“I am inspired every day by the people I work with.” —ACEE member Emily Harp
January 2007
ACEE Launches Recruitment for the 2007–08 Service Year
AmeriCorps for Community Engagement and Education (ACEE) has kicked off its recruiting season for the 2007–2008 school year! The online application system opened up this week for both full-time and part-time members, and the applications have already started rolling in. ACEE recruits come from all different places and backgrounds. From recent college graduates to parents looking to go back to school to corporate workers looking for a career change, all ACEE members make a positive impact in the lives of their focus children. The ACEE staff will be seeking out qualified candidates to fill the 72 spots through a selective application process and interviews.
ACEE expanded this year to 30 full-time members (from 25) and placed 42 part-time members at the new Lucy Read Pre-Kindergarten Demonstration Center. With 72 ACEE members working at 6 schools in the Austin Independent School District, ACEE is now reaching 1,870 students through one-on-one and small-group literacy training and classroom support.
ACEE members are also active in the Austin community, working with various organizations dedicated to improving the lives of the community ACEE serves. Members collaborate with the St. John branch of the city library to put on Día de los Niños/Día de los libros each April. This celebration of culture and literacy is a national effort sponsored by the National Library Association to bring a traditional Mexican holiday (El día de los niños, or Children's Day) to Hispanic communities in the United States and to combine this much-loved holiday with an emphasis on family literacy.
Why join ACEE in the movement to close the literacy achievement gap?
Where else can a conscious citizen with no teaching degree have the opportunity to work one-on-one with some of the most amazing pre-k, kindergarten and first-graders in Austin? ACEE takes recent college grads or people from all walks of life and gives them the necessary tools to make a concrete and sustainable difference in the lives of disadvantaged children. Whether your career goal is education, non-profit, or corporate, the ACEE experience challenges members to continue on their career path with a deeper understanding of the world around them. Once exposed to the educational inequity that exists not only in Austin but also in the United States as a whole, members become well-informed, active constituents of their communities.
ACEE members work with a sense of urgency to lift up struggling readers. Four ACEE literary specialists, Sheryl Prater and Cheten Makan (English) and Gabriela Garcia and Carolina Guajardo (Spanish), provide tutors with the tools they need to bring out the best in their focus children. Not only does the ACEE staff provide on-site training and demonstrations, but they also hold members accountable for high standards in tutoring. Members are observed and evaluated regularly by ACEE staff and meet weekly with each member to discuss what they are doing well and what they can improve on. All of the students that members work with are below grade-level expectation in early reading skills. ACEE has been successful each year in bringing at least 75% of these students to grade level in reading.
Part-time members
With the expansion of the ACEE program this year, 42 part-time members have the opportunity to affect pre-kindergarteners at the newly opened Lucy Read Pre-K Demonstration Center. Most part-time members are full-time students or have jobs outside of AmeriCorps in addition to the 10–12 hours per week they spend working with small groups of students at Lucy Read.
Part-time members work in the classrooms, the library, and the science center, providing small-group early literacy activities to build knowledge and skills. While some members come to the program with a background in education, other members have found their career plans affected by their experiences with ACEE. Michelle Castillo, a freshman at the University of Texas at Austin and part-time member says, "When I started the year, my interests lay in government and public policy, but through ACEE and the training we received there along with closely interacting with the teachers on lessons, I learned that I want to specialize in education. Working at Lucy Read has helped me better understand my purpose and what I want to spend my life doing: working towards the equal opportunity for education for all through public policy."
Part-time members also have the opportunity to work with other service organizations in Austin. They have joined full-time members in service projects such as HopeFest, serving the East Austin community, and the YMCA Annual Children's Christmas Party in downtown Austin. Service in the community outside of the schools has molded new perspectives for some part-time members. Sheena Moore, a senior at the University of Texas at Austin and part-time member, shares her experience working at the Christmas Party in December: "My favorite service project was the Annual Children's Christmas Party in downtown Austin. If it had not been for ACEE, I would have never known that this event existed." Members find themselves immersed in the community through their commitment to service.
Full-time members
Full-time members of ACEE immerse themselves completely in serving the Austin community. Full-time members not only work a full-time tutoring job at five different elementary schools, but they commit themselves to other community organizations after school.
Ongoing training is an important component of ACEE's success. Members attend a two-week pre-service training and continue their education through weekly Friday afternoon meetings. ACEE members also attend Family Fun Nights (literacy-based family learning nights), AmeriCorps National Days of Service, and service projects throughout the year. Dedication and commitment to their students and the community are what make full-time members stand out, but they gain much knowledge from their commitment as well. Full-time membership is such a rewarding experience that 9 of 25 members from last year's group chose to return to ACEE for a second year of service.
The focus of the day for full-time members is one-on-one tutoring. Members typically have eight focus children that they tutor twice a week during 45-minute sessions. Tutors also serve as classroom support in kindergarten and first-grade classrooms when they are not tutoring one-on-one. As classroom support, tutors generally help with guided reading, math centers, and computer centers, and play learning games with a couple of children or provide re-teach instruction at a center. Members also get a 45-minute planning time that they use to prepare individualized materials and lesson plans for each of their eight focus children.
Members engage in ongoing after-school partnerships. This year, members have partnered up with five after-school organizations: KIPP Austin College Prep, Reading Is Fundamental, Reach Out and Read, the Austin Children's Museum, and SafePlace Homeless Shelter. For two or three days a week, members volunteer at the organization of their choice, helping to bridge the educational gap outside of their own tutoring space. Second-year member Emily Harp summarizes the member experience well: "I am inspired every day by the people I work with: kids, school faculty, and other ACEE members. My kids inspire me with their innocence, their sense of discovery, their insight, their determination and their creativity. I am also inspired by the commitment and creativity of my fellow ACEE members and the ACEE staff."