10/30/09

Friday was somewhat eventful. I had a problem, yet again with one of the kids saying cuss words. He ended up leaving right after I had told him to sit down in time out, but he will have to pay his time when he comes back. I also sat one of the kids down later on for making some rude comments to one of his peers. I gave him several warnings to be nice to the other kid, but he refused to listen.

As it was getting closer to the evening, some of the kids began either to tell racist jokes or make racist comments towards each other. At one point, one of them called another a cracker. I thought that she said something else so I let that one go, but later on I found out that I was wrong. That goes to show that I am not perfect. I try as hard as I can. As far as the racist jokes, I had to allow my supervisor to handle it because I was not trained to deal with a situation like that. We held a meeting with the kids and one of their parents and addressed each individual situation and mentioned that there is zero tolerance for that type of behavior. I am not sure what the punishment will be, but I imagine that they will be suspended.

My thoughts are that they are good kids, but they do not know any better about making racist comments and jokes. They are influenced mostly by their possibly deadbeat parents and their friends that they hang out with at school. I am not saying that all of them have bad parents and hang out with the wrong crowd, but I believe that there are a select few of them that do. Some of them do not have any structure at home and live in households where the parenting styles are permissive. Their parents let them walk around town and just do whatever they want and be friends with whoever they want.

10/28/09

Yesterday did not go very bad. At first, I was a little bit tired and cranky because I had just come in from working at my other job. I was asked to lead a carpetball tournament for the kids as part of the olympics thing that we are doing this week. It went well for the most part, but a lot of kids began arguing about who won the games. They all kept trying to talk to me at once and I almost lost my temper with them. Finally, I just told them all that they need to calm down or we won't play any more.

Later on I decided to do the science experiment that I had planned for the day which was to place a cube of ice into a clear glass full of warm water to see if it would overflow. As an incentive to get the kids to come, I told them that they would earn five points just for participating. If they answered correctly whether or not the water would overflow, they would earn an extra five points. Most of them answered correctly. Here is the link to the webpage where I got this idea:

http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/experiments/iceoverflow.html

The rest of the day was spent doing clerical work and cleaning. I finished recording the hourly attendance for the month of October. After that that my supervisor asked me to enter in the points that the kids received from turning in their report cards. They received 25 points for just turning it in, an additional ten points for each A, and an additional five points for each B and C. Most of the kids received As and Bs. I was asked to redecorate the bulletin board and hang up pictures of all the staff members and pictures of the youth council members doing different things. My last job for the night was to clean up the gym, snack room, and game room.

10/26/09

Yesterday seemed to go really well. The kids are on Fall break this week so when I arrived, they were already there and playing around. My supervisor had taken the teenagers on a trip to the Louisville Science Center so I was in charge of running the ping pong tournament for the olympics. I had no problem whatsoever with doing that. I did have issues with the kids when one of the other staff members was trying to make them go up to art. Some of them thought it would be fun to try and play hide and go seek on us. After rounding them up I told them that if the misbehaving continues and they could not show us any respect, I would contact my supervisor and let him deal with them. For those who had permission to walk, I threatened to send them home.

I was able to do another science experiment with the kids. For those who wanted to play the Gamecube, I told them if they participated in the experiment and answered the questions correctly, they would have first dibs on it. I thought that rewarding them with that might be a good way to get them to participate in an educational activity. For the rest of the time I was either hanging out with the kids and playing games with them or doing paperwork for my supervisor. I had to figure out the hourly attendance for each day of this month. It got old really quick. Basically, I had to figure out who was there on what day and during which hours of our daily operation.

