It is crazy how fast these weeks fly. So much has happened since my last post. To be honest, I feel like I could write a blog post on every day I'm at school because every day is so different and so full of funny things. But now that I'm starting to become involved in other activities outside of school, I'm getting home even later and there's just no time or energy left. But I absolutely love what I do so it really doesn't matter. With that being said, I'm just going to jump right into this!
The last two weeks have consisted of a lot of meetings, after school planning and recruitment, and classroom setup. We officially have our City Year classroom decorated and ready for the start of our after school program tomorrow! We've got all of our Tuesday clubs decided and I'm going to be working in the dance/music club. We're going to be spending six weeks teaching them about different types of Latin dances and music and maybe getting them to do a performance at the end of the quarter. When we took surveys of students asking them what type of clubs they were interested in, dance got a pretty significant amount of votes. It'll be interesting to see their reaction to our version of a dance club because I think they may have had more of an "everyday i'm shuffling" mindset when voting on the survey.
This last week I went to two different parent meetings, both of them in Spanish. We also had Back to School night on Thursday where I met a couple of my kid's parents who didn't speak English. So I tried telling them about my role in the classroom with their kid, I really did! But judging by the blank stares, one can only assume my attempts were fruitless. I can only hope the kiddies tell their parents nothing but awesome things about "Miss Chola." They started calling me Chola and Shakira pretty early in the year ("Chola" because of my boots and my badass attitude, and "Shakira" because of my hair and my dancing during power greetings). It didn't really bother me that every time I walked into class the whole room would erupt in "EYYYYYY CHOLAAAAAA!!" but it bothered some of my teachers. So I kind of got in trouble for it this week. I am only allowed to let them call me those things outside the classroom, but in the classroom it must be Miss Nicole. I had to break it to them on Wednesday during 6th period. I got up in front of the class and told them I got in trouble for letting them call me that and told them the new rules before someone piped up with a "EY MISS! WHO SNITCHED ON YOU!?" And then another kid started chanting "Choooola, chooolaaaa, CHOOOOLLAA!!" So clearly I have a lot of authority in the classroom. It's actually really cute to see them hold each other accountable for it. Since they're so used to it, they have slipped up a couple times. But if they do accidentally call me by the wrong name, I can always count on their neighbor to slap them and tell them to shut up. The kids and I have each others backs as so lovingly displayed by one of my students this week when she asked if I had a boyfriend. I told her I was dating someone and she responded by punching her fist into her hand and saying "Don't worry, miss. If he ever breaks up with you, we got your back!" Gosh, I love them.
Not only do I love the kids I work with in the classroom, but I also love the kids I randomly meet in nutrition or lunch. The first week was so awkward because we were told to just mingle with students and strike up conversations. We would bring board games with us to make it a little easier, but would have to beg kids to play with us. Now I go to lunch and get approached by kids asking if I brought Scrabble with me so we can play. I'm starting to connect with students on a deeper level, which is awesome and scary at the same time. We had a great time this last Thursday with the substitute teacher we had for history who was probably the scariest and most bizarre woman I've ever met. Now we have this little inside joke about the crazy sub experience we had with her. That's the awesome part. The scary part is that certain students are starting to trust me with secrets. While they are mostly about who is dating who and who got down with who, I am a little nervous about what else they might divulge. I had to make my first mandated reporting call this week which was really hard. I cried a whole bunch but I think it was mostly due to the fact that the woman was a big fat meanie on the phone. I suppose my first call had to happen at some point, though.
After school program starts tomorrow. It should make for a very interesting blog post next time around I'm sure.
I love what I do. Thanks for reading. :)
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Sunday, September 11, 2011
intro into hollenbeck.
This last Wednesday was our first official day of school. So I was out of the door of Woodcraft before the sun was up. As much as it sucked waking up that early, it was kind of fun being up before the rest of the world. At 7AM, we were circled up at Hollenbeck getting our daily schedules for the rest of the year. At 7:15, we were lined up on the sidewalk hootin' and hollerin' at students and parents getting them AMPED for the first day of school. Oh, and then Mayor Villaraigosa showed up, so that was normal. Apparently Antonio loves City Year so he and his cohort just stared and smiled as we danced and yelled at kids who kept their heads down and quickened their pace when they walked past us. Meanwhile, it's 97 degrees at 7:30 in the morning and my boots are on fire (figuratively and almost literally). So I'm sweating everywhere, but attempting to look really good because Mr. Mayor has brought two of his photographers along who are snappin' away. I know the students were supposed to be my number one priority in that moment, but let's be real....these pictures might be in City Hall or something and I am not about to have a dumb look on my face for all of Los Angeles to gawk at forever. I'm just trying to rep City Year to the best of my ability. So after a few awkward minutes of having a constant smile on my face, fake laughing and being stared at by a group of people, I felt it was only necessary to get the mayor involved in morning greeting. So I told my teammate Pernell to call in the mayor to our chant. Seeing the mayor bust a respectable dance move in a professional manner was a pretty good start to the day.
