Thanksgiving, Turkey Trot, and Tahoe

Last week was Thanksgiving and school was out, so my team worked with Sacramento Parks and Recreation cleaning up local parks. On Monday we raked and trimmed hedges, Tuesday we raked and cut down trees, and Wednesday we raked 6 trucks worth of leaves, by Thursday I was so happy to do something besides raking I got excited over picking up the trash from the over 30,000 people who were at the Sacramento Turkey Trot. The Turkey Trot was probably my favorite part of the work week. We woke up early and cheered on over 30,000 people as they raced to feed the hungry. I danced for and high-fived as many people as possible.

Thursday night we had a very AmeriCorps Thanksgiving. It was nice to have traditional food, but I missed my mom’s green bean casserole. Afterward we hung out on campus and enjoyed our break, and talked of our plans for Tahoe.

We left Friday morning, with the intentions of going straight to Tahoe. Unfortunately, no plan goes off without a hitch and we managed to spend an hour running errands including buying snow chains. The drive up was beautiful, I’ve never ridden in a car while it was snowing so I was in awe with the way it fell against the trees and landed on my hands as we drove up the winding roads. My ears popped continually from the increasing elevation. The pictures I have are beautiful but they weren’t able to fully capture the essence of it all.

As soon as I had the opportunity I loaded my hands up with snow and started packing and throwing at all of my unsuspecting friends. Each hit was accompanied with a cry of delight, and fortunately my friends were more amused by my ear to ear grin and ignored the fact that I just pelted them with a huge ball of ice. Most of Friday and all of Saturday I played in the snow. I even made my very first snowman with the help of my friends Harmony, Chewie and the other Sarah. We also managed to find a hill that was just steep enough to sled down. I was overjoyed with the miracle of snow. As a born and raised Floridian my encounters with snow have been few and far between, and I have never really had the opportunity to play in it.

It was great to be able to kick back with friends and enjoy our time out of uniform and away from campus, before starting back to our regular workweek once again. Now we’re back to work as usual. Although, the kids don’t seem to be re-energized and focused after their week off as they are still in the same mindset of there is no point to school. My team seems to be in good spirits in spite of being surrounded by people without ambition, and the other misfortune that has recently affected the way my team is running.

Our team is down by 1, as our team leader had to return to Virginia for personal reasons. She will return soon and we will function as close to normal as possible in the mean time. Our thoughts are with her and her family at this time.

In other news there is talk of a possible writers group to form on campus in the near future and I find myself very excited by the prospect, as I have been slacking off recently. For now though, I shall finish watching the Sand Lot as James Earl Jones is about to grace the screen.

incomprehensible....

Amerikus about tutoring:

Inadequate me
tutoring you in things I
just don't understand

Back to High School Fun
Joking with kids all day long
what could be better?

Un-enthused kids
force them to try problems now
That's if im lucky

All in all I love
Tutoring students its fun
but sometimes so hard

It's an up and down roller coaster, and I'm sure I have an extra syllable somewhere.

I'm tutoring students at Woodland High School. The majority of the kids are really cool, they just don't want to be in high school. I can't blame them. I didn't want to be in high school either, but I got through it by focusing on what I wanted to do after. These kids can't seem to think about the future. It's like their parents never told them the things mine did. Growing up my parents always encouraged me to do my best, and to try different things. They always told me that I could do anything I set my heart too. I don't think these kids have that, and it sucks. They seem to be okay with mediocrity and even worst, failure. It's incomprehensible.

On top of the majority of my students not having motivation, I have had feelings of inadequacy in my abilities to teach. I keep asking other tutors questions, and I'm always unsure if I caught the mistakes when I'm editing their papers. Then I feel like they're not learning, and that I'm doing all their work. Also, I feel like when I have to edit papers, I don't know what to do. Their papers need so much work, but apparently we only need to get them to pass. The problem is they're not improving at all, because with each essay they only do enough to pass. They don't learn.

BUT!!! The kids are funny, interesting, and amusing. They have this naivety about life that is refreshing. I am surprised at what I remembered from Algebra 1 and Geometry. I also never thought that I'd be at a point in my life where I'd rather solve math problems than work on English papers. It's weird.

In other news, I am going to be a Weed Warrior again tomorrow with Frank! He's a PeaceCorps alum that loves working with NCCC. To top it off he's so knowledgeable and friendly. I'm really excited about our day project. It will be a nice change of pace from being inside all day.

