Polis Under Construction

Date: September 24, 2008
Place: #93 bus to UTSA, home

We gave a presentation today to a local Rotary chapter.  It went well, and they seemed to like it.  We brought in about 40 kids from KIPP and scattered them along with all the corps members, throughout the room where the lunch presentation took place.  They’re reasonably articulate students, and the Rotarians got to meet actual students we’re working with.

It probably helped the presentation that our executive director, Paul Garro, is a member of Rotary.

It’s an interesting mix for an organization.  The corps members come from across the US, the senior staff are a mixture of former corps members and those who’ve had years experience elsewhere.  Paul Garro has been here long enough to develop roots, and the board is drawn from those with deep connections.  Even the San Antonio chief of police is on City Year’s board.

The board chair structure is also an interesting blend, and a solution to experience gaps after turnover that I’d like to borrow.  After a term as chair, members serve as “past chairs,” providing experience and advice to the current chair.

On the newspaper, I’d be interesting to do something similar, have dual staggered terms for major roles.

Date: September 23, 2008
Place: Bus to UTSA, after work

This was a good day,  In some ways it was a culmination of a great many days not directly focused on helping people.  It was also a little chaotic, unplanned.  In a way those situations seem to fit my mind; the uncertainty makes reacting a bigger problem and holds my attention longer.

We got our uniforms today.  I’m now sitting on the bus with a backpack stuffed to the seams, a trashbag with a coat and workboots, the bag I brought to work today, and a sweatshirt not really required in San Antonio at this hour.  Riding a bike with all of this is an interesting challenge.

Over the rest of the week we’ll be introducing ourselves to the city.  Tomorrow there wil be a lunch presentation to the Rotary Club, on Friday we have a ceremony at City Council chambers, and on Saturday we’ll be helping to run a number of service projects across the city.  Next week we’ll dive into KIPP for our first full week, with a service lesson for ~80 7th graders on Saturday.  I’m looking forward to it.

Read the rest of this entry »

And a little bit of cynicism disappears.

Date: Monday September 22, 2008
Place: 11 PM, home

Over the nest 10 months, I’ve promised to complete over 1700 hours of community service through a program called City Year.  I’ll be working in a local charter school designed to be a college preparatory middle school.  It’s called KIPP Aspire Academy; it’s overwhelmingly Hispanic, poor (92% or so qualify for free or reduced lunch), and intriguingly successful.

I’ll be mentoring, tutoring, running electives, and creating lesson plans along with my team of 3 others, plus a team leader.

Since the 1st, I’ve been training, team-building, learning about the school, and getting to know my teammates.  There are a little over 30 of us all together, from all over the nation, between 17 and 24.

In addition there are five team leaders, people our age who’ve gone through the program before or simply have experience with this kind of work.  There are also 5 staff members, older but mainly in their late 20’s, overseeing everything.

Date: Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Place: 820 AM, McDonalds across from City Year

I’ve been training and doing a few small things for the past few weeks, and I find myself getting more tired, hungry, and cranky.  I don’t think it’s purely the unaccustomed work hours — the long days.

First, I feel I have little in common with most of my corps members.  Agewise I’m more on par with the team leaders, and I’m more interested in the work of the staff.  After a few days of poring through City Year finances and funding methods in spare moments, there haven’t been many intriguing opportunities.

Second, I’ll be working at a school where much of the team questions whether they really need us.  To all appearances, KIPP Academy is extraordinarily successful, taking disadvantaged and at risk kids and setting them on a path for college and elite preparatory schools when some of them had never heard of college before arrival.  This may change as the year progresses and I teach and get to know mentees.

For now, I’m feeling useless, surrounded by people substantially unlike me, working on problems I feel just a little bit uninteresting.

For the last two months, and until June 2009, I’ll be spending my weeks mentoring and tutoring middle schoolers, aiding and running service projects throughout San Antonio, and learning how to be a leader.

I’m part of a program called City Year, a national service organisation for young people between 17 and 24.  They dedicate a year to service in one of the 18 sites across the US (plus one in South Africa).

The days since September have been incredible, and I’ve been trying to document them as best I can.  This is an experience that changes you, as I’ve already seen in the two months so far.  I want to be able to look back afterwards and see how it has done so, and share that process with others.  Some of these will have incorrect information or points of view that I now disagree with, and I’ll still considering how to deal with it.  I’d like to leave much of it as it was written, reflecting how I thought at the time.  At the same time, I’ll try to note these errors or changes when they occur.

It should be noted, of course, that everything I write here is my own opinion, not that of City Year.  I’d like to think that’s part of the benefit — my experience, as it happens, without the changing perceptions of hindsight.

I have a stack of journal entries from the last few weeks, waiting to be posted.  This first one is undated, written at the beginning of one of the first days.

Date: Undated, written on the back of a flyer from the first day.

As I write this, I’m beginning a 40 minute bus ride early in the morning.  The sun has just barely begin to rise, and I’ll be taking this same ride every weekday for the next 10 months.  I’ve never been a big fan of sunrises, and I’m much more likely to see them from the other side of the clock.

The point of these predawn 40 minute rides is a program called City Year.  It’s a volunteer program that takes young adults from 17-24 and gives them a chance to work in one of 7(?) (actually, 19) sites across the US and one in South Africa.

They work on literacy in elementary schools, mentoring and homework help in middle and high schools, spend time on a long list of community development projects, and hopefully have some fun doing it.

Of course, fun in this case also involves getting up before dawn for nearly a year of ten hour workdays.  That’s part of the challenge, though, and it’s nearly as attractive as having some small impact on a community or school.

The next year should be interesting.