Itchy Feet - A Tale Of One City (Year)

My thoughts ahead of starting my Service Year at City Year UK and basically why you should come and join us!

Itchy Feet - A Tale of One City (Year).

There’s a feeling that you when you’re waiting on the precipice of a bright, rich canyon of opportunity with a creek of the future lying underneath, just waiting for you to jump right in. The feeling of half knowing what’s ahead but being all for stumbling in the unknown.

That feeling, is what I like to call Itchy Feet. It’s that something restless under the surface of your skin; that something excited pulsing in your head that is about to just spring out and clasp around your heart. That dramatic old feeling – as I sit on my red jacket in this room, typing sentence – is what I’m feeling right now.

It’s been about 2 months of this feeling, the anticipation of being on the brink of something amazing because it’s been 2 months since I was told that I got my Dream Job and now I’m waiting for my DBS to process with a lump in my throat and still, this feeling.

My name is Frankie Turner and I will proudly serve on the Imagination Team as a City Year UK Corps Member and this is my Dream Job. It’s not what I thought I’d do when I was a kid but I’ll be helping kids that might not even think that there’s something they CAN do. And I’m certainly not making mounds of money – I’m a Full-time Volunteer – but that matters even less, because cliché as it sounds, a job can be payment enough.

City Year is a Charity that is working towards educational equality. They support and grow young leaders to be near-peer mentors for kids in disadvantaged situations and help them get the best out of school, whilst helping us get the best out of our service year. When I can go into school I’ll be working 1:1 and with groups in lessons and interventions; playing games and helping them socialise at breaks; devising and running after school clubs and being there for the pupils throughout the year. These may be kids that don’t get spoken to. They may be kids at the back of the room that wouldn’t say Boo to a Goose. They may be the kids that are chucking chairs or shouting the odds. They might be kids with tricky home lives or finance or learning difficulties but they’re ALL kids that deserve the best that we can offer them.

They are all kids that DESERVE to be kids.

And that is something that I need to etch into my brain when I’m shaking and nervous and freaking out because I’m scared that the kids won’t like me or I’ll re-live my own childhood. When I don’t quite know what to say because, I’ll be honest here, I’ve never seen Peppa Pig and still has a strong attachment to the Tweenies. Because those are the times when I need to remember what I’ll be doing this for.

What we’re all doing this for. Be it motivated by personal experience of being thought dumb or seeing yourself as antisocial or being frustrated in every class because it just wasn’t going in – we’ll be there because every kid deserves an equal education.

So that is why my feet are itching raw and I feel all jumpy and I asked if I was dreaming when I was told this would be my year – because when the paperwork comes through, I’ll be plunging into something incredible!

So why not help us change the World?

http://www.cityyear.org.uk/