I am an excellent procrastinator, hence why I am writing my first blog post four weeks after I moved to Nashville. So please bear with me as I slowly catch y'all up on my experience thus far...
After a long drive, I moved into my new home at the "Cabana," which is what our house in East Nashville is named. I began to worry about what my roommates were thinking as my parents and I unloaded bag after bag and then box after box to move into a house where we were encouraged to 'live simply.' Well, that was a nearly impossible task for me when I was moving 12 hours away with a years worth of stuff. Everything made it into the maybe pile while packing, but only long enough for me to rationalize that "you never know, I may need it for something while in Nashville," and so it found its way into a box or suitcase. The Cabana has three bedrooms for five people and somehow I ended up with my own room, sort of. We like to refer to my room as the "pass-through room" because you have to walk through my room to get to the Susan and Ashley's bedroom as well as the washer and dryer - so as you can guess, my room sees a good bit of traffic. I live in the house with Susan, Ashley, Jay and Kyle who are from Alabama, Northern Ireland, North Carolina and Tennessee, respectively. Jay and Kyle share the other room in the house which is off the living room. There are three other YAV's in Nashville, Lee, Allison and Sarah, and they live in a house across town on the property of Second Presbyterian Church (the church through which the program is run in Nashville.) Less than 36 hours after I moved in we headed to the airport for orientation in Stony Point, NY.
Orientation lasted for a week and included the YAV's from every site, both nationally and internationally, which totaled around 60 people. We spent the week learning about culture shock, globalization, self-care, effective communication, cultural competency, and personality types and we also managed to survive an earthquake and a hurricane. It was an eventful, overwhelming and exhausting week. While I felt completely in over my head, in some respects, after orientation I was also thankful for the week because it made me aware of my naivety towards my completely new environment and culture as well as the challenges at work I might be facing. A week later we flew back from New York to begin yet another week of orientation with our site coordinator, Ben, in Nashville. This orientation was quite the opposite of our time in New York; we spent each day learning about one another and visiting one of the work placements. I loved learning about all the wonderful programs found throughout Nashville and how one of us YAV's would be incorporated into the program for the next year. We visited Room In the Inn, a homeless shelter with a brand new building, which runs many different programs to get people off the streets, back on their feet and into the job market. Other sites included an assistance program for new Latin American families in Nashville, a college readiness program at Stratford High, a preschool/tutoring program for refugees, a help/information center for Somali refugees, a campus ministry program run through Vanderbilt and Belmont, and finally my work placement at Preston Taylor Ministries.
Preston Taylor Ministries (PTM) is a program run in the Preston Taylor housing area of Nashville with many services offered to children living there. PTM has many different locations, but almost all of them are located within close vicinity to the housing area. I work at the main site, Calvin House, with the after school program. I begin work at noon each day to prepare the lesson plans, gather materials, coordinate volunteers, sharpen pencils, prepare snack, and other various tasks. At 4 o'clock I walk to the bus stop about half a block away to pick up half the kids; the other half of the kids are picked up at their school by the PTM bus, there are about 55 kids (K-5th grade) total. We begin the day with snack and singing, then they break up into eight different colored groups, according to age. Four groups begin in the main room working on homework with volunteers, and once they finish they are able to go outside to play. The other four groups rotate between reading and math classes to supplement what they are learning in school. We also have three professional reading teachers who work with kids, either one on one or in small groups, to help them reach the appropriate reading level. When the program started only 2% of the kids were reading on level and now about 45% of the kids read on level, and it is the hope of the program that this number well continue to increase. Each rotation is 20 minutes long and at the end of the day we hand out awards to kids who exceeded expectations for that day. The day concludes with a short Bible story time, then the kids either ride the PTM bus home or we walk them home. These are the basics of the program, and at the risk of too much information I will just keep it at that for now, but will likely expand on the details of the program later.
PTM also provides middle school and high school programming, a leadership and life skills training program, lunchtime mentors (adults eat lunch with a K-5th grader during school lunch), two other after school locations and many more enrichment activities. For more information about PTM you can visit them at: http://www.ptmweb.ik.org/ or find us on Facebook.
Until next time....
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