SEATTLE — On this -- the last day for City Year at Emerson Elementary School -- they began on a very high note.
Students running a gauntlet of cheering classmates through the school's front door.
Turns out that's how they have begun every day at the South Seattle school since the debut there of AmeriCorps' City Year, a national program which Microsoft helps fund.
It provides mostly recent college graduates as support, to help keep kids in impoverished neighborhoods in school.
Hannah DeWeerth joined City Year in Atlanta.
"That unconditional love they have," says DeWeerth. "That's what makes me want to get up out of bed every morning and be here and knowing how great and compassionate they are."
Sam Feldman-Greene joined in Los Angeles.
"I think sometimes we count out students who are so young," Feldman-Greene said. "And it's just not the case. They're smart. They have amazing ideas."
There was plenty of evidence of that, especially when a very earnest 3rd grader, Jaden Vuong, reminded Feldman-Greens of this: "When I asked you that question in that classroom, 'can you be City Year' again and you said no, because it's a 'one time job.' How about you give yourself a wig and then you pretend to be girl."
Vikas Kamran, consulting company CEO and a City Year board member, says he was once one of those kids.
"It's that village," said Kamran, who runs Revel. "And with City Year, the Corps members are here every day and if they see someone going off track, they get them right back on track."
Graduation usually means the end of something.
But in this case, the year that these students have spent at Emerson means the start of a new life -- and a new way of looking at education for the kids they have touched.
KIRO
