Another Long Week
It's been two straight weeks of long hours and constant running around. This week wasn't nearly as bad as far as productivity, but it was busy nonetheless and brought some frustration.
This was the first week of after-school programming. On Monday, our team got a headstart and showed a movie to our kids after school. Tuesday was the first official day of after school and my strategic games club. I have to admit I wasn't as prepared for the first session as well as I should have, but there was some miscommunication between me and another teacher. I have set up a strategic games club. I had hoped for 10-15 students to sign up and while I had lots of kids show interest in joining the club, few brought back permission slips needed to join. Only 5 kids came on Tuesday which was a good number. After introducing some of the games we would be playing, I let the kids try out some of the games. My main objective in starting the club was to expose the kids to games that they may not otherwise play or learn how to play and help them build critical thinking skills by playing these games. Among the games I plan on teaching them this year are chess, cribbage and possibly Risk. On Tuesday, a couple of the kids stated that they didn't want to play these games because they didn't know how or they thought they were boring. On Thursday, the next time the club met, things didn't go quite as well. There a few new students taking part in the activity, but still a manageable number. Unfortunately, a few students decided that since they didn't want to learn a new game, in this case chess, they would make it difficult for others to participate. My suspicion is that they have a certain stigma attached to a game like chess and think that playing it will classify them as geeks. I was not at all satisfied with how the club went that day and began thinking of how I could engage the kids into experiencing new games.
To add to my frustration is my growing concern that not all of my kids understand my role or for that matter I don't understand the particular role each student would like me to play this year. Up until the last few weeks my progress with each of them has been notable, but I feel like I'm hitting a wall with most of them and have to reach for the next level to really see some significant growth on all of their parts. I've thought a lot about it in the last couple of days and my hope is to sit down with each one of them individually and figure out what they're looking for in the mentor-student relationship and what they expect to get out working with me this year. By doing this I hope to gain some insight into their expectations and hopefully I'll be able to come up with some ideas over Christmas break to help meet those expectations.
I'm not surprised that I'm hitting the wall right now as it has been a long, stressful couple of weeks. I hope it's a temporary thing and that Christmas break will give plenty of time to re-energize and re-evaluate what it is that I hope to accomplish this year. By the end of next week I want to leave St. Louis with a sense that I'm getting back on track.
This was the first week of after-school programming. On Monday, our team got a headstart and showed a movie to our kids after school. Tuesday was the first official day of after school and my strategic games club. I have to admit I wasn't as prepared for the first session as well as I should have, but there was some miscommunication between me and another teacher. I have set up a strategic games club. I had hoped for 10-15 students to sign up and while I had lots of kids show interest in joining the club, few brought back permission slips needed to join. Only 5 kids came on Tuesday which was a good number. After introducing some of the games we would be playing, I let the kids try out some of the games. My main objective in starting the club was to expose the kids to games that they may not otherwise play or learn how to play and help them build critical thinking skills by playing these games. Among the games I plan on teaching them this year are chess, cribbage and possibly Risk. On Tuesday, a couple of the kids stated that they didn't want to play these games because they didn't know how or they thought they were boring. On Thursday, the next time the club met, things didn't go quite as well. There a few new students taking part in the activity, but still a manageable number. Unfortunately, a few students decided that since they didn't want to learn a new game, in this case chess, they would make it difficult for others to participate. My suspicion is that they have a certain stigma attached to a game like chess and think that playing it will classify them as geeks. I was not at all satisfied with how the club went that day and began thinking of how I could engage the kids into experiencing new games.
To add to my frustration is my growing concern that not all of my kids understand my role or for that matter I don't understand the particular role each student would like me to play this year. Up until the last few weeks my progress with each of them has been notable, but I feel like I'm hitting a wall with most of them and have to reach for the next level to really see some significant growth on all of their parts. I've thought a lot about it in the last couple of days and my hope is to sit down with each one of them individually and figure out what they're looking for in the mentor-student relationship and what they expect to get out working with me this year. By doing this I hope to gain some insight into their expectations and hopefully I'll be able to come up with some ideas over Christmas break to help meet those expectations.
I'm not surprised that I'm hitting the wall right now as it has been a long, stressful couple of weeks. I hope it's a temporary thing and that Christmas break will give plenty of time to re-energize and re-evaluate what it is that I hope to accomplish this year. By the end of next week I want to leave St. Louis with a sense that I'm getting back on track.
posted by Tim Weiss at 8:45 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home