The Calm After the Storm

Last week was crazy busy with prep for our first service day, which just so happened to be the same day as City Year's Opening Day. Even though everything was really hectic, the day went pretty smooth. This week has not and will not be nearly as hectic as last week.

I apologize in advance for the text heavy post.

Monday: A few of us went over to the service site for our next event, cyServes, which is happening on October 25th. We met with the principal of the school and discussed some ideas for projects. It was nice to see the space with so much time before the service event. We spent the rest of the day planning more ideas for the event since we have to find placement for about 200 people in a small K-8 school that only has about 300 students total. (Even though it is small, it needs a lot of work....)
At 1PM, the CE team met to debrief the service event from Friday. We spent a lot of time talking about communication and how we felt it needed to be improved between the different levels (PM to Project Leaders to Corps Members). There were a lot of things that happened that could've been avoided if everyone communicated a bit better. (For example, an unnecessary trip to storage could have been avoided if a few people would have communicated with one another....) Anyway, we discussed the issues, laid them on the table, and hope that these issues will be fixed for the next event.

Tuesday: I spent my morning at storage with one of the Project Leaders (PLs). We had to return everything from the service project on Friday, as well as some random extra items we had in the office, pick up a ladder from the school we were at, and grab a few things for touch-ups at another school. Now, if we had remembered everything and were told everything we needed all at once, we would've been out of storage very quickly. However, most things do not go as planned on our team. We forgot to pick up the ladder from the school before heading to storage. We realized this after we unloaded everything into the unit. Good thing I was there to remind my PL.
We headed to the school, grabbed the ladder, checked in with the librarian to make sure she liked the projects we completed, and then went back to storage to drop off the ladder. All was fine at that point.
We left storage and received a text message from another PL as we were on our way back to the office to bring a few things back with us. We decided to turn around and grab those items.
When everything was said and done, it was about 11:30AM. We unloaded at the office and then headed to lunch.
After lunch, I worked on the project list with my teammate, designing a few murals. That was pretty much how we spent our day.

Wednesday: We were originally told that we were going to end our day at a middle school in the Northeast. We were going to be touching up a few things and helping the service team at the school with a few projects. Sadly, the plans fell through meaning we were going to be spending the entire day in the office. Not exciting.
My service partner and I spent the morning working on the project list for cyServes. Again, we were designing the different murals. This took up pretty much the entire morning.
The afternoon pretty much involved myself and my service partner chatting about more service ideas, taking a walk around the block to just get of the office and think, and working on a few more mural ideas. It was a long, pretty boring day, but at least we were productive.