Here is the link to the science experiment that we did:

http://www.sciencekids.co.nz/experiments/staticelectricity.html

10/23/09 and 10/24/09

It has been a very busy weekend for me. I am going to give you guys the breakdown of how my internship has gone for the past couple of days. If there was any day where I gained a lot of experience on how ork with kids, it was Friday. I had to sit a couple of kids down. Both times were for cursing. I heard the "f" word and the "s" word. They were the real words, not the substitutes which have been a great problem recently. This was also the night that we were having our Halloween dance. I had to hold what seemed to be about 50 kids in the snack room while the mentors, youth council members, and volunteers set up for the dance. It seemed like it was going to be endless. The kids got restless and were constantly nagging me for different things. I breathed a sigh of relief when another volunteer showed up to help out. I am getting better at handling the multiple demands though. For the rest of the night I was responsible for making sure that the kids stay on their best behavior. I constantly checked the boy's restroom to make sure that there were no fights going on, no one was sick, injured, etc. I also made sure that I kept an eye on the kids as they were waiting for their rides to come pick them up.

On Saturday I did not have to do any work with kids. I worked the concession stands while having the opportunity to view cage fighting matches for the first time. The MMA rents out the Gerdon Youth Center about every three months for around $500 and we get to keep all the profit made off of the concessions. By making me work during this event, my supervisor gave me the chance to see where some of our money comes from. All in all I was able to relax a little bit and be entertained and I had a break from the kids.

10/21/09

It was not entirely troublesome for me today. The kids were well behaved for the most part. There is still the issue of getting them to sit all the way down in their seats and not put their feet up on the couches and stools. For a while I thought about giving up because sitting them down has not been working, but I am not a quitter so that will not happen. I had to sit one of the kids down for using a curse word. He did not actually say the word, but I knew he meant to use it. The kids do not seem to understand or they do not care when we tell then that doing that is actually the same as using a curse word. We try and explain it to them in the best ways we know how.

I had "1" kid for Power Hour today. Hooray! That was better than nothing. He needed help on his math homework. I knew how to do most of the problems on his worksheet, but there were a few that I even got stuck on. It is basic math, but I have not done some of it in years. If it were algebra, I could probably fly right through it. I actually had to go bring another kid in there to help him on the problems that I could not solve. Even though I tried my hardest to help him, I still am not perfect at it. Hopefully I can do better at it next time.

10/19/09

Again, sorry about the late post. Yesterday was a whole lot more successful than some of the previous days. There were a few issues. I had an incident where one of the girls did not want to listen to me. We were serving popcorn for a snack, but she did not want any and that is all we had. She decided she was going to try and eat a napkin instead. I told her not to, but she decided not to listen and got sat down. I also had to sit two of the boys down later in the day at the same time for pushing each other. They got into an argument which led to the pushing. After having them sit down, I told them that fighting does not solve any problems and they need to come to me or another staff member if they get into a disagreement and we will settle it.

Earlier I did a science experiment with them like I was talking about in my previous posts. I chose to do the one with the blow dryer and the ping pong balls. You have to turn the blow dryer all the way up on high, hold the end where the air comes out straight up, hold it level, and place the ping pong ball above it and let it go. Gravity and air pressure work together to keep the ball floating in the air. I tried to make this a Power Hour thing, but it did not exactly work out the way I had hoped. I will try to make it to where Power Hour is done right after all the other programs. I thought I would do a science experiment with them for the first half hour and the rest of the stuff for the remaining amount of time.

10/16/09

I was really proud of the kids today. Most of them did not cause any trouble. There was one who I sat down twice for not listening to me and for walking on top of a table. Abother one had used the phrase "what the freak". I told her to sit down, but she went and told another staff member what had happened and he did not make her sit down. That was kind of upsetting. I will have a discussion on Monday with my supervisor about that on Monday when he gets back from his trip. Otherwise, things went smoothly today.

It was a freeday again so we allowed the kids to play whatever they wanted. I got some games of dodgeball going with them. We also played a few pick-up football games and hit the volleyball around to eachother. At the time when I was supervising the game room I played some ping pong and carpetball with them. I feel as if the kids were really beginning to enjoy my presence there today and are starting to see me as a friend as well as an authority figure. It's not quite there yet and I don't think I am going to meet my main goal by the end of my internship, but I am making progress and taking baby steps.