Category: student

New York City, student, writing

Looking for 20 College Students to Write Essays for CentralPark.com

Christa Avampato
A picture I snapped in Central Park over the weekend.
A picture I snapped in Central Park over the weekend.

I just started a new project for CentralPark.com. I am curating 20 essays about Central Park written by college students. Essays will be roughly 500 words and can be about any aspect of Central Park. The essays can be from a wide variety of angles – a treasured memory of the park, the meaning of Central Park to the student, a recent event or experience the student had in Central Park, the history of the park, etc. Do you know a college student who is a good writer and interested in submitting a piece for consideration? Please send them my way – christa.avampato@gmail.com. Thank you!

student, teaching, yoga

Beginning: Meet Your Students Where They Are

Christa Avampato
Yoga teacher Rodney Yee and one of his students

“Go to the people. Live with them. Learn from them. Start with what they know; build with what they have. But with the best of leaders, when the work is done, the task accomplished, the people will say, we have done this ourselves.” ~Lao Tzu

Teaching isn’t about the teacher; it’s about the student. There’s no trick to teaching. No silver bullet. No magic. It only requires our awareness and willingness to be there for students. What does he or she need right at this moment? What can we offer to serve that end?

The best teachers I know step back so the student can shine. It’s about the cause (their students) and not the credit (their egos.) It requires great confidence and generosity to teach. When we’re that present our preconceived notions get tossed aside in favor of our intuition, our gut.

We have to give our students room to build their own experience while giving them the support that instills confidence in their own abilities. It’s this delicate balance between space and support that makes for a masterful teacher. (Thank you to one of my teachers, Arturo Peal, for that message.) And it’s that balance that helps students to rise above and beyond their own circumstances.

This is the point of all teaching – to help others rise.

student, teaching, yoga

Beginning: A Letter to My Yoga Students

Christa Avampato

Yesterday I wrote a post about the importance of figuring out whom your business or organization serves and why you’re the ideal person to fulfill that need for your stakeholders. In it, I partially described the type of yoga student whom we focus our efforts on at Compass Yoga. I got a few emails that asked me to elaborate on that topic so I decided to write an open letter to those students. Letters are a favorite form factor of mine in writing. They are powerful, personal, and heart-felt. Some say we’ve lost the art of letter writing in our society. If that’s the case, then I mean to bring it back. (On this blog, I’ve written letters to President Obama and My Younger Self.) 

Dear Students – past, present, and future,
      I’ve been working on gaining the skills to help you by examining my own life and focusing on my own healing. The healthier I am, the more I have to give to you. It took me a long time to learn that lesson, and for that I apologize. I wish I could have been available to help you sooner though healing happens on its own schedule and of its own accord. In this journey I learned that every moment unfolds exactly as it should, and in that revelation I have been able to find and feel real forgiveness, of myself and others.

      You are at the beginning of a brave and courageous journey that will lead you home to you, to your true essence. Congratulations on your quest for authenticity. Stop for a moment and celebrate that enormous step. It takes a lot of gumption to go in search of you; revel in the fact that you are embarking on a project that everyone should undertake and few ever do. You are to be celebrated for having the strength to even try.

      This road is not easily traveled. There are pitfalls and mountainous climbs. Some days will be smooth sailing, and others will be wrought with difficulty. I will be with you through all of it. I can’t tell you what to do or why or for how long; I can promise you that I will show up every day with everything I have. You will always have my focus and my compassion. We will walk this road together, and we will both be better off for it. I promise you that it will all be okay.  

      You may have some type of illness, mental or physical. You may be dealing with the heaviness of life in its many forms. You may need to find your way after a long period of wandering. Your age, physical or mental condition, race, religion, ethnicity, marital status, and socioeconomic circumstances do not define you in my eyes, nor in my heart. Come as you are and make yourself at home next to me. People have told you to try yoga or meditation or some other kind of mindful practice. You’ve decided it’s time to give it a shot and you are wondering where and how and with whom to begin. You have come to the right person, in the right place, at the right time. I am for you because I have been in your shoes and I know how it feels to begin this journey to healing.

