City Year - my year of growth
As I spoke about in my previous blog post, I had the opportunity to serve with City Year for an entire year in Sacramento, CA. It was exhausting, challenging, thrilling, eye-opening, and inspiring. City Year helped me to realize my true passion is working in the K-12 field. Although right now I work in higher education, I am excited to try to get my foot back into the K-12 door once the opportunity arises.
City Year taught me so many things - I learned how to develop curriculum, behavior management, small group interventions/pull outs, after-school program management, building relationships with educators and administrators, etc. I can’t even list how much I learned that year. I was given the opportunity to serve in a 7th grade English Language Arts classroom. A lot of people ask me why middle school is my favorite grade. They think I’m crazy. But, I LOVED it! I had such an amazing host teacher, who patiently taught me the ropes and helped support me throughout the entire year. She gave me the opportunity to work with students on improving attendance, behavior, and grades.
Over the year, I built such wonderful relationships with my students. They will always be considered my “kids”. They truly changed my life and taught me to have patience and humility. Many of my kids didn’t have the easiest life. One student of mine really struggled to make it to class and actively participate. She often lashed out at others, especially adults, including myself. One day, I decided to pull her out of class and just really try to get down on her level and see how I could best support her. Despite a lot of resistance, she finally had the courage to speak with me. She shared with me that she had always wanted to work in the legal field, but that she didn’t know where to start. I was able to help her find some good resources to look more into that career. I also spoke to her about how I could best support her in making it to school every day so that she could work towards her goals.
Let me tell you, this girl hated me for almost the ENTIRE school year. I honestly wasn’t sure if she’d ever trust me. But during the last week of school, she came up to me and asked if I’d be willing to help her throw a surprise party for my host teacher, in celebration of her completing her graduate school program. I was SHOCKED, but of course very willing to help her plan it. The moral of this story is - never give up on someone. Every single day I would make an effort to say hi to her and welcome her to the class. When she would scream at me, I would speak with her outside of class with kindness and patience. I would not yell at her, but I made sure to let her know that I’m here for her and will not give up on her.
This is just one starfish story out of many that I experienced while serving with City Year. This opportunity opened up so many doors for me, and I learned so much about privilege, the disparities in opportunities for others, and the lack of access to education. Many students aren’t aware of the different resources they have access to. My year in Sacramento was tiring - I often worked 55-60 hours per week, but for some reason it never seemed like that. It just felt like your typical 40 hour work week. I think that is because I truly loved and was passionate about what I was doing. I was constantly learning, asking questions, and building critical relationships with others. I really miss City Year and hope sometime in my future, I’ll have the chance to work with them again because they are such an amazing organization.
Ubuntu — I am, because you are
~ Zulu Proverb
