manager

student mentor

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City Year

- Note: experiences in this program are so variable because of the huge range of work-environments shaped by your school placement, the school's relationship with City Year, your team dynamics, and your relationship with your partner teacher. My experience was as follows.
- Wonderful, beautiful co-workers who I learned a lot from ( I am talking about the four other corps members working at the same school as me, NOT referring to management or team leader)
- Unlivable pay if you live on your own and/or don't have family supporting you financially
- Insane hours, workload, and expectations. As corps members we were responsible for working with our designated classroom and students during the school day and then planning and executing an after-school program every day. I left my apartment around 6am and got home around 7pm. We were expected to have thorough lesson plans for each activity and if they didn't go as planned we had to have a plan regarding how to improve next time. Our team leader and management were critical of us and often insinuated that we were not working hard enough, while they did none/very little of the actual hard work (i.e. working with students). This power dynamic was upsetting. 
- There was a lack of trust between my partner teacher and City Year. It was the first year that City Year was partnering with this school, and I came into the program mid-year to fill in for someone who had quit the position. This made it hard for me to be of any value in the classroom because the teacher basically just wanted me to stay out of the way. I ended up trying to help students who the teacher ignored and gave up on during group work. Not sure if I did anything helpful. 
- Poor training coupled with unclear pedagogical model. There were lesson-plans and exams designed by City Year that we were supposed to administer to show student growth. Students are already required to take state standardized tests so why demand more standardized testing using a different model? We were never granted an explanation. We were also told during training that City Year had its own lesson plans designed for our break-out groups to follow along their pedagogical model and align with their tests. However, for 8th grade math they only had lesson plans for the first few months because the person who was writing them left the company. So I was expected to make my own lesson plans, though unclear about what the students should be learning. I constantly felt like I was failing the students and possibly making things worse. So I ended up not pulling students out for break-out groups very much and focused on being of assistance in my partner teacher's classroom. I tried to hide this from my team leader and management because when I did try to discuss it with them they were upset that I was not following City Year protocol, but did not help me come up with practical solutions. 
- Unsurprisingly, and as already discussed, management is utterly disconnected from what we do, but somehow responsible for advising and critiquing us. I felt extremely unsupported. The advice they gave me regarding how to manage my break-out math groups usually made things worse. They also wanted me to be more proactive with classroom management when I was assisting in my partner teacher's class, but my partner teacher did not have those expectations of me. I do not know why we needed to be evaluated by people who didn't even talk to the head teacher in the room or understand the dynamics of day-to-day class. 
- The program tries to instill a City Year culture through these weird workshops, ceremonies, and events. It felt like a very fake way to try and make employees loyal to the mission. Also some of the activities and events my team leader made us do made me uncomfortable. Sometimes it felt like we were at a slumber party, playing games like Never Have I ever, for the sake of "team bonding." Other times it encroached on my privacy. For example, for each corps member at my school, my team leader secretly contacted our family (for me my parents and sister) to create a surprise video that was basically them telling me how proud they were of me. We were supposed to feel good about this act, but it made me upset. I do not think it was appropriate for them to reach out to my family without discussing with me. 

While the work with students is very rewarding, I would not recommend working at City Year Milwaukee, for a number of reasons. 
First, they claim to be research-based and data-driven, but few people are knowledgeable in research methods and most do not know how to read and interpret data. They throw a bunch of numbers at you without understanding basics, like that correlation doesn't equal causation, or that methods that are valid with younger children don't necessarily apply to older students. 
Second, City Year focuses on Attendance, Behavior, and Course-work. Here's what this actually means: 
*Attendance: you're given a list of 4 students who have been identified from previous years as having potential attendance issues (students' circumstances change a lot, so relying on previous years is an unreliable way to identify students). They don't even try to identify those with chronic absences - only those who are at 80-90%. Once you've got your list, you are supposed to check in with them twice a week. There is no designated time for this, so you'll find yourself trying to chase them down in the lunchroom when they'd prefer hanging out with friends, so they don't want to talk to you. If you do manage to talk to them, there's little guidance on what to say. You'll say something about them going to class, they'll say that they do, and then you're supposed to set a goal for the week. You don't have time, nor are you given the training, to teach them how to improve. It's just "you should get better" followed by their failure to get better. 
*Behavior: Very similar to attendance. You aren't given the time or resources to actually educate your students. The students who are identified are those you feel close to, and you're supposed to rate their behaviors every month. The whole process is very susceptible to researcher biases. And there is never time to actually talk to them. 
*Course-work: You're given a focus list of students, not those who need the most help, but those who are average or just below. You're supposed to design lesson plans for them but aren't given guidance on what topics you should cover. City Year is more concerned with following formats than with having coherent lesson plans that make sense. As long as you have an objective, an "I do/we do/you do" and an exit ticket, your lesson plan is considered good, regardless of the content. 

