round tables

Round tables are one of my favorite things to do as a Project Leader.  It's basically an hour or so of you talking about yourself and City Year! What could be better? This morning, I was asked to join in a meeting with two administrators from Jackson, as well as two Teach For America representatives, Ashlee, Jay and our guest of honor.  Gary Chartrand, our guest, is on the founding committee for City Year Jacksonville and helped bring TFA and the KIPP school to Jacksonville.

Jay prepped with me in the morning before the meeting.  He went over my testimonial and gave me a  little background into our meeting.  I was supposed to talk about what a day in the life of a corps member is like at school and about specific students I've worked with.  When we got to school, I waited in the board room while Jay showed Gary around.

Once the meeting started, Gary had a lot of questions for Principal Wright and the other administrator, Ms. Crady about how all of the partnerships that Jackson has with other organizations work together.  I didn't really get to talk until the end of the meeting, where I talked about my relationship that I've formed with a lot of my students and how they really like City Year.

Even though I didn't talk for most of the meeting, it was really interesting.  It was like a peak behind the curtains of everything that goes on backstage at school.  Principal Wright is hilarious and not afraid to speak her own mind.  Overall, it was a really good meeting and I think the guest of honor, Gary, really liked all of the stuff he heard.

Adrienne, Joe and I celebrated a good day (or commiserated a bad day in Joe's case) by going to wine tasting at a local coffee shop/bar a few blocks from our house. They have it on the first Tuesday of every month.  It was only $5 for five "glasses" of wine.  It was pretty bad wine, but we played Scrabbled, listened to the singer performing,  It was a good end to the day.

We're continuing data chats tomorrow, so the day should be pretty relaxed.  Fingers crossed!

"Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy. "
Benjamin Franklin