Back to School!!!

Yesterday was a long day, and we weren’t even in classes yet! We started the day with a 5:30  PT which left us with an hour to shower, make breakfast, and pack a lunch. We showed up at 7:30 to help with breakfast at school. The kids are allowed to eat in the cafeteria but can’t take the food out. We were there to help the kids stay on schedule and eat. I sat down at a table to help two 1st grade girls open their milk cartons. They just wanted to talk talk talk! I had to make a game out of it where every time they made me laugh they had to take 2 bites of their food- I laughed a lot!

Dr England, the principle, gave us a little more time to go through and visit any of the classes we missed or re-visit ones we liked and then we had to meet up in the teacher’s lounge to decide which classes we’d each be assigned to. It was a little hard to figure out at first because a lot of us wanted the same 4 teachers, but I got my first pick! 2nd grade, Mrs Neal’s class! We also had to pick a specialty, a class to spend an hour a day. we could pick from preK, Kinder, 7th grade, office work, counselor assistant, PE, RSP, or library help. I wanted a kindergarten class but I got RSP. Don’t ask me what it stands for, but it’s  a focused class where small groups of kids from any grade can come and get extra help with their courses. So I’ll be working with all the grade levels!

After we decided that we had some time to divide between recess monitors and lunchroom help. Went outside and played with the 1st graders.

I went to play tetherball and man are they fierce! I thought I’d be taking it easy on them, but no, those kids beat me for real! Going into the lunch room was a lot of fun. The kids can earn academic achievement bracelets, which look kinda like the LiveStrong ones, and we got to pass them out. The principle read the names, the school counselor rang cowbells and we ran around like crazy people passing out bracelets.

As soon as lunch was done we had to help clean the cafeteria:

and then run back to the teacher’s lounge to get ready for the Reach for the Stars assembly!

We decided to do our dance in our star costumes to the Cupid Shuffle. We came running down the aisle and all lined up at the front of the room and made complete fools of ourselves. Dr England had told us, there is no such thing as making an ass of yourself in front of elementary school kids. The more outrageous you are and stupid you feel, the more they love it! After we did our silly dance, Dr England announced which classes we’d be in and we went to sit with them.

The kids. Went. Crazy!

The sound system wasn’t working so to kill time the teacher who was running the whole assembly gave the AmeriCorps 10 seconds to run back up to the front and then we had to do our best horse impression. It’s so much fun to be around kids all day. We were all winding down by lunch time and then one of the kids, John-John came running up and gave all of us a hug and that was it- instant extra energy!

The after school program was a little less hectic than the day before because there were less kids there. My team and I were standing in the cafeteria trying to figure out where to go and one of the girls motioned for me to come over. I sat down with little Dominique and she told me I was her AmeriCorps and when her brother sat down with me and started telling me jokes she told him- “you can’t talk to my AmeriCorps!” It’s so funny how they call us “AmeriCorps” like it’s our name. So cute!!

After snack, I put myself at the crafts table (and Eslee quickly found me and sat as close as she could without actually sitting in my lap) where we were decorating plastic cups to be planters so that when the kids learn about photosynthesis they have something to grow their plant in. The B&GC staff just didn’t know what they could plant during this season that will grow. Anyone know? I didn’t think it would matter because they’re not outside/in the ground. Someone tell me what we can plant so we can hopefully get these going next week.

At 5 we were allowed to leave school so we could run home, eat dinner, and change from our AmeriPants into jeans and quickly dash back to school to watch Toy Story 3. Such a great movie! And it was so awesome to see the kids there with their parents.

After only 2 days at the school my team and I see so many things we want to help. And service learning tasks keep popping into my head. I want to find documentaries about the lives some of these children have when they go home- most of them have open CPS files. I want to learn more about the growing homeless rate of California- there’s a family that literally lives in a tree because that’s the safest place they can find. I want to learn games we can play at recess and learning games for the classrooms. I want to know kid-appropriate jokes- because yesterday some of them were telling me jokes and I don’t think they know how jokes work; example: “why didn’t the potato chip get cooked” “because it was covered in poop” while a valid point, not really a funny joke. I want to know what’s to be expected of each grade level- because to me there are two groups of school kids, little kids and big kids, so I have no idea what to expect from the grades and especially these kids because they’re so far behind. I want to learn how to discipline these kids within reason- there’s a 1st grade class where the teach has NO classroom management and the kids are ridiculously out of hand, I don’t want to throw off the balance of my classroom by being too harsh or not harsh enough. The B&GC wants us to start a program while we’re there and because we’re so musical, I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a sing-along.

I can’t wait to get into the classroom on Monday and get to know all my kids and what I’ll be doing! But for now, we luckily have the weekend off. All the teachers told us to enjoy it because we’d need the rest!