Care Force Alumni Spotlight: JJ Conlon

Back in 2022, the Team Care Force 16 blog team (Andy Wilson and Ali Tibble) along with staff member Chris Farzner interviewed JJ Colon, who served with City Year San Jose 2014 – 2016 and Team Care Force 2016 – 2017. Following his graduation from Team Care Force, JJ went on to become a City Year staff member on the National Recruitment Team and then became a teacher. He now teaches in the Lynn Public School system.

Andy: Nice to meet you!  So, you’re a history teacher.  So, what would you say is your favorite thing about teaching history?

JJ: I like using it to explain our present, why things are the way that they are.  I tell my kids – if there are two things I want them to take away at the end of the year, it’s being able to read and interpret information, and have a way of understanding why the world is the way that it is now; especially because you go and you ask kids “why to study history” and they’ll say you study history because history repeats itself, right?  Or, they tell you that they study history to learn from the past.  And then you say, “Oh okay, well what’s something you’ve learned from the past?  What’s something you’ve learned that’s happened in history that has affected you, or that you’ve used to change whatever is going on in the world right now?” And they usually don’t have an answer.  So, I like to use history as a way of trying to understand the way the world is, and hopefully from that point forward, if they want to do something with it, they can.  But at least get them to that starting point.

Andy: Absolutely.  Thank you for sharing that.

JJ: Yeah, definitely.

Ali: Alright, I have your next question for you.  So, we’re going to transition from current questions all the way back to you first AmeriCorps year.  What’s your favorite memory from your first AmeriCorps year?

JJ: This question took me some time to answer, because I had a lot that I wanted to choose from.  As a teacher, I thought I was going to be saying something that involved working with students, but honestly, I think my favorite memory was the first NVIDIA project from my first corps year.  I don’t know how much you all have heard about NVIDIA projects, but they were these huge service projects with NVIDIA out in San Jose, California.  We would have close to 1,000 people come out from NVIDIA over two days to do service and it was the first Care Force event that I’d gone to.  During the school year, the City Year service year, sometimes it can be tough when you’re working with kids.  You aren’t always sure if you’re making a change, you’re not always sure if you’re having any sort of impact.  Serving at the service project, working with Care Force, it showed me a different type of impact I could have.  Much more physical, something that I could see.  Chris and the rest of the staff will tell you, you won’t always see the impact that you’re going have with the stuff you’re building.  And it’s true.  But, the impact that you do have with the stuff that you’re building is also very real.  I’ll get into that when we get to that question.  But it was something very real and physical that I could take away and know that I’d done something that was impactful and meaningful.

Andy: No, that’s great.  I’ve heard tales of how legendary these events have been, so that’s great!  Love to hear that.  That kind of leads us to our next question.  So, what was your favorite Care Force trip, and why?

JJ: My favorite event, and it wasn’t so much a trip because we just went down to Providence, but my favorite event was at this Boys & Girls Club.  The event was with this group called Schneider Electric, and it was the first time that myself and two of my other team members were involved in the planning of the event.  So, we got to sit in on the calls with Schneider Electric, we got to help come up with some of the projects that we were going to be doing.  They specifically wanted to create some low-ropes course activities for the kids at the Boys & Girls Club.  Myself, Doug & Christian, we had to create the schematics for some of them: come up with what the low ropes courses were going to be, and it was very interesting to be involved in that side of the event; not just being told what you’re going to be doing, but actively working in terms of what you want to do and, like with the NVIDIA project, you get to see the fruits of your labor.  You get to see it all the way through from the beginning to the end.  It was also, on a side note, enjoyable because we painted chain link fences in that event.  And Farzner swore, he was like, “We’re not painting chain link fences.  No one will want to paint chain link fences.”  And it was the one thing that all the volunteers wanted to do that day.

Ali: Alright, so, our next question is about your current position and what you do.  We’ve heard a little bit about that, that you’re a history teacher.  I was just wondering if there’s anything else you wanted to add.

