Summer School

On to summer school! I just finished a week and a half with my adorable first grade class. Summer school is a new idea that is unique to the San Jose site, and this is actually the first year that the entirety of the first-year corps members were asked to participate! Summer school ran from 8:00 am - 12:00 pm, and consisted of math, literacy, PE, and Starfish Corps, which is a program designed by City Year to teach young children about community, teamwork, citizenship and service.

Overall, summer school was a very positive experience for me. I learned a lot about the demographic I'll be working with, even though these students were much younger than the ones I'll be working with for the rest of the year. Each corps member had a co-teacher who was also a first-year corps member, as well as Senior Corps members who serve as peer group leaders and peer mentors during our teaching hours, providing feedback after each day and assistance during the day if needed. My students seemed to have a lot of fun, especially on the last day when we took them to the San Jose tech museum! It was a great learning experience for me, and hopefully they are now excited to return to school and start the first grade!


A gift for me on the last day of summer school from one of my students. Apparently I have really awesome triangular dresses (I wore a City Year t-shirt, jeans and sneakers every day) and shoulder pads when I teach. ;-)

Wish me luck on my first day of middle school tomorrow! Until next time...

BTR

While in the process of getting settled in our new place (after flooded first floor, broken dishwasher, disposal, oven, stove, etc... were all fixed), my roommates and I were also going through what is called "BTA" or Basic Training Academy at the City Year office in downtown San Jose. We were in trainings throughout the morning and afternoon until about 6:00 pm every day for the first week. Then, on Monday 8/9 - Wednesday 8/11 we took off to Happy Valley Conference Center in Santa Cruz for our Basic Training Retreat ("BTR"... we like acronyms a lot).

BTR was full of team-building exercises, trainings that were both fun and serious, preparations for our 1 1/2 week summer school, and most exciting -- our placements and teams for the rest of the school year! I already knew I'd be teaching rising first graders at Cesar Chavez Elementary School for summer school, but I was anxious to find out where I'd be working for the duration of the normal school year.

Here is what I wrote in a notebook on the evening I returned from BTR:

Two weeks have gone by very slowly and also very quickly. I feel like I've been living in San Jose for a month, but I also can't believe I'm about to jump into a classroom of 20 first graders tomorrow!

BTR was amazing. Although I had expected there to be POSSE retreat/Preceptor training/Brown Center type activities, I absolutely didn't expect so many people to really open up. Members of my group shared so much about their backgrounds... it really was an incredible experience.

I'll be working in Mathson Middle School for the remainder of the year and I am SO excited to be on the only middle school team!! Even though I didn't know all of the members of my team before this weekend, I can already tell that we're going to be such a cohesive group - I couldn't have hand-picked them better myself.

Update Part 2 - Pictures!

Redwood forest where City Year San Jose/Silicon Valley resided for two nights and three days during our Basic Training Retreat (BTR)! It was gorgeous - but watch out for the mountain lion in the parking lot!


My new bedroom... with a bed on the floor for now!

Sunset behind the two palms down the road from my new townhouse :)

New Beginnings (Part 1)

Hello from the west coast!

After a week without internet, I am finally online (name of our wireless network: "Starving Corps Members") and attempting to share all that has happened in the past week and a half!

Quick catch up: I graduated on May 22, 2010 from Wheaton College with majors in Psychology and Dance Studies. I was lucky enough to be hired by the Works Cafe in Portsmouth for the summer, and had a blast while making a bit of money. I applied and was accepted into the City Year San Jose/Silicon Valley program which officially started on August 2, 2010! If you don't know what City Year is, you can check them out at www.cityyear.org, but here's a quick summary: City Year Service Corps members commit 10 (or 10.75 in my case) months of service to one of many cities in America. We work in elementary, middle, or high schools (but in the case of San Jose, only elementary or middle) for the duration of that period doing one-on-one tutoring, running after school programs, and providing other services that the school doesn't have the resources to provide for their students. I will be working in the Alum Rock school district on the east side of San Jose, one of the neediest school districts in the country.

SO, I packed up my two (giant) suitcases on Wednesday, July 22, and hopped on a Jet Blue flight to California! 6 hours later I arrived in San Jose and was greeted by all three of my new roommates - what a great surprise! My roommates are all also part of the City Year program, and although we had been trying for over a month, had not actually secured a place to live by the time we arrived in San Jose. We spent the first three nights of our journey sleeping on the floor of one of my roommates' brother's house near Santa Clara University. On the third day, we looked at a townhouse in the southeast section of San Jose and fell in love. 24 hours later, we were moving in! The place has 3 bedrooms and a den that we turned into the fourth.

The next two days were a whirlwind of IKEA, Target, Goodwill, and Mattress Discounters trips. Living on a stipend for the next 10 months meant I didn't have a whole lot of extra cash to burn, so many of my furniture items were purchased by means of elimination and had quite a lot of pieces to put together! By Sunday night I had spent about 5 hours assembling my new bookshelf and desk, but I did it!

Unfortunately my computer is still the same old slowpoke it was in college, so pictures are coming ASAP (that's Part 2!). Part 3 will also explain what I've been doing in training the past week, and what's to come!

