Week 1 in review

The first week of training is in the books. Some quick thoughts:

• If anyone were to watch us doing our chants and rallies, they'd probably think we looked ridiculous. Still, I'm buying what the staff said when they talked about how these help to build the CY community. There's something really cool about call and response. "City Year, are you ready for some power lunges?" "CITY YEAR IS ALWAYS READY!"
• I haven't sat for so many Powerpoint presentations since college. Most of it is stuff that would be hard to get across any other way, like payroll and regulations. Still, it just makes me anticipate getting into the field that much more, which may be the point.
• I love my teammates, which makes it a bit sad that the teams are getting reshuffled for the second week. Hopefully I'll wind up with some Team Six vets on my permanent team.
• CY has successfully made me look forward to the day that I get my red jacket. After all the talk about how people on the street and on the subway react to it, I'm honestly curious what the general response is going to be.
• We had a team member quit CY before the first day was over. It was sad.
• God bless the one real perk of CY employment: free unlimited Metrocards. I can go anywhere.

Long weekend because of Labor Day, so look for the next update on or around Tuesday. I'll try and make Week in Review posts a regular occurrence. You know, for all my dedicated fans.

And now, to close out the first week, I will attempt to recreate how we end meetings. Whenever a meeting ends, all the participants gather around for a "hands in" circle. Whoever winds up on top of the pile picks a "strong word" or phrase to break on. For this example, I'll close this post with what we're told is the traditional Friday break phrase.

C-Y-N-Y! AIN'T NO PARTY LIKE A NEW YORK PARTY, 'CAUSE A NEW YORK PARTY DON'T STOP! BOOM!

See you next week!

Men of the west

Most of today's training was mundane stuff about timecards and payroll, but there was one pretty interesting part. The first activity of the day had us taking a short quiz about our work styles and categorizing ourselves as a north, south, east, or west type worker. The quick version of these is:

North: Natural leaders, assertive types
East: Idea/big picture people
West: Planners, detail-oriented
South: Feelers, emphasize relationships with others

Turns out I hail from the wild west. Apparently I'm not really the creative type, but I'm good at organizing, planning, and implementing. Our cheat sheet says I can appear cold and insensitive when it comes to others' work styles, which I hope isn't the case.

We did a few short activities based on these types. I was grouped with the other Wests, and all of us were tasked with planning a dream vacation. We were the only group to use democracy to choose where we would go/what we would do, while the group full of Norths apparently gave up on order and just came up with a round-the-world cruise stopping at every country possible. We then had to work with a sampling from the other groups to try and plan a short presentation on what CY is all about. Fun and revealing. Looks like I have a bit of North in me, as I tend to take charge of a group when nobody feels like talking.

Our first Unity Rally (outdoor calisthenics and chanting) is tomorrow morning. Tonight's goal: getting some decent sleep.

More on the neighborhood

Day two of training today. Not much new to report on that front, beyond getting to know more people on my team. They claim diversity, but I ran into two other graduates of my high school. Take that, City Year!

I did get the chance to explore some more of Hunts Point. When you exit the Hunts Point Avenue subway top, the first thing you notice is the Bruckner Expressway looming overhead. It was the first time I had been underneath an interstate up close, and it's easy to see how Robert Moses' style of urban planning can decimate a neighborhood. The noise, the smells, and the simple sight of an interstate dominate the neighborhood, and property values have suffered for it.

On one side of the expressway is a shopping area featuring the usual chains (we got lunch at Subway on our first day). On the other side is the neighborhood proper. Like I said yesterday, the area I've explored so far is not a terribly rough-looking place. Lots of attractive brownstones, and a good amount of activity on the streets. We took a walk from the main community center to a rec center a few blocks away. This building is obviously new, with many well-groomed athletic fields. Naturally, we used these for more getting-to-know-you activities, including one that confirmed that my visual memory is still lacking. That's another story, though.

My favorite part so far is definitely getting to know all the different sorts of people that made their way to CYNY. There's a girl here who came from Omaha, Nebraska. Omaha! I mean, I can understand why she wanted to leave but that's a long trip.

