Suited and Booted.

Some have said that going through "Basic Training Academy" is almost like trying to take a drink of water from a gushing fire hose. After three weeks of PowerPoint presentations and content-heavy discussions, 200 of us corps members are PUMPED for the first day of school and the opportunity to put into practice what we've been learning. I've been placed at Hollenbeck Middle School in Boyle Heights. I have to be there at 7AM Monday-Thursday for the rest of the year. If I take the bus, I have to leave my house by 6AM, which means I have to wake up in the 5 o'clock hour. I think I MAYBE woke up at 5AM once to take someone to the airport. Forget dealing with at-risk and under-privileged students. It's the waking up at the most unholy of hours that will be my biggest challenge this year. Let's be real. One of the greatest things about this story is that my team has to do morning greeting every morning to welcome the students and get them pumped for the day. Basically I have to dance around like an idiot and yell really awesome cheers. For example: "MY NAME IS NICOLE AND I KNOW WHAT I GOT! I GOT A TEAM THAT'S HOTTER THAN HOT! BATMAN AND SUPERMAN, CAN'T DO IT LIKE NICOLE CAN!" I'm going to lose my cool just a little bit more everyday. Anything for the children, I guess.

Today was a pupil-free day. So I got to go into my school and meet the teachers I'm going to be serving with this year and get a better idea of what my day-to-day will look like. I'll be following a group of students to three of their classes every day: English, math and history. It will be the same group of 30-ish students all year. In that group of 30, I will have what City Year calls a "focus list" which will consist of about 10-12 students. These focus list students will be my main priority and I will work mostly with them with one-on-one tutoring and such. So until I have some time to get to know some of the kids and see which ones need more one-on-one attention, I'll be doing whole-class support during class time and whatever else I can to help out the teacher. My three teachers are GREAT. I have Ms. Uribe for English, Ms. Delgado for history and Ms. Jaffe for math. I met with Ms. Delgado and Ms. Jaffe today and they both run their classes in very different manners so it'll be interesting to see how things work.

All the staff members I have met at Hollenbeck seem to love having City Year at the schools, but I know one of the people on my team met with their teacher today who flat out told them they don't want City Year in their classroom. Thankfully my teachers are all about City Year's partnership. While all of us corps members are in the same program, we're all going to have such different experiences. After being with all 13 of my roommates all day every day for a month, it's going to be weird not seeing them but for a few hours every day. I got off work at 6 tonight, stopped at the grocery store, made dinner and lunch for tomorrow, showered, then realized it was almost time for bed. This year's going to be so crazy and busy, but I'm so so excited to see what's in store.