Un Semestre Nuevo

A late Happy New Years' (and happy MLK Day!) to everyone! The Arlington Works! AmeriCorps members have been quite busy since returning from the holiday break--here are some of the highlights.

At Edu-Futuro, Sarah has launched the inaugural session of after-school Spanish classes at Barret and Campbell Elementary schools. She's working with kindergarten through fourth grade students, providing out of classroom enrichment in support of the FLES programs there. The spring semester of Escuela Bolivia is off to a great start--despite snowy, wet weather more than 80 students came to the first day of class!

I'm happy to say that there were quite a few ESL students there as well; while it was fun doing one-on-one tutoring for most of the fall semester, I'm excited to be leading a real class. I'm happy to announce that the PARTICIPA classes at Hoffman-Boston Elementary are off to a great start. I'm especially grateful to have a co-facilitator, who's delivered these classes before, because the breadth and depth of information we're trying to cover is enormous. These classes are for immigrant parents, and we get into the ins and outs of the American public school system, from the general--the educational path from elementary school to a Ph.D--to the specific--for example, how to understand your child's 4th grade report card.  I'll be starting ESL classes there the week after the last PARTICIPA class, and I'm hopeful some of the parents will decide to enroll in that as well. Jessie has been interviewing more mentors for ELP I and II, and is also getting ready for the ELP I launch, which is coming up this Friday--seems to be a recurring theme here, but this month has flown by!

I know that the AmeriCorps members serving with REEP have been busy as well. Skye is co-teaching a beginner level morning class, and Marie is now teaching in the evenings. I'll let them fill you in on the specifics! And speaking of REEP members, we're all happy to invite a brand-new part-time member, Sara Fry. A native of NoVa, she's teaching a drop-in class at Virginia Gardens, subbing, and assisting at the Arlington Employment Center.

Yes, that's right--AmeriCorps members are now back at the Employment Center! Sara and I are each spending half a day there, getting to know the staff members there and familiarizing ourselves with the different services they offer. Our end goal is to be able to bring some of the resources back to the CEC, so that it's easier for our students to access some job-related websites, and offer workshops on job search skills like writing a resume or interviewing skills. I'll come back with more updates when we have more concrete information; it's still in the exploratory phase right now.

We're also excited to begin planning a related part of our AmeriCorps project: how we're going to deliver technology workshops. At the moment, we're reviewing the new REEP Work Unit technology modules, and brainstorming on how to best provide our students with a finished product--a resume, for example--after comparatively few hours of instruction. Tenatatively we're aiming to offer these workshops during the REEP program breaks (the weeks of June 18 and June 25), but again, this is still early days and those dates may change.

Keep checking back for more program updates! I'll be better about updating this blog more often, and hopefully can even include some pictures in the future!