Week 1

Wow! Week 1 with the kids is done...and I feel GREAT!

It's a good fit for me.

Why?
1. It's a fun age to hang out with: 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders. I dig it.
2. I love my coworkers: they're fun and open minded and talented and awesome. We hang. A LOT.
3. It's multifaceted. We do a variety of activities in a small 3-hour window.

My schedule looks something like this:

10:00-2:30 Planning time (meetings, snack prep, logisticals...it goes faster than it looks)
2:30-2:45 Walk to Campbell Elementary to pick up group of students
2:45-3:00 All Students Arrive
3:00-3:30 Team Meetings: Icebreakers! Kudos cards! 
3:30-3:50 Free Choice 
3:50-4:10 Snack
4:15-5:15 20 minutes reading, 40 minutes homework help
5:15-6:00 Lesson
6:00-6:20 Kids leave, We write reports/clean


The kids are honeymooning, I know. But I have to say it feels pretty refreshing to work with this population compared to my work with the kids this summer.  It's pretty interesting, though. Surprisingly, for the most part, these kids really enjoy the homework help section of the day- most are eager to start, eager to finish, eager for help. They seem to truly know how important it is for their future. Today I had a young 3rd grader really struggle when I told her program time was over and that she had to finish her HW this weekend. It was heartbreaking because she knew and I knew that it was going to be a real challenge for her to complete it for Monday without the help of our center. The issue is that the parents often don't have the language ability to assist, and sometimes neither do the students.

This low-income/immigrant population can also be tricky because they form pretty strong cliques that can be disgustingly exclusive. Fifth grade can be hard for anyone, but some of the children have distinguishing personalities that come off really strong. I had one student tell me that even though her "best friend" told her she couldn't play her game and was being mean to her all day, she didn't want me to talk to her about it because she was afraid she would lose that "best friend" being a tattle tale. Remember those days? I spent a lot of time talking to her about what friendship actually means.

Today was the best, though. We did a GREAT community project where kids made "Personal Profiles" (cough Facebook anyone? cough) illustrating their likes and dislikes. Then, they all went around with post it notes and stuck onto people's profiles "I like Math too! -Erin" or "I don't like Vegetables either. -Erin". At the end they got to see their profiles and how many people had something in common with them. It was really cool. Except for maybe the popular group in the corner counting all their post-it notes and discussing their popularity.

More later. I'm going to try to get pictures of the place, my coworkers, projects, etc.

Keep on the look out!
Bye for now!

Erin

P.S. A post about my new bike is on the way!