Challenging to Say the Least...

So today has been an interesting day. I had a meeting with one of the big wigs who is responsible for site placements. I got a weird vibe from her on a couple different things...I got the impression that she thinks I'm this privileged person who, in some respects, thinks I'm "too good" for this. While my life hasn't held some of the challenges of many of the people that I serve, everyone has encountered different struggles and taken a different path to get them to the point where they are today. Sure I dress well on occasion (credit that to the retail discounts) and speak well (credit that to public school...and my mom) and am well educated (credit that to Teachers College not requiring the GRE and having a late application deadline), but does that somehow make me "too good" for all of this? Maybe some of those things do give off the vibe that that is true, but I'd like to think it's pretty far from the truth. One of my primary incentives to do AmeriCorps was to get away from that mentality. At Columbia, I remember being shocked and appalled at this "world of privilege." Not every person there falls into that category, but I felt this overwhelming aura of wealthy, white privilege just in being there. At first, I remember questioning just about everything about the place, but by the end of my two years there, I felt I had become way to comfortable in that environment. One friend described it as "putting on your Columbia skin when you get off the subway at 116th and Broadway. Here I was this self-proclaimed public school kid, knee deep in everything I'd come to despise about the educational system: that money and privilege made all the difference when it came to education. But despite my feelings to the contrary, I'd learned to navigate this world pretty well. I was almost, dare I say, comfortable there. And I hated that about myself. By the time graduation rolled around, I wanted to find the opposite of Columbia, the opposite of uppity New York, the opposite of Wall Street (pre-depression of course). So doing volunteer work in Alaska seemed like the best idea to re-focus and re-prioritize.

So at my meeting today, when I was asked how I would feel sitting next to someone who may be at one of the lowest points of their lives...unemployed, just coming out of prison, homeless...I was taken aback. That's the whole reason I signed up for this: to help people with real problems, not just roommate conflicts and tickets to student events. Real problems. So if I have in any, way, shape, or form given off the vibe that I think I am "too good" for this, please accept my sincerest apologies. I think feeling "too good" for something and needing to be intellectually stimulated in the work that you do are two very different things. Maybe I haven't done the best job at conveying the difference between the two and my strong need for the latter.

One thing I really wanted to challenge myself on this year and moving forward is to be more open and less judgmental. I know more about strangers on the bus in a 15 minute bus ride than I do about some people I have known for months. I tend to be pretty closed off with the exception of a few close friends. I'm not a big "sharer" but it is the sharing, that exchange of struggles, that exchange of ideas that brings people closer together. Making an effort to be more visibly open to this exchange can make all the difference.

Damn all this character building and personal growth.

I'm back...

As of my last post, my concern was that if I left Alaska to do my interviews that I would not actually come back. Well I did leave Alaska, spent about a week in New York City, saw some of my favorite people in my favorite place, and did return to the Last Frontier. Short of working a corporate gig that requires you to travel four days a week, I consider myself to be a pretty experienced traveler. So I took the fact that I completely lost my boarding pass from Seattle to Anchorage to be a sign, not of absent mindedness, but a sign that maybe I shouldn't be going back. But I did go back. And cried most of the way. I cried on the train leaving New York, heading to the Newark airport. (New Jersey tends to have that effect on people sometimes.) I cried when I got on the plane from Seattle to Anchorage. And I cried when I walked back into my shoe box size apartment in Alaska. Had I had the money to throw caution to the wind and put down a deposit on an apartment, I may not have returned. But I did return. And I'm pretty darn proud of myself for doing so.

Yesterday I was back at the after school program for the first time in a week. There are about 20 kindergartn-8th grade students that come to our program. About 10ish of these are the "regulars," the ones I see every day. Before I left, they told me they would miss me when I left, but when I came back three of them almost tackled me to the ground in an effort to hug me and welcome me back. That, in a nutshell, is why I have stayed here as long as I have. That, in a nutshell, is the reason I came back.

I spent most of my two interviews talking about my experiences working with the kids at the afterschool program. While Teach for America has been on my bucket list for awhile, I wasn't quite sure I was ready to apply. I thought I had more adventuring yet to do, but after working with these amazing kids for the past 6 months, I felt I was ready. While I know teaching 8 hours a day in a classroom setting with 25 of them would be 10 times harder than having them for a couple of hours after school, I loved this enough to try.

After spending two solid days talking about how much I loved working with these kids, I realized that I'm not ready to leave them. Yes, it would be much easier to pack up shop and head home, but I have an amazing opportunity here to work with some amazing kids.