JJ: Sure, I mean I could tell you a little more about my position, specifically what I do and about Lynn.  I don’t know if y’all know anything about the area, but Lynn is a pretty diverse school district, for the most part.  It’s funny – I served in San Jose, like Chris said, and the demographic here is similar to the demographic in San Jose.  There’s a lot of immigrant families, newcomer families, specifically from Central America.  In San Jose and California, we have a lot of students that immigrated from Mexico.  Here we have a lot of students who immigrate from Guatemala, the Dominican Republic.  We also have a large population of students from Cambodia, so it’s a unique and diverse school district.  Diverse in the sense that we have many different types of people from backgrounds.  Not necessarily diverse in the sense that the majority of our school is of Latino or Hispanic descent.  As far as my day goes, I have five classes that I teach: three of them being general U.S. History and the other two are U.S. History for English-language learners.  I am, quite literally, in the room with forty to fifty newcomer students who just recently immigrated to the United States, either in the past six months, past month, past couple weeks – what have you.  This isn’t necessarily where I intended to end up.  I just found myself in this situation.  But it is interesting, starting out in City Year San Jose, in a place that I never thought I’d really be in, or working with the demographic I wasn’t sure I’d be working with.  Especially since I grew up in Vermont.  And coming into Lynn and being back in a situation very similar to the one I was able to serve in as a Corps member.  Very funny.

Andy: Thank you for sharing about that.

JJ: Yeah.

Andy: What was a skill that you learned when you were on TCF that you think is most relevant to your current position?

JJ: I would definitely say project planning.  Reverse planning.  One of the first things you learn, right, is that if you’re going to plan a project, you start not at Day One, but at event day.  Then you work yourself backwards.  And so, with teaching, the first question you ask yourself, regardless of what the subject is, whatever the topic is, you ask yourself, “What is it that I want students to take away from this?  What should they learn at the end of this unit, at the end of this lesson?”  And you work back from that.  After you ask yourself, “What do I want them to learn?” you ask yourself, “How am I going to ensure that they’re going to learn that?”  And then you ask yourself, “What are the different ways in which I’m going to teach them this information?  Or how will they access this information?”  It’s very much like project planning.  You start at the end, you figure out what you’re going to be doing, what you want to do.  What you want the end result to be.  And you work yourself up to that point.  And I thought, again, not knowing much about lesson planning before starting grad school, I thought it was very funny how my project planning experience with City Year then aligned to what I was going to be doing as a teacher.  If you asked me if I was going to learn anything from Care Force that would help me as an educator, other than maybe relationship building, I don’t know if I would’ve said anything else.

Ali: Cool!  Our next question is: do you have any advice for future TCF members?  Or even future potential City Year ACMs?

JJ: Sure!  I worked in Admissions for 2½ years after I served with TCF.  And so, I worked in the East Region, interviewing applicants, and helping place them at the different sites in the East Region.  So, Boston, New York, D.C., Philly, Providence and Manchester.  When doing interviews, that would usually be one of the questions I’d get asked at the end… “What’s some advice?  What’s something I should keep in mind coming into this year?”  There’s two things I’d always would tell them.  The first is: “Know why you’re doing this work.  What’s your reason, what’s your drive?  Because you’re not doing this for yourself.  If you’re doing it for yourself, you’re not going to last, you’re not going to make it.  It’s not going to be what you want it to be.”  So, you’ve got to figure out what that motivation is that brought you here and what’s going to keep you going, especially when the days are getting long and you start getting discouraged in whatever it is that you’re doing – whatever it is that’s getting you down.  And the second piece of advice I would give is: “Your year is going to be what you make it.  If you come in with an excellent attitude that you are going to buy into the work, you want to commit to doing something, you want to commit to having an impact, then it’s going to be great.  If you come in with this attitude that, ‘I just have to get through this year over with, and then I’ll be done, I’ll be out in the real world,’ then all you’re going to do the entire year is complain and struggle and get yourself down.”  So, you put in the effort and you’ll see the results in yourself.

Ali: Yeah, that’s good advice.

Andy: Yeah, it is.  I feel like I embody the “Your year is what you make of it,” personally.  Thank you for sharing that.  So what implored you to stay at City Year after your corps year?  What brought you to Recruitment and Admissions?

JJ: I knew for quite a while teaching was something I was going to do.  In fact, it’s why I joined City Year in the first place.  I knew I wanted to go to grad school part-time.  I didn’t want to pay all the money to go to grad school and be in classes full-time, and I didn’t want to have to deal with being a first-time educator while taking classes at school.  I was job searching, trying to find a job at various non-profits in the city because, obviously, being an educator, the work that I want to do is… I want it to have some meaning.  I want to be able to have some sort of impact in whatever work I’m doing.  So, City Year was obviously one of the places that I applied.  I like the culture, I like the fact that there are many people there who… City Year is very important to them, and they’ve made it into a very impactful organization.  Quite honestly, being a corps member was one of the most transformational experiences for myself and I wanted to try to give back to the organization in some fashion, some form, or another.  It’s one thing to serve as a City Year corps member, it’s another thing to serve as a staff member.  It’s a whole other thing to serve as a corps member and then serve as a staff member.  They’re all unique experiences and you get a very unique perspective at City Year.  Did I think I was going to end up in Recruitment and Admissions when I was leaving TCF?  No.  Am I glad I did?  Yeah, I got to meet a lot of the new incoming corps members, and give them some of my own advice, my own thoughts from my three years.  And it gave me a lot of insight into what was bringing people into City Year… What makes them want to serve.

Ali: Cool!  So, moving along, what City Year culture piece do you strongly believe in and want to continue to, kind of, grow into?

JJ: Yeah. When I thought about this one, I definitely thought of the icebreakers that you have – that we would have – before meetings.  Right.  At the time, they might seem kind of kitschy or gimmicky, but I think it really does set the tone for the meeting.  You know, you don’t always want to be in a meeting, right.  There are times when you want time to do the work that you think you need to do, things you need to get done, check it off on the checklist.  But, having those icebreakers helped break that tension and get some buy-in into the meeting, you know, and it – it lightens the mood, a little bit.  It’s something I try to include when I’m teaching in the classroom, too.  The same sort of situation.  Most of the kids don’t want to be there, whether it’s because they don’t want to be in your class or because it’s 8 o’ clock in the morning, but those are something that I miss and something that I also wish that we would have in our own staff meetings, here.  As goofy as they are.

Andy: Thank you for sharing that.  Yeah, we love a good icebreaker.  What would you say, during your time as a staff member with City Year, what was, like, your proudest accomplishment?

JJ: So, when I started in Admissions, what I was supposed to be doing in my role was helping to retain prospective Corps members.  Once y’all commit to serving for the year, ensuring that you all actually show up on Day One and follow through with your service.  To be honest, the work is harder than it sounds, right.  It’s difficult finding – what do we have in the East Region – 700 individuals that actively want to commit to service and serve for a year, especially at that point in time, when you’re living on $1,000 or $1,300 a month.  So, while I was trying to figure out was how I was going to make sure that these Corps members came back and committed to serving, I was speaking with some of the other Admissions people and staff members that had been around for some time, and they said that one of the things they really missed was they used to have a confirmed Corps member Ice Cream Social where the Corps members would come in and they would meet with the other prospective Corps members – the other Corps members that they’d be serving with.  They’d host it in May or June, sometime before graduation, but still close enough towards the end that they still had some current Corps members that would come in and meet the incoming Corp members.  The first year we did it, we had somewhere between 20 and 30 come into Boston, which was a pretty decent turnout.  The second year, we had about 30 come in.  Again, another pretty decent turnout.  But, the first year that we did it, we only did it at City Year Boston.  And then, the year after that, City Year New York, D.C., and Philly – and Providence too! — they thought it was great.  They heard good things about it and wanted to do the same thing at their sites, as well.  It was, one, selfishly, it was nice to see something that I’d planned come to fruition and see other people appreciate it and want to do the same thing.  And, two, it was also good to see that other sites wanted to buy in and try to get opportunities for their prospective Corps members to come in and see the building, meet the staff members, meet the other people that they were going to be serving with.  I don’t know if they’re still doing them.  I hope they are, but that’s what I would say was my most impactful moment that I took away from being a staff member.

Ali: Alright! So, how did you kind of translate your City Year experience to moving into teaching and being a history teacher?

JJ: Sure. First, like I said with the project building, it was eerie how closely project building, or um, project planning aligns with lesson planning, and building out my units for class.  When I came into grad school, I think I had a step up on the other kids.  Or, what I should say, is that I had more familiarity with the process, and I think that gave me a lot of benefit in the classroom, right.  So, it helped me not have to struggle so much when I was going through those periods of trying to understand lesson planning and unit building because I’m sitting there and I’m thinking, “Oh, this is just backwards planning.  This is just everything I’ve done in the past.”  And the other thing I would say is relationship-building.  When I was in college and high school, I really struggled to put myself out there and talk to other people, and from Day One at City Year, you know, they tell us, “Get squishy,” “Lean into it,” “It’ll all work out.”  And I bought into that and it, one: really helped me grow, in terms of my relationship-building with my peers, and two: it really helped me grow in terms of relationship-building with my students.  At the end of the day, it’s not that you’re standing up here in front of 20 students, you’re standing up there in front of 20 young people.  Just as yourself, as a person – you have your likes, your dislikes, the things you want be doing, the things you don’t want to be doing – it’s the same thing for them.  And part of getting them to commit, and buy into whatever you’re doing in the classroom, is meeting them halfway and trying to understand who they are as people and build that relationship as person-to-person, not exclusively as teacher-to-student.

