First Day (version 1.0)

Today was my first day back in AmeriCorps. I'm calling it "version 1.0" because tomorrow is the official first day. Today was a "group leader" orientation, for those of us who have been in the Northwest Washington Reading Corps before. Most everyone else was on the team last year, so they all know each other, and then there's me. I did this three years ago. Wow.
We did a brief review of what we will be doing during the remainder of the week, because as small group leaders we will be facilitating some of the training. There are something like 80 members on our team, which is crazy and awesome at the same time. So small groups are pretty necessary.
We discussed the "Pillars" of the Washington Reading Corps. These 5 pillars describe what we as WRC members do. It's easy to say "I'm a reading tutor," but tutoring is only one of the five pillars.
We briefly went over the other four pillars, and we will be going over them in more detail with our small groups tomorrow.

The Five Pillars of the Reading Corps are:
Tutoring
Sustainability
Community Partnerships
Volunteering
Family Involvement

Although we can easily describe our jobs as "reading tutor," the other four carry just as much importance as the actual tutoring.

-Sustainability: We are trying to create programs in the schools that will last much longer than our year (or two) of service. Ideally, we want to create a system of volunteers so the program can continue without AmeriCorps support.

-Community Partnerships: Our goal is to create a strong connection between our schools and the local community. This includes training volunteers, creating community partnerships such as sponsoring events, and having events such as literacy nights at our schools. This is a big part of being in the WRC. My first year I spent a lot of time talking to community organizations and businesses, getting them to take part in one event or another. I hope to have even more success this year.

-Volunteering: We are, essentially, volunteers in the schools. We are lucky enough to participate in a program where the government supports us while we do this, but we are still volunteers. No one is getting rich in AmeriCorps. In addition to working in our schools, we do a lot of other service projects in our community. We also recruit volunteers to come into our schools as tutors and mentors.


-Family Involvement: According to The National PTA, when parents are involved, students achieve more and have a more positive attitude towards school, regardless of socio-economic status, ethnic/racial background, or the parents’ education level. Often, low-income and non-English speaking parents are unsure of how to become involved in their child's school. As WRC members, we organize family events, provide reading materials for children to take home (often in their native language), and many other things to include families in the education of their children. 
During my first year, my team was very successful in the Family Involvement Pillar. We organized some of the best family events our school had ever seen, and had a great time doing it. I hope to have similar, and better, events at my school this year.


So, tomorrow is the first "official" day of training. I'm looking forward to meeting my team members and learning more about how my year is going to go.