ACE News
Campus Spotlight:
AmeriCorps Organizations Work Together
at Linder Elementary
March 31, 2011
The primary mission of ACE is to ensure that all children develop a strong foundation in early literacy skills; however, it is equally important that our organization is part of a larger AmeriCorps network. This means that ACE members foster outreach by volunteering with other nonprofits to develop community partnerships. At Linder Elementary, our team has had the privilege of working with another AmeriCorps organization—Communities in Schools (CIS), a dropout prevention program that helps children who are facing non-academic barriers to succeed in school.
Our group of tutors have been coordinating with Lestvia Reyes, the CIS director at Linder, to develop and run an after-school program called Kid Fit. This program promotes healthy living by organizing fun and interactive physical activities once a week for children in the third and fourth grades. Every Wednesday after school we provide the kids with a healthy snack and then discuss what activity we are going to do that day. We change the activity every week to provide a wide variety of options to show children how important it is and how many ways they can get active. Some of our activities have included basketball, soccer, dodgeball, and kickball. We have also had wonderful support from outside the Linder community. We have had a yoga instructor and members of the UT Ultimate Frisbee team come to teach and play with the kids.
This has been a great opportunity, not only to work with a fellow AmeriCorps program, but also to promote healthy living at an early age. Kid Fit has provided a fun, social outlet for these children. The greatest aspect has been getting to know these kids that we would not otherwise work with. It is a huge reward to hear our names being called in the hallways to excitedly ask what we are going to do that week because their enthusiasm shows how much they're enjoying the program and that our work is worth it.
Celeste Nagy
ACE Tutor 10–11