City Year - Graduation Day

Today is Graduation Day at Hero School.  In my Detroit and in 18 other cities in the US, and in London and South Africa, hundreds of 17-24 year olds will celebrate today the end of their year of service.  Look at a description of their program:

At City Year, we define idealism as “the belief that you can change the world, and the passion, skills, and courage to do it.”  Everything we do at City Year is grounded in this concept and the idea that each of us can make a difference.  To inspire others, share the power of service, and promote the value that each of us can make a difference, City Year corps members proudly wear the City Year uniform. With the uniform, City Year corps members express their full-time commitment to solving social problems, training outstanding new leaders and building a more beloved and just community and nation.

Here is a City Year Detroit “Starfish Story”, a story about making a difference with just one student.

Tiara was a fifth grade student. When I first met her, Tiara was way behind in her reading skills, reading only at a 1st or 2nd grade level. I began working with Tiara daily. We made small goals:  “OK, you got 2 out of 20 on the last spelling test; next week let’s get 5!” These small goals worked, and by December she was consistently getting 10 to 15 correct answers out of 20. Her spelling was getting better but reading continued to be a problem, so we kept at it. In October, she was reading about 20 words a minute, in January we were up to 40!  I noticed that Tiara needed practice reading, something she rarely, if ever, did at home. I talked to her about the importance of reading at home with her mother.

One spring day when I was working with Tiara, we started reading. She was like a whole new person! A paragraph that took her 40 minutes to read before now took only 10!  She credited the difference to at home reading time with her mom! I was so proud. Additionally, I had been stressing to Tiara the importance of speaking up in class. She lacked the confidence to answer questions posed by the teacher, even when I knew  that she had the correct answer. I challenged Tiara to answer at least one question out loud each day. She began responding to this challenge, and started speaking up more and more. This was affecting her social life also. At lunch she used to always just sit silently. Then I began seeing her laugh and talk with other girls. I think that her increased literacy helped her gain confidence in more ways than just academics; she  felt like an equal with her classmates instead of an outsider."
- Colleen Kushlak, City Year Detroit Alumna

I rise early, here in my retirement, and come to my desk to write.  Facing the prospect of death a few months ago made me aware that there are things in me that I want to pass along.  They are most often stories of people like these young heroes, who would, for the last year, rise early, put on their khaki pants and Timberland boots, their Red Bomber Jackets or something cooler emblazoned with CITY YEAR in bold black letters.   They’d gather in the Compuware Plaza, or in front of the Detroit Library, or on one glorious morning, the campus of my UDM, to do physical training, their red and black and white and yellow and brown hands clapping and reaching in cadence with their “ONE – two – three …onetwo – three…TWO – two – three…twotwo – three….  And then they’d go, like Coleen, to encourage Tiaras, by their example to discover that there are things in her that she wants to pass along.

I can’t write about these young people at City Year Detroit without blinking tears.  It was almost ten years ago that I was invited to speak at their “Breakfast of Champions” , surrounded by Corps members and staff and a room full of people who supported them.  As an introductory video showed Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy and JFK, I noticed Penny Bailer blinking tears.  Today she will blink them away again as she gives one more congratulatory sendoff to this graduating class of City Year Detroit, young people like Colleen who every day make a difference, who know from the example of Penny and their fellow corps members and from the Tiaras they’ve met that they have something inside them, bread for the world, a bag of rice they’ve been given and must share.

Learn more about City Year Detroit at http://www.cityyear.org/detroit.aspx

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.