My Poker face

You will notice that a lot of my reflections also come from stories about fifth graders. Fifth graders are BY FAR my biggest challenge in this service year, so success with them is a big confidence boost for me.


From February


When I am surrounded by my friends and family, I have a hard time keeping my heart off my sleeve. If I'm upset or worried about anything, it is written all over my face.

But in my time working with children (and special needs/at-risk children in particular) I've learned to better compartmentalize my emotions, especially the stress and anxiety that often accompanies classroom and large group management.

But I'm not perfect, and I sometimes wonder if I have a good poker face, especially when it comes to behavior management. During homework the other day, I finally got a little much needed feedback, and it happened to be from my most challenging female fifth grader.
This young woman is creative and expressive and loves to be right in the center of it all. In doing so, she sometimes pushes the envelope with the staff, and gets away with a lot of snide public commentary. When she was having some difficulty focusing during homework, we began to have a conversation about my expectations for her behavior.

I told her that I was finding myself becoming more and more frustrated with her at this time everyday and before I could go on to say that I needed her to try harder to be the mature, intelligent student I knew she could be, she stopped me mid-sentence.

"YOU'RE FRUSTRATED?!" she belted out.
"Yes. I am." I replied.
"But you don't LOOK frustrated at ALL!" she responded, hands in the air.
"Well. I am." I restated.

There it was. The best compliment I had ever received, at least from a fifth grader.

Over the past couple of weeks I've kept my poker face on. Our rapport has increased and we've worked diligently together to get the work done. 

student on left.

J and Tree

You'll see me post a couple of entries about a 5th grade male student, J, who left the program in February. Here is a reflection from early January.

A 5th grade student was teary-eyed at the beginning of outdoor "free choice" (outdoor play time) on Tuesday. He was staring across the street as a team of workers chopped down a large tree.

"How could they do that?" He cried.
"It is sad, isn't it..." I replied.
"THAT'S SO WRONG!" he exclaimed.
"You'll have to plant a new tree in it's memory." I said, trying to comfort him.

The student then began to tell me that it wasn't just any tree, but the biggest tree he's ever lived by. And it wasn't just the biggest tree he's lived by, but it was also his favorite tree. And it wasn't just his favorite tree. It was a tree, he said, "That me and my family have special memories with." I asked him if he wanted to share any of those memories with me.
"I don't want to talk about it," he mumbled, looking away.

"Let's do something fun to get the tree off your mind." I said, as he shook his head no.

I thought for a moment and began to sing:
"I have a friend and his name is.......Kyle
! When I look at him he always....Smiles!"
Referring to a rapping game the student and i sometimes play together. His eyes lit up.

He chimed in:
"I have a friend her name is Erin,
She makes me want to do somethin' darin.
But then I will just get in trouble,
so I go and pop a bubble!"

"NICE!" I exclaim.

As we walked inside a couple of minutes and a couple of raps later, before I could even really assess the situation with a cheesy moral about personal expression and it's impact on mood, the student read my mind and said it himself: "I'm so happy now. Rapping makes me feel so good."

Word. 

Apology

I apologize for not updating this regularly. When I work intensely with the kids all day, it's a challenge to sit at home and write about it. 

However, once a month i have to write several reports regarding my service, so I thought I would share those with you. Some are from a long time ago. And some are poor writing samples because I was rushing to make the due date. But...enjoy!


Poetry Night: RIF "Shel"ibration I love poetry, especially performance poetry. I knew that our students had the extra flavor it took to shove all insecurity aside and take to the stage. I also knew that if the shyer students put their heart into it, they would gain more confidence participating in the activity. But in the two program days working up to May 25th, our RIF "Poetry Night" celebration, I wasn't sure how we were going to have enough time to prepare the students for their poetry performances. Some students were leaving program early and not getting time to select or practice their poems. However, when one small shy and developmentally behind student got on stage to perform the Shel Silverstein poem "Tree House," I knew an impact had been made. All the students that performed, decorated, or illustrated for the poetry night did an amazing job! Some even got on stage and used improvisation to create poems about staff. One student performed a poem entitled "Erin" that her classmate wrote at school. Poetry Night was a huge success!

"Shy" student

Here is the poem entitled "Erin"

She's warm, she's fun.

She's filled with love.

She's like an angel from above.

She'll dance and sing and play tag with you.