After morning greeting, we were told to mingle with students before class. And in case you were curious...yes, simply walking up to too-cool-for-school middle schoolers and introducing yourself and asking questions IS as awkward as it sounds. Thankfully the bell rang, and since my first period is a planning period, I didn't have to get to class. So my team manager Tara and I went around campus and hung up posters. I walked in the library and was suddenly approached by a parent who proceeded to ask me a question in really fast Spanish. Cue the deer in the headlights expression. I panicked, obviously, but managed to pull a "Mande?" out of my butt and ended up getting a pretty decent idea of what he was asking when he repeated himself. After letting out an awkward, nervous chuckle I used my sub-par knowledge of the Spanish language to tell him to take a seat if his kid's name wasn't on the class roster. This mild crisis put my "brushing up on Spanish skills" to the top of my to-do list. Si se puede! Shout out to Disney Channel's original movie "Gotta Kick It Up" for teaching me that inspiring phrase.
On to the next and most exciting part about my service: MY STUDENTS! They are AWESOME and I'm obsessed with them....in a non-creepy way. I met them in 2nd period English and within a couple minutes already felt I had made a connection with one of the girls. She laughed at my joke so obviously she's cool. This year, it'll be the same group of students plus or minus a couple students for 2nd period English, 4th period History and 6th period math. After two days, I've already pinpointed students who love to talk and students who like to keep to themselves. There's also going to be another adult in the classroom which I just found out. Her name is Ms. Gomez and she is there to work primarily with one of my students who has bipolar disorder. However, she will be doing a lot of whole class support because she doesn't want everyone to know she is there only for that one student. He's been made fun of in the past, and she wants to avoid that at all costs. He's had a few outbursts in class before, and if he doesn't take his medications at home it's a "bad day" as Ms. Gomez said. That said, he's a really great kid and I like him a lot.
Ms. Delgado let me read the students' "About Me" questionnaires so I could start to get to know them. I read some hilarious and some really touching things. One student wants to be a dance teacher when he grows up so he can teach kids how to shuffle. LOLLL. Best. A lot of the kids answered this question with things like nurse, teacher or soldier because they really want to help people. One of the other questions asked was "If you could meet anyone from the past who would it be and why?" Many students named family members they've never met before or ones the lost that they would like to see again. My absolute favorite answer though was, "I would like to meet Martin Luther King, Jr. so I could talk to him about his dream." I have a bunch of students with big hearts and I'm really excited to get to know them.
I'll end this post with my favorite story of the week. In history on Thursday, Ms. Delgado wanted to have some fun playing "Would You Rather?". Her question was "Would you rather drink a cup of someone else's sweat or eat five of their boogers?" Now, assuming these are five normal-sized, non-bloody boogers compared to a grotesque cup of salty sweat from someone else's body, I decided to go with the boogers because I figured you could just clump them all up and generate enough spit to swallow the clump the way you would a pill. So while the students were busy writing their answers, I was walking around the room glancing at their answers and saw that most of them said they'd drink the sweat. Two of my students called me over and said, "Miss Nicole! Which would you choose?" So I told these kids who had already written that they'd drink the sweat that I would eat the boogers. After explaining my reasoning and listening to them gag at the idea of eating boogers, I continued on my way to the back of the classroom. When I came full circle and passed these students again, I noticed that both of them had crossed out "I would drink the sweat" and changed it to "I would eat the boogers." As dumb as this might sound, that moment gave me a lot of perspective as to how much of an influence I have on my students. It totally put me in check and made me realize how much they do look up to me and will look up to me throughout the year. I love this new role I have as a mentor and I love my students so much.
