Wheaton Bio

This is copied from a story Wheaton recently published on my work with City Year and Teach for America. You can find the actual story here.

My Wheaton education: The chance to explore and innovate in such a safe community was a unique opportunity that has shaped who I am now. I was given the opportunity to lead groups of my peers as a senior preceptor, work one-on-one with a professor in an independent study (thanks Professor Searles!), and help to design and implement two January freshman orientations. To come away from undergrad with these experiences under my belt is incredible.

Favorite memory: Jumping in the pond with my best friends after our senior year Chapel Ceremony. It was so slimy!

First job after graduation: I am currently a corps member in City Year San Jose/Silicon Valley. During the day, I tutor 6^th – 8^th grade students in literacy and math, as well as run after school programs that include homework help and academic enrichment clubs.

The rewards: The students, hands down. My students have seen and gone through so much, yet they are incredibly strong and passionate young people. My goal is to prove to each and every one of them that they have the ability to succeed, and to provide them with the tools they need to do so.

Secret to success: Perseverance and Wheaton connections! Every internship and position I’ve gotten has been at least in part due to a Wheaton alum stepping up to help me.

Proudest accomplishments: Graduating from Wheaton as the first ever Dance Studies major and getting accepted into Teach for America.

Next step, Teach for America: I developed a passion for education and multicultural psychology during my time at Wheaton (thanks Professors Peony Fhagen-Smith and Kirsten Olson!). When I was accepted as a City Year corps member, I knew that I was signing up for a challenging year. What I didn’t expect was to fall so madly in love with my students that they would inspire me to continue working for them beyond my single year of service. Although I have been passionate about educational equity for a number of years, never before did I realize the magnitude of our country’s crisis. I don’t just want to be involved in the solution; I want to be the solution.

For the next two years, I’ll be teaching special education in the Bay Area of California as a Teach for America corps member. I am thrilled to have been chosen for this position, and am excited to take this next step in my pursuit of educational equity for all students in America.

Thankful Thursday: STOMP

This is a post that I wrote for the City Year San Jose blog. You can find the link to the actual post here.

March 24, 2011

tags: Broadway San Jose, Music Village, STOMP

by City Year San José/Silicon Valley

Each week, City Year San Jose/Silicon Valley will thank a person or organization for inspiring us in our service. This week, corps member Laura Peters thanks Broadway San Jose Music Village and other members of the community for supporting her STOMP enrichment at Lee Mathson Middle School.

When corps member Nancy Adjei and I began planning a stepping and drumming enrichment for our after school program, we were excited to bring movement and musical concepts to the students we serve at Mathson Middle School. Little did we know how much further this idea would go!

A few days after the initial seed was planted, I remembered that I had seen the drum and dance performance STOMP advertised as coming to San Jose. Minutes later, I was on the Broadway San Jose website realizing that the show would be coming to the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts during the final week of our STOMP-themed enrichment!

I immediately called group sales. I was planning on applying for an Attendance, Behavior, and Course performance Grant and wanted to see if we could get a few tickets at a discounted price. Joe Noonan, our liaison at Broadway San Jose, posed the question,

“In a perfect world, how many tickets would you receive?”

I thought for a moment. I didn’t want to sound greedy, but I knew that my students deserved to go to this performance and it would be a great incentive to improve their behavior and attendance. I told Joe that in a perfect world, we could bring all of the corps members from Mathson as well as approximately 30 students.

Well, it turns out that it is a perfect world! Broadway San Jose has been able to secure 42 tickets for our corps members and students to attend STOMP this April. Students who are part of our STOMP enrichment and meet specific attendance and behavior criteria will be invited to join the Mathson City Year corps members for the traveling Broadway performance.

Once we had this ticket incentive, we began to focus on our actual enrichment. On Tuesdays and Thursdays for one hour, approximately 15-20 students meet in the cafeteria to make instruments, learn step routines, and combine their talents in preparation for a final performance.

