Archive for November 3rd, 2008
Introducing the Corps
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.