Sunday, January 25, 2009
The Kids Are All Right
My volunteering Saturday morning turned out to be just fine. Well, we ended up just standing around for about 45 minutes before anyone even told us where to go, but there were donuts and the building had those truly effective old radiators, so that was not a big deal. Our two classes have five and four students in them respectively. It turns out the classes we're competing with are things like "fun with percussion" and "cartooning," so we're really only going to get the kids who would rather argue with people than beat on a drum or learn to draw Garfield. (Well, probably it's not Garfield any more. Who are the kids drawing these days? Chelsea Handler?) But I would say those kids probably count for two or three kids each, since they talk incessantly and aren't particularly interested in deferring to an instructor. I may well end up bound with a jumprope and thrown into a broom closet before this is all over.
But anyway, since our first session started late we only had to teach for about half an hour, a decent chunk of which we could fill with get to know you activities, which actually utterly failed to teach me any of the kids' names. (Except for the kid who insisted his name was "Shahshafufu;" him I remember.) The second session we actually had to teach more, so we did a lesson on writing and interpreting laws. Which is pretty useful, because I think half of these kids are state legislators. And judging from their behavior, the other half will be on trial for something before they turn 17. But regardless, we made it through our lesson and they actually seemed pretty into it. And next time will be even better, because we're planning to use a transparency! We are the greatest people in the universe.
My volunteering Saturday morning turned out to be just fine. Well, we ended up just standing around for about 45 minutes before anyone even told us where to go, but there were donuts and the building had those truly effective old radiators, so that was not a big deal. Our two classes have five and four students in them respectively. It turns out the classes we're competing with are things like "fun with percussion" and "cartooning," so we're really only going to get the kids who would rather argue with people than beat on a drum or learn to draw Garfield. (Well, probably it's not Garfield any more. Who are the kids drawing these days? Chelsea Handler?) But I would say those kids probably count for two or three kids each, since they talk incessantly and aren't particularly interested in deferring to an instructor. I may well end up bound with a jumprope and thrown into a broom closet before this is all over.
But anyway, since our first session started late we only had to teach for about half an hour, a decent chunk of which we could fill with get to know you activities, which actually utterly failed to teach me any of the kids' names. (Except for the kid who insisted his name was "Shahshafufu;" him I remember.) The second session we actually had to teach more, so we did a lesson on writing and interpreting laws. Which is pretty useful, because I think half of these kids are state legislators. And judging from their behavior, the other half will be on trial for something before they turn 17. But regardless, we made it through our lesson and they actually seemed pretty into it. And next time will be even better, because we're planning to use a transparency! We are the greatest people in the universe.