Third, management is a joke. Most of the managers are corps members who stayed for second and third years at city year. They have little training and experience and are completely and totally inflexible. This is particularly problematic given the dynamic challenges of the work we do. When corps members offer solutions and strategies to improve the work, they are dismissed, partially because management doesn't feel powerful enough to implement any changes, and partially because it would be too much work on their end. 

Finally, the culture is oppressive and ridiculous. They treat you like a child and make you do chants, hand wavings, and weird rituals. It's basically a cult. If you do not conform to their "culture," you are ostracized and threatened, even if you are a fully competent worker. They claim to value social justice, inclusivity, and idealism, but reject anyone who dares to be different. When confronted with their hypocrisy, upper management has said that values don't really matter. 

I loved working with the students, helping them, and building relationships with them, but I would suggest looking elsewhere to do so. Someplace that emphasizes the work they do more than the culture.

Thinking about applying to City Year? DON'T DO IT.

I became a corps member shortly after I graduated from college and it remains the worst decision I've made in my life. I was a newly minted graduate from a nearby liberal arts college and I wanted to do some good in the world (as you've probably guessed, I was also really naive). I'd always been interested in educational issues and because I was a history major who didn't quite know what to do next, I thought it would be cool to spend a year in a school tutoring while I figured everything out.

That was a big mistake. For me the strangest thing about City Year is the level of contempt it had for education. Many corps members and staffers have never gone to college (some don't even have high school diplomas), and many cannot read or do math above a third or fourth grade level. There is no reading or math test given to CIty Year applicants and the City Year site has no problem placing a tutor who can barely add fractions into an eighth grade math classroom. More than once, I'd see a child actually correct their tutor on their math or tell their tutor they were pronouncing a word wrong. It's a shame, because City Year promises these schools that their tutors will help bring up test scores and providing these classrooms with illiterate tutors really damages the cause.

How unqualified are City Year tutors? One corps member on my team once wrote an entire essay without using a SINGLE VERB. Sample sentence: "My mom my hero because she strong." I'm not making this up. City Year being City Year, any corps member that criticized that fact that many corps members were unqualified were berated and told that they were hurting City Year's mission. (Notice how City Year thinks a college graduate who criticizes the organization's methods is more damaging to the organization's mission than a tutor who would write a sentence like that. It says it all really.)

City Year also has no problem letting its corps members and staff design lesson plans that are at best ineffective and at worst factually incorrect. Would you want your kid to do a lesson designed by a 19-year-old high school dropout? (Keep in mind that no one actually fact-checks the lesson plans.)

And then there's the culture of the organization. I found many City Year corps members (and a huge number of the staff) to be extremely homophobic, sexist and generally intolerant. Management turned a blind eye to it all, because they were more concerned with the organization's image than with the quality of life of their employees and addressing the homophobia problem would actually require acknowledging that there was a problem to begin with. (And City Year did not provide any training about homophobia or sexual harrassment to its managers or employees, which sounds like something that would happen in the 1970s, and not in the 2000s.)

Absenteeism was also a big problem at City Year, but no one in management really did anything about it. If City Year management likes you, you can basically do whatever you want without any consequences. However if a corps member points out that the rules are not consistently applied, they will be punished, even if your work in the classroom is stellar.