       Take a comfortable seat, close your eyes, and breathe. This is where we begin and end, breathing in and breathing out, respectively. Welcome. I’m so glad you’re here, just as you are.

Love,
Christa

career, choices, school, student

Beginning: The Process and Product of a Career

Christa Avampato

A friend of mine recently asked me for some advice on how to get into the kind of work I do. I’m currently a product developer in the mobile space, and my first question to her was, “Why do you want to do this kind of work?” She was a little surprised though my interest in the answer was very genuine. She talked about how much she loves technology and how much it does for us to help keep us connected. That’s the end product, and I wanted to know what work, day-to-day, she really enjoyed doing.

The wow of an end-product and the work that goes into making that product are two very different things. I think losing sight of this idea leads many people to jobs they end up disliking. (Though the stats vary widely from study to study, it’s estimated that between 60% and 80% of Americans dislike their jobs.) This is completely understandable – it’s a fine nuance to get our heads around. I started out at Penn as an undergraduate in the engineering school. I loved science and math all through school, and so I thought engineering would blend the two nicely. Plus, I loved the end products of engineering.

I was quickly very unhappy in my classes. I hated the actual work of engineering. What I found I loved was understanding the engineers themselves. How could they possibly sit by themselves in labs for so many long hours. Didn’t they want to talk to anyone? I was fascinated by their focus.

It took me a long time to learn what careers were really for me – those that involve understanding the human mind and the choices we make. I love people and knowing what makes them tick. I want to know why when confronted with choices A, B, and C, they go for C under one set of circumstances and B under another set of circumstances, or even more interestingly, why they sometimes make no choice at all. And then I like to see how those choices impact their lives and the lives of those around them. (After I realized this interest of mine, I became a double major in Economics and History with a minor in Psychology. These are areas of study that all pivot around the psychology of choice, my favorite subject.)

So if you’re looking to start a new career, or you’re trying to understand how on Earth you got yourself into a career that really isn’t for you, my advice is to focus on process. Don’t be so concerned with what you’re creating; consider the act of creation that’s most exciting for you. Don’t let what you’ll be overshadow what you’ll actually do. A career is an action more than it is a title.

education, learning, student, teaching, yoga

Step 286: Teaching to Improve Ourselves and Our Students

Christa Avampato

“Teaching is the greatest act of optimism.” ~ Colleen Wilcox

I thought about this quote on Monday night as I wrapped up my second yoga class at Columbia Law School. I was more familiar with the space this time, brought some new music, and recognized some repeat students. Teaching requires improvisation. We explain something a specific way, see if the meaning is registering with the students, and if not, we try something else. No time for judgment. We’ve got to get better with each moment. Teachers constantly seek to improve themselves and their students. It is an act of constant faith in our ability, in the journey, and in one another.

With each yoga class I teach, I find myself walking in and thinking “I want this to be the best class I’ve ever given.” Usually it falls short of my expectations, no matter how much effort I put into it. I always end up jotting down a page of notes that detail things I could have done better. I take that page and plow into the next class, confident that there will always be another page of improvements from that next class. The cycle of continuous improvement never ends in teaching. It is the gift that truly keeps on giving so long as we keep showing up.

community service, education, New York City, student

Step 253: Get Involved with Student Sponsor Partners and Change the Life of a New York City High School Student

Christa Avampato

I respect and admire nonprofits that create a huge impact in the world by making it easy for volunteers to make a difference. On Thursday, I went to a presentation by Margaret Minson and Faith Botica of Student Sponsor Partners (SSP), a nonprofit that helps at-risk, high-potential public middle school students get a private high school education in New York City. SSP pays the great majority of the tuition for the students while also providing them with a personal mentor to help them through their 4 years of high school at a private school. The results are impressive – 90% of SSP students go on to college. SSP currently has 1,400 students enrolled and over 4,500 graduates.

