There's got to be a better way...

It was a rough week overall at work. First of all Cindy was having me do follow-up calls to all the people we invited to participate in or donate to the Fall Festival. Ick. And time was pressured Thursday and Friday to get the October calendar finished. And I had to stay late 3 days wrapping things up after working with kids until 6.

Tuesday was very frustrating. J was having issues following instructions and was being goofy. He ran into the back room and hid in the corner and wouldn’t talk to me or look at me. So I let him stay there while the others ate snack. Forcing him back to the room would have been met with more resistance on his part and goofing off and distracting the other kids from what they should be doing. My mistake, which led to the frustrating conversation with Cindy, was when I sent our volunteer back there to do his homework with him. I was thinking about so many other things that I didn’t think about the fact that a volunteer should not be alone in a room with a child. Big oops. So I asked them to move up to my office, no problem.

I felt pretty good about the way I had handled the whole situation. But when I relayed the whole story to Cindy, her response seemed to be that I should have been harder on him, should have given him an ultimatum and a punishment for not returning to the room. I was trying to be caring and maintain my sanity, and she wanted me to be strict and tough. Her advice for any subsequent situations that may arise was “You just have to be really firm sometimes and show them who’s boss, so that they know you’re serious. Sometimes I say things that make me cringe when I hear other people say them, but you’ve gotta do it, or they’ll never listen to you…” I know in my heart that that is not true. The problem, though, is that it’s so crazy and chaotic that we don’t have the time or staff to have the deeper one-on-one conversations with the kids about their feelings and needs and how they respond to each other. But I refuse to believe that it’s impossible to do any of that.

If they’d stop yelling at each other to stop yelling, we might actually be able to accomplish something. I have got to figure out how to talk to these kids in NVC, because I cannot do the yelling and threat thing. D ran away today after he was done reading. His brother chased him down, and one of the high schoolers carried him back. Sigh. At one point I had to take him into the hallway and make him get his body under control because he was just crazy and lashing out and jumping/kicking/punching like he does…then he was better for a while.

I think Cindy thinks I’m overwhelmed and don’t how to handle having 7 kids in my room. She keeps wanting to take some away and give me “easier” ones. We've already switched D and N out. Yesterday, she proposed taking J and E (two 1st-grade boys) out of my room in exchange for two older kids, but I managed to talk her out of it.

In terms of the kids in my room, I think I just got off to a bad start with them. I didn’t manage to establish rules/expectations right off the bat: the environment was not at all conducive to it, and it’s hard to talk to a group of kids who are bouncing off the walls… Most of my time is spent responding to things the kids are doing rather than preventing them from happening in the first place. The thing about J is that he reminds me of me when I was little – he’s very shy when people ask him to do things and doesn’t want to talk to adults or people who are trying to pry information from him. And then he just gets physical and goofy to avoid it.

P.S. his mother is from Honduras.

18-hour visit

Last night, I finally got in touch with my friend Marié! (We had discovered in August that we were both going to be out here this year). So instead of going bar-hopping with my housemates (not my idea of fun…), I dropped them off in Philly and went to her place. It’s fun to have a Methodist friend from Oregon nearby, even though (as we soon realized) we don’t actually know each other that well.

Went to Arch Street UMC together on Sunday morning. It’s a pretty neat church, very old and right downtown. It was great to hear some good Methodist music—emphasis on the music part (they could have picked better songs...): great singing/harmony/acoustics/choir. The UMW invited us to stay for lunch with them, so we did: JVC (and poor Grad student) rule: never pass up free food when it’s offered… It was a great spur-of-the-moment 18 hours.

Work

Work is going along treadingly. As in: I’m not drowning, but I wouldn’t say it’s going “swimmingly.” I’m keeping my head above water, but it’s tiring.

In the first 4 hours, Cindy asks me to do things that I'm unsure about: often am not sure exactly what it is she wants me to do, or how she wants it done, or if she really cares how I do it…and sometimes they’re things I’d really rather not do, like make phone calls to businesses in the area and ask them if they’d be willing to donate food or supplies or money for our upcoming fall festival. If you know me very well, you know that making phone calls is one of my least favorite activities in the world. Especially when it’s to people I don’t know, and especially when it involves formality…SIGH.

The last 4 hours are a completely different story. I still haven’t quite figured out how to respond to and interact with the middle schoolers, so that’s always a little awkward. Then, the 1st-4th graders come and bounce off the walls and yell at each other and ignore my instructions or my pleadings. I don’t even get that many opportunities to give them instructions because I’m so busy trying to get them to calm down enough to listen! I wasn't expecting to be surprised by how difficult the children were and how chaotic it might be, but then I realized that although I'm used to working with groups of 7 kids at day camps, I'm only used to having 1 or 2 per group who are noisy and/or hyperactive and/or violent. But here, the opposite is true. Out of 7 there's maybe one or two that aren't! Luckily, they all have their good sides, too. The trick is to figure out how to make that good side be the dominant side...

I come home tired at the end of the day.

Surprise!

The adventure of the day today was setting the burglar alarm off this morning!

I went in to work late and so hadn’t come out of my room yet when my last housemate left for work at 9. I walked down the stairs and around the corner, and all of a sudden the alarm siren stared wailing. It was SO loud! After I had recovered from the shock, I walked over to the front door and turned it off. Whew. About 10 minutes later, I heard a brisk knock at the door and was not surprised to find a police officer standing there. “You’re burglar alarm went off?” “Yeah…” So I explained and he left.

As one of my housemates noted, he probably knew it was OK the second he saw me: simply because I was white. I think the pajamas might have had something to do with it too: who robs a house in their pajamas? …

New Beginnings UMC

This morning I went to the United Methodist church right around the corner from us on State Street with Megan. Its official name turns out to be “New Beginnings” UMC, which might explain why we couldn’t find any information about “State Street UMC” on the internet.

It’s a small, African-American congregation that’s trying to figure out how to remain vital. The Conference is watching them this year to see if the ministry site is worth keeping open; if the congregation has the energy, vision, and commitment to keep going and to offer ministries that make a difference in the community. I don’t know that I’ll go there very often – it’s not really my worship style – but I’m glad I went and made the connection with them and the neighborhood.

Soggy day

Oh for adventures! Hah!

We went to the Red Bull Soapbox Car Derby in Philadelphia today with the Philly JVs in the middle of Hurricane Hanna. Needless to say, we got soaked, drenched, water-logged.

The first challenge of the day was driving there in the rain (I drove). The second was finding a place to park! We tried to park in an ACME parking lot, but got threatened with a ticket after getting out of the car. We were sopping wet by the time we got back in the car, about one minute later.

The Derby itself wasn’t that interesting – cars only passed about every 15 minutes and we weren’t in a place where we could see the big screens following them. The streets were mostly lined with young drunk people spilling out of their houses. It was boring, so we left and put our soggy clothes in the dryer and ate homemade bread instead.

Day 1

Holy cow, I survived the first day of children…it was NUTS! The kids were crazy, and mostly I felt like I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. Plus, we had them for 3 ½ hours instead of 1 ½ since the first day of school was a half day. Way to jump in with two feet! The hardest thing was trying to keep them from fighting with each other…

But as I told my parents, dealing with the kids was easier for me than sitting through an hour of listening to Giuliani and Palin speak at the Republican convention…