Thursday: We started our morning doing Unity Rally. I would've been excited about this except it was raining... a lot. I had on my all-weather, which kept most of me dry, but sadly my hands were cold. We did a few exercises, but they were all simple and did not involve too much movement since the PT Crew did not want anyone to slip and fall (with my luck, I would've fallen and gotten hurt).
After Unity Rally, we headed to separate locations with our Journey Teams (IJs), the teams we started with during Basic Training Academy. It was so great to see everyone.
We spent our IJ session 'speed dating' to catch up on what was happening with everyone and then discussing our personality types from the Myers-Briggs personality test. Unsurprisingly, I am an ISFJ (Introverted, Sensing, Feeling, and Judging). Here's the condensed version of what the test says about my personality:
ISFJs direct their energy inward. They are energized by spending time alone. They are private and deliberate. ISFJs usually have a small circle of close friends. As Sensors, ISFJs process information through their senses. They are concrete, realistic, practical and live in the moment. ISFJs give attention to details. ISFJs are Feelers and make decisions with their heart. They are gentle and empathetic. They are warm and caring. ISFJs strongly dislike conflict. ISFJs are organized and plan ahead. Their lives are scheduled and structured. ISFJs are responsible when it comes to finishing tasks. They get satisfaction from closure.  "The Defenders" are agreeable and kind. They are deeply caring and conscientious. They are excellent helpmates and need appreciation from those closest to them. Their greatest contribution is their ability to identify the needs of others and meeting them selflessly.
Anyone who knows me knows that most of this is true. It was really cool to be able to put my personality into such clear words. I've taken this test before and have always been ISFJ, but I never really thought about it until today. It was also great to see who had the same personality type as me and what other personality types were in the room. Maybe my service team will take this test and discuss the results. It's always really cool to know these things about the people you are working so closely with.
Also, in case anyone wants to know what their personality is, here's an assessment: http://www.personalitymax.com/free-personality-test
It's free and simple, so why not check it out? (And it only takes about 10 minutes to complete!)
After the IJ session, I had to travel back to the office. There were not any other sessions that applied to the CE team so we just had to work on our tasks that needed to be completed by Friday.
When we got to the office, we were assigned new seats. Before, we were a bit scattered. Two PLs sat on one side of the room and the rest of us sat on the other side. Our PM decided we needed to be more cohesive and put myself and my service partner in between the two lonely PLs and then shifted the rest of the team down two seats. It was a bit of an adjustment, but I think it will be okay.
We had a meeting around 1:15PM about a luncheon that we are attending on Monday.
It's a Women's Leadership Luncheon with a few guest speakers. It is a way for City Year Philadelphia to earn more money. (We have to fundraise a good amount of money each year and this happens through events like this.)
Our job will be to greet the guests for an hour, watch the speakers while eating lunch, and then mingle for a half hour. I'm excited for this opportunity to meet influential women in the area. (And it will also get us out of the office for a good chunk of the day!)
I spent the rest of the day searching for inspirational quotes to add to the walls of the school we will be working in for cyServes.

Friday: I really wasn't feeling well when I woke up on Friday morning so I decided to call out of work. It was the first time I had taken off and took the day to sleep. Hopefully I didn't miss too much...

Just a note, if anyone who reads this is between the ages of 17 and 24 and is interested in applying for City Year, we are accepting applications for next year. Check out CityYear.com for more information! =D
Also, if you are in the Philadelphia area and are interested in volunteering for the cyServes event on October 25th, sign up here: Fall Service Event
Have an amazing weekend!
Cheers,
Allee

Crunch Time

So this week I am trying something new. I am going to add to the post everyday, but not post it until the end of the week. This way I won't forget what I am doing all week and hopefully not overwhelm myself with a ginormous post on Sunday night again.... Here goes nothing!

Monday: We kicked off the week with a team meeting. Everyone talked about what we were working on, how we were progressing, and what we needed assistance with. It was nice to be in the loop about everyone's tasks.
After the meeting, my PM asked to see my designs for the East Falls station. He really liked most of them and encouraged me to keep working. The next designs will be due at the end of the day on Tuesday. Fingers crossed he likes how the designs are progressing and that SEPTA approves of them as well....
I spent most of the day reworking old designs for the murals and trying to come up with new ideas. Hopefully I will get some good feedback tomorrow.
After about seven hours of sitting in front of my laptop, a team member and I worked on sketching the word LIBRARY on parachute cloth for our mini service event on Friday. We need to do as much prep as we can during the work day to avoid staying after hours this week.

Tuesday: Myself and three other teammates traveled to South Philadelphia to view the space we would be working in on Friday. We needed to scope out a few things before heading back in the afternoon for prep. We went back to the office, had lunch, and gathered supplies for prepping. My teammate and I chatted about briefing the team on their assignments. I then realized that I needed to submit my designs for the SEPTA murals to my PM before the end of the day. I had to compile thirteen designs into a Word document for him with titles/descriptions of each. It wasn't hard to do, but it took a decent amount of time since I had to re-save each layer as a separate JPG and then put them together on a different computer that had Word on it.
While I was doing this, the rest of the team headed to the school to start prep. We had to sketch a mural on a hallway wall and start making paper mache branches for a tree we are making in the library. I didn't want to hold everyone up so they went ahead without me.
By the time I got to the school, everyone was hard at work. Most of the mural was sketched and there were two branches already made out of chicken wire. I came in and helped make three more branches, stuff them with newspapers, and then paper mache them. We were only able to do one layer, but hopefully tomorrow we will be able to do more. (It was taking a while to dry, but hopefully the process will speed up now that the first layer is on....)
Tomorrow, we are getting PT certified. Basically, we have to run through PT with little to no mistakes and hope they pass us. It's nerve-wracking, but we should be alright.

