Rent money and volunteers

Sorry for the slack posting, but I’ve been up to my turtleneck in copywriting work, which has been keeping me busy from the time I get home until I finally give up staring at the computer until my eyes bleed copy. Eh, it pays the bills. Normally don’t knock myself out like that, but I had a rush job turn up out of nowhere.

Hey, lookee – rent!

In other news, we’ve got volunteers! Yesterday we had almost as many adults as kids in the building. Which actually had more to do with not having very many kids, but hey, I’ll take it. We got a guy who’s going to be coming in regularly on Tuesdays, our local mom-volunteer is coming in three days a week and we also signed up another outside volunteer who will also be coming in three days a week. So, go us! Wooohoooo!

Other than that, not much news aside from predictions that we will probably get snowed out again tomorrow. Big winter storm supposed to be howling off the mountainside sometime after midnight tonight. Then again, we’ve had these “storm of the century” warnings before, only to get a few lost flakes slumming around in the outlying hipper areas of town checking out the boutiques while their more committed brothers and sisters gang up to beat the crap out of the southern counties. We’ll see.

Technorati: americorps, copywriting, volunteer, snow, winter weather

Snow Day!

No school. Slept in. Awaiting a call from one of my copywriting clients so I can earn some rent money. Otherwise, sitting around sipping cups of green tea and surfing the web. Sweet.

Technorati: americorps, snow day, green tea, copywriting, surfing the web

A full day of fun – director’s cut

Heh…I’m back! And I’m all rested enough to tell you about all the fun we had Saturday.

To start with, 4 Americorps and the 7 kids that self-selected from those who were eligible to come along set out around 1:30 for a tour of the mind-bogglingly ginormous Biltmore Estate. On the one hand, it was cool to see all the sights – lots of wood carving, fancy interiors and insights into how things worked “back in the day” in the servants’ quarters. It’s pretty much a given that if you live in Asheville, you’re eventually going to be expected to do The Tour.

On the other hand – stairs! OMFG. Stairs up. Stairs down. Stairs, stairs all around. We spent almost 2 hours wandering around oggling the place (the kids had those tour headsets to listen to, as well), and by the end of it we were all pooped and the kids were more than ready to go home and sit down.

One note that I found incredibly reassuring – one of the kids who we’ve been having some trouble with spent pretty much the entire trip attached to me, and by attached I mean she sought out every opportunity to speed up or hang back to where I was and link her arm through mine as we went along the tour. Nice.

We got back just at 4:30, and by the time the kids were signed out and all, it was almost 5. Hubby whisked me away for a quick burrito lunch and then back again to the community center just in time to meet up with a few other Americorps buds to chauffeur 9 young kids (we’re talking little ones, now – toddlers and up to third grade) to the movies to watch Charlotte’s Web while their parents had a celebratory graduation dinner for the conclusion of the parenting classes they’ve been holding for the last several weeks.

I was vaguely dreading it, not being very familiar with little kids, but it was actually a great deal of fun! The little kids are very “huggy” and were all incredibly well-behaved, so it all went very smoothly. Due to a slight misunderstanding, we were driven to the wrong theater at first, but we had plenty of time and reached our correct destination with a good 15 minutes to spare (which was way better than the 45 minutes I was worriedly eyeballing as we pulled up to the first theater. 45 min with nothing to do is not a fun concept when you’ve got 9 hyper little tykes and a full theater lobby.) Our little asthma sufferer, about whom we were warned and about whom I spent a great deal of time anxious about, didn’t even have a single wheeze and didn’t need his meds even once during the whole trip, which was probably as much a relief to me as it was to him.

In fact, the only sour note of the night was the fact that Charlotte dies. I’ve always hated that.

We got them all home in good time, with several kids asleep on their feet. By the time I got home it was after 9pm. Hence the “later, gator” blogging. I mean, there’s a point at which I do draw the line and that was well past it.

Anyway, it was, as I said, a full day of fun. Hopefully, I’ll not have too many more like it, though. Sleep is also good.

Technorati: americorps, field trip, Biltmore, tourism, Charlotte’s Web, kids

A full day of fun

Long day. Long night. Remind me to tell you about it later.

*snore*

(Yeah, I’ll get back to it. Just not tonight.)