The actual activities today were mostly boring. Lots of talk about rules and regulations. I think I'll post an abbreviated glossary of City Year Speak one of these days.

Training, day one (lots of words in this post)

The first day of City Year is in the books. Herein follow some initial thoughts.

One thing you notice right away about CY is how pervasive the organizational culture is. There's a whole lingo of acronyms and slang that we're expected to learn by the time we begin service in earnest. And then there's the chants and rituals...but more on that later.

Day one of orientation and training began in an auditorium on the Lower East Side. After being divided into temporary teams (everyone switches around weekly during training), we were all treated to several lectures and videos on the CY philosophy, and asked to write down our reasons for serving on an index card. We were told that these will eventually wallpaper part of the main CYNY office.

We got our first concrete discussion of the uniform. The basic CY uniform consists of a red jacket with CITY YEAR across the back, a white logo t-shirt, khaki pants, and work boots. All of this is donated by Timberland and Aramark, so it's quality stuff. The catch is that CY seems to be very strict about their uniform code. The list of potential violations is over a page long. God help you if you wear the wrong color undershirt. Still, it's not hard to see why they take the uniform so seriously. CY has developed a reputation for professionalism, and they're clearly very concerned about maintaining it. We don't get our own until training is over, but once I get mine I'll post a picture.

There was also quite a bit of talk about the code of conduct for corps members (that's us). Most of it is common sense - don't drink while wearing a uniform - but there's one regulation that's going to be a tough one. No jaywalking is permitted while wearing the uniform. As anyone who has been to New York knows, pedestrian traffic signals are essentially meaningless. I don't dispute the necessity of the rule (we have to keep kids safe and be role models) but it's going to be a tough habit to break. I already screwed it up twice today.

After the auditorium sessions, we headed up to Hunts Point to see the neighborhood for the first time. First impressions: obviously a poor place, but doesn't appear to be a war zone. East New York looks worse, in my opinion. We grabbed lunch from Subway, then headed to the community center that serves as the home base for CY operations in the area. It would be another fun afternoon of getting to know our temporary teams, as well as the rest of the corps that would be serving in the Bronx. Nothing like being forced to share embarrassing stories to help a group bond.

It really was a fun day, though. Everyone seems just as excited as I am, and I think personalities are meshing well. I probably won't post as in-depth of an update tomorrow, but if anything really interesting happens I'll put it up here.

Thanks for reading. Day two tomorrow.

Who are you? Why are you doing this? What on earth is City Year?

Hello, fair reader. Welcome to my City Year blog. In this post, I'll introduce myself and explain what it is I'm doing here.

My name is Jake, and I'm a 23-year old skinny white guy from the suburbs of New Jersey. Currently, I live in Washington Heights, near the upper tip of Manhattan Island. I graduated from Connecticut College in 2008 with a history degree. Immediately after graduation, I moved to Anderson, Indiana to work as a field organizer on Barack Obama's campaign. Since the campaign ended, I had drifted, working on and off, until I found what looks like a great organization in City Year.

City Year was started by two friends, Michael Brown and Alan Khazei, in Boston in 1988. The organization has since expanded to several US cities, as well as Johannesburg, South Africa. CY asks young men and women to give a year of their lives to work in troubled schools. Corps members serve as tutors, mentors, extra planners, and generally jacks of all trades. I'd provide more information, but there remains a lot for me to discover over my own year of service. The linked website has a lot more info for the curious.

I applied to City Year New York in April of 2009, and got notice of my acceptance in mid-May. Shortly thereafter, I was notified that I'd be working in Hunts Point, a particularly poor neighborhood in the South Bronx. After spending September of 2009 in training, I'll be working with a team of 10-12 people in the school until mid-June.

Why am I doing this? Well firstly, see the blog title. I'm a hopeless idealist at heart, and I continue to hold out hope of having a job that does some sort of good in this world. Thanks to some bad experiences, I've also discovered that I work best in jobs where I interact regularly with people not my co-workers. I feel like being able to see in person the results of my work will be a large motivating factor for me.

A caveat: due to privacy laws, I'll only be able to speak in very general terms about the kids I'll be working with. I'll try and make things interesting nonetheless.

So there you go. First real post to follow...