I've said since day one that if I'm spending a year of my life volunteering, I should be doing something that I'm remotely interested in and, dare I say, passionate about. Trying to convey this to the people who make the placement decisions at the organization I serve with has been a challenge to say the least. Maybe my standards are too high. I don't know. But I'm certainly not going to lower my standards on their behalf. Negotiations are in the works for me to switch site placements. I would love to be at the afterschool program full time, but realizing that is not an option, I would love to see what else is available. The past couple of weeks have been extremely trying. Anyone who has had a job where they have spent time crying in the bathroom, completely unmotivated, working with people who don't acknowledge that you even exist, and/or literally bored to tears can understand. While I am here to serve with this organization, this is my experience too. For a paycheck, I can certainly fake happiness or contentedness for a while, but since money is no object, I'm gonna need some of those intangible rewards. Like not hating my life.

I think Howard Thurman says it best...

"Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." -Howard Thurman

So my new concern...

Is that if I go to New York or Omaha for a Teach for America interview (still keeping those fingers crossed!) is that I won't come back to Alaska. Another fellow AmeriCorps member even volunteered to pack up my stuff and send it home if I decided not to come back. She offered even though I was already thinking it. Decisions, decisions. Here's hoping they offer TFA interviews in Alaska.

Trying to Decide Which Basket to Put All the Eggs In...

So I had my phone interview with Teach for America on Sunday. I think it went pretty well and I'm pretty hopeful. If they offered me a teaching position in New York, I'm about 99% sure I would do it. Nothing is ever 100%. You know how I am with the options...things always come up! :)

I have been asking around to folks familiar with NYC Teaching Fellows and Teach for America to try and be as prepared as I can be for this whole process. It looks like NYCTF is primarily looking for math, science, and special education teachers. I'm not qualified to teach math or science so that leaves special education. I'm really not sure how I feel about teaching special education. I kind of have my heart set on teaching elementary school and it doesn't look like that is a "high demand" area for them either. I've also heard that the support system for NYCTF isn't nearly as strong as Teach for America. I'm sure that is for a variety of reasons: smaller organization, funding, etc. After this year and being up here in no man's land, feeling like I serve with an organization that doesn't really give a crap about us, not having some semblance of a support system has become a deal breaker for me. So I've got some thinking to do...

I find out Tuesday if I get an interview for Teach for America so I'm keeping my fingers crossed. :)

Some exciting news!

So it's no secret that I like to apply for things. (I have deferred my admission for two completely separate degree programs for this fall. I still apply for jobs even though I have a couple that I'm pretty content with. The list goes on...) It's something I get made fun of for on a pretty regular basis. I even coined a term for it in college: compulsive joining. I've actually tried to make my compulsive joining a little more planned and purposeful and with that in mind (and also the fact that I miss civilization and New York City more each day), I applied for Teach for America, an organization focused on closing the achievement gap that places teachers in high needs school in 35 urban and rural areas across the country and also NYC Teaching Fellows, a program with a similar mission but specific to New York City.

On Thursday I found out that I was offered a phone interview for Teach for America and an in person interview for NYC Teaching Fellows! It was a pretty exciting day! :) So I'm headed back to the Greatest City on Earth sometime the second week in February. I will hear back from Teach for America on January 26th if I am offered an in person interview so I'm hoping I can kill two birds with one stone. New York City here I come! :)

(dis) Organized Chaos

Perhaps one of my biggest challenges here is entering the world of non-profit and all of the chaos that has a tendency to ensue. Lack of communication, ten extra steps to accomplish just about anything, mountains of paperwork that are submitted to 100 different people in order to maintain funding for just about everything. Last spring I applied and was accepted to Vanderbilt and Teachers College in order to get a second master's degree in organizational leadership. It's like business school without actually going to business school. It's all about communication, leadership, effectiveness, efficiency, and all those other things that really excite me to no end. So to enter into a world of complete chaos in those respects has been one of the biggest challenges throughout this whole experience.

My site supervisor, while a wonderful woman and really very nice, will tell you, "This is why I don't like being a supervisor..." So that in and of itself is wonderful to hear every week. She's pretty scatterbrained and not the best communicator. Also, our office looks like it should be nominated for the TV show Clean House. The physical clutter gives me anxiety. Let alone all of those other efficiency things that can make your work life bearable and even enjoyable.

I was scheduled to teach all three morning English classes and when I walked in to find the papers I had set aside for the classes no where to be found, honestly, I was in a pretty annoyed mood. But then after class started, something kind of magical happened. While I am a firm believer in training (Not just "hey watch me do this" but actually teach me how and why we do this. I just graduated from 19th grade. Formal education and training is all I know.), I found that even though I felt completely unprepared to teach anyone anything, let alone another language, I felt like I didn't do too bad.

So I'm actually kind of excited about taking it upon my self to get some training (I plan on signing up for an online Teaching English as a Foreign Language certificate.) so I can feel like I actually know what I'm doing.

This whole moving to Alaska thing is character building at it's finest. :)

Alaska Nebraksa

So I just learned that there was a character on The Simpsons named Alaska Nebraska this past spring. Apparently she is a pop singer, a parody of Miley Cyrus.

I promise I did not move to Alaska from Nebraska to become the next Hannah Montana, but had I seen that episode last spring all bets would have been off. :)