Still waiting for service to start

I took a week off from posting, because, well, last weekend was unduly stressful. Ironically, taking time off from City Year to spend 3 days at Hamilton for Alumni Weekend made my life worse... Let's just say, ex-boyfriends suck... a lot. While at least Alan left me alone, Wex decided to be an immature jerk and start a screaming match that all of Babbitt heard. It truly showed me just how much I've outgrown college and am so much better off with City Year/any group of more mature, idealistic individuals.

At the end of the week before my Hamilton visit, we had a meeting with the middle school principal, the civics teacher, and a ESL teacher who taught one civics class. There was also some talk about connecting with the 7th grade social studies curriculum. Things were looking promising. It looked like I was finally going to get a chance to get into the classroom and teach.

This past week, I somewhat got to. I arrived on Tuesday to find that I was not permanently assigned to a full-time civics teacher. I had my definite assignment in the ESL class (thanks to my SHINE experience/certification), but that was only one class period a day. I'm loving my ESL kids (I'm assigned to about 5 8th grade boys... which is surprisingly working out). But yeah, I spent Tuesday observing a class that was not mine.

Thursday, I arrived at the school still not knowing where I would be ending up. Last minute, I was told that I would be in a 6th grade social studies class... Excuse me? When was this decided? Well, apparently, not even the 6th grade teacher was informed that I was assigned to his classroom. I didn't even find out what the 6th grade curriculum was until about 10 minutes into the first class. I also later find out that the teacher, a rather reticent individual, will not be in school for all of January and February. Obviously, this is an unacceptable assignment, which means I still don't have a classroom assignment.

I got my team role assignment this week: Documentation Coordinator. In sum, I'm responsible for keeping track of everything: timesheets, photographs, service projects, etc, etc, etc. I basically get to be anal and put my sociological documentation skills to work. Yay!

I'm still in love with my afterschool program. My 1st and 2nd graders are absolutely adorable. They've started drawing me pictures and seem all excited when I show up. We've successful run the PE program for the past 3 weeks and are looking to start a related program called: "Physical Enrichment Program Sportmanship Initiative (PEPSI)," which will develop good sportmanship while teaching general respect.

So, yeah, it's been a rough week. My hope is that next week will be better.