Date: September 25, 2008
Place: #93 bus North
There were two major parts of today. First, the corps covered mandated reporting. Since five of the six teams deal directly, routinely, with school aged kids, and the main focus of CY is school support, there’s a fairly firm policy in place. Regardless of state laws applicable where the site is located, corps and staff members are required to report any reasonably grounded suspicions of abuse of any kind.
On a lighter note, the entire corps received phones provided by TMobile for the length of the term. And Saturn, who is sponsoring the Civic Engagement team, will apparently be providing them with 5 cars so they can travel easier.
Date: September 29, 2008
Place: Crossroads Park and Ride
I made the mistake of biking to Crossroads from KIPP and getting there fifteen minutes after the bus. The next one arrives at 8, and I’ll be at UTSA at 8:17. It’s dusk, and the lights of the bus stop have just flickered on.
On Friday we had opening day. There was another presentation stage managed by Garro, this time in City Hall. Saturday we had a local part of the National Day of Service, with our part based at UTSA’s downtown campus. Erin and I managed teams that repainted benches in Milam Park.
We painted 29/75 and I learned that the typical attention span for service for middle schoolers is about 2 hours.
Today was our first full day in KIPP. Mostly, we floated around classrooms, tutoring. We also had our first introductions to mentees today. Actually being in the classrooms makes it far more clear what the staff are talking about when they say we’re really needed here. Large numbers of kids don’t do their homework at home, for whatever reason. Maybe they don’t have a stable home life, parents with the time or background to help, or just don’t want to. A good portion of the day was spent going over with students work that was nominally assigned for home, and there are multiple times (lunch bench, tutoring, no shortcuts) set aside for this.
There is also a wide disparity in skill levels. While very few whiz through, most plod.