I found out my school team today! We tied balloons to our legs and inside the balloons were pieces of a puzzle which said the names of our schools and who was on our team! These are the people and the place I will be spending about 99% of the rest of my year with, so this was a big huge deal
SJ Davis is a first year CY partnership and on the Eastside which are both things that I really really wanted in a school but didn't put on my application, because I knew I'd be put where I fit best, luckily where I fit best is what I truly wanted.
I wanted a first year CY partnership, because I wanted more of a challenge, not some place where I could easily slide in as just another year of corps members, but a place where I could really shake things up and prove my worth.
I wanted to be on the Eastside because the Eastside is a promise neighborhood. The promise neighborhoods are neighborhoods that are based off the Harlem Promise Neighborhood. It was a neighborhood established by a man with a long term vision. Mothers are given access to prenatal health care, and taught basic child raising tips, such as how often to read to your child and when you should expect the child to begin speaking. The children go to excellent charter schools and are given amazing educational opportunities. Then they are strongly encouraged to go to college and come back to live in the community and strengthen their community in a way that only current communities have the ability to go. President Barak Obama was so impressed with the plans for the Harlem Promise Neighborhood that he offered the opportunity for some select neighborhoods to be given mass amount of funding to create multiple promise neighborhoods. The Eastside was awarded this funding! This is such a powerful movement to be apart of and I feel inspired every time I think about it. The Eastside is most definitely the place to be!
At SJ Davis, as far as I know, I will be working with 7th and 8th graders. The racial make up is about 51% latino, 48% black, and 3% minorities, I will definitely be the minority in this situation (which I am so excited about!!!). We also have the total freedom to start our own after school programs totally personalized! After I saw that, my mind began to race, women empowerment, outside adventures, slam poetry, maybe all three! I am so excited, because an after school program based outdoor therapy is all I want to do!
I also love my team! It is made up of all people that I have wanted to work with and no people are people that I have thought at some point, "ehh, I don't know how working with them would go". We all seem to vibe very well and I am so so so so excited.
Today once we got our schools we did a lot of team bonding and with our team we drove around the school and the Eastside and where the neighborhood is that the students will be coming from. There are a lot of project areas, but they seem to be very well kept up. Home front pride is very important and there are mostly family businesses. We also went to an H-E-B in that neighborhood. My inner (not so inner) sociology nerd came out and I immediately started noticing the people shopping there and what was different than other grocery stores I'd been to. One very very noticeable difference was that there was a whole aisle taken up with ramen, very cheap very unhealthy food, that tells me something immediately.
Tomorrow we are going to hopefully get our foot in the door at SJ Davis and have lunch at apparently a classic Eastside diner with a mural painted by students in the back. Eastside! Strongside!
After work I was feeling kind of stressed and overwhelmed so I went to the gym and did about 45 minutes of elipticaling at an incline. That was amazing because
1. I got to watch an Obama speech, analysis of different presidential candidates and Jersey Shore, while burning calories.
2. And I seemed to sweat out any of my non-positive feelings.
After a delicious dinner of stir fried vegetables, avocado, and pasta sauce, I am looking forward to an early bed time. One of my multiple goals for this year of service (ya know, besides serving!) is to have an earlier bedtime during the week. I am going to have such long days that I will need all the sleep I can get!
Daily Hero: Whoever at City Year thought it would be a fantastic idea for every team to visit the local grocery store, totally understands my life and very not inner sociology nerd.
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