North Carolina LiteracyCorps

Becoming More Independent: A Year in Review with NCLC

As this service year draws to a close for me and I prepare myself to depart for service in Peace Corps Madagascar in just a few weeks, I thought it would be best for me to sit down and reflect about what I learned over the course of my time with NCLC and The Raleigh Boys Club.

My thoughts on North Carolina LiteracyCorps

Having served previously with another AmeriCorps program, I have found that not all AmeriCorps programs are the same and they all have their different benefits. Here are some of the benefits of serving with NCLC:

• Agents of change – I am proud to be a part of a group of people that were chosen to serve with NCLC. This group of people each brings a diverse set of skills and knowledge to the program which has made for a very enriching year of service. Many have provided their knowledge and expertise in areas on how to help diverse learners, how to set goals, and provided better ways to help with volunteer management and recruitment to name a few.
• Different methods of providing literacy instruction – NCLC has provided me with awesome training on a variety of methods for providing literacy instruction to meet the individual needs of the students that participate in my program.
• Conference opportunities – I have had the great honor of being chosen to participate in the IMPACT Conference where hundreds of volunteers and organizations convened to share best practices in the areas of service, action, and advocacy at UMASS Amherst. This conference positively influenced me to continue in the area of public service where I can build the capacity of the people and communities that I serve.

A cold day but that didn't stop the smiles on our faces! #IMPACTCONFERENCE2016

• Service Days – All of our service days have been purposeful in engaging volunteers, our service sites, and the community. Whether it be collecting book donations to be given to youth in need or having the community come together and participate in fun literacy related programming, you can always know that NCLC is making a positive impact.
• Awesome Program Director – NCLC’s program director is very personable and I’m thankful for the working relationship I have formed with her as she is readily available to provide feedback and resources to ensure that everything goes well for our training days, service days, and at our service sites.
• No micromanagement – For those that value #gettingworkdone on their own (such as myself), I have found many chances to test out different techniques and ideas at my service site as freely as I wanted.

My thoughts on The Raleigh Boys Club (Boys and Girls Clubs of Wake County)

I personally think that I got the best service site in NCLC!

While my work with the previous AmeriCorps program only focused on teaching literacy to 6th graders, I am now doing that with the addition of math, history, and science and whatever my students need help with while covering grades k-8. This is great because I am currently anticipating working with elementary or middle school students with the Peace Corps.

I piloted a program called Brain Gain Read which helps with learning loss in the area of literacy for grades K-3rd. My site director gave me the go ahead to flow as freely as I wanted with the program. I was then tasked with writing the curriculum for The Boys and Girls Clubs of Wake County that would work best for the different clubs. Again, great experience for Peace Corps. I have also learned how to set up a classroom to provide structure for my younger students as they need it the most.

In addition to providing literacy instruction, I am also in charge of volunteer management and recruitment.  This has been my most challenging area as our volunteers come through the administration for the entire Boys and Girls Clubs of Wake County and someone is already tasked to handle that. What I did do with this was that I created a list within Constant Contact for 200+ volunteers and tagged them by their interests so that they can be contacted when we need volunteers in a particular area. I then focused my attention on managing the volunteers at the Raleigh Boy’s Club by keeping up with their volunteer schedule.

I got to work with the most amazing staff at the Raleigh Boys Club. They are very knowledgeable in the area of youth development and was readily available to answer any of my questions and to give advice. They are very passionate about what they do.

My site director provided me with many professional development opportunities such as attending different workshops and working with staff in administration to learn more about how the organization functions.

In addition to that, I got to sit in on weekly organization wide staff meetings where I learned a lot about how the seven Clubs in the organization comes to together to function as one unit while still maintaining their individuality of their Club. Along with this, I got to attend some pretty high profile events such as the Holiday Board Program where my Brain Gain READ! program was highlighted, the 50th Anniversary Luncheon where board members and community leaders gathered to show their appreciation for the Boys and Girls of Wake County, and the Youth of the Year luncheon where top performing Club Members were celebrated along with sharing the positive impact of the Boys and Girls Clubs on their lives.

The greatest and most important thing I will take away from the Raleigh Boys Club is the relationships that I have built with my students. I have gotten the chance to learn about some of their personal backgrounds and their triumphs, share laughs and jokes with them, give relevant advice for life, talk to them about their plans for the future, and to be a mentor and role model for them. I am going to miss them terribly but I know that they are in good hands.

How I Changed Over the Course of My Service 

I would describe myself as a no-nonsense type of person. I typically like structure and a plan. Serving at the Raleigh Boys Club, I found that I have become less rigid and have learned to go with the flow as a lot of things tend to happen that aren’t routine. My patience has also grown by leaps and bounds and I have learned how to handle disappointment in a more constructive manner.

I am immensely grateful for my time with North Carolina LiteracyCorps as I can definitely say that I have grown as a person in my thinking and the way I view the world, the way I provide instruction, and the way I communicate and build relationships with others around me.

Thank you NCLC and the Raleigh Boys Club for everything.