A Post Of Thanks

Our Executive Board procured free tickets for the whole Corps to see the new documentary "Waiting for Superman". The film is directed by David Guggenheim (he also did "An Inconvenient Truth") and it is "a deeply personal exploration of the current state of public education in the U.S. and how it is affecting our children." (http://www.waitingforsuperman.com)

Five children are profiled, all of whom reminded me either of my students or myself. Most go to public schools of various sorts and all care deeply about their education. (Daisy's story was particularly moving.)

Anyways, I don't want to write to completely endorse the film, though I think people should see it to at least start discussions around public education in America. I want to write to say thank you for my own education. Many of you were and are directly involved in it and not until this year have I fully realized just how much work it takes to get a child to love learning. Thank you, Mom and Dad, for reading to me so much that I could read faster to myself than you could read to me. While I've always been a little too proud of that, it's a pretty weighty gift that took an untold amount of your patience. So thank you for all the Goodnight Moon's, American Girl chapter books, and the Little Hungry Caterpillar's. Thank you to the rest of my family for setting our education standard so high: my grandmothers who went to college even though higher education for women was not the norm; my grandfathers' Master's degrees.

Knowledge is power and with power comes responsibility. I am grateful for my education--grateful that my schools' were never falling apart, never too overcrowded, always had academic options, clubs, languages, music, art, friends. I have been so blessed, there's no other word for it. And the best part is this year, the year that pushes me to see that my background is not the norm in my country, far from it in fact. The power I've been given is being used to show me the responsibility I have--we all have--to each other and to our future. We can't push the inequalities to the background anymore. We have to act, to be responsible to our community. We can't wait for Superman.

Opening Day Ceremonies

I had a sleepover with my mom this weekend. Friday, October 1 marked our Opening Day ceremony, which she flew out from Virginia to attend. As we are the Founding Year this year, a lot of top brass was in attendance (obviously none as important as my own house guest): the CEO and co-founder of City Year, Michael Brown; a lot of other high-up people from the CY Headquarters in Boston; US Congresswoman Gwen Moore; Superintendent of MPS Gregory Thornton; Julie Uihlein, a very, very wealthy woman who donated $1 million to get City Year to Milwaukee and then another $100,000 to sponsor a school team; and of course the current Corps and our immediate supervisors and all our friends and family.

The ceremony consisted of a lot of speeches and some demonstrations of enthusiasm by the Corps Members and a reception afterwards, with food. Honestly, there only needs to be free food and half the Corps will attend anything.

Opening Day is really making all the City Year members into debutantes, being introduced to Milwaukee society. I've attached some pictures of my team in all our red glory.

Today was a hard day. Mondays always seem to be the hardest day of the week, no matter the job, but today was just frustrating. The students got their laptops today and it became even more obvious who can manage solo and who needs to be hand held through lessons. AKA: it became more obvious who will pass 6th grade and successfully go to 7th and who will fall further through the cracks. Perhaps I'm being too harsh.

Then we learned this: apparently, it is an MPS mandate that no one other than a teacher can take students out of the classroom to work this them. AKA: City Year cannot take their focus groups into the hall to tutor them. Remember our focus groups are 8-10 kids who are not Special Ed but who need more help than they can get in class. We have to work with these kids in class, while the teacher is teaching, while the other 20-22 kids are trying to learn. There is no space in my classroom for me to do this. I was explicitly told during the first week of school that I am to be as quiet as possible when talking to students during lessons. AKA: no tutoring in the back of the room. No group discussions; no time or space for extra help.

With all the AKAs one might as well just speak in plain language. It's the Founding Year of City Year Milwaukee and I am a guinea pig.

Overall, I'm all right with this; it's just wearing on me in particular today.

On a lighter note, tomorrow the Boys and Girls' Club's After School program starts and I will be assisting first with the Cultural Dance class then the African Drumming class, taught by a Senegalese man who I have yet to meet. How perfect is that!?