Wednesday: We started the day with practicing PT to make sure we would pass the certification later in the morning. It went well so hopefully it's a sign!
And we passed! Woo! There were only seven of us so we weren't as loud as we could've been, but other than that, we did well. Go CE!
For the rest of the morning, we worked on signs for CY Opening Day on Friday. (Yes, City Year has an Opening Day that is different from AmeriCorps Opening Day and yes it is the same day as our first service event. The good news is that the service event and opening day are both at the same place.) There were three signs: "Thank you, Comcast", "#CYODay", and a longer phrase I can't quite remember. Whoops....
Around 12:30PM, our team (minus the team leaders) headed to the service site to continue prepping. (The paper mache branches weren't going to finish themselves!) We spent the rest of the day working with the branches. Sadly, we had to cut one down. It was our largest branch and it wasn't working out the way we needed it to. It was so droopy that we just decided to cut it in half and scrap the half that was collapsing. Hopefully when we head back tomorrow the branches will be ready to prime!
While we were waiting for a layer to dry on the branches, we primed the column that the tree is going to be painted on. We had to move some furniture around so it worked out that by the time we were done with the first coat, we could do another layer on the branches. They were looking pretty good before we left for the day so hopefully that means we can prime and adhere them to the column tomorrow.

Thursday:My teammate and I headed to the service site in my car to pick up the purchasing card from our other teammate. We needed to get a few last minute things to make sure the branches would adhere to the column. After we grabbed the card, we headed to our storage unit to grab everything we would need for the service event tomorrow.
It took us pretty much all morning to get everything we needed. We didn't have a few things in storage that we needed so we headed to Home Depot and Walmart for the last things.
When we got back to the service site, my teammates and I grabbed lunch since it was noon. At 12:30, we got down to business with the tree.
It took us all day (and then some), but three branches were finally adhered to the ceiling and the column. I drew extra branches and an outline to contain the leaves that the volunteers were going to sponge paint. There's no paint on the tree right now, just primer, so it looks a bit weird. I'm not going to lie.... I'm extremely nervous about how this is going to turn out.
The rest of the team spent most of their day at the office, finishing last minute things for the event. When they came to the service site, they helped set up the stations with paint and supplies for tomorrow. By the time we left the site (at about 6:45PM), I felt like we were in good shape. I hope tomorrow runs smoothly!

Friday: Today was the big day! We all met at the site at 7:30AM to finish any last minute prep before the volunteers arrived. We set up the paint stations for the different projects close to them so the volunteers could easily access the supplies. There was a lot of poor communication happening between the various levels of 'authority' causing a bit of stress and tension during the final set up, but we all let it go and put our best face forward for the volunteers.
It was about 9AM when twelve of the eighteen volunteers arrived. We decided to move forward with the program and hope for the best.

First stages of the tree

Super excited to lead volunteers

I helped oversee a group of four volunteers to fix-up the logo outside of the school. They were very excited to fix it up because it was in bad shape. They were excited that it was going to be the first thing that the students saw when they walked into school on Monday morning.

Old Logo

At 9:45AM, I had to leave my group until 11:30AM because it was Opening Day for City Year. Luckily, this was happening at the same location as the service event so it was an easy transition.
My teammates and I walked into the auditorium, extremely confused about what we were supposed to do. We sat down in a row and hoped for the best.
Around 10AM, we all rushed through the gym doors and started doing PT for eleventh and twelfth graders as well as some corporate sponsors and the Lincoln University band. It was a lot of fun, but could've been better if we weren't so damn confused....
The band was awesome. They did a little show after all of the speeches were given and we were sworn into service. They played traditional campy band songs but also played some modern songs including Katy Perry's Birthday and the Electric Slide. It was really cool to see this since my university didn't have a band. (We didn't really need one since we didn't have a football team...)
After the Opening Day ceremony, the CE team headed back to our projects. I was super impressed with the amount of progress my group had made in the time we were gone. A few people walked by and said "Wow, I didn't even realize this was here until you started working on it." I think it really helped boost the morale of the volunteers.

