Summary of Semester 1

Since my last post, City Year added more responsibilities to my position, teachers changed, and events/initiatives happened. Here are some highlights, happenings, and changes from last semester!

90's day costumes

Million Man march on the Mall

I designed the City Year door

Metro station on fire. See firemen running in.

New Responsibilities:
In addition to behavior coaching, I also support 10 students in math course performance, and 8 students in attendance monitoring.

• Course performance- This takes the form of small groups. I pull 2-3 of my 10 focus list students out of 3rd period. This doesn't harm their class grade because 3rd period is a 45-minute block that teachers don't take seriously. SO, I create lesson plans that support the current math lesson. These small lessons keep my students caught up when they normally fall behind in class. Sometimes the lessons are designed to review a topic that is rusty (i.e. fractions, negative numbers, percents etc). City Year requires that I have 15 hours with each of my 10 students. 
• Attendance monitoring- this is a layer of support I don't entirely understand. I'm still working on being regular with checking in. The 9 students on my focus list are ones who have missed 3-4 days of school. So, they aren't chronically tardy, but they still need some reminders about coming to school. Theoretically, I'm supposed to track them down every day, mark down if they're at school, then set attendance goals. This is probably one of my lowest priorities (but should be higher) because I'm focused on setting behavior goals and pulling students out of class for math support. 

Changes:
My teacher mysteriously disappeared around the end of October. So for about a month, I was half teaching, half trying to do my City Year job with a substitute (who all the students hated for whatever reason). It's disappointing that a teacher could just bail on their kids in the middle of the year. LUCKILY after Thanksgiving, they shuffled some people around and now I have an AMAZING teacher who has caught the students up and has high expectations for them. Her name is Ms. Lucas and she is fun and strict. Sometimes I think she doesn't even need me in the classroom because the kids are so well behaved and engaged.

Fall in the neighborhood around school

Highlights:
Mom and Dad visited DC. They took a spontaneous trip to visit me for the weekend and we were able to do a lot in that short time!

At the Franciscan monastery in DC

Mom and Dad at the whitehouse. After the Paris attacks, you can't get this close to the fence anymore.

Apple Picking- My team went apple picking and made quite a haul.

Squadsgiving- The weekend before Thanksgiving, we had a big potluck with the team, leadership, and some staff.

Eye Screenings - I sent out a survey to all of 9th, 11th, and 12th grade students to figure out who couldn't see the board. Based on the responses, I ended up screening 90 students for eye glasses. Most of them failed the exam. I am now working on getting glasses donated for them.

Eye screenings in the gym.

Ugly Sweater 5k Run- Taylor and I did a themed holiday run at the National Harbor. They had hats, beer, hot chocolate, and sunglasses. Though our sweaters weren't ugly, we did attach battery powered light strings to our persons.

Taylor and I caught on camera at the run.

Attendance pizza party- students who had only missed one day of school or less were rewarded with a pizza party.

Tacia, Whitney, Christina, me at pizza party lunch

Tutoring Student K- This student has had trouble understanding fractions. I've been doing a lot on 1-on-1 time to catch him up. He started outwith little confidence and unable to add, subtract, and multiply fractions. Now we've gotten to the point that he reminds me we have to study and he's really understanding fractions. It's been amazing to watch him grow in math, as well as his confidence. I had him do an easier addition problem and asked him if he remembered when that problem was really hard. He said he remembered and seemed pleased with his growth. Once we master fractions, I'm going to try to push him with graphing concepts and 2-step equations.

Mid-Year Summit - The entire corps just got back from a 3-day retreat, called Mid-Year Summit. It was a time to relax and get rejuvenated for semester 2. We were at West River Retreat center in Maryland. There were really nice cabins on a lake. I gave a presentation with a teammate to about 200 people about Manipulating Oxytocin. It was basically a teambuilding/relationship building seminar. People seemed to enjoy it. One team said there had been some tension among them regarding PT competition (explanation of PT later). The seminar helped them talk out their problems and re-bond. After the session I heard people using "oxytocin" and cuddling more. So overall, I think it was a success.

People paired off in a breakout part of my Oxytocin session.

Teams doing cinnamon roll hug in my session

Taylor, me, Whitney at mid-year summit

PT competition- This is something teams had been working on since about November. We had to incorporate PT moves into a dance routine. Somehow my team won, but other teams were much more creative and energized. Here is the link to watch the various teams: PT competition

I won a "tweet of the week." They pull tweets from all 29 sites. 

And here is one of my other tweets on the City Year website!

(and here is my City Year twitter if you want to see more gems: @cydcMsM)