Coming Soon: Year Two!

Coming Soon to the Blog-o-sphere, Catherine in the Corps continues. September 1st I will be returning to Sacramento for the beginning of Team Leader Training (TLT) and a second year with AmeriCorps NCCC. This year I am taking on all sorts of new responsibilities. It will be a challenge, but certainly a rewarding experience and opportunity to grow so much more. I am also sure it will add quite a few entertaining anecdotes to my life story, so check in this fall for more tales of my adventures out west.

SOS Overnights

While the Summer of Service program was not a residential program (Thank God!) there were two overnights included in the program schedule.

The first overnight was on our campus in Sacramento. A giant slumber party in 943, our multipurpose building, we had the kids sleep over so that we could head out super early the next morning for a service project on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco. The group was split in two for this trip, so while each participant had this overnight only once, the crew leaders had the pleasure of two teen filled overnights and 4am wake-up calls. In order to make the staff ferry to Alcatraz we left Sacramento at 5am. Sadly the day that my group went on the trip, it was pouring rain in both Sacramento and San Francisco. It was our only rainy day during the entire summer program.

We arrived in San Francisco without any problems and with a little extra time left before we needed to gather at the ferry, Allison and I walked over to Fisherman's Wharf with the Earth Crew. We stopped in a coffee shop (the only place open that early) and walked around the deserted tourist area. Then we met the Fire Crew at the ferry and boarded the boat. When we arrived at Alcatraz we met with Shelia, who works with the Alcatraz Gardens through Golden Gate Parks and set to work. Fairly soon after we began weed removal, the rain was too strong to continue outdoors so we left our stuff in a green house nearby and headed up to the prison for an audio tour.

The Alcatraz audio tour is very well done and everyone seemed to really enjoy the visit.

After the tour was over, we officially called the day of work and headed back to the ferry and back to Sacramento. Our crew made a quick stop off for a snack at Wendy's, and then the two day straight work experience was over and shuttles left campus to drive participants home for the day.

Later that same week, for Friday and Saturday, the entire Summer of Service group headed north into the Sierras for an overnight at Grizzly Creek Ranch in Portola, CA. The purpose of the trip was for some outdoor time and team building activities. My group (crews fire and earth) were not super in to the team building activity portion of the trip and frustrated that they never made it to the more exciting ropes course activities because they were not working very well together. They did have some wonderful moments though, doing really well and having fun with certain activities.


Later that evening, frustration grew for both crew leaders and participants. Inappropriate behavior and rumors of planned sneak outs and nighttime meeting spots, caused a all program time out so to speak. Abby gave the group a serious talking to and we had them sit along the walls of the dining hall for an hour.
The evening turned out pretty well after that. Mandy, from the camp staff walked us around the grounds and then we had a camp fire and s'mores before turning in for bed. Because of the rumored sneak outs, crew leaders had to sleep quite literally in front of each cabin exit, but there were no subsequent problems.
The next day we played a game of frisbee golf and then went on a wonderful hike up to a look out point. Despite the numerous complaints from participants, the crew leaders loved the hike and were pretty impressed with some of the more determined and dedicated participants who made it up the mountain without complaint.

Green 2 Atop the Mountain at Grizzly Creek Ranch

The Entire Summer of Service Group: Participants, Crew Leaders, and Abby

After the hike was lunch and then back to Sacramento. The overnights were over, it was a holiday weekend for the 4th of July (so we had two days off in a row!) and then we had the last week of the program.

The Earth Crew

When SOS started, we entered the busiest and most exhausting three week's of the entire AmeriCorps experience. We were working six days a week for about 11 hours a day and constantly in charge of great but also energetic and sassy teenagers. And all of this was during the hottest days we have experienced all year. Even our days off were not truly days off, as we had grocery shopping for our crews, paperwork to complete, and team fun days to plan. Busy Busy Busy!

My Crew, the source of my constant entertainment and stress, was the Earth Crew. Allison and I led this group of eight for the three weeks. We were sometimes incredibly impressed and sometimes incredibly frustrated, but overall, they did great work and we were able to see real growth in several of our participants who gained a lot from the experience.

(Left to Right) Isaac, Camay, Me, Allison, Jahzale, and Jenobah covering over graffiti at a housing development owned by the Salvation Army

Anthanisha, Dominique, and Randy working in the kitchen at our Primary Sponsor: St. John's Shelter for Women and Children

Dominique, Camay, Jenna, Anthanisha, and Jahzale at the park on our Team Fun Day

Bowling for Team Fun: Anthanisha, Jenna, and Camay

Team Building Exercises: The Swamp Game

Team Building: Magic Carpet

The Crew working at Sacramento Food Bank and Family Services. We packed 745 food bags that day!

