City Year, what time is it?!

Another Friday. In City Year Milwaukee, that means another Unity Rally down at the Sunburst sculpture, another day full of trainings (today's happens to be about how to effectively tutor math), the sharing of crazy stories from school teams, and more. For me today, and probably for the next 40 or so Unity Rallies we have, I will be thinking of my middle school boys. During after-school on Wednesdays we run a program at our school called Weekend Wednesday. This is a little more active than the other clubs we run, but we still try to incorporate an academic/CY focus. This Wednesday, we ran our own version of the Amazing Race. The students were divided into teams and had to follow 4-5 clues around the school to figure out who their CM was. At each station they had to do a task before they could get their clue, or in the case of the last clue, have free time in the gym. I was racing around with 5 middle school boys, and their last task was to perform four sets of CY Power Lunges. This is a PT move we do as a corps at Unity Rallies sometimes, and it's a fun call & response/step. Teaching it to these boys and watching them perform it and get really into it is something I'll never forget. They were watching me so intently, making sure they didn't miss a beat. With huge grins on their faces the entire time they were learning, I had them do an extra set just to test them, and it was awesome. It's always a great feeling when you're able to impart wisdom and know they understand what you're teaching them, but having them be excited about it just takes it to a whole other level. I'm starting to think I need these students just as much as they need City Year.

"What do you say to 50 bucks?" "I say, '50 bucks? You are more than I have.'"

Man. I remember being frustrated with CY people who didn't update their blogs frequently last year, but now I completely understand why. The days are long, the kids are exhausting. And that's only Monday through Thursday. Fridays are always kind of unpredictable, which is nice. I find myself telling my students that Thursdays are the new Fridays, and since Wednesdays are "Weekend Wednesdays" in after-school, technically the week only consists of Monday and Tuesday.

I suppose I should speak about my students a little. I currently have 5 "focus list" students, or students that I pull out for 1-on-1 or small group tutoring in E.L.A. Lucky for me, though, this will all change next week. Because of a lovely little thing called "Third Friday" in urban teaching circles, our school has had its budget slashed, resulting in the layoff of at least 5 teachers. My teacher is one of them. This, conveniently, disrupts the whole middle school rotation, because he teaches science for all 6-8 graders. That's the way my middle school works, by the way. There are four teachers for mainstream classes. They all have their own homeroom in the morning - two 6th grade classes, one 7th and one 8th. After homeroom, they teach an hour and a half reading block to their homeroom students. Then, they follow a block rotation throughout the day, and teach their specialty area to all the grades. However, because my teacher is leaving, the school has to fill the position from within the school. For my class, this means a 3rd grade teacher is coming up. She's only certified to teach through 6th grade, however, so the social studies/7th grade homeroom teacher now has to teach both social studies and science, and my class will move from a block rotation to a self-contained classroom. One teacher, one room, one class of 6th graders. All day.