Hello again!
I purposefully tried not to post for a while into my stay at the middle school. Some days have been extreme highs and others have been very low, and I was trying to wait until I had a real handle on the situation before writing about it. I've also been very, very busy!
We've officially been in the middle school for three weeks and it feels muuuch longer in some respects. Most of our days have been spent planning our after school program as well as lunch/yard duty (not the highlight of my day...) and other tasks that the school has needed help with. As of yesterday, I began what will become my more regular schedule of tutoring three students one-on-one during the second, third, and sixth periods of the day. I'm really excited to get to work so closely with a small group of students because I can already feel the relationships we're building and I'm excited to see where they go.
Our after school program has been slightly less structured this month than it will be in the following weeks and months, but I think it was a nice way to ease students into what is going to turn into a pretty rigorous after school program! We start with 1.5 hours of homework "center," where they finish their homework and can get help if needed. I worked with 5th graders for one week (they're awesome and adorable!) and 8th graders last week (a little less adorable and they have "hecka" attitude). I'm not quite sure what possessed me to do it, but I did indeed put 8th grade as my preference for the rest of the school year.
Which brings me to today. Today, we found out our specific placements in the after school programs as well as what enrichment programs we'll be leading, and what students we'll have for both of those time slots. I'm going to be an 8th grade tutor (as opposed to an 8th grade classroom leader), which I'm very excited about. The 8th graders have a lot of attitude, but they're also the ones screaming for help the most. I think the tutoring is really going to produce noticeable results.
I'm also leading a (surprise surprise!) dance enrichment! I was nervous that students wouldn't sign up for it, but it was actually one of the most popular ones! I have 18 students (7 of whom are boys!) and just had the first class meeting today. Although we didn't do too much dancing today, it was pretty hilarious to convince 10- to 14-year olds to do "Power Lunges" with me! We mostly spent time going over expectations and watching videos of different styles of dance today, and it was cool to see how excited the students got over certain things. I'm definitely looking forward to this enrichment!
I'll try to post some pictures soon... I've been pretty bad at taking them lately, so I don't have much to show you right now. I'll definitely work on it for next post, though!
Until next time...
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