Work Notes

written: October 27th

Photo for today:

 

This is my trade from Andrea on the perfume swap group. Today has been so insane, I haven’t really even had a chance to test out “Ask” and see if I like it! ::laughs::

So today was an Early Release Day – which translates over into a Long Fucking Day for the after school program. 11:15 am until 6:35 pm – no real “break”. Just bathroom breaks as we could swing ‘em. ::shakes her head:: And add to the mix that the weather took a nose dive of THIRTY degrees today – yeah, it was 87 degrees yesterday and 57 degrees today.

But honestly, all things considered? It was a pretty easy day. My typical “challenging” students weren’t today. Hell, Mason, who normally gets into trouble for SOMETHING and has a meltdown about it, didn’t today…at all. Hell, he was POLITE and almost subdued today. I made sure to brag to his mother (where he could “eavesdrop” so he could hear me praising his good behavior) about it today. He doesn’t have a whole lot of victories like this, so I make sure to make a big deal out of them in hopes that this will entice more of this behavior.

Jess and I traced and cut out fish and starfish for the kids to paint. I also let them paint the bats if they so desired. And Jess did her coloring contest. I only made 20 copies for that as it’s usually a small group, but ended up having to go make more. Originally, I sent Jess to the copy room to make it, but my directions weren’t overly clear on how to select the paper tray where she put the cardstock in, so I had to jog down there and show her. But now she knows how to do that, so hopefully I can let her start doing more of that. I have GOT to start letting go of the reigns on EVERYTHING. I cannot do it all by myself.

And then Jess turned around and asked Sarah to do the foam pumpkin project with the students without me prompting. Hell, I didn’t even know that’s what she did, as we were over there cutting out fish. But I think Sarah really enjoying doing the art project with the students, so I need to nurture that and give her more free reign on that. I think on Monday, I will show her the catalog we order a lot of our supplies through and let her pick some art projects she would like to do with the students. I also want to team her up with Jess on planning for the Winter Break Party for the students. That is another early release day (aka Long Ass Day) that Jess has all these games and a photo booth and what not that she puts together. I think if she and Sarah start on that NOW, we could have some really awesome stuff by the time we get to Winter Break. And it will already be done and ready to go, so that we just have to pull it out and set it up.