Two in a Row!

I'm two for two in successful days with City Year. Today again was a lot of team building, learning cheers, the ins and outs, and the can-do's and can don'ts of the program. Sadly, we learned about more staggering statistics surrounding inner city schools and obviously, specifically in D.C.

• The average student who graduates high school are at 8th grade reading levels
• D.C. ranks the 5th highest among U.S. cities in dropout rates
• The United States spends more money per pupil on elementary and high school education than most developed nations. Yet it is behind most of them in math and science abilities of the children.

However, we did learn that there is hope. By using early warning indicators for dropouts, programs like City Year are able to identify and help fix this ongoing problem. Its call the ABC's.

Early warning signs are as follows

• Attendance is less than 80%
• Behavior is "unsatisfactory" in one class
• Course Performance- if a student receives a "F" in Math or English

92.8, almost 93% of K-5 kids with City Year tutoring demonstrated improvement on assessment tests from the start of the year to the end. So what we're doing has been proven to work. U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, calls this fight of education the, "Civil rights issue for our generation."

One more set of numbers before I get on with the rest of my day. If there was just a 10% point increase in graduation rates, it would reduce murder and assault rates by 20%. That means there would be 3,400 LESS murders and 170,000 FEWER aggravated assault cases a year! Let that sink in for a second.

I STRONGLY (hence the capital letters) URGE YOU TO TAKE TWO MINUTES TO WATCH THIS VIDEO. YOU WILL BE SHOCKED.

Well, back to my experiences. I love baseball. There's no hiding that. Tonight, I got to add another ballpark to the list of venues I've attended. Me and about nine other friends decided to take the Metro straight from work and get $5.00 seats. Sure they were upper deck, but we really didn't care. The Nationals played a great game, belting three home runs including a grand slam. But the highlight of the night was talking to and getting to know my friends better. I had an 18 page conversation with my deaf friend Brittany, and along with my other friend Kate, they taught me a few new things while signing.

On the bus ride home, this young girl noticed my conversation in the notebook I had with Brittany. My roommate Hunter was explaining to her why it was written, and she seemed interested, so I asked for her name, and taught her how to sign her name. It was really a cool experience. These are the type of things that I will be doing with the children for the next 10 months. This whole City Year program couldn't have gotten off to a better start...Well I guess it could've. I could have a real bed and not wake up with a sore neck, but hey, that's just a small roadblock in the road to success.

P.S. I promise pictures from the game as soon as my friends get them up...the whole no camera thing...ugh