I’m Back!!!

Hey,

I hope everyone is enjoying the lovely spring weather.
It is hard to believe it will soon be April leaving us
only three months left in the program. It is amazing
how time is just going by. As part of our service, we
have been hard at work doing Bringing Books to Life at
P.S. 48. This month, our theme is cultural history
where we focus on great leaders and figures that have
made a contribution to our society and world. For my
BBL, as we like to call it for short, I read a book on
Mahatma Ghandi. And to gain a better understanding of
why Ghandi stood up to injustice, I had the second
graders do an exercise where they learned about
segregation. The teachers and students really enjoyed
the activity and learned more about their history.
Also, Nancy read the story of Anne Frank in which they
learned about how courageous one little girl was in
the midst of the Holocaust. Even though the content
was deep, I think they have a better understanding of
their history. Next up, 1HOP, where we will do
community service for one week. Stay tuned until next
month to find out how it went.

Yours in Service,

Candra

Cadillacs of Social Change

Even though the NYCE (New York Civic Engagement, for those who haven’t read my past blog entries) team anticipated a bit of a slump in the month of March, I am happy to report that a lot of very cool things have happened this past month! To kick things off, NYCE enjoyed a fun afternoon of bowling in the Bronx for our Team Day. We were becoming jealous of other teams that showed up funny pictures from their Team Days, but our time finally arrived, and we had a blast. There’s nothing quite like bowling in the Bronx… with five other crazy individuals… in your City Year uniform. Ha! We worked in the morning and then took the subway up to the Bronx for the rest of the day, and good times were had by all.

We also had SPI (School Partnership Initiative) Week. Throughout the last four months or so, NYCE would split up (*sigh*) and spend a every other Tuesday with another team in the schools. We would spend the day completing their tasks with them: tutoring in the classrooms, Bringing Books to Life (BBL) lessons, lunch clubs, and Starfish. In March NYCE had SPI WEEK, and needless to say, we were with our SPI teams for one whole week. I really had a great time in Bed-Stuy with the PS 308 team! My SPI highlights always seem to be the Kindergarten BBL lessons (with Marty and/or Amato) and Starfish.

After what seemed like FOREVER, we had a physical service day on Thursday, March 22 with one of our sponsors, Cisco. A small but mighty group of volunteers served at one of our Young Heroes schools, MS 201 in Hunts Point (S. Bronx). We have a pretty strong relationship with Cisco, and the volunteers we get from them are always awesome. We painted seven bulletin board murals, completely transformed the gym teacher’s office with a nice new paint job/design, and constructed eight bookcases. It was amazing! We (NYCE and the Hunts Point Young Heroes team) were so proud at the end of the day.

March also happened to be NYCE’s month for the Community Meeting. At the end of every month, the corps attends a Community Meeting that is put on by one team. It’s always entertaining to see how creative teams can get with their presentation. A Community Meeting consists of many City Year “culture” pieces: Ripples & Joys, Starfish Stories, Life Works (by someone within the CY network), and Appreciations… to name a few. We presented a sing-a-long musical called “[insert title here], The Musical.” It was complete with a playbill, bios for the “cast,” re-written lyrics to some songs, a silly pre-show picture slide show, and our very own Cadillac (Vehicle) of Social Change which our dear service leader rode in on (what a good sport!). We knew going into it that we would probably find it more funny than others, but we didn’t care, because we had a great time creating the presentation together. If anything, I know that the corps was grateful for our time management; we did our entire Community Meeting in an hour! (They usually last 90 minutes… or longer.)

Coming Up for CYNY:
** 100 Hours of Power: Next week, CYNY will be serving for 100 consecutive hours in New York City! We’ll be working in shifts so that City Year will be represented in physical service for 100 HOURS STRAIGHT! I can’t wait. I’m sure many amazing blog entries will follow that experience.
** Community Service Days: Before our “City Year” is over, all of the school-based teams will host a physical service day in their communities under the supervision of the NYCE team. They are coming along very well, and I can’t wait to see the final results from their service.

