Living in Seattle certainly comes with a lot of perks. Coffee, ferries, mountains, biking and more. We believe helping thousands of students in Seattle Public Schools reach their full potential tops the list.
While Seattle is widely known for being a vibrant center for academia, business, tech and medicine, some students in Seattle face significant challenges every day. Our school district serves more than 15,000 students across 125 schools.
I served because I come from an under-resourced zip code, and my passion is to help other youth in underserved areas. It was a great privilege to witness the strength and resiliency in the youth and families I worked with. Today, I carry my City Year experience with me as a school social worker.
Jo-an Lanzaderas City Year Seattle/King County ’17
Your corps experience
City Year is a key partner to the Seattle Public Schools District (SPS) in creating equitable learning opportunities for all students and in developing the city’s future leaders. AmeriCorps members support teachers and staff in delivering instruction that serves the development of the whole child and is responsive to the diverse racial, cultural and linguistic needs of Seattle youth.
A close-knit community with ample opportunities to develop meaningful personal and professional relationships, Seattle is an ideal place to serve. SPS believes it is their responsibility to do whatever it takes to ensure that every child, regardless of race, gender, socioeconomic status, language proficiency, learning style or disability, achieves their highest level.
By engaging students, families and other community organizations, City Year Seattle helps to fight against systemic racism in our education system, striving to be an anti-racist youth centered organization and is proud to partner with SPS.
Serving in Seattle schools
Serve in one of ten elementary and middle schools throughout the Seattle area. The schools we serve in are part of vibrant and diverse communities—147 languages are spoken in SPS. You will work with students from many different cultures and background and work alongside committed, caring educators. The vast majority of our AmeriCorps members live in Southeast or Southwest Seattle, in the same neighborhoods as our students and families and take public transportation (provided free to AmeriCorps members) to service each day. Watch this short video to get an inside look at our work in Seattle:
Working on a team
Work with a committed and diverse group of 6–10 other City Year AmeriCorps members who share your passion for service and personal growth on your school team, along with a team leader, an AmeriCorps member who returned for a second year to help support first Year AmeriCorps members. You will also be supported by a program manager dedicated specifically to your school.
Our fantastic program managers (PMs) are staff members who lead each team of AmeriCorps members through their experience in service, partnering with school leadership to ensure that City Year Seattle is best serving students and school communities. PMs observe and coach AmeriCorps members in their work with students, meet regularly to discuss their service experience, and provide guidance for the team on whole school initiatives and activities. Our PM team is full of inspiring, passionate, committed individuals and makes Seattle a great place to learn and grow during your year of service.
Professional development
City Year Seattle provides our corps with four full weeks of training, including a hands-on practicum experience, before the school year begins. Professional development focuses on tutoring best practices, social-emotional learning, trauma-informed care, and more.
We also prioritize learning and growing in the topic of race and equity—what we consider our core work. All staff and AmeriCorps members will participate in five race and equity summits throughout the year, which includes race-based affinity groups. We believe that to best serve our students and families, this is crucial learning for all of us.
We also provide career readiness opportunities throughout the year, hosting grad school fairs, resume and interview workshops, and bring in leaders from various sectors to share their experience with AmeriCorps members. There are also a number of committees AmeriCorps can apply to join that give you an opportunity to see a different side of the non-profit world and creating programming for CYSKC, such as the race and equity committee, learning and development committee or ambassadors (supporting telling the City Year story to champions and donors in the community).
Community involvement
Create a positive climate of high expectations and engagement that ripples throughout the greater Seattle community, with opportunities to support other organizations and initiatives within the school district as a volunteer, attend events focused on important education issues, and connect with community leaders.
Over the last few years we have built a robust relationship with our partner schools, teachers, families and the community at large. We can’t wait to welcome you.
Today, we saw something that we don’t often see in America: accountability when Black life is taken at the hands of police.
As we, along with communities across the country, waited for this verdict to be announced, we have grappled with the deeply flawed system in which we live and operate: one where we hope for justice for a murder we all watched happen, but knowing that historically, a guilty verdict has rarely been delivered in similar cases.
Today feels like a much-needed step forward, but the work towards justice continues. We continue to stand with the family and friends of George Floyd, with the loved ones of Daunte Wright and countless others who have been killed at the hands of police before and since, and with the Black community.
Above all, we stand with our students, who are both witnessing and participating in this moment. We wrap ourselves in hope and action together with them, with our partners, and with each other in community, until the fact that Black Lives Matter is demonstrated in laws, policies, policing, and in education. We must do this together, in pursuit of a more just and more hopeful future for our students and for all of us.
Our #RipplesofHope Campaign starts April 26th-May 14th! This three-week fundraising campaign will be a virtual celebration of @cityyear’s work, during which we’ll share stories of impact from this year of innovative virtual service, spotlight our anti-racist values that drive our work in schools, and celebrate our amazing @americorps members who make this work possible!
And, mark your calendar for our first-ever City Year Town Hall on May 14th with guest speaker @ijeomaoluo, Seattle-based equity leader, and New York Times bestselling author of "So You Want to Talk about Race." During this conversation, and culminating event, we will explore issues on race and social justice, and discuss how City Year Seattle / King County advances education equity for Seattle students. All who donate to our Ripples of Hope campaign will be invited!
After months of hard work, we are happy to share our Civic Engagement team installed our "Beloved Community" murals at Wing Luke Elementary School. These murals were created with the help of City Year Champions at our annual MLK Day of Service in January and are the first piece of artwork to decorate the halls in the new building. What a beautiful way to welcome students back to school next week!
Special thanks to everyone who made this project possible, most notably Van Nguyen and Colleen Weinstein from @seattlepublicschools, Principal Mendoza, Assistant Principal Clark, the @cityyear team at Wing Luke, and our corporate sponsors at @talkingrainwaters, @starbucks, Russell Investments, and @kp_washington for supporting this event. THANK YOU!!!
Today we mourn the loss of eight lives at the hands of another emboldened gunman: Delaina Ashley Yaun, Paul Andre Michels, Xiaojie Yan, Daoyou Feng, and four more individuals we are waiting to learn more about.
As we've seen throughout history, much of the brunt of these targeted violent attacks falls onto BIPoC women; in this case, of the eight lives lost, six were Asian-American women.
These actions are intolerable.
Currently, there are mixed reports on the motivation of these heinous actions, much of which suggest that the attacks were racially motivated. This extreme violence comes at a moment in our country when we have seen an increase in anti-Asian violence and rhetoric over the past year, much of it targeting Asian women. These acts of hate are rooted in this country's deep history of racism and misogyny.
At City Year, we honor the identities of all who are a part of our community. And we recognize that actions like these seek to create a division in our communities. As an organization, we will continue to strive towards anti-racism and create space for ALL who want to walk this journey alongside us.
Please join us in holding the victims and their loved ones in your thoughts.
To take action, check out & support these organizations: @smithsonianapa @weareaanow @hateisavirus @stopaapihate and to report acts of violence visit stopaapihate.org
#repost @cityyearjax @cityyearnewyork
Statement by: @cityyear Office of Equity...
Congress just passed #COVID19 relief bill that includes $1B for @AmeriCorps.
Thank you @senpattymurray for taking a #Stand4Service and for the role #nationalservice has - & can - play in helping schools reopen and students recover from the loss of instructional time!
