Me, Erin, Megan, July, Mae.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Leaving for the woods!
So tomorrow I'm moving to the woods for a month. We received our tents on Friday and it took us over an hour to figure out how to set them up. I think we're good now, but we'll see. I'm super stoked to go camping though. Here is one last picture of the girls of Green 5 before I leave with no electricity or cell phone reception for a month!
Me, Erin, Megan, July, Mae.
Me, Erin, Megan, July, Mae.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
South Los Angeles
I realize that I haven't updated this blog in over two months, but it's better late than never. The last two months were spent tutoring children in South Los Angeles. My daily schedule was pretty interesting so here goes:
PT (Physical Training) from 6-645 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. We would either run up and down our street or do yoga and stretches in the living room. There were some scary dogs that would bark and chase us down the street, which was in some ways an incentive to run faster. Most of the neighbors were pretty friendly actually and said hi to us on their way to work.
After PT we had a little over an hour to get ready for the day. That consisted of making breakfast and lunch and showering. We had one bathroom for 10 people. Intense. At first we thought 5 minute showers would suffice, but we ended up running out of hot water halfway through the lineup, so we settled on 4 minute showers.
Our team was split up between two different elementary schools: Marvin and 61st. 61st School was 2.5 miles away and the 4 people working there walked or skateboarded to school each morning. I worked at Marvin Elementary School, which was a 30 minute drive without traffic, but this is LA so there was always traffic.
The site supervisor at Marvin was awesome. During the morning we were in charge of designing after school enrichment programs for the students in the CYFC (Children Youth and Family Collaborative) program. This work became tedious when we spent 3 hours each day doing it, so after the first 2 weeks or so, we were able to go assist in the classrooms. I went to a 3rd grade classroom for an hour every morning and assisted the teacher with checking the student's fluency levels. I had a stack of passages of various reading levels and I would time each student for one minute to see how many words they could read. The teacher explained to me that this standard for reading ability is rather new and mostly only used in inner-city schools. It was really rewarding to see how so many of the students advanced 2 or 3 reading levels just during the time I spent in their classroom.
After our lunch break the four members of my team and I went to a 2nd grade classroom. Each of us was paired with a 2nd grade boy that was at risk for being held back. We had 1st grade workbooks to help the students with and it was really sad to see that most of them were struggling with that work. I was paired with a boy named Alex who had a great personality and always made me laugh. One of the last days I was working with him, he was playing with a pair of earplugs and I asked him why he had them. He told me his teacher gave them to him so he could sleep at night since he sleeps next to a window and hears gunshots outside every night. Hearing stories like this from the kids put life a bit more into perspective.
After assisting in the 2nd grade classroom for an hour, the after school program began. Our supervisor pretty much gave the four of us AmeriCorps members free reign to structure the program the way we wanted. There were about 60 2nd-4th graders in the program divided between 3 classrooms. The kids adored us and after 2 days some of the girls began calling me "mama". I'm not sure how I feel about that, but it was still cute. We helped them with their homework for the first one-two hours and then we led an enrichment activity.
Snack time was always fun. We had all of the kids sit quietly at picnic tables outside and one student was chosen to pass out snack. I have never heard so many creative lies for why they deserved more than one snack. My favorite was when they had crumbs from graham crackers all over their face and they'd claim they were never given any. Play time outside was pretty fun. I usually played house with the girls. It was a much different game than I remember. It was pretty common for them to say someone died, they'd fall on the ground, and the next minute grandma was alive and running around again. This game is what provoked the girls to begin calling me mama.
There is one girl in particular that I really bonded with. This girl made me cards every day and I would usually have to threaten that I wouldn't accept any more cards until her homwork was done. I now have a stack a foot high of cards she made for me. For an 8 year old her maturity was incredible. She walked home by herself after school, vacuumed, did the dishes, made dinner and went to sleep by herself. She told us that if her homework wasn't done before she got home, she would get in trouble. This was a common story from many of the students.
At 530 we would drive to the other elemetary school to pick up the rest of our time and get back to our house by 630. Two people were in charge of cooking dinner each night which was usually at 8pm. All in all, the days were rather long, but I looked forward to seeing my kids everyday.
The last day we spent at the elementary school was really moving. Almost all of the kids in the after school program cried. It was awesome to see how much of an impact we really made in the kids lives. Many of them just needed a stable role model to be there for them each day and I'm glad I was able to provide that for a short period of time.