We couldn’t have put on this enrichment without the help of Music Village in south San Jose who donated 20 pairs of drumsticks worth almost $100 in total. Our friends on the Civic Engagement Team right here at City Year San Jose allowed us to borrow paint buckets, which our kids will be using as makeshift drums. Teachers and corps members came together to donate paper towel rolls, beans and cups to be turned into rain sticks and maracas.

The STOMP enrichment has truly been a collaborative effort between City Year and our community. The students in STOMP are flourishing in their rhythmic abilities, as well as attempting to improve their own behavior and attendance. The students and corps members at Mathson sincerely appreciate all of the individuals and organizations who have helped to make this experience possible.

Laura Peters, Corps Member CYSJ

A night to remember

Recently, City Year San Jose hosted an event we call "Starry Starry Night," which is a gala/fundraiser that our organization holds each year. Each corps member was allowed to sit at a table with guests who had paid up to $150 for a ticket and dinner. I was placed at a table with the co-founder and other high-ranking members of NVIDIA, one of our corporate sponsors. During the "Fund-A-Need" portion of the night, my table donated over $50,000!

My table also happened to be next to a sponsored table, which means that a company such as Applied Materials or Bank of America sponsors a table so that teachers and community members have the opportunity to attend the event free of charge. I was next to the table that was full of teachers from the school I work at, as well as a family with two students who attend our after school program. I watched as each teacher donated what they could to our organization, and held back tears when the mother of the two students handed me a check.

It was incredible to see people from all different backgrounds offer what they could to our organization, and that moment was one of the proudest for me this year.

I thought I would share a video that a colleague of mine shot during the night, featuring some of the teachers from the school I serve at and other members of the San Jose community:

What do you want to be when you grow up?

I know it has been a long time since I've blogged, but believe me when I say "I've been busy," it's a dramatic understatement.

After spending 8 months with my 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students I have more adorable (and horrifying) anecdotes than I can possibly recount. I'd like to think I've taught them a few things, and I know they've certainly taught me a lot about things I didn't expect. I've learned west coast slang terms (I'm "hecka bougie Ms. Peters"... look it up on urbandictionary.com), I've learned how to conjure patience from thin air, but most of all I've learned the meaning of the term "unconditional love."

I love my students with all of my heart, even the crazy ones who do things that most of the people reading this would be appalled by: swearing in my face, running away from teachers, stealing things (more specifically my iPhone at the beginning of the year)... But the victories - sometimes small, sometimes larger - are more meaningful than any awards I received in college.

At the beginning of the year I asked some of the 8th graders in my after school homework center what they wanted to be when they grew up. I got one or two students to answer, but the majority of the classroom responded with "I dunno," and "I don't care." This was appalling to me -- although I didn't necessarily know what or who I wanted to be when I grew up at the age of 13, I certainly had ideas. I distinctly remember a year when I wanted to be a Rockette and a politician, and maybe a librarian on the side. Well, after working with these students day in and day out, I am proud to say that I asked this question again a few days ago and was greeted with a ginormous surprise: I now had pediatricians, lawyers, engineers, architects, business owners, chefs, and members of the special forces in the Army!

I'm going to post a few links to pages that include blog posts I've written for City Year as well as a bio from the Wheaton website that details a little more about what I'll be doing next year.

For those of you who don't know, I'm going to be joining Teach for America, an organization that is sort of similar to City Year, except that I will be a full-fledged teacher in the state of California next year. This is an exciting step for me in terms of my professional goals as well as yet another opportunity for me to effect positive social change through education (and hopefully the arts, too). This year has been an incredible experience and I can't wait to dive even further into this crazy education system.

Although I haven't found out my exact school placement yet, I know that I will be teaching Special Education, most likely in a middle school in the same area of San Jose that I'm working in this year. I'm psyched for the opportunity, and although I'll miss my students from this year I can't wait to get started on this next adventure!