On a very exciting note, the weather is FANTASTIC in New York City right now! I can guarantee you that this San Diegan is basking in the 60-degree weather. It’s still cold compared to my Southern California standards, but it’s a huge improvement from the NYC chill we’ve had lately.

In service,
Lindsay M. Sablan
Civic Engagement Team
– — — — –
City Year Los Angeles Founding Senior Corps
Visitor Program Service Leader ’07-’08
(Yup! You read correctly! I’m headed to City Year LA, baby!)

Starfish Story(a great one)

Hey Ya’ll,
I am so bad at keeping up with this blogger thing. Nevertheless, I have a great story about a little girl that i work with at P.S. 111. Brittney is in my fourth grade class, she reads at a 1st grade level and also had little to no basic math skills when I started tutoring her. I have been working with her for about a month now. Honestly, I wish that I had known about her sooner because I feel that I would have been able to help her way more than I already have. I work one on one with Brittney on Tuesdays and Thursdays during the hour and a half of math. When I initially began with her she couldn’t really tell you how many fingers she had on both hands without having to count them. When she did count them she always came up with 9 fingers total. This really frustrated me in a way that would make me so angry. I seriously asked myself,”How on earth did this little girl get passed so many times and no one ever bothered to care or take notice that she was not understanding what was being taught?” My teachers have said that she is borderline “Mentally Retarded”(again that is an assumption made by the teacher not a diagnosis by a doctor) but i really think that this is an excuse for lack of attention or caring for that matter. It gets me seriously worked up to even think that this little girls future has been jeopardized because someone didn’t care to take their time to work with her or even stop to see that she really was not understanding what was being taught. I guess I should get into the positive part of the story. Well it’s been a month now and Brittney understands how many fingers are on both hands. She also can do basic addition and subtraction by using her fingers and number lines. She is also understanding the concept of numbers that come before and after each other. I am so very proud of her. I just had this feeling that it was not a mental disability but just being looked over for so long. For me this is by far one of the biggest accomplishments in my life. Just the ability to teach another human being how to understand or learn something is really a phenomenal and endearing feeling. Sorry to have rambled on so much. -Jovanna
P.S. I don’t have a picture of her either but i will work on that. I promise!

East Harlem Heroes!

February was an exciting month for the Young Heroes teams of East Harlem. We led the heroes in exploring the topics of Health and Wellness, Gender Roles, and HIV/AIDS.
On Health and Wellness Day we discussed different health issues that threaten individuals in their community. We brought out two experts from North General Hospital to talk about childhood asthma and obesity in East Harlem. We also invited an expert environmental air quality inspector from Micro Ecologies that spoke to parents and students about air quality in project housing. Health and Wellness was a day filled with powerful discussions about health, yoga, trail mix, and reminders of general well being and happiness. It was a great day.
We found ourselves all over the city for the service portion of our Gender Roles Day. A large group of our students traveled downtown to the Anti Violence Project (AVP.) AVP is committed to the prevention of violence against lesbians and homosexuals, they offer free and confidential couseling, support, and advocacy. The students heard from some of the clients at the facility, participated in a creative writing workshop, and donated Valentines Day cards. The other portion of the group traveled to green thumb community gardens in East Harlem and spent the afternoon putting up blue bird boxes, that students had made on Animal Cruelty day in January. We also visited council women Melissa Mark-Vivorito at her office on 116th street and made Valentines Day cards.
The relationship that we have established with the Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center (TCCHCC) is one that I hope to carry on.
By the end of this Heroes year we will have spent two service days working with the facility and they have connected us with a variety of helpful resources and organizations. February 17th was National Make a Blanket day and the Young Heroes HIV/AIDS Day. Our teams traveled to TCCHCC and made “no-sew” quilts for the HIV/AIDS patients. The facility offered us the use of a large space, enough to fit all of our teams, and they were informative and accommodating. We will be working with TCCHCC again for our Ageism Day on March 10th.

Young Heroes is exciting. We make the students work hard on Saturday’s. We push them to think in new directions and challenge them to acquire new skills, the best part is that they keep coming back.
We are always looking for volunteers!
Come out and serve a Saturday!

-Isabella, Young Heroes East Harlem