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

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