Introduction

Emily and Karlie are writing this blog as a way to chronicle their first full year out of college. Watch them test the waters with the tips of their toes, and slowly stretch out their wings and fly, fly, away. Poetry... is not what you will find in these posts.
Americorps scooped up Emily and sent her off to Washington state, and Karlie is nestled in a house in the Champlain Islands teaching music to 3-14 year olds.

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Who's writing this blog?! Emily is!

OH HEY!

My name is Emily (If you are reading this and don't know who I am, that's pretty cool. That probably means that Karlie and I have achieved our lifelong goal of becoming famous on the internet. We have made some pretty awesome Youtube videos, but they haven't quite taken off yet). I graduated from UVM last December after having student taught in a wonderful kindergarten classroom. Soon after graduating, I got a job as a paraeducator at a school in Colchester, Vermont once again working in a Kindergarten classroom. Then this summer I worked at a camp with five and six year olds, so kids that either just finished or would be entering kindergarten in the fall. Needless to say, I enjoy working with kids. And have fallen in love with Kindergarten just a bit. One day I will go back to being a more traditional classroom teacher, but for now I am doing an awesome AMERICORPS program!

I applied to a variety of Americorps programs in which I knew I would somehow be working with kids. The program I am doing is based out of North Central Washington, and is called Intermountain Americorps (IMAC for short). Yeah, North Central Washington is not exactly a neighbor to Burlington, Vermont so I will explain how I got here in the next post. Hint: I did not fly or disapparate. I am serving in a K-12 school in a tiny tiny town called Pateros. What will I be doing you ask? Well I am still kind of figuring that out. But mostly tutoring, mentoring, planning events, recruiting volunteers, and just being a good role model for these awesome kids. My supervisor was working on my schedule last week but three things I know/think I will be doing are: tutoring 2nd grade ELL students (English as a Second Language), helping with reading in a 5th grade classroom, AND helping in an elementary school band class! Karlie is going to have to help me help students learn how to play the flute and saxophone.

I am very excited to be in a new place, and to be a part of a new school! In addition to serving at Pateros School, I also have a lot of Americorps trainings and meetings with a group of about 30 members. We had our first days of training last week, and it was great to be able to meet new people who are in this area. I can't wait for more!


Here's some of the AmeriSWAG we got after the first meeting. One of the things I like about Americorps is that they like to make "Ameriphrases," so basically any word can be added after "Ameri" to make a cool phrase. So...Amerigear, Ameriswag, Amerifriend, the list goes on...My favorite is an "Ameraffair" which is when two Americorps members find themselves in a very friendly relationship and perhaps get married. 

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