Our Projects Started today!

Today was our first day on the Job. My team Blue 4ious is working at Pioneer and Woodland High Schools in Woodland, Ca. We are tutoring and mentoring students throughout the day. The learning center where we're working was established 16 years ago by this lad Irma who took it from one room and one tutor at Woodland to over 80 tutors at Woodland High School alone, not to mention she's opened several sister programs in High Schools in Woodland, and the surrounding counties. She partners with UC Davis Students who tutor several times a week at the school. She is a very passionate woman, and I hope that if I ever accomplish my dream of opening a non-profit, I have the same passion and pride in my creation 16 years down the line. I'm kind of surprised Irma isn't an National Civilian Conservation Corps member as her main focus was getting things done, and we were thrusted into tutoring first thing. It was stressful, but cool. I feel better about my abilities to get involved straight away. I'm excited to watch myself grow over the next year.

The Continuation of CTI

I'm exhausted. I think it was because I've spent the last few weeks getting little to no sleep, and so here I am at 4pm dying for a nap. This past weekend I went camping with my friends in Marin. It's just across the Golden Gate Bridge. It was awesome, and free. We spent the day in San Fran and slept in the woods. I had entirely too much fun.
I'm back and we're in our last week of CTI. Only four more days and I'm officially inducted as a true and proper corps member. Next week we start our first project. I'm really excited about it.

Like I said before, I'm exhausted and I see my friends outside. So I'm gonna go there.

Hopefully I'll find more time to write after CTI. Especially since I'll be on campus.

Phase 1 Project Revealed!

Despite all the challenges that life can bring right now it seems simply perfect. It’s not always sunshine and happiness; in fact, I spent the two previous days fuming about the little things. About not getting any position that I had requested, and griping about someone in the program I’m not particularly fond of. Complaining about it didn’t really make the situation any better, in fact for the most part, everything felt worst. For whatever reason I woke up the other morning and was like this is going to be a good day. And it was a great day, the sun was shining, I did well in PT, I hung out with friends, and I found out my first project. We’re working at two high schools in Woodland, CA mentoring and tutoring High School kids. We’re trying to encourage them to stay in school. I’m so stoked about this. I wanted a youth project so bad. Just one, and I’d be fine and I got my one youth project first round.

I’m happy I get to stay on campus first round two because more than likely I’ll be going off base for 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th rounds. So I have the added bonus of knowing my surroundings. Staying in one place longer than 6 weeks, I haven’t stayed in one place since I moved out of Tallahassee. I also get to have Internet, cable, and the benefit of hanging out with the other teams on campus.

Today I only had Project Outreach Liaison training; it’s my only specialty role. It’s a good role for me because I’ll get to network with Nonprofits all year, and I was seriously thinking about either going into nonprofit management or child psychology. So I think my career path was just kind of decided for me. My heart has been racing after this dream job for about two years now, so I might as well just dive head first into it and worry about the messy stuff later.

Tomorrow our project is Weed Warriors, where we will spend the day removing invasive species from a creek. I’m hoping I get to wear one of those rubber suits. I think it will make it way better. Pulling weeds is one of my least favourite activities, but I’ll find fun it somehow. I always seem to manage to find joy in the little things.

The weather here is gorgeous. If I were to pick somewhere too live solely based on climate this would be the place. It’s warm but not hot, with a nice breeze every now and again. It hardly rains and the leaves change colors, so there are seasons! I love seasons. Weather should change; it’s unnatural to maintain a state of hot or cold. I enjoy sunshine, but sweltering heat in November is not fun for me. So this place is perfect. I need to upload pictures but it doesn’t seem like that will happen any time soon.

Back to CTI

Mendocino was a nice break from traditional CTI. I miss being surrounded by red woods, and I wish that it were a little bit chillier here. I had my first bad day in Americorps yesterday, but today seems to be going much better. I just have to remind myself that I can change my happiness, not others. We're finding out our Project within the next couple of days, rumor has it I should know it today, but it maybe different for every team. I'm hoping we find out, today. I want to know what we're doing. With each new training new possible projects our mentioned and I become more and more excited about each of them.

I have lots of pictures to put up but I haven't found the time. I do have some up on Facebook, and I may open a flickr account. But I will try and add some pictures to here soon.

I'll report back with my first project as soon as I know it.

My Address

Here is my address if you would like to post mail.

Sara Pennington Class XVI Blue 4
3427 Laurel St
McClellan, Ca 95652