Mentors meet with their students about once per month, many times through SSP organized events where all of the SSP mentors and students get together. The content of the mentoring runs the gamut from help with school work, career, and college admissions to personal issues with friends, family, and relationships. Mentors play a critical role in the student’s life as 75% of them come from single parent homes in which those parents are working round-the-clock to provide for their families. The students often go without an adult who can guide them and mentor them through their high school years. That’s where SSP Mentors step in. Without SSP, most of these students would surely fall between the cracks and never even realize, much less achieve their potential.

Being a Mentor is an incredible opportunity to truly make a difference in the life of New York City high school students. Because of the incredible corporate sponsorships that SSP has fostered through the years, it is also a tremendous networking opportunity for professionals of all ages in New York City who want to meet other people who care about community service, education, and helping young people succeed.

A Mentor usually mentors the same student all the way through their high school years, though occasionally mentors have to drop from the program because of personal time commitments, geographic moves, etc. SSP is currently looking for Mentors for sophomore – senior high school students who have lost their SSP Mentors and want to build a relationship with a new SSP Mentor. I just signed up to hop onboard. If you’re interested, please visit the organization’s website. Attached to this post, you will also find the brief Mentor application forms. I hope you’ll join me in making a difference for high school students in New York City.

SSP Sponsor Application FINAL.

SSP LexisNexis Screening Solutions Consent Form

children, design, education, New York City, student

Step 9: Perseverance

Christa Avampato

“With ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable.” ~ Thomas Foxwell Buxton

I’ve known some people in my life who are so brilliant, so capable, and yet they never seem to reach heights that are well within their grasp. They toil away in jobs that aren’t quite right. They miss the opportunity for love, for community impact, for profound influence because they weren’t willing to put in just a bit more effort. My father was one of these people. He had a truly brilliant mind and could have been the leading clinical psychologist of his day. Unfortunately, he thought the world should reward him specifically because he was brilliant. He didn’t realize the world doesn’t work that way.

And then I’ve known people of fairly modest talent who were just relentless in their efforts, and achieved not only what was within their natural reach, but also successes that no one else thought possible. It’s the people in this latter group who have been my greatest teachers. They showed me that the world rewards those who work as hard as they can and give the best they’ve got everyday. The world rewards commitment, particularly commitment that perseveres in the face of great adversity.

I thought about this ideal this morning when I found out that my after-school education program with Citizen Schools starts the week of February 8th, not the week of February 25th as I had originally planned. This accelerates the time line I now have to work under. I’m going to have to shuffle around some other commitments so that my first few lessons plans are created and edited in time for the class. I’ve been collecting resources for several months and now is the time to just sit down and plow through the work.

And then I paused as I looked at all of these resources, most from designers of incredible talent. I appreciate design and use the tools of a designer in my profession as a product developer, though I am not a traditionally trained designer. I didn’t go to art school and I’m not an engineer. My product development skills have been self-taught. I’m a volunteer teacher, though I don’t have a degree from an education school and I don’t have a teacher certification. My teaching skills have also been self-taught. To top it off, I’ll be teaching in a school in East Harlem with more than its fair share of challenges: it is the lowest performing school in the Citizen Schools portfolio. 87% of the students receive free or reduced-price lunch (this is an indicator that 87% fall at or below the poverty line), 86% read below grade level, and 78% have math skills below grade level.

I leaned back in my chair, and asked myself, “What exactly are you doing, Christa?” But I didn’t ask this question with an air of despair or fear. I asked myself the question to mean, “What is the heart of the matter here? What gifts do you have to give these children who need you so much?” With that motivation in mind, any trace of trepidation disappeared.

I have modest design talents with extraordinary passion, empathy, and determination to back them up. I grew up below the poverty line, and still many adults believed in my talents and abilities. Now its my turn to manifest that same belief in these children. I’m paying forward the great and good gifts that so many people gave me when I was in school.

