Wordlesss Wednesday: Training with Public Allies Milwaukee

“A Day in the Life”

by Pa Houa Xiong, Rockwell Automation Team serving at Rogers St. Academy

As the Rogers Street Academy Civic Engagement Coordinator, I had the pleasure of organizing a Neighborhood Clean-up with the Don & Sallie Davis Boys & Girls Club. In collaboration with Cody, the Character and Leadership Coordinator for the Don & Sallie Davis Boys & Girls Club, we were able to plan an eventful night.

On May 10, more than 80 volunteers were engaged in an event filled with service learning. We collaborated with Rockwell Automation by inviting and recruiting volunteers.

Donna, a Rockwell volunteer, was great in co-leading a team of volunteers during the clean-up with Ashley and helping out with the art show contest.  The large number of volunteers greatly shows the connection and commitment between the families, friends and neighbors of Rogers Street Academy. It was great to see so many people involved and supporting each other.

The volunteers were able to participate in a neighborhood clean-up and an up-cycle art show contest lead by my teammate, Nancy. Art work was created by our very own After School Heroes students in our afterschool program to be on display at the pizza party. Art projects were made from items such as toilet paper rolls, wine corks and plastic soda bottles which greatly demonstrated our student’s creative and artistic abilities.

The Neighborhood Clean-up was truly a team collaboration event. I am so grateful for my team and their efforts in making the event as successful as possible. My team was very supportive in so many ways like creating a beautiful flyer and banner to advertise the event. I could also depend on my team with help in recruiting volunteers and leading groups of volunteers during the clean-up. Each team member supported the event by either leading or co-leading a group of volunteers while cleaning a specific area of the neighborhood. My in-kinding team, made up of three team members was so supportive by their consistent and dependable efforts in in-kinding enough pizza to feed all of our volunteers. Thank you to Ned’s Pizza, Palermo’s Pizza and Times Square Bistro and Pizzeria for the delicious pizzas! I couldn’t have done it without my team and I am proud to say that I am a part of the Rockwell Automation team at Rogers Street Academy!

City Year Milwaukee’s Hopkins-Lloyd Community School team featured on MPS portal Web site

To view the entire article click here.

Additional photos can be viewed here.

Wordless Wednesday: Service at Growing Power

After School at Hopkins Lloyd Community School

The final bell rings at 2:30 pm. As students stream into the hallways, corps members report to their partner classrooms to pick up the students who are staying for after-school programming, or “CLC” as it is fondly called at Hopkins Lloyd Community School (CLC actually stands for Community Learning Center, and they are the organization that City Year partners with to run the after school program at HLCS. City Year is in charge of 4^th-8^th grades, CLC staff cares for K-3^rd grades).

After we drop off our kids at the cafeteria for snack, corps members man their respective ground. A tiny-in-stature-but-not-in-personality female corps member is our door bouncer while a tall, witty, soft-spoken male distributes the snack of the day. Our youngest corps member, a soon-to-be-professional-video-gamer, keeps watch over the 4^th and 5^th grade table, and another female, lovingly dubbed Big Mama, watches over the middle school girls. A blunt-but-hilarious, semi-perfectionist male walks around with white binders and brown clipboards taking attendance. A spunky, creative male stands by the middle school boys, and our newest member, our refreshingly humorous mid-year corps member guards the door leading outside.

They proudly watch over these stations from 2:30-2:45, while I run around opening up the three classrooms we use for after-school, posting up 5 signs in each classroom – one with the daily schedule, one with noise levels, one with behavior expectations, one with behavior consequences, and one plain one that says STRIKE ZONE at the top. It is at this moment I realize how hot it is in the classroom, so I dash over and throw open three of the windows. Repeat in the other two classrooms. Back to the CLC storage closet to grab the 4^th & 5^th grade crate with QuickReads books, tons and tons of blank worksheets, and the bright orange CLC bathroom passes. Repeat for the middle school classroom. It’s a race against the clock to write either the “Math Enrichment” or “Literacy Enrichment” rotation schedule for the middle school students on the classroom’s whiteboard. Sometimes I win, and I can catch my breath for a second before the middle schoolers stream in, aided by Big Mama’s voice saying, “Come in quietly, take out homework, or raise your hand for a worksheet”.  Sometimes the clock wins, but no one ever really seems to notice. Depending on the team’s rotation schedule, I either stay with middle school or head across the hall to the 4^th and 5^th grade room. I settle in for the half-hour of homework help, followed by the half-hour of academic enrichment, and finally by the 50 minutes of the City Year club activity.

