MLK Day

Happy MLK Day!! 

On MLK day, everyone gets the day off, except AmeriCorps!

So for the past few months, I have been on a planning committee that organized a huge day of service for MLK Day. Our goal was to engage 1000 volunteers to beautify 3 schools: Simon ES, Hart MS, and Ballou HS. There is already a City Year team at Simon, however we are trying to get teams at Hart and Ballou. Beautifying these schools helps us build a relationship with these schools and the administration.

I was on the Ballou team where the bulk of the volunteers were. We came up with projects, called companies for donations, organized corps members, did prep work, and did mega troubleshooting.

Today, all our hard work paid off! I was a Zone Leader where I managed 5 projects, 115 volunteers, and 14 corps members who were directly leading the projects/volunteers.

In total, we engaged about 850 volunteers, including sponsors, high school students, City Year Alums, and VIPs such as,

• the Administrator of NASA, Charles Bolden
• the AmeriCorps CEO, Wendy Spencer
• the DC Mayor (not sure if she actually made it), Muriel Bowser
• and finally, the Secretary of Transportation, Anthony R. Foxx. 

Charles Bolden was able to be in my Zone working on one of my projects!

Charles Bolden, NASA, with me, Lowly Peasant.

And now for some project pictures:

During prep day, there were some times where we scrambled to find jobs to keep people busy. Here, my some of my corps members are being troopers and doing the menial (but necessary) task of mass cutting.

Wendy Spencer brought out her selfie stick at Opening Ceremony.

Volunteers painted 35 of these college banners to be hung in Ballou's cafeteria. Colleges are mostly HBCUs or in the DMV area.

We got 4000 condoms donated to make sexual health kits. The kits will go to Ballou HS students.

Eric and Joe with painted book covers to be hung in the library.

One of the committee members, Millie, designed the following two murals. They were her brain babies of the day and turned out well.

Room divider mural. We were worried about shading on this design and the next one, but the volunteers really impressed us!

Other side of the sun mural.

Chandler, one of the Project Leaders, had a great idea to make giant "BALLOU" letters and post them on a hill like the Hollywood sign. It was his brain baby of the day and it looks awesome! The process involved a taking a jigsaw to plywood, painting, nailing, and cementing in posts. 

Digging holes for the posts.

Chandler and Stephen by the Hollywood Ballou signs.

My brain baby was coming up with "rail-weaving." Ballou has a ton of fence/rails so I thought we could weave strips of fabric into them to add more color to the space. It looks beautiful! Emily was able to solicit a few reams of fabric for free from a fabric store.

Rail-weaving

Room divider #2

One of my corps members leading 1st-circle with about 40 volunteers.

In other news, one of our City Year teams (Leckie ES) was mysteriously not involved with out MLK prep at Ballou. We eventually figured out it was because they were having a service project at their school that engaged a huge VIP: PRESIDENT OBAMA. So while the rest of us are dying of envy, they got to briefly see potus and flotus. Perks of living in DC. They said they were very genuine even though the event was extremely staged. Cool stuff.

Great day of service! I am so proud of all the projects that were produced with excellence. It was fun and a huge learning experience.

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)

Around DC

National Book Festival
This was held at the huge convention center by my apartment. There were tons of authors. I tried to  see David McCullough, but the line was gigantic and I didn't get in. Instead I saw David Baldacci, who was really interesting. I saw a children's author by chance. She was deaf and interesting to listen to. She didn't know sign language because she grew up in a time when they taught lip reading. Supposedly Buzz Aldrin was there, but I missed him. Finally, a friend and I went to a poetry slam. There were 8 highschoolers and they were incredible!! Slam poetry is great, but they were brilliant.

Busboys and Poets Poetry Slam
As a whole team, we went to a nice restaurant for a poetry slam. This one was no where near as good as the one at the Book Fest, but it was still entertaining.

H Street Festival
This was a big block party/street festival. It was 10 blocks of food, music, performances, business, samples, and crowds. I bought some mambo sauce - unique to DC and super delicious. It's like runny, sweet, and spicy ketchup. I also had Korean bbq tacos for lunch from a food truck. It was great! We were there for a few hours and, according to my new phone, we walked about 8 miles.

September LDC
This is City Year's monthly Learning and Development Conference. The entire corps reunites for 2 days. We began with a unity rally right in the middle of the Navy War Memorial. It was great because a lot of people just got into the PT group (an extracurricular like Service Reserves), so it was fun to see them lead. At the LDC we learned more teaching techniques, City Year incentives, exchanged ideas/experiences/frustrations with similar grade levels, and met with people with the same coordinator roles. One session was about how to call up businesses to in-kind food and other services to events. They had one corps member come up to the front and make a phone call on the spot to a cupcake place. The company was going to throw them out anyways, so the volunteer would request that they be donated for a Service Reserves Training the next day. It was Anthony from my team, and he successfully arranged to pick up about 40 cupcakes! It was awesome.

Back to School night
I worked with our Positive School Climate Coordinator (Hannah) to bring a City Year presence to this event. We had a table with handouts, some tables with our after school clubs, and set up a rotation schedule for the corps members. Not too many parents came. There was a brief lecture and there only looked like there were 10-15 parents there.

Service Reserves
Service Reserves had training one Saturday. We went to Ketcham elementary to learn and use power tools, how to measure wood, set up tarps, set up paint areas, hammer, and use electric drills. It was pretty fun. We also ate the cupcakes that Anthony had in-kinded.


Hiking at Billy Goat Trail
On my birthday, I went hiking with Danny and a couple of his friends. It was along the Potomac and about 30min away from the city. We walked through the forest and passed about 3-4 locks. It didn't look like they were in use.

Resources

Here are some relevant articles to my service:

First day of school inspiration

This is research done by non-CityYear affiliate showing our impact here.

We have started doing a weekly social justice topic. Last week was our first one: Problematic mascots. Taylor is in charge of giving us articles to read, then we discuss them at lunch on Friday. Problematic mascots is relevant to us because Anacostia's mascot is the "Indians" with a big Native American head. Here are the articles we read:

List of 9 inappropriate mascots

Academic article on the role of media

CNN Article on Red Skins

I enjoyed all of them, and they are all very different.

I just started watching "Empire," a tv show that my students watch and others have told me to watch. It's good so far!

Little Things

Some funny things:

• There was a lesson on perimeter and area. One of the tasks was to come up with an expression for a box like the one below if the numbers were just x's: 

So I was guiding one student through it. It should have looked like x+x+x+x, but they came up with x+x+x+house. It was one of those moments where you have to giggle internally, and guide them in the right direction.

• Another time, we were going over square numbers. I was reminding one student not to forget to square her number, so i said, "so then we put a square here..." and she drew a tiny square where a tiny 2 should go. So again, I chuckled internally, realized she didn't understand what a square number meant, and started over with explaining square numbers.

• A lot of my students have terrible eyesight. When I ask them to read something off the board or pay attention, they face forward and squint like crazy. I might look into optometrists around DC to see if we can in-kind some glasses or have a health day where kids could be checked for free. We'll see. Anyways, I lent one student my glasses and he said, "Oh yes. OH YES! There medicine in these things??" While he is usually more distracted, he was more engaged and started copying from the board immediately.

Things to work on:

• So waaaay back on our first day, the school had us handing out schedules. It was crazy because we had a huge stack of paper, and by the time 1st period was starting, there was still a thick stack. There are so many students who don't show up to school. When I enter grades, there are many names I don't recognize at all. Just last week, we were getting new students. Their first day was 2 weeks into school!!
• Students like to eat in class. The only thing I see them eating though is chips, candy, and sugary drinks. The healthiest thing I've seen is sunflower seeds, which end up all over the floor.

Nice things:

• One of my students is a little louder in class, but I've been helping him in the back, which helps him focus. I didn't think he particularly enjoyed it until he asked me, "Ms. M, can I be your City Year assistant?" I thought that was great. I asked him what he meant by that and maybe we could work something out. I think since then he's forgotten, but I hope that mentality persists!

• Another girl said, "Are we working back there with you again today?" At first I thought she was going to complain, but she said, "I work better back there with you."

A day in the life

Whew so it's been awhile! Time to catch up.

My students are great. They are funny, bright, easily distracted, and garrulous.

A usual day has been going like so:
6:20 wake up
7:00ish go find bus
8:00 First Circle
8:15 Power Greeting outside
8:45 1st period
10:00ish 2nd period
11:15 ASPIRE block
12:05 Lunch
1:00 planning period
2:08 Last period
3:15 Afterschool tutoring
4:30 Various City year things
6:00 Final Circle
7:00 get home

Soooo in more detail....
The bus ride takes around 30-45 minutes. I use this time to either read the newspaper or read a book. DC provides a free newspaper every weekday that has many article summaries from the Washington Post, as well as events happening around DC. Recently, the big news these days are the Pope's arrival (a City Year corps members is singing for him!!), the refugee crisis, and Trump. Bus fare is $1.75 - cheap!

Power Greeting- Every morning, the 9th grade corps members (5 of us) go outside and cheer the students coming to school on time. We have different City Year chants and dances. It's fun and energizing. Recently we've started doing yoga at the suggestion of a different school. That has been great.

1st period is my honors class. I started out the year with 4 kids. They are slowly working on transferring students into this class who are performing well in the other math classes. They are usually quiet.

2nd period is my most challenging period. There are some big personalities. When I'm able to isolate each student though, they seem interested in learning and respond well to tutoring. However in the large group setting, EVERYONE IS CONSTANTLY BOUNCING OFF THE WALLS. It is like teaching in a pinball machine with 15 balls. As a group they are crazy, but individually they are quite fun.

ASPIRE block is like an advisory period. It is 45min of an activity that an administrator creates then sends to every teacher. Some activities include a lecture on code switching, debate, watching "Lean on Me," watching "Fresh Prince," and standardized testing. Some teachers hate it and go through the motions, others really get into it and try to make the best of weird lesson plans.

During my planning period I plan for after school, organize different events, fill out CY surveys/docs, and collaborate with my teacher to lesson plan.

My 5th period is similar to 2nd in that they are also bouncing off the walls, but somehow they are more manageable. There a few more of them, but I think the bigger personalities in this class are able to focus a little better. In this period, a special Ed push-in teacher is present as well, so there are 3 of us to split the class up.

In After school, we started off tutoring the football and cheer team. It was a bit unfocused, so the cheerleaders were redirected to sports and we continue to tutor the football players. I have a few of them in my classes, so I like to tell them in class we'll be working on the homework in the After-School space. This space is good because we get to interact with upperclassmen that none of us have class with. It also makes the football games more fun!

After tutoring, there are various CY things we do each day. Sometimes we have a team meeting, other days it is prep time. Fridays are the best because we do "Life Works." This is a time for one corps member to give a 45min presentation on their life. It's great! Afterwards we get to grill them. I'm not til November.

Finally, we do our Final Circle and head out. I've started working out at the school because they have a free gym! And by then the students are gone. Sometimes we go to the CY office where we can print and use the office resources. We did this last Tuesday to print flyers for our new clubs and handouts for an event the next day.

In other news, we got our official white uniform tops! They gave us 2 oxfords, a polo, a red vest, a really nice red quarter zip, a bomber, a heavy winter coat, a cardigan, and a black button up. My favorites are the oxford and the red quarter zip.

We also recently got free memberships to Capitol BikeShare. So now I can also ride bikes around town! So much free stuff.

Nepal dinner

Tonight I had a really nice dinner with dad's friend Kumud, and his daughter, Maya. They are both from Nepal. Maya is starting at AU on Monday, so Kumud was in town dropping her off. He was a great resource for a career in water, as well as a source to find other Nepalis. We went to a nice Turkish restaurant at Dupont Circle. Both were very nice and Kumud was chatty. They were actually in Nepal this past summer, which is interesting because it's post-earthquake. It sounds like things are slowly going back to normal, but it's still a mess.