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The school year is a little over a month and a half into the swing of things here at Denny International Middle School in West Seattle and students, staff, and City Year corps members are still settling into their new … Continue reading
Corps Members pause before greeting students into lunch.
Every morning, each team of City Year corps members starts their day as tutors and mentors by sharing joys with their teammates. A joy is one of City Year’s civic “power tools.” The joy power tool allows City Year corps and staff members to share joyful news and information that can help to fuel a more idealistic and inspired service day.
A joy that the City Year Seattle/King County site recently celebrated was Denny International Middle School‘s first City Year event of the year: MAP Spirit Week! MAP, or Measures of Academic Progress, is an assessment program based on a standardized test that all Seattle Public School students take three times a year measuring their growth in reading and math.
Corps members prepare to lead a lunch intiative.
The corps members at Denny, in conjunction with the students that make up their Associated Student Body program, put on the event in an effort to ensure that students were ready and excited to take the first MAP Assessment of the year as well as to build student pride.
The team put on five days of lunchtime activities centered around strengthening the required skill sets that students need to perform well on the MAP Assessment, including math basics, healthy competition, and being prepared for school. A theme was selected for each day by the school’s Associated Student Body program. For example, Tuesday was “Tip our hat for Literacy” and students were allowed to wear hats in school and were challenged by literacy themed games during their lunch period.
A bulletin board for Digit Day was created to engage students before a standardized math test.
The week was a success for the new Denny team! Students from all grade-levels participated throughout the week. It takes a lot of courage and hard work to put on a successful program when corps members are just learning to get their feet wet in their new positions. We look forward to sharing more joys from Seattle as the year progresses.
Text by Senior Corps Member Denise Taylor
City Year Seattle Blog 