New Job!

I began my new job a week ago. I am now back at CELTS at Berea College as an Americorps VISTA.

History of VISTA
Kennedy had the vision for VISTA and Johnson found the need for these volunteers when he started his "War on Poverty". The premise of VISTA is that volunteers live at the poverty level and serve the community where they are living by increasing capacity of existing programs or creating new programs. All of the volunteer efforts are supposed to help eradicate poverty. The number of volunteers grew over the years. In 1990, Bush founded the Commission on National and Community Service. AmeriCorps was born and VISTA became part of that. Today there are about 8000 volunteers all working to eradicate the core causes of poverty. 

How I ended up here
Okay, so that's VISTA in the big picture. How does that relate to CELTS? I didn't intend to apply to VISTA really. Actually last summer I was sort of turned off by VISTA when I learned that it's focused on indirect service. My only experience had ever been with direct service so office work sounded horrible. If it hadn't been for Heather approaching me about the position, I wouldn't have ever considered it. In fact, I've learned that Heather actually applied to have a VISTA for this role with me in mind, hoping that I would want to do such a thing.

What I'm doing
Here at CELTS my official title is Training Resource Specialist. That does not mean that I am currently a specialist in training resources. It means I do a lot of research and thinking in order to create training resources. My main focus is on the tutoring program here, which offers tutoring to K-12 students. In the past few years, the tutoring program hasn't been as effective as it could be simply because no one has had the time to make changes to the program in accordance to changing educational thinking and college schedules. Hopefully my experience with the program, my education background, and my experience tutoring other places will help me come up with a plan to change the program. We do have some ideas but making them happen is the hard thing. Currently I am restructuring the referral process and the assessment portion of the program. It's quite a bit of computer work.

What it's like
It is strange being back in CELTS just a bit. Currently there are only a handful of summer student workers here, but I imagine when the students get back on campus full force I will have to adjust. Many of these students are people that I worked with when I was a student so making the adjustment from student to staff is somewhat difficult. Since I won't be in a direct leadership role over the students, it should be fine though. Basically the only students I'll be working with directly are my former teammates on One-on-One anyway and I already was their student boss anyway. I look forward to being able to help this program and to learn more about education and teaching. Already I've learned so much about the elementary learning standards.