Repainted Logo

Finished tree

We broke for lunch around 12:30PM. It was nice to chat with the other volunteers and to see the progress everyone was making on their projects. After lunch, everyone continued working until about 1:50PM, when we gathered to debrief about their day.

The volunteers departed a little after 2PM. The CE Team spent the rest of the day cleaning up and touching up small areas of the projects. It wasn't a lot of touching up, which shows how well the volunteers followed directions. I was very proud of our team for being so clear.

Mural (sorry no before picture!)

The day came to an end at 4:15PM when we had our final circle and did a little debriefing. We are saving the big debrief for Monday.
It was definitely an interesting experience overall. It was very hard to take the back seat and not get my hands dirty, but it all worked out. I'm excited to work through the issues we had with our first event to make the next event even more successful.

I'm not sure what is in store for this upcoming week, but I am excited nonetheless. Hopefully I will hear back from SEPTA about the mural designs!
Have an amazing week!
Cheers,
Allee

East Falls, Here I Come

Aftermath of storage

I know I didn't post last week, but to be completely honest, it was extremely uneventful and I don't remember most of what happened. Thursday and Friday were the most eventful days since we were at storage, checking paint and doing inventory of it. It was nice to get out of the office and have conversations with each other that might not have usually happened in the office. I'd say it was a pretty good bonding experience for the CE team. Oh, and I didn't get hurt this time, so that was a huge plus.

This past week went by extremely fast, most likely because we had a lot going on. On Monday, half of the team assisted at the Philadelphia School District Building while the other half (which I was part of) spent the day at the office.

View at East Falls station

When I arrived, my Program Manager (PM) informed me that I will be the point person for the SEPTA project this year. Every year, the CE team works with SEPTA to enhance a station, usually within the city. This year, however, SEPTA asked the CE team to help out at a regional rail station in East Falls. We scoped out the location and then my PM had a meeting to see what SEPTA was looking for. When he returned, he informed me that SEPTA wants a mural in the underground hallway that leads between the inbound and outbound sides of the station. He wants to see six different ideas on Monday so I spent the rest of the afternoon researching the area. Apparently Grace Kelly was born in East Falls. Fun fact.

On Tuesday, the team switched places and my half of the team assisted at the School District Building. While taking the Broad Street Line, one of the SEPTA workers saw my City Year jacket and thanked me for my service to the city. It was a great way to start my morning.
When I arrived at the School District Building, I had no idea what I was stepping into, but I was excited to be out of the normal office setting. I was quickly swept into a room with one of my team members to assist with charter school assignments. It was called the Renaissance Room since the charter schools were through a program called Renaissance. Our job was to help families fill out paperwork and call out the next person on the list to meet with someone to help place the students in the next closest school. A lot of families lived in an area where the charter school was their neighborhood school, but there was no room for their student to attend. The school district was in charge of finding a new school for the students to attend. It was a very heated room to be in.
The first family that came in did not even speak English. My team member and I had to use broken Spanish to explain what was happening. The family really appreciated our effort. When it was their turn to speak with someone, they called a translator on the phone to help with the conversation. It was so great that the translator was readily available via phone to assist this family. Apparently this is a very common thing that the school district deals with so they are prepared with the translator company via phone.
Another interesting scenario I ran into was a mother of three who needed help reading and writing the form. She was embarrassed and told me she did not know how to read or write and her mother was unable to come with her to help. I explained the form and filled it out with her. She kept thanking me for all my help, but I didn't really feel as though I did much. It's the little things.
After a hectic morning, my team member and I headed to another room to diffuse some issues. People were not as friendly in this room, but I didn't take any attitudes or anger personally. It was frustrating for everyone. The school district had been working to place 140,000 students in 217 schools all summer and now families were coming in to change things around. There was a lot going on.
At 5:30PM, we finished with the hectic day and were told to meet in the office on Wednesday at 8:30AM (15 minutes later than usual!).

