Kindergarten at 61st Street

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I am taking advantage of a morning off (site supervisor has training) to update about our project. I was placed at 61st Street Elementary School along with my team leader and another guy on Blue 3. During the day we'll be doing mostly administrative and preparation work and then after school we will work with the students for a few hours. I decided to go into the Kindergarten class and it's been super crazy but very fun!! There are only 11 of them and for the most part they are good 😊 Usually there is a paid tutor who runs each class but for some reason several of the tutors from 61st first decided not to or were unable to come back so I've basically taken over running the class, which I actually prefer! The other guy on my team was asked to lead the 5th graders on our first day and they gave him a really hard time ( he'd never worked at a school before...) so for this week he was in K with me and then he'll switch to high school next week.

The after school program consists of tutoring, enrichment, and homework. Tutoring is basically a lesson and so far the old tutor has left us enough material to work with. She left a painting activity which was just disastrous! No matter how much newspaper we put down or how many times we told them not to touch their clothes they still managed to get paint EVERYWHERE. So the next day we used markers instead. Slightly less messy but caused a few tears over who got to use the blue one first...

Enrichment is an organized activity, which for K means burning as much energy as possible! Duck, Duck, Goose is the only game which makes them run but doesn't immediately escalate into mass pandemonium. They gave me a CD of silly songs to play so we also danced for enrichment one day and that was probably the funniest/cutest thing I've ever seen!!

Homework time can sometimes be a bit crazy because they are all working on different things and are all quick to yell, "Teacher I need hellllllp!!" without even trying on their own!
The good part is that it gives all the kids a good work space with people who can help them with their work because a lot of them probably don't have that at home. You never really think about that, but I helped one girl practice her reading sight words and then when I met her parents I learned that they don't speak English at home, so without this program she wouldn't really have a way to learn those words.
I guess when it comes down to it that's why I'm sleeping on a cot and crowding in a van with 10 other people for the year...

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Comments

[Art Hagy]

who you are:
Kristen, you are right, it is because of who you are that you are doing this work at 61st Street school. What a thrill for you and for them. Just think, they are experiencing the fact that somebody cares about them. And that "somebody" is absolutely terrific. God bless you. Art