Friday in the Second Grade

There's a temptation, I find, to assume that just because one no longer works, one's weeks are suddenly devoid of all purpose and meaning. Ah HAH, I say to such naysayers! The last few weeks (three, I think?) started out a bit lazy, I'll admit, but my days are as much or more full now. I get up at 6:30-7am, get Elise up and ready for school. Some days I go with her, as I'm volunteering in her classroom to teach the kids about internet searching and research, and to get them look up a famous American they may be interested in.

I'm going to shoot off on a tangent here, but it's an important one, I think. The dynamics in Elise's classroom are pretty strange, and worth mentioning. I'm fairly sure these kids are worse behaved than most at the school, just so you don't think that the whole school is full of screaming ADD-heads...

There are three boys who represent the worst of the worst. I'll call them E1, E2 and M1. By no means do I believe these kids are just bad kids and that's all there is to it. Nope, they've all had a very rough time growing up - one boy spent the first five years of his life floating through different foster care settings. His mother's been forbidden to have any contact with him, and he's never had the slightest idea who his father is. M1 (and I have this from his father) has a psycho mother, and the father now has custody. He's raising this boy and his sister by himself, and it's a struggle.

I don't know the situation for E2, but he's like the other two: so desperate for attention that he'll do anything, including really naughty stuff, to get it.

I started out in the classroom a few days after I left my job. I'd promised the teacher, Mrs. A. to help her set up the computers in her classroom, but then I got swamped at work, and she finally got them setup. I then asked what help she could use, and she suggested I teach the kids the module about internet searches, and have them search for information on a famous American, thereby killing two birds with one stone.

I love kids, and I'd been on a field trip with Mrs. A and the class earlier in the Spring. I'd already met all the kids in our group, and every time I'd come to pick up Elise, on the days I could, everybody would say "Hi, Elise's Mom!"

Now everybody gives me a hug when I walk in, and I'm gaining a bit better rapport even with the difficult ones, who are starting to do what I ask without too much argument. They all seem really anxious to get my attention, and I find it really is true that you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.

By way of example, E1 started out the day just full of angry rebellion - every single thing anyone asked him for, he did the opposite, and he did it looking us straight in the eye.

At first I used my serious angry mommy-voice, but then I started to think about him the way I used to think of young horses: you can yell when they get something wrong, but the only way they know how to do the right thing is if you immediately praise them as soon as they stop doing the wrong thing. I also remembered that the only way to get a young horse to go the way you want him to go, when he's decided he doesn't want to go where you lead, is to push him sideways, and then as soon as he takes that sideways step, you lead him forward. You can spend your whole life and all your energy trying to push a horse forward, but let me tell you, it just don't work. Ever.

Example: E1 had some word puzzles he was working on. He WAS supposed to be working his journal with everyone else, but he was sitting at the back of the room, doing these puzzles, and ignoring the teacher when she asked him to join in.

So I went back and stood next to him, and watched him doing his word puzzles. Then, when he got all interested in showing me how he was doing them, I sat down in a chair, patted the one next to me, and he sat down so we could work on the puzzles together.

When he'd finished the last puzzle, I made a big fuss out of how well he'd done (and it wasn't hard - he has quite a fine mind for puzzles) and then I patted him on the back and said, "Great work. Now go grab your journal and we'll work on that together."

(Push sideways, step forward, walk ON...)

He grabbed his journal and showed me some things in it, and drew a star for me to show me how well he could draw a star. Then I drew one, and asked him how to make it look like Patrick. (Okay, so you gotta know Spongebob to know who Patrick is). Then I told him I wanted him to write me a journal entry on Spongebob. He wrote out a nice entry and showed it to me. I told him it was wonderful, but could he write a bit more? He came back with an entry about the Bubble Band, and pictures of Sandy, Spongebob and Patrick, colored in and everything.

Okay, so it went on like that. I found that he could do the work, but only if I spent every minute working directly with him. Mrs. A does not have a teacher's aide because no one gets a teacher's aide in these days of thin budgets. E1 will probably wind up in jail someday unless someone intervenes right now, and I do mean right now, while he's still a child and willing to listen. Once he hits puberty, if no one does anything for him, he's doomed. I could just cry.

Anyway, back to the original topic. I got up at 7am, got my shower and got Elise ready, and then we went to school. I worked with the kids until 10:30am, when I had to take off for a meeting with my career counselor. THAT lasted until 12:15pm, at which point I hurried off to get some lunch, and then hurried to Elise's school to pick her up. THEN I sat with her while she played in the play structure with some of her friends who were in the afterschool program. Then we went to the post office to get stamps, and then off to Safeway to get fruit and some snacks. From there we went home, where we had just enough time to get a snack, and for Elise to get changed for gym class. After gym class we came home again, had some dinner, and now it's 7:20pm, and we're off to my best friend's house to talk story (she's a writer too, and I ask her to read all the stuff I'm working on).

Tomorrow, I'm taking Elise and her friend Wynter to McDonalds to play in the play place and get some lunch. Then I'm driving my niece Brianne down to the in-laws in Morgan Hill, where I will then hole myself up in my trailer to get some writing done, and she'll go off with Grandma Doris to pick out yarn for the blanket Grandma is going to crochet for her.

I have an end-of-July deadline for having my portfolio finished and off to the first agent, and that's coming along well, and I have to write up the beginnings of a website and the corrections to my resume that I discussed with my career counselor today, and THAT has to be done in the next two weeks.

Da-YAM...

Unemployment is so much more hectic than I thought.

:)