A little something before winter break

Things I have learned from my time at FC Joyce:

- When first introduced to silly bandz I thought they were simply ridiculous, but have since learned they are a fantastic bargaining chip

- Second grade girls LOVE to play ring-around-the-rosey

- If you pull out a camera to take a picture, kids will stand as close to the lens as possible

- Always be ready for a sneak-attack hug… or just a sneak-attack attack

- 6^th grade girls are the keepers of all the gossip (according to them, Brett and I were boyfriend and girlfriend)

- According to students, your name for the first week or so is “AmeriCorps”

- There are so many rules to the game of four square

- Kids are smarter and hear more than you think they do, of course it’s always concerning things they don’t need to know

- The more outrageously bizarre your behavior, the more awesome they think you are

- You can do so many things well, but what will stick out the most is your ability to color inside the lines on a coloring book page

- There will always be a pencil that needs to be sharpened (and sometimes it’s broken on purpose)

- … or a mistake that needs an eraser

- … or a math problem that needs explaining

- If a student can reach into your pocket, they will and sometimes leave things for you to find, or take things for you to realize it’s missing much later in the day (like a cell phone)

- There’s no need to take it easy when playing tetherball with an 8 year-old, they will beat you no matter how hard you try

- You will leave school with about 500 new best friends!

- I have a lot of 8 year-old pen pals, thirty to be exact

- Our celebration video is up on Youtube thanks to Catherine!

my 4th grade friend Esly

Some of my playground crew

Taylor's and my afterschool tutoring group (you can almost see Taylor under all the kids on the left)

My buddy Ezra

My bestie Little Dominique

It was fantastic to have my pod 7 friends back, if only for a couple days. I’d forgotten how much I laugh when I’m around them. I’ve missed them so much! But no matter, I’ll be seeing Ashley at some point over the break and I get to meet her family! And I’ll get to see my family! Even more of a yay!

On Wednesday night we had brisket. Real, honest to god, Texas brisket from Rudy’s! Mom and Dad (in their infinite awesome-ness) air-shipped it to me! The teammates did it all up while I was in meetings and surprised me with a table full of balloons, a huge singing birthday card, cupcakes and presents! A Justin Bieber calendar, my own jar of Nutella, window gel stickers, and a confused panda puzzle! J.Biebs is totally going on spike with us for the next round! I had to teach my teammates how to build a brisket sandwich with WHITE bread, dill pickles, and bbq sauce with a side of potato salad. YUMM! G2 thanks you, Mom and Dad!

The last day at school was so hard. My kids surprised me with thank you letters and one of the girls got me a little desk jar with a sunflower on the front. She told me it was for pens AND pencils! Oooh, multi-tasker! They told me after school they had been planning on it for 5 days! 5 days! That’s an eternity for 8 year olds! I’m going to miss my babies so much but they’re right down the street. Hopefully we can go visit them every now and then during transitions.

a little bit of reflection..

The end of round 1 is in sight and none of us are looking forward to it. In all the paperwork we've filled out there is a column for "pluses" and "even better ifs", all our EBIs are- we want more time! 6 weeks of school and only 21 days in the classroom because of holidays and parent-teacher conferences. Even in that short amount of time we've bonded so closely with the kids. There's not a kid I don't look forward to seeing each day... but I know I have my favorites, as I'm sure every teacher does, who will stick with me.

I think the most frustrating thing to see in this project was how the school system is set up. In pre-k they're learning their letters and sounds. In kindergarten they should be able to read some simple words and by 1st, reading little reader books. But most of the kids don't go to preschool so they're already starting out a year behind. By the time they get to 2nd grade they're so ticked off and annoyed about being behind and the teachers singling them out that they turn away from education. They've been told so many times that they're not meeting the expectations and then they give up. So many of these kids are so smart and can do the work when I'm standing next to them. They can show me how to do everything and explain it to me, but as soon as I walk away they get the road block up. I understand that when they act out they’re just seeking attention in any form because they’re parental relationship leaves something to be desired. That is why I’m so glad that for some time, no matter how short it was, we were there to provide stability for them. Keep them responsible for their learning, homework and behavior. And give them a new friendly face to go to school for every day.