My idea to use design as the backbone to engage students in the learning process is not revolutionary; many people have thought of this idea, and many of them are far better designers than I am. No matter. There are so many children who need help, so many children who need an adult to show up for them and take a vested interest in their lives and education, that it is impossible for me to not have a profound impact in this field. My own individual commitment and perseverance is the only limitation on the amount of good I can do with this program, and I’ve got both of those in spades.

education, game, learning, student

My Year of Hopefulness – Playing Games

Christa Avampato

I woke up this morning to rainy skies and a little knot in my stomach. This is the week that I begin my verbal review for the GRE, and I’m having some anxiety over it. My friend, Allan, made me stop beating myself up over my seemingly large deficiency in vocabulary. Honestly, I don’t recognize half of the words on the GRE as English. Allan clued me in to the fact that no one recognizes these words as English because no one actually ever uses them. I felt mildly better. No matter – they’re showing up on the test, and I have to learn them.

When I was little, I used to play the dictionary game with my mom. I’d open the dictionary to any word, and she would give the definition of the word. I never, ever stumped her. She knew every word, no matter how archaic it was. I couldn’t understand it. How did she know all of these words? And how come I didn’t know any of them? Why do I still feel like I don’t know any of them now?

Begrudgingly, I went to my 3 inch thick GRE prep book, and started making my flashcards with a heavy heart. And then I decided I had better get with it. I had better make a game out of this or I am doomed to not do well. And I can’t afford a low score. I just can’t – PhD programs are competitive and every piece of an application counts.

The GRE book is full of helpful hints, and as I learned each hint I saw puzzle pieces falling into place. Now I know how my mom could figure out all of those words. She took many years of Latin, requiring her to learn a variety of roots, suffixes, and prefixes. Our language is largely made of little pieces that are recombined again and again in different ways. For example, “mal-” means bad, so words beginning with “mal-” likely have a negative meaning. It also means bad in Spanish, so knowing a foreign language helps enormously when deciphering new vocabulary words because English is largely a language of other languages. My mother speaks French and Latin, so it’s no wonder the size of her English vocabulary is through the roof!

As my GRE studying progressed, I found myself getting more and more excited about it. I found myself finally, finally understanding pieces of our language I never knew before. Studying for the GRE isn’t just to gain entrance to a program; it’s actually beneficial for my life and for my writing. Now when I read, I have an eye on roots and suffixes and prefixes. I see arguments being pieced together with new insights that I never saw before. I see polygons and parallel lines and acute and obtuse angles everywhere I turn. The basis of the GRE is all around us. And while I’ve seen all of these things before, I’m now noticing them with new eyes and a new found curiosity.

My learning took a great leap forward today. It’s so easy, and more than a little tempting, to get lost in our books and studies. The real power of our studies is when we can pick our eyes up from our books, look out into the world, and see that opportunities for learning, and application of our learning, is all around us. Or better yet, our learning helps us to see what could be out in the world, and gives us the tools and the resolve to go make it happen. Whoever said games were only for kids?

change, education, student, teaching, yoga

My Year of Hopefulness – Sonic Yoga

Christa Avampato

It seems that I just cannot resist the pull of being a student again. Some people can’t wait to get out of school and spread their wings. The moment I graduate, I’m trying to figure how to continue to be a student. Call it an addiction. Weez, my sister, tells me that my end goal in life is to figure out how to be a professional student. She, as usual, is right.

In 2004, I took a weekend course through Yoga Fit that gave me a very basic teacher certification. This was before Yoga Alliance became the true gold standard. I have taught free classes to friends and colleagues though now, after many years of practice, I have decided that I want to be more dedicated to my practice and to join the community of fully-certified teachers. For the practice that has given me so much, it is now my turn to provide the comfort of yoga to others through teaching. I’ve been trying out a lot of different studios in New York – we are blessed with many! – and doing research on different teacher training programs. While they have been amazing finds, none of them felt quite right to me until today when I stepped into Sonic Yoga in Hell’s Kitchen.