I hope this review encourages other former corps members to speak out about the insane practices that go on at the City Year Greater Philadelphia site. If I could go back in time and advise my 22-year-old self, I'd tell her to just get a 9-5 job and volunteer with Philadelphia Cares on the weekends. If I had done so, I would have saved myself a lot of grief.

City Year exploits corps members who are college graduates to the point that it borders on abuse, (While the corps officially boasts of its "diverse corps" consisting of college graduates, high school dropouts, kids taking a year off, etc), the truth is that if you don't feel like working hard (or at all), no one at City Year will force you to do so. There is no such thing as accountability. I found that it often fell to to the college graduates to pick up the slack. There were points when my college grad/college-bound co-workers and I were in the Philadelphia office until 11 at night because each one of us was expected to do the work of 2-3 people. The rest of the team would literally go home and party while we worked. Anyone who complained was called negative and accused of "not being a team player" or "not caring about the children." Which was ridiculous, because the only thing that keeps City Year's hardest workers going are the children in the schools we work in.

Also, because corps members don't have to meet any academic standards before being hired, it is not unusual to see corps members design lesson plans that are factually incorrect. (For example, during my corps year, a group of senior corps members designed a lesson plan about the world's 4 largest religions and the organizers incorrectly said Buddhism came in at number 3. This is incorrect, the answer is Hinduism. When I pointed this out, I was chewed out and told I was being negative.)

If I could advise City Year management, I'd tell them the following:

Please get rid of the Scientology-esque culture and weird evangelism. A legendary American political figure had a major surgery during my corps year and all corps members were REQUIRED to sign a get-well card for him. It was just creepy and the only reason we were required to do it was because City Year wanted this particular politician's political support. (As I was signing it, I distinctly remember thinking, "I feel like I'm in North Korea writing a message to the Dear Leader.")

Please require that all incoming corps members take a writing and math test before being hired, It's ridiculous that City Year places 18-24 year olds who can barely read or do math into high schools. (I knew several corps members who couldn't read beyond a 5th grade level (if that), and don't get me started on math comprehension.) How does placing these people in inner-city schools solve the so-called "drop-out crisis?"

Please get a real HR Department that knows how to deal with issues like harassment and homophobia.

Please treat your corps members with respect. My project manager was emotionally abusive to us and when it was brought to the attention of management, leadership was more concerned about sweeping the issue under the rug than actually addressing the problem.

Related: Please also give your project managers some managerial training, especially on how to be sensitive to people of non-Abrahamic religions, people of color, and the LGBT community.

Stop expanding. Part of the reason City Year is so insane is because sites set unrealistic recruitment goals. The Philadelphia site literally hires people off of the street to fill their quotas each September. I'd rather have a committed, literate corps of 75-100 young people than a corps of 300 that was mostly composed of dead weight.

A typical day at City year would start off really early and end really late exceeding the 8 hours as we not only invest time in making a difference in childrens' lives but also meeting community needs. Every morning we had to greet students as they walk into the doors to gear them up for a positive and energetic start of the day. Then, we would go to the assigned classes and assist students individually and in groups meanwhile ensuring that they are attentive and well behaved with their teachers. After school, we would hold after school programs such as Homework help and test prep, College readiness workshops, extracurricular activities, or else we would be cleaning up the playground, auditorium, and whatever space available so that we can plan for different activities students can be a part of.
While in City Year, I have learned to be a diplomatic individual approaching tough situations with calm and patience. Moreover, I have learned to be detail oriented and organized in order to take on initiatives and implement change.
As far as management, there were good established relationships between me and my supervisor and team leader. They always trusted that I would follow through with the instructions and worked on assigned tasks as required. My co-workers were a blend of different ages and personalities, yet we managed to come together strong by building on our team dynamics and working with each others' strengths and weaknesses.
The hardest part of my job was to keep insisting on those students that just didn't care about graduating. It was simply tough to keep them on the right track while they had no inspiration or perspective for their future. However, this part was also the most enjoyable part of the job as well as, it was challenging yet rewarding to get down to students' level and establish some sort of peer relationship with them so as to help them get on track. It was interesting to learn about each and every one of them, their background, and it was sort of playing Child Psychiatry as their needs brought me closer to them and urged me to insist on bringing their positivity and perspectives back to life.