This week I stood on my own in the classroom. We had a sub who was basically a babysitter with a sheet of lesson plans. She just passed out papers to a math section the class hadn’t learned yet and then sat down at the desk while the class went crazy with complaints. So I had to take charge and teach. I taught my kids how to estimate measurement and then how to actually take measurements. I taught them how to do paragraph editing and refresh them on their letter writing skills. We read aloud, played word games and reviewed spelling words. We did art crafts and journal writing. And after all that, I went out to recess and ran around the black top with them. I love the way a kid’s mind works when playing. We were on the playscape and they all decided that I was It. So I had 4 girls on each arm pulling me around and around because, obviously, we were in a tornado. It had sucked me up and when I was done spinning in the middle of the storm, it spat me out and I was the “un-dead person” and they all had to run away from me screaming. My little girls love to balance along the edge of the playground box or play ring-around-the-rosey. I still don’t understand the fun of that game, but I think I have run around in a circle about 500 times because of it. All my boys like to play basketball or pretend they are panthers and chase the girls around growling at them.

I can’t believe it’s already time for us to leave the school. It seems like we just walked in the door for the first time to chants of “hey, AmeriCorps! Hi, AmeriCorps!” like it was our name. I feel like we’ve had a successful first round. We left our mark on the campus and on kids. Hopefully they’ll grow up and remember their AmeriCorps helpers from grade school and be better people because of it.

Round 2 announced

This was our first full week at school and I think it went by faster than the previous 3 day weeks had. But I did get some great pictures of the kids! Plus it was Catherine's birthday week so we had to do something special.

So anyways- on to finding out round 2. Thursday night after dinner, Abby told us to clear the table because we needed to solve something. She placed a huge sheet of butcher paper on the table with a word scramble on it. Clues about AmeriTools we had learned about (McLeod, loppers, chainsaw, etc) and some of the letter spaces were circled. We had to fill in the blanks and then unscramble to letters to figure out our project. Turns out we are going to be in the county of San Diego. As far as I know, the place we're staying in is Agua Caliente, just outside of Julian, CA. There are natural (supposedly mystical healing powered) hot springs we can use.  We will be working on historical restoration, trail maintenance and camp site enhancement. We will be living in a one room house that sleeps 10... and we have a team of 12. So we'll be taking tents with us too, just in case. Agua Caliente is apparently right on the edge of the desert so the days are fantastic work conditions now (because it's "winter") and the nights can be in the 30s. Because of our location we will not have cell phone reception but there will be access to wi-fi. Hope to find out more soon.

For right now, we're scrambling to get everything done for the end of round 1. Trying to finish team position tasks, compile our portfolio, plan for winter break, get some ISPs done, and just in general do our regular work is a lot to do. Tomorrow is my first ISP! I've signed up for 3 before and they've all been cancelled due to rain. And, even though it's raining right now and supposed to all tomorrow, the event will still happen. It's the California International Marathon and apparently it's a big deal. I guess I'll find out tomorrow.

And now, some pictures of my kids--

Today I felt accomplished

So I teach 2nd grade but I spend an hour in the RSP classroom (found out it stands for resource specialist program... basically a trsting center- a quite room away from the busy classrooms to give more one-on-one time for the kids to learn better). I've been assigned to 4th grader Brian to help better his reading skills. He comes in from recess and I read a book to him while he follows along and then he reads the book to me while I follow along. We go through the 100 high frequency word flash cards with words like "was, as, their, were, this, said, which". When we first started 3 weeks ago Brian only knew 47 words, didn't know too many of his letter sounds, and was iffy on his vowels. Now there are only 2 words he has problems with and that's only because he says what he thinks it should be instead of seeing the letters in front of him. I got tricky on him yesterday and changed the order of the flash cards because I realized he has memorized them.

I tell him he can take as long as he wants and he can sound the words outloud because it's just him and me. When he struggles and gets frustrated, I've taught him how to break words like "together" down into more manageable words or how to sound them out. I find myself saying a lot of the things I remember my mom saying to me when I was in elementary school- "when two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking" or the rule about the silent E and how it reaches around to poke the first vowel so it can talk and say its name (see mom! I was listening!).

But I think the best thing was when the two RSP teachers who usually work with him came up to me this afternoon and told me how great he was doing. He shows up on time for our little lessons. He pays attention (which apparently he talks back a lot, gets up and walks around, or gets off task easily... I've never had that problem with him) and they actually notice an improvement!

I wish we had more time with the kids. Our last day is December 14 but their last day of school is the 17. I see a lot of random visits for those last 3 days.