Last week was a slow and easy intro to Hollenbeck with the minimum day schedule. This week will be my first full normal week. I just got off the plane from a wonderfully busy two days in Kansas where I got to visit David at his new home at KU. I went to one of the best football games I've ever seen where the Jayhawks won it on a 4th down touchdown pass with 14 seconds left in the game. I also went to one of the worst football games I've ever seen where the Bills just massacred the Chiefs 41-7. It sucked, but I'm always happy to see my baby Eric Berry in action and my boy Tamba Hali deliver on defense. A great weekend with the family, but I'm ready to get back to work! As always, props for reading this super long post. Thanks :)
After morning greeting, we were told to mingle with students before class. And in case you were curious...yes, simply walking up to too-cool-for-school middle schoolers and introducing yourself and asking questions IS as awkward as it sounds. Thankfully the bell rang, and since my first period is a planning period, I didn't have to get to class. So my team manager Tara and I went around campus and hung up posters. I walked in the library and was suddenly approached by a parent who proceeded to ask me a question in really fast Spanish. Cue the deer in the headlights expression. I panicked, obviously, but managed to pull a "Mande?" out of my butt and ended up getting a pretty decent idea of what he was asking when he repeated himself. After letting out an awkward, nervous chuckle I used my sub-par knowledge of the Spanish language to tell him to take a seat if his kid's name wasn't on the class roster. This mild crisis put my "brushing up on Spanish skills" to the top of my to-do list. Si se puede! Shout out to Disney Channel's original movie "Gotta Kick It Up" for teaching me that inspiring phrase.
On to the next and most exciting part about my service: MY STUDENTS! They are AWESOME and I'm obsessed with them....in a non-creepy way. I met them in 2nd period English and within a couple minutes already felt I had made a connection with one of the girls. She laughed at my joke so obviously she's cool. This year, it'll be the same group of students plus or minus a couple students for 2nd period English, 4th period History and 6th period math. After two days, I've already pinpointed students who love to talk and students who like to keep to themselves. There's also going to be another adult in the classroom which I just found out. Her name is Ms. Gomez and she is there to work primarily with one of my students who has bipolar disorder. However, she will be doing a lot of whole class support because she doesn't want everyone to know she is there only for that one student. He's been made fun of in the past, and she wants to avoid that at all costs. He's had a few outbursts in class before, and if he doesn't take his medications at home it's a "bad day" as Ms. Gomez said. That said, he's a really great kid and I like him a lot.
Ms. Delgado let me read the students' "About Me" questionnaires so I could start to get to know them. I read some hilarious and some really touching things. One student wants to be a dance teacher when he grows up so he can teach kids how to shuffle. LOLLL. Best. A lot of the kids answered this question with things like nurse, teacher or soldier because they really want to help people. One of the other questions asked was "If you could meet anyone from the past who would it be and why?" Many students named family members they've never met before or ones the lost that they would like to see again. My absolute favorite answer though was, "I would like to meet Martin Luther King, Jr. so I could talk to him about his dream." I have a bunch of students with big hearts and I'm really excited to get to know them.
I'll end this post with my favorite story of the week. In history on Thursday, Ms. Delgado wanted to have some fun playing "Would You Rather?". Her question was "Would you rather drink a cup of someone else's sweat or eat five of their boogers?" Now, assuming these are five normal-sized, non-bloody boogers compared to a grotesque cup of salty sweat from someone else's body, I decided to go with the boogers because I figured you could just clump them all up and generate enough spit to swallow the clump the way you would a pill. So while the students were busy writing their answers, I was walking around the room glancing at their answers and saw that most of them said they'd drink the sweat. Two of my students called me over and said, "Miss Nicole! Which would you choose?" So I told these kids who had already written that they'd drink the sweat that I would eat the boogers. After explaining my reasoning and listening to them gag at the idea of eating boogers, I continued on my way to the back of the classroom. When I came full circle and passed these students again, I noticed that both of them had crossed out "I would drink the sweat" and changed it to "I would eat the boogers." As dumb as this might sound, that moment gave me a lot of perspective as to how much of an influence I have on my students. It totally put me in check and made me realize how much they do look up to me and will look up to me throughout the year. I love this new role I have as a mentor and I love my students so much.
