The trouble with being five...

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If working for non-profit organizations hadn't already taught me the value of patience, working with kindergarteners would have! I constantly have to remind myself that they are still really, really young and not adjusted to school yet. None of them are bad kids, they are just all really wiggly and have no attention spans whatsoever. I am learning to think very quickly on my feet because things that work to keep them interested at first very quickly wear off! I had a good thing going where I wrote "STICKER" on the board and erased a letter any time the class was off task. At the end of the day if there were still letters on the board then everyone got a sticker. This worked like MAGIC the first time; my neediest student was calling me "ma'am" and apologizing for speaking out of turn. Now they're sort of over that so I'm working on passing out stickers for good behavior as I see it.

I swear the phrase "If you give an inch they'll take a mile" was written by a Kindergarten teacher because every time we so much as walk out the door half of them sprint across the playground faster than I can say "stay in line". This would be a good way to release some energy but inevitably two of them collide and someone is crying about a skinned knee and the other is crying because he feels bad.
Another tutor accidentally locked the bathroom door while one of my boys was still in a stall. It took a few minutes for me to track her down and get her to open it so by the time we got in he was just standing by the sink with wide, terrified eyes. Poor little guy didn't shout for help or anything...

I'm picking up bits of Spanish. Usually I just cheat when a student has a homework assignment translated into Spanish, I read that and pretend I know what Im saying. If I ever go to Spain Ill know how to say "count how many" "what letter?" and "write your name here"

One punk underestimated my Spanish skills and tried to trick me. They were taking turns writing on the board (a HUGE privilege) and one kid kept telling the others to hurry up so he could go. I told him not to rush his friends so he starts saying "rapido!" and acting like that's a compliment. Unfortunately for him that was one of about 3 Spanish words Id heard before, and either way I probably would have guessed that it meant fast!

The best part of my work day is the student workout and watching my little crew do jumping jacks with the big kids. They're just not quite coordinated enough to move their arms and legs at the same time...

Anyways Ive been loving hearing about snow days back east from sunny LA! We spend a lot of our free time at the beach and have explored downtown quite a bit. The biggest problem with LA is that it's very spread out so you can't really walk many places. There also isn't much for public transportation so traffic is notoriously awful! It takes us anywhere from an hour to an hour and a half to pick up everyone from their schools at night.

We've done a few independent service projects here. Stacked food at a food bank, played with kids at a women's shelter. We also went to an ape conservatory, but this didn't end up being much fun. They had us digging through dirt piles looking for big rocks. For cages for the apes? Who knows, but al least we got to see a few on the way-out. We also participated in LA's homeless count, a kind of census to see where homeless support services were needed. We walked the streets tallying how many homeless individuals or encampments we saw pin each area. Sounded glamourous but my group was sent to a residential suburb so all we did was wake up neighborhood dogs and set off a car alarm. Can't really see how I improved the lives of any homeless people by confirming that there are none in the nicer areas.

One of my team roles is Service Learning Initiator so Im in charge of facilitating reflection and learning about the projects we work on. I didn't really do much our first round, but this one has been easier since I studied education and it's a very hot topic to discuss. We wanted to watch Waiting for Superman but it's not out yet so we watched a documentary about the fall od the California School District.

I also made up a project to get my teammates thinking about what it's like for students from bad areas or broken homes. I basically made up a bogus assignment and told them everyone in AmeriCorps needed to fill it out. Then I took away everything we as middle class students take for granted. I made them all sit on the floor in one small room, I shut off the lights and turned on the TV really loudly. My questions were too complicated to understand and required dictionaries and the handbook which we didn't have in the room. Anytime someone asked me what a word meant or how to answer a question I rudely said I did not know and did not care because I was watching TV.

A few people caught on thAt it was a set up because I never yell at my teammates like that, but for the most part it really worked. They got too frustrated to answer it and one girl just covered the sheet with profanities. Finally I turned the lights on and explained that it was an experiment and got people talking. It struck home the most for the people who got really upset; the girl who wrote profanities said she even had kid in her class who never does homework and she never thought about why before this. She was frustrated with his poor work, but in fifteen minutes shed become worse than him.

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Comments

[Art Hagy]

a special place in heaven
I have always thought that Kindergarten teachers would have a special place in heaven. You have confirmed my feelings. I have done some "Mothers Helper" work in first grade and seen the results that you mention. God bless you, Kristen. I also thoroughly enjoyed the experiment you devised for homework for the group. What a great idea. We all love you and are proud to know you. Art