She'll be excited about everything we say and do.

Her curls are black.

Her eyes are brown.

We're always happy when she comes around.

In math she helps us multiply and divide.

She also helps us not to be so shy!

She always pushes us to try and do our best,

So we can be well above the rest.

When she leaves we are always sad,

But knowing she's coming tomorrow makes us really glad.

written by M-F M.

Pictures

I'm so lazy in updating. I'm going to lay down a bunch of pictures.

Hiding at Thanksgiving Feast

We love uniforms

Thanksgiving Feast

Columbia Grove Apartments: Reading Jack Frost and setting the stage for the rest of the day's activities!

Here I am leading students in brainstorming winter words and creating rhymes to jump start their poetry-writing.

A winter poem

Teamwork

Gingerbread Houses!

Those graham cracker templates took me over and hour the night before...

 Enjoi

e

One big post

The best way to do this is with pictures:

I guess I am the designated face painter

That's me in the snack room painting faces for the Halloween fieldtrip.  I was horrible at it, but I had a time limit and several children crowding me all at once, so there.

We went to Marymount U., an ironically Catholic University close by that hosts a huge Halloween event, filled with scary dorm hallways, game booths, trick or treating, pizza, and a lot of crying girls in costume(dorms too scary). I was permanently attached to, and therefore forced to protect, three brave young souls- a "Pajama Girl", Mouse, and ...Princess, was it? They underestimated the amount of terror young Catholic (male) college students could pack into a strobe lit but otherwise completely pitch black hallway. We made it three steps before they retreated in tears. It was actually a very successful field trip and I enjoyed it throughly.

I haven't talked a lot about this part of my job, but I'm in the schools twice a week- Tues and Thurs mornings at Campbell Elementary. Here are two very interesting conversations I had with two different fourth grade boys today:

Me: What do you want to be when you grow up?
4th Grade Boy: I dunno, like a bad guy or something.
Me: What do you mean?
Boy: Like a bank robber.
Me: !! But you'll go to jail and won't have any family!
Boy: Yeah but I'll be rich!

4th Grade Boy: Your name is Erin. Not Mrs. Erin...
because you're not married, right?
Me: Right.
Boy: Why aren't you married?
Me: I feel too young.
Boy: How old are you?
Me: 24.
Boy: (with a SHOCKED expression!) WHHAAAAT! That's so old to get married. My mom got married when she was 19!
Me: Too young for me. When do you want to be married?
Boy: 19!!!

I like going into the school because of the structure that is nearly impossible to match in the after-school realm, which is always a circus. And it completely and drastically reinforces my belief that being a classroom teacher is one of the most challenging careers out there... speaking of which, our organization went on a field trip to see this:

It was really powerful & really depressing. I cried a lot. I would recommend it.

We also went on a team-building retreat at 7 in the morning to Front Royal, VA. It was BEAUTIFUL to see fall that way. We climbed through spiderwebs and bonded and you know I was in such heaven in the whole mushy experience of getting to know my coworkers and uppers. 

What else?

Work is challenging. The ratio is not perfect, as it never seems to be in any environment working with children. We have several challenging behaviors that I wish I could tackle one-on-one all the time, Camp Starfish style, but the truth is, I really don't have the time for that. Or much of anything. I don't know. Maybe I do-- but it seems overwhelming at times.

Truly, though, I love my job and the experience here is more than I could have asked for. Sometimes it's just hard waking up and knowing what I need to "get through" on a daily basis. The kids are really special though. I'm in the process of making a CD for one 5th grade boy who is particularly close to my heart (He requested to hear some songs he said he heard weeks ago on YouTube and hasn't been able to hear since). Yesterday we sang Bulls on Parade together!

OH, and another thing. In order to get my team to read for the whole 20 minutes today, efficiently, I told them that if they could do it, we could listen to "Dynamite" (an appropriate mainstream rap song) and have a dance break. We did! It was glorious. 

Erin

More things I can buy with Food Stamps

Two of my favorite things blended into one addictive snack.

We had this at Kaldis. Heaven.

My dad would be proud.

Perfect for Nasal Congestion.

Erin

Video

I won a video contest at work. We had to create a video that was less than 2 minutes about AmeriCorps, GreenBrier, or just a day in the life. It is now featured on the website: greenbrierlearning.org

I created this:




Enjoy!

E