Last week was a slow and easy intro to Hollenbeck with the minimum day schedule. This week will be my first full normal week. I just got off the plane from a wonderfully busy two days in Kansas where I got to visit David at his new home at KU. I went to one of the best football games I've ever seen where the Jayhawks won it on a 4th down touchdown pass with 14 seconds left in the game. I also went to one of the worst football games I've ever seen where the Bills just massacred the Chiefs 41-7. It sucked, but I'm always happy to see my baby Eric Berry in action and my boy Tamba Hali deliver on defense. A great weekend with the family, but I'm ready to get back to work! As always, props for reading this super long post. Thanks :)
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Suited and Booted.
Some have said that going through "Basic Training Academy" is almost like trying to take a drink of water from a gushing fire hose. After three weeks of PowerPoint presentations and content-heavy discussions, 200 of us corps members are PUMPED for the first day of school and the opportunity to put into practice what we've been learning. I've been placed at Hollenbeck Middle School in Boyle Heights. I have to be there at 7AM Monday-Thursday for the rest of the year. If I take the bus, I have to leave my house by 6AM, which means I have to wake up in the 5 o'clock hour. I think I MAYBE woke up at 5AM once to take someone to the airport. Forget dealing with at-risk and under-privileged students. It's the waking up at the most unholy of hours that will be my biggest challenge this year. Let's be real. One of the greatest things about this story is that my team has to do morning greeting every morning to welcome the students and get them pumped for the day. Basically I have to dance around like an idiot and yell really awesome cheers. For example: "MY NAME IS NICOLE AND I KNOW WHAT I GOT! I GOT A TEAM THAT'S HOTTER THAN HOT! BATMAN AND SUPERMAN, CAN'T DO IT LIKE NICOLE CAN!" I'm going to lose my cool just a little bit more everyday. Anything for the children, I guess.
Today was a pupil-free day. So I got to go into my school and meet the teachers I'm going to be serving with this year and get a better idea of what my day-to-day will look like. I'll be following a group of students to three of their classes every day: English, math and history. It will be the same group of 30-ish students all year. In that group of 30, I will have what City Year calls a "focus list" which will consist of about 10-12 students. These focus list students will be my main priority and I will work mostly with them with one-on-one tutoring and such. So until I have some time to get to know some of the kids and see which ones need more one-on-one attention, I'll be doing whole-class support during class time and whatever else I can to help out the teacher. My three teachers are GREAT. I have Ms. Uribe for English, Ms. Delgado for history and Ms. Jaffe for math. I met with Ms. Delgado and Ms. Jaffe today and they both run their classes in very different manners so it'll be interesting to see how things work.
All the staff members I have met at Hollenbeck seem to love having City Year at the schools, but I know one of the people on my team met with their teacher today who flat out told them they don't want City Year in their classroom. Thankfully my teachers are all about City Year's partnership. While all of us corps members are in the same program, we're all going to have such different experiences. After being with all 13 of my roommates all day every day for a month, it's going to be weird not seeing them but for a few hours every day. I got off work at 6 tonight, stopped at the grocery store, made dinner and lunch for tomorrow, showered, then realized it was almost time for bed. This year's going to be so crazy and busy, but I'm so so excited to see what's in store.
Today was a pupil-free day. So I got to go into my school and meet the teachers I'm going to be serving with this year and get a better idea of what my day-to-day will look like. I'll be following a group of students to three of their classes every day: English, math and history. It will be the same group of 30-ish students all year. In that group of 30, I will have what City Year calls a "focus list" which will consist of about 10-12 students. These focus list students will be my main priority and I will work mostly with them with one-on-one tutoring and such. So until I have some time to get to know some of the kids and see which ones need more one-on-one attention, I'll be doing whole-class support during class time and whatever else I can to help out the teacher. My three teachers are GREAT. I have Ms. Uribe for English, Ms. Delgado for history and Ms. Jaffe for math. I met with Ms. Delgado and Ms. Jaffe today and they both run their classes in very different manners so it'll be interesting to see how things work.
All the staff members I have met at Hollenbeck seem to love having City Year at the schools, but I know one of the people on my team met with their teacher today who flat out told them they don't want City Year in their classroom. Thankfully my teachers are all about City Year's partnership. While all of us corps members are in the same program, we're all going to have such different experiences. After being with all 13 of my roommates all day every day for a month, it's going to be weird not seeing them but for a few hours every day. I got off work at 6 tonight, stopped at the grocery store, made dinner and lunch for tomorrow, showered, then realized it was almost time for bed. This year's going to be so crazy and busy, but I'm so so excited to see what's in store.
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