Here I offer you a small window into the life of an After School Program Coordinator. It is not very glamorous, but very rewarding. It gives me an odd sense of joy to have my HLCS After School binder filled to the brim with awesome lesson plans, extra pens and pencils, and Corps Member rotation schedules. A successful day of after-school can completely turn around a not-so-hot day of service.

-Mary Louise Halling, Corps Member, Hopkins Lloyd Community School

Corps Eye View: The impact of our mentoring service

I decided to serve with City Year because I believe that education is the ultimate equalizer. Where a child from any background can achieve success and by learning about the world and the people around us, we can melt the differences between one another and become great future leaders. Reminding myself of this has helped me help my 9^th grade students at South Division High School succeed, not just inside the classroom with attendance, behavior, and course performance, but also in their social and personal lives. I firmly believe that around every corner there is a mentoring opportunity and that maybe my experience, as well as my fellow corps members’ experiences, can help our students navigate their way in the world.

To help students outside of the classroom, the South Division team has been leading mentoring clubs afterschool. The clubs include the “Men’s Mentoring Club”, “L.A.C.E.R” (Latinas Augmenting in Confidence, Education and Respect), and “Ladies First”. Co-leading the young women only “Ladies First” mentoring club has been highly rewarding. Through this club, we are able to reach and engage older students as well as freshmen and have exposed them to social issues and service learning. The topics that we have covered thus far have been living a healthy life through a good diet and moderate exercise, trust-building exercises, and self-reflection exercises. We have also integrated service learning by speaking about non-profit organizations that serve in Milwaukee such as City Year, Big Brothers Big Sisters, and Habitat for Humanity, etc. Additionally, we have done a small scale service project making arts and crafts for the Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin. We will also hold a bake sale, in which we hope to raise money to give to a charity, and organize a neighborhood clean-up. Our mentoring clubs have been successful because we are a useful resource to students who just want to talk about issues that they have on their minds. Having someone that is just a little bit older than them makes us seem more approachable than a teacher may be.

Over these past eight months, we have made many great strides with our students, but we are not done yet. We will give this last month and a half of service all we have, and finish the year with a bang. All of our hard work is paying off, and I am humbly privileged to serve with City Year Milwaukee and to give back to the students of my hometown.

-Deepika Katta

Corps Member serving at South Division High School

Reflections from a Corps Member: Camp City Year

As teachers packed up and wished us corps members a good, restful spring break, in the back of my mind I knew that it was going to be one of the busiest weeks of the service year.  That is because we would be running our week-long Camp City Year, and as a member of the Camp planning team, I knew that our days were going to be packed with activities and events—not to mention nonstop excitement from campers.

In Milwaukee, we were lucky to be able to partner with Discovery World, a beautiful innovation center located directly on the shores of Lake Michigan.  Here, people of all ages can explore science, technology, and the unique environment that distinguishes Milwaukee from other cities.  Each day, our campers had the opportunity to find out what Discovery World has to offer.  Students representing all six of the schools in which City Year teams currently serve participated in special labs hosted by Discovery World staff.  High school students used the Digital Media lab, where they were exposed to different areas of graphic design and digital productions.  Meanwhile, elementary and middle school students had a different lab experience each day, ranging from behind-the-scenes tours of the facility’s aquarium, creating their own food concoctions, building their own robots, and investigating forensic science techniques to solve a mystery.

Throughout the entire camp experience, City Year corps members supported teams of students and immersed the campers in City Year culture, from strong team circles to favorite games and chants.  In this way, students were provided a glimpse of the greater vision of what City Year is and what our mission and values are.

Although Camp City Year was only a week long, it has certainly had a lasting impact.  At my school alone, I have seen a middle school student show off his homemade hand sanitizer, have been greeted by a fifth grader with my camp nickname “Chocolate”, and have been told by one elementary student, in serious detail, how he learned to make his own ginger ale.  For the campers, Camp City Year was a chance for them to explore and learn.  It was an opportunity many of them would not have had if not for City Year.

- Chrissy Ripp, David and Julia Uihlein Charitable Foundation Team at                     Alexander Mitchell Integrated Arts School