Stay tuned...

Crazy at Wheaton

If you are still following this blog - kudos to you for remaining dedicated!  I have obviously been off of my blog for quite some time, and keep meaning to come back to it.  A lot has happened since I returned from New Zealand, so I'll try to give a quick update...

I spent my one month summer at home in New Hampshire (after returning from LA and then TX, respectively) working at the same store I've been working at for a while, aerie.  What was nice about this time is that my bosses actually started to respect me and even let me create a little charity project called "Support for the less fortunate."  I asked all of the employees to bring in the bras that they don't wear anymore (because of our fantastic discount), and collected about 35 bras that were donated to a women's/girl's group home in Dover.  It was a really rewarding experience.

Since returning to Wheaton, I have been involved in quite a lot.  I am the co-Captain of Dance Company and we had our auditions as usual.  This year, over 30 students auditioned and we only had the space to take 5 of them.  There was a lot of talent and I think this just speaks to the growing popularity and prestige of the Dance department at Wheaton.  I also decided that I wanted to join the multi-cultural and hip hop group called TRYBE, of which my roommate Rachel is the co-Director.  I auditioned with 55 other students and was one of the 7 that they accepted!

I am dancing for 4-6 hours per day, for 4-6 days per week and am loving it!  I feel like I am in the best shape of my life, although my knee is starting to bug me and I am trying to be careful of my muscles and body.  I have been having a blast on TRYBE and also have been working hard in Dance Company.

Last but not least, I applied over a week ago to the Wheaton selection committee with my proposal for a Watson Fellowship, a grant that seniors can apply for to do a project of their choice post-grad.  They announced the 12 students who made it through the first elimination process and onto the editing round, and I was one of them!  Sooo... currently I am in the library, attempting to edit my proposal.  Maybe I'll post the actual proposal or a more detailed version of what I'm applying to do, but essentially I want to go to many different countries around the world that use dance as a means of social and personal empowerment, and try to find the thread that connects them.  My countries have been changing since the first application, but it is looking like I'd be traveling to Brazil, India, Ethiopia, Bulgaria, Samoa, and China.  The grant is for 12 months of independent study abroad in which I cannot return home.  It would be intense, but certainly an amazing experience!

Well that's about it for now... I'm going to stop procrastinating and edit my proposal :)  Until next time...

Alive and (almost) home :)

This will be a quick post, as it is almost 3 am in Houston, TX. I arrived stateside on June 30, and spent 6 days there frolicking with old friends. I made it to San Diego and Laguna to visit friends who have already graduated from Wheaton, as well as around the westside and south central LA to visit my friends from last summer. It was a whirlwind trip and I wish I could post pictures... but sadly my camera has been left in Jade (Chris's Prius), who is currently somewhere north of Napa Valley!

I've been in Texas for three days now, and although it has been almost 100 degrees, I have enjoyed the heat and seeing my family. I haven't seen my mother in over 4 months, and I haven't seen my grandmother and aunt in much longer than that. Tomorrow I am getting my first manicure of my life! (I KNOW, it's weird that I haven't had one before... I guess it was just never my thing... wasted money, in my opinion) We are also hopefully going to see 42nd Street, a musical that I have never seen and am very excited to see for free in an outdoor venue (Theatre Under the Stars).

I started and finished a novel, My Sister's Keeper, while here in Houston. It is by one of my favorite light-reading authors, Jodi Picoult. I love her work and was hoping to get to read this book before the movie comes out (Cameron Diaz, Abigail Breslin, and Joan Cusack... can't wait!). It is nice to have free time to read and relax again!

Well, that's all for now. Hopefully I will see many of you in the upcoming months, if not next week or two. It feels good to be home :)

Hello again!

I don't have any new and exciting pictures, but this is from Mother's day when Meaghan, Britta, Maggie (not pictured, she was napping), and I spent the weekend with some friends of Britta's mother. She traveled here a long time ago, and has been friends with this woman and her husband ever since. They graciously invited us up to their beach house about an hour north of Auckland, and we had an AMAZING time. It was homey and really felt like being around parents/grandparents/family again! They also took us to an absolutely fantastic farmer's market on the way up, which reminded me of something you might see in California. All in all we had a great time with our surrogate "mum" on Mother's day!

Not much has been happening lately... I just had my one big final and hope that it went okay. I have spent the past few days studying (well, attempting to at least) and preparing for my sister's visit (!!!!). Last week, I had final performances for three of my classes, which resulted in four performances in two days - crazy! I also helped out with a show that some of my dancer friends were in. I got to essentially be the Assistant Stage Manager, it was pretty cool. I even got a head set! Ha, ha...

MY SISTER ARRIVES IN 8 hours! This is crazy! I have been planning all of the ways to keep her from getting caught staying here (we're not allowed to have overnight guests for longer than a night... oops?). My friends all pitched in and I managed to come up with an air mattress, a set of sheets (with baby sheep on them), and blankets for her - I did not expect this because it has been so cold here lately that I didn't think anyone would be willing to give up their stuff! I am really excited to show Julie around Auckland :)

I'll post more updates when Julie and I have pictures to share. I can't believe I'll be on my way to California in less than two weeks!