Before the field trip, though, I knew I had to find JR and tell her about the sign ins. I called her mom yesterday to tell her what happened (that's part of getting signed in), so I figured she would probably already know, but just in case. When I saw her walk into school, I grabbed her before she could go off with her friends and told her the bad news. Before I could get it all out, she states annoyingly "I know and now I have behavior detention" and walked off. Part of me thought that she would have moved on and everything would have been fine, but I guess I should have known better.
Despite this bad start to the morning, I had a great time at the zoo! I had KS, JC and AA in my group. There were tons of chaperons so lots of them were only with their kid, but I had a couple who didn't have a chaperon and then one who's dad was supposed to chaperon and never showed up. We saw tons of cool animals, such as lions, gorillas and tigers. We stayed with Ms. Moulton's group, so there were five kids, plus Ms. Moulton and I. It was a lot of fun and a couple of them had never been to the zoo before, so that made it even better.
I did feel bad for TB though. His dad was supposed to chaperon, but when we were getting on the bus to head out, he was nowhere in sight. TB is not my favorite student by any means, but I do feel bad for him because he has a crazy home life that makes him do less favorable things. Anyways, I sat next to him on the bus and reassured him that we would have fun, regardless of whether his dad came or not. Luckily, when we walked into the zoo, TB's dad was there waiting. Ms. Moulton walked over with TB to greet him and as she walked back, I could tell something was not right. Ms. Moulton comes back and whispers that she thinks TB's dad is high. Luckily (or unluckily), TB was the only one that his dad was in charge of. After TB went with his dad, we split up for the morning going our own separate ways. We saw them occasionally, but his dad was always on the phone. At lunch, everyone met up in a grassy area to eat and let the kids hang out a little bit. TB's dad told him he was going to go get some pizza. TB said okay and we all thought he was going to the zoo restaurant. Turns out he left and got pizza, and we think maybe a drink. When it came time for lunch to end, the dad was still nowhere in sight. At that point, we needed to get going so we could finish looking at everything, so TB joined another group. Five minutes later, we get a phone call from TB's dad wondering where we are. We met up and TB and his dad ended up staying with our group for the rest of the day. I felt so bad for TB all day and I experienced first hand why he craves attention so bad. He may drive me crazy 95% of the time, but he needs someone at school to give him positive attention because he obviously doesn't get a lot of it at home. Lesson learned from this experience: have rules for chaperons.
Regardless of this, the zoo was great! By the time we got back to school, there were lots of tired kids and two tired adults in our classroom. At this point, I probably would have paid money to just go home, not deal with course coaching, and take a nap. Unfortunately, stipend living and my job didn't allow that. I headed to enrichment where JR ignored me out on the playground, signaling that course coaching was going to be rough. When Course Coaching came, she walked into the room and sat down a back table. I asked her if she had a lot of homework and I just got a short "No." JA walks in and sits down to do her homework and works pretty independently. I sit with JR, trying to help her with her homework and making small talk. JA finishes and I let her leave five minutes early because I wanted to get JR alone so we could talk about everything that had happened the day before. When JR finished her homework, we did vocab flash cards for a few minutes and then I just said, "One more question. Are you still mad at me?" She just replied "No" but looked a little embarrassed. I told her how upset I was when she skipped and how it hurt my feelings. I said that I thought we were friends and had a good relationship (to which she smiled) and that it really hurt me when she skipped. I then told her that I didn't want to give her three sign ins, but I had to. I knew she wasn't going to say anything, so I just said that I wanted to make the last two weeks good and that I was glad she wasn't mad at me anymore. So, despite tears on both of our parts and a lot of lost sleep on my part, everything turned out well and we made it through. JR is such a quiet, funny, and kind person that it really threw me off when she did all of this. I'm glad that we were able to make it through.
My dad and Ben are coming this weekend and I'm super excited! I can't wait to see them and hang out all weekend! It's going to be a blast! Have a great long weekend, everyone! Enjoy the weather!
PS for student profiles, I think I'm going to do individual posts about my Course Coaching students because there aren't that many and they're extra special to me! Those will come next week!
"From the outside looking in, you can't understand it. From the inside looking out, you can't explain it."
my thoughts on City Year exactly.
We're making a calendar for Erica for the end of the year and we needed to take a team picture. This is what happened.
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