City Year Program Mentors Aim to Change Lives, One Student at a Time
By Joanna Chakerian
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Anthony Buenafe was sure he could motivate the kids in his sixth-grade class to do something besides playing with paper footballs or fighting.
So he brought his childhood chess set into school.
Buenafe was starting a year as a mentor to students at Stanton Elementary School in Anacostia, and he wanted to make it count. To make sure everyone had a chance to play, he scoped out holiday sales at toy stores and bought more chess sets with his money.
CAPTION: U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan greets Anthony Buenafe, a City Year mentor at Stanton Elementary School in Anacostia, this month. (By Mark Gail -- The Washington Post)
Months later, in the spring, the entire class could be found sitting quietly and playing the game at the end of the school day.
"It's not like where you see in commercials or movies, where you know that an adult is going to come in there and stand out in that child's life," Buenafe said. "When you're in the moment, you don't know how much work you have to pour into a child.
"It doesn't happen in the span of two hours, like in a movie," he said. "There's a lot of resistance, and you don't know when that tipping point is going to be. It may never come."
Buenafe, 22, is a D.C. corps member with City Year, a national organization that lets people 17 to 24 contribute one year of public service. Equipped with a few items donated by City Year sponsors -- a T-Mobile cellphone, Metro cards and uniforms made by Timberland -- plus a weekly stipend for living expenses, corps members take on a variety of service activities at locations across the District.
The program operated this year in 19 locations throughout the country. Corps members' duties have included such things as planting community gardens and running spring break camps for schools in poor urban areas.
The organization's D.C. operation, which has 85 corps members, received a boost when Michelle A. Rhee took over as the District's schools chancellor in 2007. She has supported the program's involvement in schools.
"I have been pleased to work with City Year this year to provide more small-group and one-on-one support to our students," Rhee said. "Especially in systems undergoing significant reform, I have seen directly how powerful quality one-on-one and small-group support can be in challenging our students to higher achievement levels."
Rhee has roots in such service efforts and was in one of the first classes of Teach for America in 1992. "When districts can engage in true partnerships to align reform initiatives with the support that organizations like City Year can provide, we see the enormous potential of our students transform into achievement," she said.
In April, President Obama signed a $5.7 billion national service act that will triple the size of AmeriCorps, the federal umbrella program that includes City Year.
Members of City Year's D.C. corps use mentoring and tutoring to raise the public school system's graduation rate. A study released last week by Education Week found that the on-time graduation rate for D.C. public school students fell to 48.8 percent in 2006. Other projects include an HIV/AIDS prevention team as part of an effort to address the city's high infection rate of 3 percent of residents, according to a new report by the District's HIV/AIDS office. The City Year team teaches middle and high school students about safe sex.
Central to City Year's philosophy is the use of "near peers," people young enough to be friends but old enough to be role models. That approach is considered crucial to improving struggling urban school districts, educators say.
City Year members can be recognized by their red jackets, but the organization recruits from diverse locations and demographics.
CAPTION: Education Secretary Arne Duncan shares a laugh with members of City Year at the group's national conference. (By Mark Gail -- The Washington Post)
Tamonie Villigran, 18, hails from the District and is a product of the city's public school system. She said she remembers City Year members in her schools. Erin Connell, 18, is from Haddonfield, N.J., where the public school graduation rate is near 100 percent. After high school, she said, she decided to do something different from her friends and postponed college to join City Year.
Once they are on the job, City Year corps members quickly learn that achieving results requires perseverance.
After the classroom success of his chess gambit, Buenafe brought in a Rubik's Cube. Every day for one month, he showed sixth-grader Keith Spriggs, 12, the sequences of how the cube moved. After many frustrating sessions, Keith had a breakthrough and solved the puzzle.
His mother, LaKisha Spriggs, said she remembers when Buenafe called to tell her the news. "I was so amazed," Spriggs said. "I think he can solve it in like a minute now. He takes his lunch breaks to do it. . . . I've never seen him as excited as he is with this."
Buenafe said he likes to explain the program to his family and friends with "The Starfish Story," a City Year motivational favorite. Thousands of starfish wash up on a beach, and a little girl throws them into the ocean one at a time. A man walks up to her and says, "Why bother? You can't save all of them." The little girl keeps throwing them and tells him, 'Yeah, but now I've just saved that one! And that one! And that one!" -- as she throws each one into the water.
Buenafe paused and said, "Keith with the Rubik's Cube was my starfish kid."