Volunteering overseas

At today’s Friday Morning Meeting, we listened to a wonderful speaker who talked to us about the possibility of volunteering overseas with faith based and other groups. She and her husband (and two kids) spent three years in Israel and the West Bank back in the early nineties, supporting peace groups in their efforts to work toward a peaceful resolution to the problems in that area.

It was great to hear what it was like working with Israelis and Palestinians during that time of hope (that was right after the whole Bill Clinton/Yasser Arafat/Yitzhak Rabin group hug thing), as well as the obstacles they faced and overcame to do so.

I’ve considered going overseas to help out in any number of ways and places, but don’t think I ever will simply due to the fact that I happen to be madly in love with my cats, who I neither want to leave behind nor care to have them sit through months of quarantine in a steel cage somewhere so they can come with. So that pretty much limits me to domestic do-goodery.

Yeah, well. It’s not like there’s nothing left to work on.

Technorati: americorps, volunteer, overseas, Israel, Palestine, peace

So now I’m a referee (either that, or those stripes down my shirt are tire tracks)

Well, that was fun.

Remember that fight I talked about yesterday? Well, today one of the parents came over and asked to speak to all the kids involved. My first thought was, great! We’ll all sit down around the table and hash this thing out, maybe come up with some solutions. And hey! Parental involvement – one of our goals!

Uhm, not so much. Turns out, she just wanted to take the “other girls” to task for coming around to her apt after homework club and doing whatever it is kids do when they’re feuding – ringing the doorbell and running, calling the other kid out, hanging out conspicuously, etc.

While I appreciate her frustration and share her concerns, to be honest it wasn’t exactly an appropriate way to handle this. For one thing, the activities she was upset about didn’t even happen in the club or during club time, and for another, I doubt she’d care to have the other girls’ mother coming down on her kid in her absence.

Sarah and I did our best to diffuse the situation quickly and get everyone back on track (the whole club was basically put on hold while we dealt with this, since we both had to be there, which was another inappropriate result). And to her credit, the mother was calm and civil – it’s not like we had a beatdown going on or anything. But it rather caught me by surprise, and it shouldn’t have been allowed to happen at all. If I’d known her intentions (or, you know, gotten past my initial excitement and asked more carefully), I would have tried to find another way to deal with it.

But to be honest, I feel like I was ambushed (although I doubt that was her intention), and I resent being put in that situation. This should have been between her and the other girls’ mother, and handled outside of the club. Granted, she did feel that the problem was coming from the club (it’s not – the two girls came in all prickly from the bus ride beforehand), but that still doesn’t make the club the place to deal with outside hooliganism. Especially when we have a full house of now hyper-excited and way too interested kids we are supposed to be supervising being pulled away from their homework and crammed into one room so we could keep an eye on them while we dealt with this in the next room.

Hopefully, we can work this out in a civilized manner and it won’t be an issue going forward. We’ve worked out an alternate-day attendance option we hope will diffuse the tension. Cross fingers and hope for the best.

On another note, still not doing well with direct confrontation. And holding really still to escape detection doesn’t work when the “predator” is an righteously angry mom, LOL.

Technorati: americorps, conflict resolution, stress, behavior management, angry mom, playing dead

On a lighter note

When we were outside today, there was a funny, laying-down rainbow in the sky above us. Instead of being the traditional “bow” going up from the ground, over and back down, it was a half-circle centered on a spot in the sky directly above us. We called it a “lazy rainbow” (because it was lying down on the job) and enjoyed watching it as it rotated a bit around it’s central point during the time we were out there.

Neato.

[Edit: turns out it's a phenomenon called a circumzenith arc. Here's a super cool photo of one above some trees. Wow.]

Fight! Fight!

And it started out to be such a good day. *sigh*

Everyone did their homework with a minimum of fuss, I got to work one-on-one with a few students who really needed the help without running around like a headless chicken putting out fires. We had a drop-in visit from a potential funder whose depth of pockets are rumored to match her depth of commitment to helping children – and the kids were almost unnaturally well-behaved and poster-child-like in their studies while she was there (to the extent uncoached kids can be – we didn’t know she was coming, so we hadn’t “prepared” them.) It was nice out and we all went out to play or paint after homework got done. Puzzles and riddles were gleefully solved.

It was a good day. Right up until the end.

A couple of our kids have some sort of simmering-just-below-the-surface animosity going on (and at least one of the participants has a history of provoking others and playing Little Miss Innocent I’m Just Defending Myself). And once they got out the door, all hell broke loose.