A typical day in City Year depends on the grade level (elementary, middle, or high school), the site location you are placed at (by city), and how long the program has been around in that location. Overall, you are tutoring students, creating lesson plans of your own in your assigned subject (math/literacy), and collaborating with teachers and school staff to provide programs and other resources for the school body that they otherwise would not receive.

As someone who worked with City Year San Jose/Silicon Valley for two years, the first year at an elementary school and the second year at a first-year partnership with a high school, there were vast differences in my perspective and experiences. 

More commonly than not at my site in Silicon Valley the elementary school sites have it the hardest because there is a lot expected from the Corps members with minimal support and training. 

The coworkers on your assigned team, you learn to love at some point because the work is some laborious it brings people together. The management lacks in supporting their team, I believe, in part because they themselves do not have the much needed guidance and support from the higher-ups they need to effectively and effeciently manage. There's a blatant lack of transparency and empathy between manager and corps member, likely because of the pressure to perform their specific duties as managers, which are often unseen and unnoticed. 

The hardest part isn't tutoring or necessarily even coming up with lesson plans. The hardest part is the high expectation to do our duties, adapt to irrelevant changes, and focus on making change in the lives of the students we serve under the harsh conditions of long hours with low pay, few days off, lack of emotional support and lack of guidance. 

Because of such high employee (Corps Member) dissatisfaction, it's hard to believe City Year's Silicon Valley site will last even 5 more years. 

The enjoyable part of City Year is strictly the students, getting to know them, and interact with them, and inspire them as they grow to become capable and socially aware humans.

City Year was the worst job I've ever had, and I've held several positions at non-profit community based organizations.

I served as a corps member at an at-risk inner city middle school in East Harlem.  I worked with a group of very bright and hardworking individuals, with whom I still remain in touch to this day.  The organization culture was interesting, as they made us line up in parks to do jumping jacks and shout out company mantras over and over again.  We had to wear red oversized (or undersized) uniforms that sported the logo everywhere we went.  We did silly dances during conference meetings and in public.  I get it.  It was to create a prominent and cohesive identity, one that would be recognized everywhere we went.  But none of this bothered me that much.  I was open-minded and gave it a try.  

What bothered me was the inefficacy of the management and of the programs.  At the end of the day, these people did not truly care about the students and did not care about their corps members.  We worked 60 hour work weeks and were compensated with a stipend that was way less than minimum wage.  They even encouraged us all to go on welfare and food stamps in the name of community service.  The programs did not prove to be effective, and students suffered as a result.  Corps members' morale began to sink toward the middle and end of the year and management did nothing to offer support except hold inane meetings where they did not take our opinions into account anyway.  The data tracking system was also severely outdated.

I don't mind community service.  In fact, I have a history of community service, but when I tried asking for changes to be made to the programs, my ideas went unheard and unnoticed.  Management later apologized to me, but it was too late.  My service year was over, and I could do nothing to improve a system that was bent on creating a cult mentality that it lost sight of its true mission, which was to ensure the academic success of students with low socioeconomic backgrounds or those that had fallen through the system's cracks. It truly broke my heart to leave knowing that I could not help these students.

The day began at 6:45 am and did not end until 5:00 pm or later. The days were packed with small group instruction focusing on Math or ELA, behavior interventions, and event planning for student engagement. I worked with a small team of ten people, including my manager, at the lowest high school in Duvall's district. In addition to my educational responsibilities I was also in charge of reaching out and engaging our team's corporate partner, Acosta. This was not an easy job, perhaps the hardest year of my life. Working ten to twelve hours while living on a government stipend while juggling the emotional struggles and upsets of the twenty or so ninth grade boys assigned to me by the district, was not easy. However, I found that at the end of my service year leaving the kids and the community I had invested in was truly the hardest part of my year. My service year changed me. I learned to manage myself while balancing numerous responsibilities in an ever-changing educational environment, while holding certain values and morals to be a quality mentor to my students. I would not have made it through this job were it not for the leadership and friendship I developed with my team. Working in such a stress fueled environment everyday for long hours can be taxing, and it certainly was. There were many afternoons where the team was near choked out by the agitation they felt for one another, but those moments never lasted and didn't dare tamper with our mission. We became a family and leaned and carried each other throughout the year, a bond that I did not expect to blossom. When looking back on the year I feel my most enjoyable moments were the quiet ones. The little moments when one of my students would pull me aside and say, "Mr. Goins, can we talk?" and then we would walk around the school and while he talked and I listened. Those moments of trust, of friendship, of brotherhood, got me through every harsh day where sleep depravation threatened to over take me or when my lesson plan just wouldn't come together. It was always during those moments when I was reminded about why I was there.

