write really quickly about the most salient points because it is way too difficult to cover what i am going to call the entire sensation that was BTR.

we did a lot of workshops that challenged people to open up to each other, to question each other, to work towards educating themselves, towards realizing we have a lot of work to do with ourselves before we start working with the kids, and basically, to bring together a group of 142 (now 141, someone dropped out today) individuals that know nothing about each other in a short amount of time. i dont think we could have developed the camaraderie that we did in four days back at the office, but we managed to do it isolated in the woods, and i am pretty psyched for my corps.

we ate a lot of crazy camp food, did a lot of team building, did some service at the camp where we do BTR (my team helped to build a fence).

upromise william monroe trotter elementary school team serving
in the roxbury and grove hall communities

myself, kevin/r-roy (behind the pole) and matt on the right -- setting a post

i have come to the realization that even though the nametags that we wear every day are dorky, they are still super useful. it is nice to hear my name in our interactions, even with people that i don't know very well but recognize their faces.

so now we are back at the office doing more fabulous training, except it is really hard to sit still all day. i am glad that we will be prepared when we enter the schools because that was one of my biggest fears about teach for america, not being adequately prepared. today the MBTA people came to talk about safety and our role as ambassadors on the T. we get passes to ride around for free, even though they take a deposit out of our accounts. so at the end of the year we get the money back if we haven't lost our T passes. which is pretty nice if you think about all the money we could spend on transportation a month. not to mention 10 months.

on thursday we get to go to our school and visit in the community and do our PT out there. hopefully one day i will get to take a good picture of PT being done so i can put it up here. opening day is coming up for city year in a week and a half and i can't even believe it. our first day of after school is the 25th, which is like, next week!!