Snarky asides were snarked. Mamas were described in unflattering terms. Threats were threatened and fronts were fronted. Hips were thrust, arms were akimboed and heads were waggled back and forth. And, of course, the rest of the kids had to hang around egging them on, gleefully willing to make like a pack of midget Don Kings for the chance at a little pay-per-view throwdown of their own.

In the end, we ended up having to separate them and walk them home separately to keep the from going after one another.

Crap. Dunno what we’re going to do. Probably have to separate them by days. Luckily, one has a schedule that takes her out of the club for the better part of two days a week. We’ll probably have to do something like have them alternate days, with the off-scheduled girl just going home instead. Hate to do it, but short of suspending them both, I can’t see much option. Might get the local juvenile conflict resolution/mediation miracle workers out here to see if they can pound out a truce, but knowing the personalities involved they’d better be miracle workers indeed to pull off anything that will hold up longer than the time it takes one of them to mutter snarkisms under her breath.

And it doesn’t help that the parents flat out tell their kids that if someone starts something, they’re supposed to finish it. (At least, that’s what the kids tell us, but we’ve been told from other sources that it’s probably true). Why would you do that? Granted, I wouldn’t want my kid being a doormat and just taking a beating, but there are other ways to handle aggression besides playing dead and playing dumb.

Damn people, work with me here. I’m trying to maintain a safe, secure environment to help these kids succeed and to teach them how not to end up in jail or on the streets like a lot of their current role models, and meanwhile you’re telling them that if someone gets in their face the appropriate reaction is to take them down. Why would parents go out of their way to encourage their kids to engage in behaviors that are dangerous, illegal and stupid, and which are almost certainly going to reinforce in them that violence is the solution to their problems? What the hell are you thinking?

Gah. I hate confrontation. Makes me all itchy.

One thing is for sure – neither of them is going to get to go on the field trip to Biltmore Saturday. I am not fighting this battle up and down the halls of the world’s “biggest and bestest” uber-monument to elegance, refinement and civilized deportment.

Technorati: americorps, conflict resolution, fight, violence, mediation, violence, Biltmore

Ripples

Had to add this snippet, from geek god Wil Wheaton’s blog:

Okay, so now that the history lesson is done, something to think about: Socrates inspired a respect for knowledge and understanding in his student Plato, who passed that along to his student Aristotle, who clearly instilled those values into his student, Alexander the Great.

Imagine what the ancient world would have been like, and as a result what our world would be like today, if Alexander the Great, one of the most powerful and successful military conquerors in history, had been taught by someone else.

Everything we do matters. Everything we do ripples.

Whoa.

(Click through the link and read the whole piece. It’s short and very interesting.)

Cabin fever and Blue Monday

Could be coincidence, but the kids have just been unstoppably difficult to get and keep under even a modicum of control just as the last week of January rolls around, a time officially known as the week of Blue Monday – i.e. the worst day/week of the year, for it’s perfect storm of darkness, failed New Year’s resolutions, cold weather and Christmas debts, among other things. Although kids are most likely indifferent to the resolution issues and holiday bills, they certainly are feeling the weather and the darkness, which is keeping them cooped up inside for most of the day. Add to that the synergy of 12-15 kids in one apt, which is our situation, and you’ve got a recipe for mayhem and disaster.

It’s been really tough, because I hate constantly being on their case, but they simply will not or do not have the capacity to settle down and act like human beings for more than seconds at a time. There are arguments breaking out over the smallest misunderstanding (or “misunderstandings” are being created to provoke arguments – hard to say either way) and no one seems capable of using an inside voice, going directly from talking to shouting without much lag time and all at the same time, which is simply deafening. They won’t listen. They won’t behave. And they’re getting closer and closer each day to outright mutiny. At least it seems that way. And the thing is, it’s not just the usual suspects. Even the nicest, most well-behaved kids are acting like someone poured a heaping helping of crazy over their breakfast cereal.

*pulls hair* (you see why I keep it so short, now)

I am soooo looking forward to daylight and warmth. But I still gotta slog it through Feb (my personal nemesis) and March (not much better) before I can even begin to pretend it’ll get better.

Lord help me.

Technorati: americorps, Blue Monday, cabin fever, winter, behavior management, pulling my hair