The latest

So, I'll just continue this from where I left off in my last post...

Last Wednesday was 18 minute networking, which allowed me to pick the brains of City Year alum about, well, my own future. I think I've pretty much decided on doing a Senior Corps Year (the next step above Corps Member). This really means I get to have another year to delay making long term plans and basically fuck around. Hurray! In honesty, I hate making long term goals and plans, because something always changes and I end up disappointed and confused with what I had done to accomplish now moot goals (case in point, my half-filled out grad school applications). I still find it really funny that I can have this attitude and still be the control-freak that I am.

On Friday, we did service at The Greater Boston Food Bank. It was all sorting food and stuff like that. My specific job for the day had been "runner." Basically, I went and got things or put things back... I had made a sarcastic comment to my Senior Corps (who was also a runner) that "We should stretch before we start." To which his response was "Ya know, we're not actually running." I got shot down on one of my few attempts at sarcasm... I guess this is what happens when you make it known that you don't get sarcasm. But yeah, it was okay. I'd rather paint or landscape... especially because the weather has been AMAZING lately.

I also found out on Friday that I got Developement Team for CYFK. Basically, I'm gonna learn to in-kind... Which means that I'm going to be making phone calls to get donations for the February and April camps and then track everything. I kinda knew it before, but documentation is kinda my thing. I do it well and I enjoy it... I've been told that means that there will always be a place at City Year for me... That's really dangerous.

Saturday, more service. I got to meet the City Heroes (High School Students that I'll be mentoring). We put together literacy folders for younger kids. It was only 4 hours and only 3 of that was spent with the City Heroes, but it's cool. I actually think any more would have been a high pressure situation for me... One of these days, I'll master the art of small talk.

Obviously, because of Thanksgiving, I had a short week. Monday was exciting for two reasons. 1) Service was postponed at the Mason, which meant I had time to lesson plan and didn't miss Step. 2) I got to meet my mentor. She works up in HQ, something to do with developing CMs into staff and then integrating them with external people. This is cool since I would like to be developed into at least a Senior Corps - if not further. Tuesday was a usual day... I got observed in civics, which went fine and my 6th & 7th grade teacher offered me a job as a nanny to her 1.5 year-old... I turned her down, at least for now.

I always feel weird over long weekends and breaks... Something about having my routine messed around with. I don't want it was (the weather, change in rountine, something else), but I had a headache for almost 48 hours in a row. I think it's gone now, but I'm not gonna push it. I have some cleaning and an application for a leadership academy to fill out. I'm such a work-a-holic.

A long short week

So, last week, it was a 4 day week (woot Veteran's Day)... However, it ended up being a rather long week (at least it felt that way).

First of all, I caught the cold from hell. By the end of the week, I had basically completely lost my voice. It was rather ineffective in attempting to teach and make little kids be orderly. I rested up over the weekend and am back to normal :-D

Wednesday was ridiculous. First, my boss made the announcement that she's taking away our lesson planning time on Mondays and making us go to afterschool instead. Now, some of my teammates aren't using their Mondays for lesson planning and they certainly should go off and do service during that time. But I've already stayed late planning the past 3 weeks in a row. I don't mind staying late in the office, but I can't exactly be there until forever. Second, the licensing person came to my afterschool. So, while Gal & I ran PT with the youngest kids, Red made a mad dash around the school, making sure everything was in place so as not to get us shut down. Yeah, that was stressful enough. Towards the end of the day, a kid had a seizure in front of the licensing agent AND a group of kids. After all of this, we still had to go to a team dinner in JP which went until 10pm (i.e. I got home after 11pm and had to wake up at 5:45am the next morning). Wednesday night, needless to say, I got to suffer with the ill-effects of stress.

But, of course, not everything's bad. Even though there isn't much for me to do with my new 6th grade class (because they're the "Advanced" class), they're great kids. They sing to start every class and are generally polite and well-behaved. My civics kids are a bit rambunctious, but they are super-eager to learn, so I forgive them. Even my 7th graders aren't misbehaved. I somehow ended up with a bunch of middle-school kids who are actually well-behaved... And yet, maybe it's just that I've gotten along really well with middle-schoolers all along and this is no exception.

So, the beginning of this week is looking good so far. Monday, we performed PT at the EPA conference, which was fun. We also had to listen to a really boring econ lecture on the development of brownfields, which was fairly boring and resulted in even my bosses cracking jokes. Finally, we got to do service at my afterschool. We picked up glass and did some other landscaping. I absolutely love my afterschool and was so happy that we got to help out there... We'll even be back to some work in their library and paint some murals. Afterwards, of course, I stayed at the office until 7pm, lesson planning *sigh*

Today was pretty normal... I don't get to say that often and I'll take it. The one humourous story from today is that Red & Gal's 8th graders think that they're dating... yeah, I laughed forever about that.

I have 4 more days left of service (woot 6-day week), but we have a lot of service days, which are ALWAYS fun. And then, next week, we only have 2 days of work... hooray!

More changes...

Monday was my first day of actually prepping for a full course-load. It wasn't that bad and I felt like I could manage prepping 2 or 3 chapters every Monday...

That was until Tuesday rolled along. I arrive to my meeting with my civics/ESL teacher only to find out that the schedule has been changed... YET AGAIN! So, I've had my schedule changed now 3 times in a month. I remember a time when that would have severely frustrated and caused me a lot of anxiety. Now, however, I found myself laughing... the situation with Dearborn is the funniest thing ever. And yet, I'm not a student there. My success in future education doesn't depend on having a stable school now... my students, however, may be adversely affected by it and that does worry me.

Alright, so, at least a solution was arrived at reasonably quickly this time. I will be with 7th grade geography, then 8th grade civics/ESL, and then 6th grade ancient civilizations. Yeah, I now work with every grade from Pre-K through 8th. This is actually pretty awesome. If I get the City Heroes team leader, I'll then work with every single grade... *crosses fingers*

In afterschool, we started the PEPSI program this week. Parts of it worked really well and parts worked less well. I just hope that the kids got it and start using good sportsmanship. In addition to our sportsmanship stuff, we also have to prepare for a Nutrition and Wellness event to take place the last week in November... Yeah.

In final news, my classroom partner left City Year... that's all I'm gonna say here.

And so things have started actually happening and I've gotten into the swing of things, despite being moved around a lot. I'm really happy to be with City Year and I think I'll probably end up doing a second year.