HeadsUP DC with Blue Crew 3

Yesterday I referred to the Point as my place of residence one month ago. Truth be told, it has only been a week, but so much has happened that a month could have gone by.

We started off with our Orientation with the youth participating in the Mayor's Summer of Service program (MSOS), a program designed by the Mayor of DC that is coordinated by the organization known as Serve DC. This initiative is giving hundreds of 14-21 year old residents of DC jobs this summer, and our program, MSOS, is working with 100 of those youth who are all in the 16-17 year old age range. The key difference in our program is that these youth will be doing service in the areas of environment and education, and for many, this will be their first experience in the world of service-learning.

The Orientation ran on Monday, where we met all of the participants and revealed the teams. Lili, my co-crew leader, and I have a crew of 9 participants, and we began work with them on Tuesday at our site.

For the summer, our crew (Blue Crew 3) will working at Amidon-Bowen Elementary School. A program known as HeadsUP DC tutors elementary age students here, and our crew will be some of those tutors. Each day has a well-planned schedule that includes lessons in Math, Reading, Service-learning, Clubs, snack-time, and independent reading time. Our participants learned this week which classroom and children they would be assigned to. The objective is to help keep the kids engaged and help them in any way they can throughout the day.


As for Lily and me? We'll be teacher liaisons, working alongside the site director, helping where help is needed, and most importantly, supervising our participants daily. We've got quite a crew, and a large one at that. Many of these folks have never worked with kids, which is a challenge I foresaw coming into this...

...However, there was one day this week where the crew supervised kids at a nearby Recreation Center, and watching them play with and look after the kids like naturals proved to me that this is going to an amazing experience, not just for them, but for the kids they'll be helping.


I'm already gearing up for the waterworks in 9 weeks...