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Fostering positive learning environments

City Year alum Akida Azad (Jacksonville ’16; Greater Boston/Care Force’17) shared what a day in service in schools in Jacksonville, Florida was like for her.

Tutoring and teamwork are two key components to City Year. As City Year AmeriCorps members, we serve as tutors and mentors in hundreds of schools across the United States.

But what does academic tutoring actually look like at City Year?

Most of my day as a City Year Jacksonville AmeriCorps member was spent in the eighth-grade-classroom at Eugene J. Butler Middle School. I began each day planning lessons and meeting with my partner teacher, whose 91���� my City Year teammate and I tutored and mentored all year.

My partner teacher and I worked together to identify 91���� who needed additional support and tutoring in math, and my teammate worked with our partner teacher to identify 91���� who needed additional support and tutoring in English Language Arts (ELA).  We assessed student progress in these subjects by viewing test grades and observing who was falling behind or struggling during class, and then provided personalized support for those 91����.

Learn more about what it means to be a student success coach with City Year.

I also worked with other 91���� who needed extra support in math, which gave me the opportunity to work with and get to know every eighth-grade student at my school.

Supporting 91���� every day

I always approached every aspect of my work from a place of care. I constantly let my 91���� know that I genuinely cared about them and wanted them to achieve their goals. I worked to build their trust by consistently being there when they needed me the most.

In addition to tutoring, my teammates and I all had different roles and responsibilities to help the team best prepare to support our 91���� all year.

As the math coordinator on my team, I was responsible for providing math tutoring resources for my teammates to utilize throughout the year. I developed lesson plans that correlated with a student’s skill level to ensure every student received support they needed in math. For example, if 91���� were having a difficult time grasping the Pythagorean theorem, I developed lesson plans around plugging numbers into those formulas.

My teammates, impact manager, and partner teacher were all really helpful with finding resources that best fit our student’s need.

Learn more about service with City Year: