For the past year, I have been a City Year member in an elementary school in Washington DC. City Year is an Americorps program that places corps members in under-resourced schools to work as tutors, mentors, and teachers' aides.

As a City Year member in a third grade classroom, my primary responsibility was to work with students that were struggling with reading. Every day, I would pull out 3-5 students that tested below grade level in reading and would work through comprehension and flue...