Last, but not final experience at Boys and Girls Club

This was a fun day with the Blue Hawks. I have spend enough time to get to know most of their names and they know mine. During the health checkup today, the Junior staff were busy keeping the kids in line, with their paperwork and at each health check station. Once the children were done moving through the checks they were supposed to sit quietly. Talk about unreal expectations for 4 year olds. So I devised a game. The kids had to take off their shoes for height and weight checks and the shoes were piled and scattered all over the floor of the mulit-purpose/video room. So Sade, Horton, Sonny and Dion organized the shoes in a row, matched the pairs against the wall. As kids finished the check, they had to count the shoes and count the pairs. I was surprised that many of the kids could count 19 pairs and 38 shoes. It was fun to tease them about odd number counts! They didn't think that any of their friends had only one foot.

After the health check we went to the Pearson farm to learn about rototilling and planting some more potatoes. Again, during some of the wait time that staff and Mr. P were setting up, I had a bunch of kids to work with and keep from stepping on the garden rows, the farm implements and the weeds. I had them write their names in the dust. Then they drew their favorite animals in the dust and then I had them draw faces in the dust. Most of the kids could do all of these tasks. The puppies stayed away from the kids today and so a couple of the youngsters could participate fully without being scared of the dogs.

I thought that it was odd that the junior staff sold candy to kids that remembered to bring some money. Kids were told not to share and not to ask for candy. Kids with money/candy had to be separated from the others to enforce the no share/no ask rule. I hope that drawing in the dirt was a distraction enough. It seems to me that the overall learning I came away with is that I cannot exercise appropriate "teacher" authority/expectations until I get to know the kids and they get to know me. The senior staff and junior staff have that relationship and with that foundation, they can work with kids, move them from task to task and maintain expectations.