Tag Archives: City Year Los Angeles

Interview with Marc Schlief: Taking Service from LA to Boston

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By Jennifer (JJ) Javier, City Year AmeriCorps member serving on the MFS Investment Management Team at the Dever-McCormack Upper School.

Not too long ago, at the beginning of the year, a few of us from the MFS Investment Management Team serving at the Dever-McCormack Upper School were in our red City Year uniforms, waiting anxiously for a train. All of a sudden we hear, “Yeah! City Year!” We all turn and a young gentleman walks up to us, grinning from ear to ear. “I served in City Year Los Angeles!” he said. Being a native Californian, this excited me to no end. I instantly wanted this person to be my friend. We encouraged him to attend City Year Boston’s Opening Day at English High School and he ended up serving on my project, painting a set of bleachers.

Since then, Marc has been involved with City Year Boston by volunteering on more service projects. He is also a student here in Waltham at Bentley University, one of City Year’s Give-A-Year scholarship sponsors, and continues to help City Year by hosting info sessions on campus.

Marc served in City Year Los Angeles in 2010-2011 in a fourth grade classroom at Malabar Elementary School in Boyle Heights. I sit down with the alumnus to ask about his City Year experience and how it helped set him apart.

What is your favorite memory from City Year Los Angeles?

I was a math and literacy coordinator and one of my favorite moments was when I threw my first whole school event – Nightmare on Malabar. It was a Halloween-themed math event that involved parents, community members, students, teachers, faculty and staff. I was overwhelmed for weeks planning it, but it was amazing to see my team’s hard work come together for the hundreds of people that came. The second I saw the kids having fun – it was all worth it. To get parents and kids to come to an event after school in a neighborhood where that wasn’t the norm at all was incredible to see.

What did you take away from serving at City Year? 

I took a lot of things away from my year. I’m a computer science major and a lot of people ask me what that has to do with tutoring kids for a year. I’ve been interviewing for internships recently and everything from working on a diverse team, to being incredibly detail-oriented is directly relevant to any job I’ll ever have…interviewers always have so many questions about my experience. The perspective I’ve gained from the year and the ability to take a step back and look at situations with a neutral point of view has also been huge – working on a team with people from all over the country and from different backgrounds really changed how Continue reading →

A Mentor for Myself

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City Year corps members strive to serve as powerful mentors to the students they reach in schools around the city.  Many of them are fortunate enough to have had strong mentors in their own lives who have helped them get to where they are today.  Below is team leader serving at the Irving Middle School, Elvia Sornoza’s story about a strong mentor that she has had and how that mentor has influenced her life.
2010-2011 corps members Laura Coleman (left) and Elvia Sornoza (right) with program manager Dan Foley at graduation on June 11, 2011.

2010-2011 corps members Laura Coleman (left) and Elvia Sornoza (right) with program manager Dan Foley at graduation on June 11, 2011.

When I began my first year of service with City Year Los Angeles, I knew that I would make a difference in the lives of others and become the mentor my students needed. What I didn’t realize was that in the process, I would find a mentor for myself as well.  I feel that my year as a corps member truly challenged me and led me to develop as a person and a leader, and it was through the guidance of my program manager, Dan Foley, that I saw the potential in myself.

At the beginning of my City Year, I was very shy and kept to myself most of the time. I was always amazed by the wonderful people that surrounded me; I felt that I was placed on a team with great leaders that could do anything, but for some reason I just didn’t feel that way about myself. I went through the first half of my year without taking advantage of very many leadership opportunities because I felt that others on my team were more capable of leading.  During a mid-year meeting with Dan, I expressed my hesitations and admitted that I hadn’t really felt ownership over any of our team’s previous projects.  He looked a little confused and asked me, “Why?”  I didn’t really have an answer for him, but he challenged me to lead our team’s next project, which happened to be our parent orientation. I took the project on because I saw that Dan believed in me and knew that I was fully capable of making our parent orientation a success.  Now I just had to believe it for myself.

As the year went on, I opened up to my team and took on more leadership opportunities. Parent orientation was just the first of many other projects I successfully led throughout the year.  I was able to gain confidence in myself because I felt constantly supported, reassured, motivated, and empowered to do anything and everything by my program manager.  Dan is one of the most committed, invested, caring, selfless, dependable, motivated, determined, and dynamic individuals I’ve ever met, who is an inspiration to not only me but his entire team from last year.  I told him many times, “I want to be like you.”  His response was always the same: “Don’t be like me, be better than me.”