Camay and Jahzale at the Boys and Girls Club where we cleaned out a storage closet and found a disorganized box of prom dresses

Miniature Horse at St. John's on one our of last days of working there

For our Crew's "Legacy Project" we fixed up three benches in the yard. This is a bench before...

During...

...and After!

We had left our Mark

Graduation Day: The Crew with their Paper Plate Awards

Getting All Caught Up: First Month of Round 4

It has been ages since I have written and I deeply apologize to both my few loyal readers and to myself for this neglect. A huge amount has happened since I last checked in and I am not going to attempt to update on absolutely everything, but in this and the next few posts I will do my best to fill in the gaps.

For starters, I am now back East, two weeks removed from the “Ameri-Bubble.” It is somewhat weird being home, but also certainly nice to see family and friends, and in part it is weird how not weird it is being here. But I miss my team and have spent the past fews weeks reflecting (somewhat in awe) on my experiences from the last ten months.

Our final project brought us back to Sacramento. As I briefly mentioned in my previous post, the project was a program called AmeriCorps NCCC Summer of Service (SOS). For the first four weeks of the Round, while school was still in session for our program participants, we were training to be leaders, learning all about the inner workings of the program, working with the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Sacramento, and working with non-profits in Sacramento that would be hosting SOS crews during the program. Mondays were our training days. The schedule was constantly changing each day and we did not spend our days all together as a team, but were constantly split up by crew leader teams. My co-crew leader was Allison and it was absolutely wonderful being paired with her. Allison and I certainly spent some quality time together, but I missed working with the rest of the team. Though the schedule was varied and not always full, complete with downtime to plan for the actual program weeks, we were pretty constantly occupied in some way.

We set up shop in one of the rooms in the NCCC office building. Our white boards covered in notes and schedules.

One of our first weeks of the round was "AmeriCorps" week. We worked a special service day for a Sacramento event called "Homeless Connect," which provided services to Sacramento's large homeless population. We were also offered free tickets to a Sacramento Rivercats baseball game (pictured above).
For a service learning trip, we went and toured the California State Capital building in downtown Sacramento. Our tour guide was great and a fun time was had by all. Above is our group picture in front of the door to the governor's office.

Part of our work at the Boys and Girl's Club including revamping the Tiechert branch's teen room. The project was a bit frustrating and not entirely successful due to a lack of support and supplies, but we did have a fun time painting a few murals for the room and, as Maya is demonstrating in the above picture, reminiscing about childhood by finger painting.
Two fridays in a row, we ended our formal work a little early and headed to elementary schools in Sacramento to help run their end of the year carnivals. What a fun way to get service hours! At the first carnival I worked at the food both, selling hotdogs and hamburgers. The second carnival I got to attempt to be artistic at the face painting table. One of the popular designs which I feel I had mastered by the end of the day was a spider design. One child who came up to my station wanted his entire face to be a spider. That one was interesting. I did my best.

Another independent service project during the first weeks of Round 4 was at the Sacramento Public Library's summer reading kick off event. The library has a wonderful summer reading program in place, available not only to children, but to the whole family. Each of the childhood age groups, then teens, and adults have different bingo cards. The squares of the cards are filled in with different library and reading related activities. Once a participant completes a row of activities they bring their card to their local branch, receive a small prize, and are then entered to win a bigger prize at the end of the summer. It was great to learn about this program and to see families coming together to read and explore the library. An added bonus to working at the event was that two of our corps member participants got to wear costumes of children's book characters. Above, I am posing with Allison as she wears a costume from "Where the Wild Things Are."
One of the SOS sponsors we worked with during the training weeks was the Sacramento Zoo. Though, my crew never worked with the zoo during SOS, I was very happy to have the opportunity to work there prior to the arrival of crew participants. The day I went, we worked in the Kangaroo and Imu pen! It was a very unique and amazing experience to be so close to the animals. The kangaroos lounged while we worked around them and the Imu was very curious and walked around us, checking out what we were up to.

Towards the end of our training month, it was time to really get ready for the beginning of the program. At the beginning of the Round we were lucky enough to be able to read applications and interview applicants for the program. It was wonderful to be able to select the participants we would later be working with and interesting to later see how different some of them were than their interviews and applications had suggested. The interview process and training were also a great way to get to know all the NCCC staff at the Sacramento campus. They were all so fun to work with. Once the participants had been selected, we held three different orientation sessions to bring them in with their parents, process paperwork, size them for uniforms, and let them know a little more in detail about the program they were to be a part of.

Erin and Marybeth working at the Paperwork table

Katie working at the uniform station

One of my participants, Camay, turning in her paperwork with Norma

Danny and I, manning the checkin table

Orientation and training was then over. It was time for SOS to begin!