Wednesday was a pretty quick day as well. I spent most of my day working on designs for the SEPTA station. I was able to come up with about nine designs throughout the day. Around 3:15PM, we headed to the Loew's Hotel via trolley. We were going to help set up an Aramark service event for Thursday with Care Force. (Care Force is part of City Year that does really big service events that are usually more labor intensive.)
We spent from 4-6PM doing inventory of ingredients for Rainbow Soup containers that we would be making the next day.

Rainbow Soup

Thursday was the big service day. We started at the Loew's Hotel at 7:45AM and began the containers around 9AM. Each person on the CE team was a captain for an Aramark team and was in charge of overseeing the event. It was difficult to step back and let the team work through their issues and make the containers, but it was a good introduction to many of the service events the CE team will be running throughout the year. After we made over 1800 containers, we cleaned up and broke for lunch. Around 12:30PM, we started loading pallets into the freight elevator and brought them down to the loading dock. We had to stop loading until about 2PM to avoid disrupting a session. We finally finished loading everything around 3:45PM and then finished the rest of our day at the office.

CE Team needs to work on jumping pics...

Why I serve

Friday was AmeriCorps opening day. It was the 20th anniversary of the AmeriCorps programs, too. We started our morning with Unity Rally at the Municipal Services Building to get everyone pumped. We did Physical Training outside and a lot of Philadelphians stopped by to watch. It was a pretty cool experience. After Unity Rally, some of our team went to LOVE park and hung out before grabbing breakfast and heading to the AmeriCorps opening at Benjamin Franklin High School. When we got to the school, we started by watching Bill Clinton and Obama speak about AmeriCorps from the White House. Then, we had people in different AmeriCorps programs talk about why they serve. It was great to have all of the Philly AmeriCorps programs together and to hear about the different experiences.

Inside of a DELL

After the speeches, we had a quick lunch and then headed to an afternoon of service. My team was sent to a local secondhand computer store that focused on supplying computers to families, schools, and nonprofits. We spent our time opening computers and pretty much gutting them. It was pretty fun.

Outside of the store

After a few hours, the store realized they didn't have anything left for us to do. The CE team headed to Rittenhouse Square for team building for the remaining forty five minutes of the day.

This upcoming week is going to be hectic. We will be prepping for our first service event on Friday. I am looking forward to getting started and to getting feedback on my mural ideas from my PM.

Here's to another quick week!

Cheers,
Allee

You're Never Truly Alone

Arch Street Meeting House for Training

This week has gone by as a blur. Monday and Tuesday feel as distant as the beginning of Basic Training Academy (BTA). The days have all blurred together, which I am sure will be the case for most of this year.
Monday and Tuesday were spent in the office and at the school we were touching up the previous week. We had to finish up putting furniture together in the 'Eagles Room' where the students will be able to hang out. Unfortunately, we did not have enough time to get everything completed on Monday so myself and two other people from my service team headed back to the school on Tuesday. Luckily, all that was left to complete on Tuesday was a ping pong table. The directions were not very clear and we had to redo the table a few times, but around 11AM we were able to head back to the office because the room was finally complete (minus a chair that did not have the right screws....).

After lunch, we headed to training with the rest of the corps to participate in "4 Corners" for diversity training. As a former Resident Assistant, I was familiar with this from my Residence Life training. Basically, statements were read and the participants had to move silently to one of four corners marked "Agree, Strongly Agree, Disagree, and Strongly Disagree". Some statements were simple (Pepsi is better than Coke, which I disagreed with....), but many were complicated because they were vague or had very specific wording (Sexism still exists in the USA, Everyone should be able to marry anyone they want to, Everyone should be able to participate in any cultural rituals even if I do not agree with them). The statements were vague for a very specific purpose: to make us think and have difficult conversations we may not have been ready to have, but they needed to happen. Some of the follow up comments to the statements were hard to hear, especially for someone who spent the last four years at a very liberal university and grew up with very liberal parents. Sometimes it is hard to see from another person's perspective when it is so incredibly different from your own. Even though the conversations were tough, I really enjoyed the session. It served as a stepping stone for the next two days of diversity training.

