Better Boys Foundation: The Beginning

It's Monday morning of my third week of working at Better Boys Foundation in North Lawndale, Chicago. The first two weeks have gone by incredibly fast. I was lucky enough to overlap with last year's fellow, Jocelyn Drummond, for the first week, and she helped ease me through the transition from spending my days sleeping and eating to working my first nine to five job of my life. I've had plenty of jobs before this, but never one where I couldn't call in last minute and feign illness or simply admit that I had been up until 4AM the previous night watching Intervention reruns and couldn't come in at 10AM like planned.

I'm still trying to define my role here at BBF. Officially, I am the academic support coordinator. Supposedly this means I'll be in charge of recruiting tutors and scheduling tutoring sessions, making sure our kids give me their grade reports on time, and partnering with local schools so that we can help each other help our kids better. Since it's August, and school doesn't start until September, I haven't quite had the chance to implement any of my vast tutoring plans. BBF partners with a program called After School Matters (ASM), which help provide after school apprenticeships to high schoolers, where they learn a skill and are paid for their attendance, like a real job. Last Friday was the last day of two of the summer sessions, film making and tap dancing. Bike repair will continue through August, and I've been supervising that twice a week. We're welcoming an Americorps volunteer in September to manage the apprenticeships, and I'll be working closely with him, since we're making tutoring a mandatory part of the apprenticeship. We're hoping to offer tap dancing, film making, gardening, a literary magazine, and knitting in the fall; I'm most excited about the knitting, since I'll be teaching it!

One of the most important things I've learned in the past two weeks is just how flexible Project 55 / Alumni Corps fellowships can be. Jocelyn's role here was completely different than mine; she worked mainly behind the scenes, in the development office, and while I'm officially employed by the development office, I'm throwing myself into the melee of YouthLAB, the official name of the high school program. I think that's a real strength of both Alumni Corps and BBF, that both sides are able to tailor positions that fit both the needs of the organizations and the fellows. Tonight is the first unofficial Alumni Corps get together, at Millennium Park; I can't wait to see how everyone else is doing!