Andy: Yeah, definitely.  Well, thank you.  And you touched on this a little bit earlier when we talked about the icebreakers and teambuilders at the beginning of meetings.  But would you say that there’s a culture piece that maybe isn’t present, where you are currently, working for the school district?  That you wish was there, besides that?

JJ: Again, they all seem kitschy when you’re in it but, looking back, I do enjoy the debriefs – the daily debriefs – that you have, because sometimes when you’re all in the work, you don’t always take the time to reflect on what you do and what happened.  Sometimes when you are in a debrief and you are going through your roses and your thorns, you might be forcing yourself to come up with something that went good or that went bad.  But, ultimately, it gives you the opportunity to reflect on the experience that you had and if everything had gone according to plan, and if you did it again, would you do it the same way?  Or is there something that you would change?  And I think there are times I do that, but I certainly don’t take all the time that I did before, when I was with City Year, to reflect on my work.

Ali: I think that’s most of our questions for now.  Although, if you have like, a fun fact, about yourself, or something having to do with your City Year experience that you wouldn’t mind sharing, that would be good.

JJ: A fun fact.  Um, I don’t know if I have one.  Usually, my fun fact was just that I had served three corps years.

Andy: That’s a pretty good fun fact, honestly.  And then, you talked about grad school.  So, what schools did you attend?

JJ: Undergrad, I went to UConn, University of Connecticut.

Farzner: Huskies!

JJ: Yes, thank you, Chris.  For grad school, I went to BU – Boston University.

Andy: Awesome.  What did you end up studying in your graduate school program?

JJ: Teaching.  So, I had to—Typically, what happens is, if you are coming into the field, if you’re coming into education, you go and you get your Master’s in teaching.  For educators that have been working, or went to school and got their Bachelor’s in education or something of the sort, then when they go back to school they get their Master’s in education.  The biggest difference being that, in education, in a Master’s of Education, you’re really deep-diving into the theory of education; and in a teaching program, you focus more, just on the craft of being a teacher.  So, what does it mean to work with students with special needs?  What does it mean to work with students that are English-language learners?  What does it mean to plan lessons, to plan units?  Things like that.

Andy: I don’t think I ever knew there was a difference between a Master’s in teaching and a Master’s in education, so I learned something new today, thank you!

JJ: You’re quite welcome.  It was also, again, going back to City Year, it was also pretty funny coming into BU – I wanted to go to BU because they have the scholarship from City Year.  You have to be a full-time student to get it, so I wasn’t able to get the scholarship.  But, every year, there was at least one student in my classes that was a City Year alum, as well, so it was very funny, you know.  City Year will pop up in so many different parts in your life that you don’t even understand yet.  One time I was walking down the street, in Somerville, after another event as a – oh, what are they called – when you come on the event…

Farzner: Reserve?

JJ: Thank you, as a reserve, for one of Farzner’s projects.  And I hear this guy yell, “Yo, City Year!”  And I turn around and he’s like, “Are you with Care Force over there?”  And I was like, “Oh, I was before.  I was just helping them out as a reserve.”  And he was like, “Oh, I did City Year too.  You probably know my brother, he was on Care Force.”  And I was like, “Well, where’d you serve?”  And he said, “Sacramento.”  And I said, “Are you Jackson Young’s brother?”  And he’s like, “Yeah!  You know who I am?”  I said, “Yeah!”  Because I knew Jackson from San Jose.

Andy: Wow!

JJ: And when his brother was applying to be a Corps member, he was telling me that he was applying to go serve at City Year Sacramento.  So, again, just – you know – walking down the street, and this kid’s like, you know, the brother of some guy that I knew when I was out in San Jose.  And now, Jackson’s actually married to one of the girls from my Care Force team.

Andy: Wow, that’s a small world.

JJ: Yeah.

JJ: I served at Mathson.  First year I served was the first year it was called Mathson Institute of Technology.  To be honest, I don’t even know if Mathson is still a school, or if Renaissance took over the school–

Farzner: Yeah, it’s Renaissance Academy at Mathson, now.

