At the Club

Each morning, while most of my peers at Generations head out to their respective schools to begin programming, I make the commute to our downtown office to get some work done before my site begins at 2:30. I am one of four AmeriCorps coordinators serving at an after-school site, and I think that all of us can agree that we operate in a very different world from that of the school-serving corps members. One of the differences is that our afternoon schedules afford us the time to visit school sites during the morning and become ever more aware that the after-school environment is a world of its own. Last week, on a suggestion from my supervisor, I used one of my mornings to visit the Blackstone Elementary School in the South End in order to get a better feeling for how different sites run.

I have spent time at schools all throughout my year of service; in particular, I visit the Perkins Elementary School in South Boston regularly, which is right down the street from the South Boston Boys & Girls Club, where I serve. However, it has become very clear to all of us this year that each site has its own personality – no two are the same. The Blackstone is much bigger than the other schools I’ve visited – Bill, the site coordinator there, told me that it takes ten minutes to walk from one end of the school to the other! Bill and Sarah, the AmeriCorps member at the Blackstone, have the luxury of a wonderful space there, big enough to accommodate all of the many students they serve. Having spent some time at schools that can only offer the space under the stairs for their Generations program, I understood how lucky Bill and Sarah are.

The most shocking thing to me about school sites, however, – and in this they are mostly similar – is how easy it is to locate the students and get their reading sessions started uniformly on time. Since the Blackstone is a large school, and one with mostly three-walled classrooms, which sometimes gets confusing, things don’t always go as quickly and smoothly as they do at smaller schools. Still, I found myself with mouth agape at how efficiently everything ran at the Blackstone. At the after-school sites, particularly the larger Boys & Girls Clubs, there is never a day that is not at least somewhat chaotic. It is fun chaos, though, and I have come to really enjoy the whirlwind of activity surrounding me constantly from 2:30 until 6.

The South Boston Boys & Girls Club has about 200 members, children who come there after school is over until their parents can pick them up, and at any given moment, they have two options for activities to take part in. In reality, the children could be in any number of places – doing their homework, getting a snack, or, as has become more frequent as the end of the year draws nearer, hiding from me. By necessity, I have become intimately familiar with every nook and cranny of the clubhouse. I’ll admit that it took me a while to get into the flow of the club; to understand when different kids would arrive, what activities they were likely to do, whether they would be easy to convince to come and read or whether it would be a time-consuming persuasion process. But by this point, the club feels like a home to me; granted, it is a chaotic, crazy, and at times stressful home, but a home nonetheless. There are definitely benefits to being at a school site, but I love the unique qualities of the after-school environment that set these sites apart. The club is a little like summer camp, which I am very familiar with. It is fun and casual; kids often stop by the Generations room to hang out or do some independent reading when there is enough space, and if a student misses a session, I can always grab them later in the week to make it up. I have gotten to know the kids in my program in a friendly way, not just an educational way, and I have also had the chance to get to know other kids who go to the club, because we see each other every day. When I am not too busy, I will occasionally get the chance to play games with my students, see what they are working on in the art room, the computer room, or the education room, and sometimes help with homework or school projects.

I really enjoy being able to visit other sites, and there are days when I think that my mornings spent at the Perkins School are the only thing preserving my sanity, but I know that when my year of service ends in June, I will be broken-hearted to leave this crazy, chaotic world that I have grown to love.

Jessie Kunhardt is an AmeriCorps State Program Coordinator. You can email her at JKunhardt@generationsinc.org