The City Year team at P.S. 57 is continuing to inspire children to love reading through our “Bringing Books to Life” Program. Today for our lesson, Cherisse, Leah and I read to second graders about dinosaurs. The children all seemed very engaged and excited about the topic, and their eyes lit up almost every time we turned the page.
For our activity afterwards, we gave each student paper bags and crayons which they used to create their own dinosaur puppets! Many kids chose to make tyrannosaurus-rexes, but there were some other ones including brontosaurs, triceratops and raptors. When they were finished creating their puppets, had the opportunity to talk about their dinosaurs and act out their own scenes behind the stage we created. It was very fun and amusing to watch, and I was most excited to hear some students use big words we discussed such as “carnivore and herbivore”. Overall the lesson went great and the teacher Ms. Arons loved it. Once again thank you for your continued support.

Yours in Service,

Rick Wolfsdorf

Lunch Mentoring Program at P.S. 111

Hola, My name is Jovanna Lopez, I am from San Antonio, Texas and I am currently serving at P.S. 111 in Long Island City/Queensbridge. I am the D-Comm rep for my team, so you will be hearing from me on behalf of my team.
We just launched a new Lunch “mentoring” program for the children along with their Lunch Clubs. I was not a huge fan of the mentoring program when we began due to the fact that the kids were so hard to maintain during the lunch clubs. So, naturally i saw this to be a failure when it was initially introduced. I thought “These kids are not even going to care or notice us in the auditorium during their free time.” Boy!!!!! was i wrong! They absolutely love the fact that we spend that extra free time with them. We chat, dance, play games and run around the gym with them. I have established so many new relationships with children i never get to interact with normally. I work with a 4th grade class everyday and only them. So, its actually a joy to meet some new students from the school. Anyhow, i just wanted to update you guys on what goes on in our neck of the woods. Talk to you soon. Sincerely, Jovanna

February 12th 2007

Hello!

We’ve had a really exciting month here at P.S. 308. Our school was one of the sites of City Year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day event. With the help of volunteers and children from our school we painted several beautiful murals of inspirational African Americans such as Malcolm X, Rosa Parks and Jackie Robinson. Our own corps member Marty was instrumental in the planning of this inspirational day.

Recently, some of us had the opportunity to go on a field trip with our classes to the Natural History Museum in Manhattan. Our children learned about fossils, butterflys and various species of animals.

We’ve been continuing with our work in the school doing Bringing Books to Life, running Lunch Clubs and our afterschoo program, Starfish. We recently passed the halfway point of our year and we can’t wait to finish the year with the same amount of excitement and energy for the rest of our powerful service year.

Yours in Service
Jorge
PS 308, Bed-Stuy

extra work

Here are some events going at PS 75. Our students occasionally ask whereabouts of City Year team members. “Where are Ms. B and Mr. M?” Well believe it or not, we are always working hard for City Year. So when Ms. B and Mr. M are out during planning time they are actually at the office working till 9pm planning Camp City Year. Though we do wish we could spend more time in our school, we all recognize the importance of our other roles. I am personally part of the Development and Communications team. City Year not only cares about the students we serve but also about the corps members’ development. It allows us to test ourselves beyond what is required. Despite all these circumstances we still get the job done at PS 75. I can attest, there has never been a lesson canceled or a child left unattended because we look out for one another.

Yours in service,

Roma
PS 75