Focused on increasing attendance, decreased behavior altercations, and improving academic course performance. In/out of class tutored a classroom total of 32 6th grade girl students for 45hrs/week; direct individualized attention for 18 students in Math, SEL, Literacy and Attendance. Improved math grades, Attendance and SEL behavior for 75% of “Focus List” students from September to January through in class help or small group instruction 4 hrs/week, differentiated lesson plans to accommodate different learning styles and collaboration with all 5 teachers to insure the special needs of each student. When City Year is not in the classroom with students, we had days where we did multiple things, such as team building with the team assigned with you at your school (my team had 22 people), attending informational workshops (Literacy, Social Emotional Learning, Math, and attendance) to help improve our work at schools. City Year is full of diversity, with 489 Corps members in Philadelphia there's about every different culture, race. I loved working at City Year due to the different kinds of people I've met there. I have learned so many different things. I enjoyed working around children and being the role model needed to make a difference. The hardest part of my job was balancing work and life. I found myself always working from home on my time off. if it was making lesson plans, math/SEL/Attendance/Literacy interventions, or meeting deadlines assigned by City Year such as Self evaluations or surveys. It was always something to be done. During the regular school day there was little to no time to get those things done having to be with your students all day and providing 4hours of individual tutoring for the students on my focus list (18 students) a week. Overall I enjoyed being a role model, but this is something you have to dedicate your personal life to.

Overall, my experience at City Year was rewarding! I personally enjoyed my time, but I will say that CY is not for everyone. You truly have to be committed, resilient, and selfless to do this job because there is no work/life balance. You literally eat, breath, and sleep City Year. City Year becomes your life. You're there so early and leave so late that you are physically, emotionally, and mentally exhausted. 

I worked for City Year Los Angeles, which I hear is the most strict CY operation. There are a lot deadlines and unnecessary paperwork. Be prepared to be challenged. There were also a lot of restrictions with things we could and could not do. I don't know if it was management or Americorps.

The hardest part of the job was the long hours and low pay. It's criminal how hard we work and the low pay we receive. Corps members work over 50 hours a week and receive $282. You're literally getting paid half of minimum wage. 

In terms of the students, the hard part of trying to get them motivated when they don't care at all... and there's no much you can do or say to change that.

The most enjoyable part of the job was getting to know my students and getting attached to them. I'm not the type of person that loves easily and get attached but I did at this job. I loved my students and my teammates. I became best friends with one of my teammates and the rest are truly lifelong friends. 

There are definitely perks to the job. I got to go to cool events and meet a lot of celebrities such as the cast of Empire, iCarly, Modern Familiy, Justin Beiber, Michael B. Jordan, Jessica Biel...etc. 

P.S. be prepared to sing, dance, and chant. 


Schedule 
7am- report to school (cannot be late) 
7:30am- sing songs to students or any other morning enrichment. 
8am - provide in-class tutoring 
12pm- hang out withs students at lunch
12:30pm - more in-class tutoring
3:20-4:45 - after school tutoring program
4:45-5:30 - training 
5:30-5:50pm - final circle (meeting)

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Manager 6 salaries reported	$52,917 per year
Student mentor 27 salaries reported	$2,040 per month
Americorps member 1 salary reported	$1,600 per month
Career coach 4 salaries reported	$1,968 per month
Director 3 salaries reported	$80,167 per year

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