The gracious and masterful Johanna quickly put me at ease, put the entire packed classroom at ease. I knew I found my home. Sonic Yoga is not fancy; it’s homey, comfortable, and filled with so much positive energy and warmth. People laugh in class; it’s one of the few places in New York where you are encouraged to not put on a show, but to just be exactly as you are.

Today’s lesson was about surrender, letting go of the stories we tell ourselves, freeing ourselves from situations in life that just aren’t working for us. Johanna asked us to continue to repeat one of the following three mantra throughout our class – “I surrender”, “I don’t know”, or “not my will”. She asked us not to choose the one that felt the best to us, but rather to choose the one that bothered us the most. “I don’t know”. Those words haunt me. At one point during the class, they made my eyes tear up. I’m tearing up now just thinking about this. My life is on very uncertain ground right now. While I know what I want and have an idea how to get there, I am having to give up a lot of the stories that have sustained me in order to make the change.

I am now in the process of turning away from things in my life that just don’t fit. And I don’t care what anyone says – the process of good-bye is hard. Even when we know we need to let something go for our own good, it still hurts. There are dreams that have to be put to rest. There are people who aren’t good for us. There are situations that we must remove ourselves from. I’m now in the process of deciding what dreams, people, and situations those are. And while I have my eye fixed on the horizon of the new life I am so excited about, it means surrendering some aspects of my life now that I love. There are no certainties in life; there are many things that we don’t know, that we can’t know. We must learn to be comfortable with not knowing.

Throughout the 90 minute class, I would repeat to myself “I don’t know”. I kept reminding myself that I can do this; I can surrender, even if it hurts. Keep a stuff upper lip and just muscle through. And then Johanna said, “you don’t like those words, do you?” “No,” I thought, “I don’t.” And then as if inside my head, Johanna said, “that’s okay. Acknowledge how hard this is, how much it bothers you. And then keep going.” So I did the only thing I was certain I could do. I could keep going through the asanas. I could keep moving, even with tear-filled eyes, even with a heavy heart, even while saying good-bye, I could keep moving toward my beautiful life ahead.

child, high school, letter, school, student

My Year of Hopefulness – First Day NY

Christa Avampato

A friend of mine from college recently invited me to join a Facebook Group for First Day NY, a program that looks for volunteers to sponsor New York City children for their first day of school. I signed up immediately and today received some information about the child I’ll be sponsoring. She’s 14 years old (and I assume heading into 9th grade), wants to be a nurse, and loves language arts. My mission is to get her a backpack, a first day of school outfit, and an age-appropriate book based on her interests.

It’s been so long since I thought about the first day of 9th grade. I started high school that year and I remember being so nervous. All my same friends from middle school went with me since my town only had one set of schools. There were kids who were so much bigger and smarter than me. They played sports and ran clubs. How would I find my classrooms? Would boys like me? And the dreaded cafeteria, every 14 year old girl’s nightmare. The movie Mean Girls comes to mind.

The other piece of my mission for the child I’m sponsoring is to write a note of encouragement. “We would like your child to know someone out there cares about their success…with this note you can offer a window into the world of opportunity that awaits them if they always do their best and stay in school.” I’m not ashamed to say I teared up a little upon reading this instruction from First Day NY. This is more than just a backpack and some clothes for a 14 year old; it’s a signal to her that there are people out here cheering her on, people who believe in her potential.

As I think back, 9th grade is the time when I realized that if I worked really hard, I could go anywhere and do anything. That year opened up a new gateway to the whole rest of my life, and how I thought about my purpose in the world. And now I think I have the beginning to my note of encouragement…

If you’d like to get involved with First Day NY, please visit their website: http://www.firstdayny.org/