Next week we leave to go camping for one month at a YMCA in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I'm excited to be in such a pretty area, but I will definitely miss not having electricity again. We'll be trail building and repairing cabins which sounds similar to the work we did in Catalina. As with anything this year, it's all an experience! Thanks for reading, I realize this is rather long. I miss everyone SO much!!!
PT (Physical Training) from 6-645 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. We would either run up and down our street or do yoga and stretches in the living room. There were some scary dogs that would bark and chase us down the street, which was in some ways an incentive to run faster. Most of the neighbors were pretty friendly actually and said hi to us on their way to work.
After PT we had a little over an hour to get ready for the day. That consisted of making breakfast and lunch and showering. We had one bathroom for 10 people. Intense. At first we thought 5 minute showers would suffice, but we ended up running out of hot water halfway through the lineup, so we settled on 4 minute showers.
Our team was split up between two different elementary schools: Marvin and 61st. 61st School was 2.5 miles away and the 4 people working there walked or skateboarded to school each morning. I worked at Marvin Elementary School, which was a 30 minute drive without traffic, but this is LA so there was always traffic.
The site supervisor at Marvin was awesome. During the morning we were in charge of designing after school enrichment programs for the students in the CYFC (Children Youth and Family Collaborative) program. This work became tedious when we spent 3 hours each day doing it, so after the first 2 weeks or so, we were able to go assist in the classrooms. I went to a 3rd grade classroom for an hour every morning and assisted the teacher with checking the student's fluency levels. I had a stack of passages of various reading levels and I would time each student for one minute to see how many words they could read. The teacher explained to me that this standard for reading ability is rather new and mostly only used in inner-city schools. It was really rewarding to see how so many of the students advanced 2 or 3 reading levels just during the time I spent in their classroom.
After our lunch break the four members of my team and I went to a 2nd grade classroom. Each of us was paired with a 2nd grade boy that was at risk for being held back. We had 1st grade workbooks to help the students with and it was really sad to see that most of them were struggling with that work. I was paired with a boy named Alex who had a great personality and always made me laugh. One of the last days I was working with him, he was playing with a pair of earplugs and I asked him why he had them. He told me his teacher gave them to him so he could sleep at night since he sleeps next to a window and hears gunshots outside every night. Hearing stories like this from the kids put life a bit more into perspective.
After assisting in the 2nd grade classroom for an hour, the after school program began. Our supervisor pretty much gave the four of us AmeriCorps members free reign to structure the program the way we wanted. There were about 60 2nd-4th graders in the program divided between 3 classrooms. The kids adored us and after 2 days some of the girls began calling me "mama". I'm not sure how I feel about that, but it was still cute. We helped them with their homework for the first one-two hours and then we led an enrichment activity.
Snack time was always fun. We had all of the kids sit quietly at picnic tables outside and one student was chosen to pass out snack. I have never heard so many creative lies for why they deserved more than one snack. My favorite was when they had crumbs from graham crackers all over their face and they'd claim they were never given any. Play time outside was pretty fun. I usually played house with the girls. It was a much different game than I remember. It was pretty common for them to say someone died, they'd fall on the ground, and the next minute grandma was alive and running around again. This game is what provoked the girls to begin calling me mama.
There is one girl in particular that I really bonded with. This girl made me cards every day and I would usually have to threaten that I wouldn't accept any more cards until her homwork was done. I now have a stack a foot high of cards she made for me. For an 8 year old her maturity was incredible. She walked home by herself after school, vacuumed, did the dishes, made dinner and went to sleep by herself. She told us that if her homework wasn't done before she got home, she would get in trouble. This was a common story from many of the students.
At 530 we would drive to the other elemetary school to pick up the rest of our time and get back to our house by 630. Two people were in charge of cooking dinner each night which was usually at 8pm. All in all, the days were rather long, but I looked forward to seeing my kids everyday.
The last day we spent at the elementary school was really moving. Almost all of the kids in the after school program cried. It was awesome to see how much of an impact we really made in the kids lives. Many of them just needed a stable role model to be there for them each day and I'm glad I was able to provide that for a short period of time.
Next week we leave to go camping for one month at a YMCA in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I'm excited to be in such a pretty area, but I will definitely miss not having electricity again. We'll be trail building and repairing cabins which sounds similar to the work we did in Catalina. As with anything this year, it's all an experience! Thanks for reading, I realize this is rather long. I miss everyone SO much!!!
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