JJ: So, when I served at Mathson, Renaissance just had one wing on the property.  In California, it’s not like a whole giant building.  They have different wings.  And I was a math tutor.  I tutored mostly sixth-graders my first year.  My second year I tutored seventh- and eighth-graders, so I got… I was able to tutor some of the same kids both years, which, I mean, it’s obviously not what you want, but it was nice to be able to work with the same students from one year to the next.

Andy: Sure.

Ali: Yeah, that is awesome.

Farzner: JJ, do you have a big “a-ha moment” from you from Care Force?  Something that you either messed up or made a mistake on, that you would attribute to further learning from your Care Force experience.

JJ:  Sure.  I’m gonna give you two, because I interpreted this question differently, so I’ll give you the answer I had then I’ll give you the other answer.  So, first, the answer that I came up with before, it was probably my third event and we were in Dallas for an Aramark event.  We were at this community that was originally created to be an orphanage, and over the years, it had evolved.  Eventually it evolved into a program, a facility, that would help single mothers take care of their children, and help single mothers either get into work or get into college and redirect their life.  Get them to where they want to be, where they want to go.  So, we go to this event.  One of the things that we do is we build an outdoor stage for them.  You know, like the whole shabang.  We put the outdoor platform, the chalkboard, and all the different benches.  And we’re cleaning up when these two kids come over and they start playing with the platform that we had just built.  You know, I forget if they were play acting or play performing, but whatever it was, it was evident that they were very excited to see what we had just done over there.  And, going back to what I said before, you don’t always get to see the outcome, the reaction of the kids.  So that was just something that, you know, reaffirmed what the staff members had been saying about the impact that you have, building these things or drawing these things – what have you – that, the kids really do appreciate it.  Whether you see it or not, it’s true.  Now, to Chris’s question just now, I was at another event outside of Atlanta.  We were building picnic tables and, I forget exactly what the issue was, but I think the legs were too long?  Oh no, I remember – the angle wasn’t right.  The angle wasn’t right so we couldn’t get them to, either properly rest on the ground, or couldn’t get the boards properly on top.  Because what we were doing was trying to rebuild the legs so that, on the event day, they could just put everything together.  Because the angle on the legs were wrong, we had to re-cut them.  So, I’m telling my team, I’m like, “If we just remeasure the angle, and re-cut it, they’ll be fine.  We’ll figure it out.  The height might be a little short, might be a little wonky, but if we just remeasure the angle, we’ll be fine.”  And my other teammate Doug is telling me, “JJ, let’s just cut new boards.  Let’s just get rid of these boards, just cut new pieces – it’ll save us so much time.”  And I’m thinking, “No!  It’s gonna save us time because we already have the legs, we just need to recut them.”  So we re-cut it, the angle’s still wrong.  So we re-cut it, the angle’s still wrong.  So we re-cut it, the angle’s still wrong.  And I’m like, “You know what, Doug?  Whatever.  We’ll go with your plan, we’ll go your way.”  And it made me realize that, sometimes, it just makes sense to just start over, right?  Sometimes there’s just no saving the situation, and by trying to readdress the situation and fix specifically what you’re working on, you’ll waste more time than just going back to the beginning and starting over.

Farzner: Uh, anything else you wanna share?  Any memories, any particular events that stand out to you?  Anything from your Corps year or your Corps experience – transitioning from Corps to Care Force?  And it’s okay if you don’t.

JJ: Um, I guess one other thing I would say is, you know, take advantage of the experience that you can have when you can have them.  And it’s smart to have a plan, it’s smart to know what you want and where you’re going, but it’s okay if, along the way, you get distracted and decide that plan has changed.  Or, if you’re taking a break, for a moment.  I moved to California, my plan was to go to City Year, serve as a Corps member for one year and then go to grad school at UCLA.  And then, I served a second Corps year, because I wanted to spend some more time working with the students and working on my skills – building relationships with them.  And then, I was going to go to grad school.  And then I applied to Care Force and I was like, “This is the one opportunity I’ll have to do something like this,” so I might as well take the opportunity to do it.  And then I moved back East, I moved to Boston, and I was with Care Force, and I remember thinking to myself, that, “This is great.  This is literally the best job I’m ever going to have.”  Myself and some of the other people that have served have said, from time to time, that, “If we could be a Corps member on TCF with an actual salary for the rest of our lives, that’s what we would do;” if that had been a real opportunity, maybe I wouldn’t have become a teacher.  I enjoy what I do, but sometimes it’s just not bad to change up what it is that you want to do and, if you try new experiences, new things, it’ll open you up to a whole new line of thinking.