Date: October 7, 2008
Place: #97 North
We’re starting to settle into a routine. Now, for me at least, it’s about incremental changes to make sure I don’t slowly drown. I eat breakfast, try to get 7 or 8 hours of sleep, catch the bus with time to spare, and try to squeeze lesson planning into schedule cracks.
Today I was scheduled for an 11 hour day, and 10 hour stretches are going to be the norm on my time sheet, but it still feels like there isn’t enough time to plan, think, and pay attention, not to mention relax.
That slow stretching has caused its first casualty. On Monday, we learned that one of the corps members would be leaving, deciding the program wasn’t right for them. They’re the second to leave, the first because recovery from a knee injury would limit his participation.
Date: October 14, 2008
Place: #97 to the Rim, home
It’s been eight months. She had to remind me.
Date: October 20, 2008
Place: Bus stop
As City Year, we have to walk a very fine line. On one hand, we’re there to tutor, mentor, and help the kids. At times this means managing a classroom, handling requests from students, or realising that they should be doing something else.
At the same time, we have few of the powers of a teacher. We can’t discipline, only persuade and bluff.
This isn’t all bad, we’re trying to be peers, in a way, to these kids. Not disciplining them, leaving that up to school administrators, is a quick way to set us apart from them. But as students start to learn what our limitations are, as they do, they become adept at taking advantage of them.
I’m still getting used to the problem. There are some small solutions: knowing details about the school schedule helps, though that ideally means knowing it for all grades and each class within. Stubbornness seems to be a virtue in this, as well as a quick wit.
In the host of skills I thought I’d need for this year, being able to outwit middle schoolers didn’t really come up.