Wednesday was a heavier day. We had a guest speaker leading us through the diversity training. I'm not going to lie, I was really excited to see how diversity training was going to pan out since I had gone through it before at my university. I decided to take the back seat for most of it, observing everyone and taking it all in, trying to see the information in a new light.
One of the first things we did was called Identity Circles. We had to make a web with our name in the center and write five identities we claim. They could be anything. Gender identity, sexual identity, ethnicity, religion, marital status, etc. Then we had to get with our villages (a few service teams put together) to do a modified version of 'Stand Up, Sit Down' (which I will fully explain later). Basically, someone would read off an identity and if you identified with it, you could stand up and then sit down after about fifteen seconds. It was meant to have everyone see who else identified in the same way and to feel connected, even if you didn't think you would have a connection with someone.
When we met with our service team after this, we were asked to discuss our five circles and say a time we were most proud of a specific identity and a time we were not so proud of the identity. It was incredible how open our group decided to be with one another. Tears were shed, but in the end I would say our service team grew closer than I could have ever imagined. It's interesting how diversity can really bring others together.

On Thursday, we revisited the identity circles as a group and then moved into 'Stand Up, Sit Down'. If you have ever heard of a 'Privilege Line', it is very similar to this. The moderator would read a statement and if it applied to you, you were to stand up (or raise your hand), observe the others around you, and then sit down. It was done in silence (except for the moderator) and was very powerful. The statements ranged from 'I was born as an American Citizen' to 'People who share my sexual orientation cannot legally get married in all fifty states' to 'One or both of my parents did not complete high school' to 'I started school speaking a language other than English'. Every time I stood up, I was happy to see how many other people stood up with me. There was not one time that someone stood up alone. It goes to show you that no matter who you are or where you came from, someone else can relate (maybe not to the entirety of your situation, but still). After this, we debriefed with our villages and tears were shed. It was nice to feel so safe in a space full of so many people.
At the end of the day, we closed out our diversity training with one of the program manager's stories about their life. It was so powerful and eye-opening. I actually teared up while they were speaking because I could relate to some of the things that happened in their life, but also because I could hardly believe that one person could go through so much in such a short time and overcome it. I was so impressed and so thankful that they felt comfortable enough to let in over 250 people to something so personal.
At the end of the day, everything felt heavy, but I was so glad we went through the training and that I feel comfortable enough to speak to my service group about such topics.

Friday was a big day for City Year Philadelphia: Red Jacket Ceremony Day. It was happening in the afternoon and was a time to signify the end of BTA and the beginning of our year of service.
My team spent the morning visiting a school in South Philly where City Year Opening Day and EY Connect Day (our first service event) will be happening mid-September. We walked around the school with the principal and planned out what projects we could do. Since EY Connect Day is so small, the principal emphasized that he wanted good projects that could be completed that day with little left to do after the event. We came up with a few ideas, but need to run them by our Program Manager this upcoming week.

Pre-ceremony selfie with CE

After our meeting and lunch, we headed to Drexel's campus for the Red Jacket Ceremony. We had a keynote speaker and then the corps started, by service team, going on stage and dedicating their red jackets to someone or something. My service team was up first. I had spent a lot of time deciding who I wanted to dedicate my red jacket to, but when the mic was handed to me, it felt so simple:
"My name is Allee Garry and I am a proud Americorps member serving with the Civic Engagement Team. I dedicate my red jacket to my little brother, Jordan, who inspires me to do better everyday and to my mother who has inspired me to help anyone and everyone in any way that I can. I cannot begin to describe how proud I am to be wearing the red jacket and how excited I am to make better happen this year."

I cannot wait to see what the rest of this year has in store and to actually start serving. I get to wear my uniform from now on and proudly serve as a City Year Philadelphia Corps Member.
Here's to hoping my first week of service is exciting!

Cheers,
Allee

CE Team: Coming to a School near YOU!