1. How did today differ from how I expected it to be?
2. What are the high points of the day?
3. What are the low points of the day?
4. What is one experience that caused me to grow today?
5. What am I excited about for tomorrow?
1. Today went much faster than I expected it to! The sessions were much more pertinent to our actual school service, and every session was packed with information, so the minutes tended to move pretty quickly. Something that was interesting today was that I felt like everyone was jockeying for position as far as having something planned to do this weekend. I'm always pretty socially aware (which in NO way means that I'm popular) and I could tell that during break times, everyone had their sensors out to see which group, if any, they could latch onto for plans. There were groups planning on playing True American (look it up if you've never heard of it), watching a movie in a small group, going out downtown, the whole works. It was just interesting because it added a sense of urgency to all of our break times. The high-action plans that I made with Bridget and Andrew (ugh, I mean Twerk Team Captain) were to stay in and watch a documentary. I know you are all jealous. But it was awesome. I love doing nothing with other people; it's one of my favorite pastimes! And if you've never seen Half the Sky, you need to, and I'm serious about that.
2. High points of the day were getting a lot of stuff clarified for our school service, which starts Monday for some school teams! Our district has scheduled an emergency meeting for Monday to approve CY in their schools, so hopefully (cross your fingers!) we'll be able to start serving on Tuesday. Just to clarify, there's not really any danger that they WON'T approve CY, it's just a legal formality that they have to approve us before we're allowed in their school. So it's just a matter of when. Today, we discussed ad nauseum our Corps Member/Teacher relationship, which will determine the success of our service year in so many ways. I felt like I had such a good framework set up to gauge how to navigate that relationship, having just had a fantastic relationship with my cooperating teacher during student teaching. I am SO EXCITED to get to know my teacher and start helping them! I know that my primary focus as a corps member is to help my students succeed, but I know that I can also help change the school climate by supporting a teacher who might feel like no one is on their side.
3. Low point, aside from the slight insecurity I felt before I made plans with people for the weekend, was after I got home, when I was getting the movie ready, my roommate came flying out of the bathroom. I thought, "Oh, no big deal, probably another cockroach." (P.S. I literally JUST killed a cockroach in the middle of typing that sentence; it's an old building, kay?) But there wasn't a cockroach in the bathroom. There WAS a fountain of water coming out of the toilet though. It had flooded out of the bathroom and into the hallway before I could at least get it to stop. We called maintenance, and in the meantime, our downstairs neighbors came up to tell us that water was coming through their ceiling. Whoops. We used all the towels we own to mop it up, and the maintenance man got it working again. Hooray! Even though it was pretty bad to have the bathroom flooded, I count many blessings in the fact that my roommate had just spit into the toilet and flushed it, rather than any other number of terrible things that could have been all over our apartment floors. Silver lining! And it was pretty chaotic because my friends were on their way any minute and I still had to submit my time card hours online by a deadline. I think we handled the whole situation pretty gracefully. :)
4. I think I grew today because our final circle tested my patience, and my patience did not pass that test. So every day at the end of the day, our school teams gather round to go over joys for the day and to clear up any last minute announcements before we're dismissed. So around the building, all the different school teams are doing this simultaneously and getting dismissed all hob-nob at different times. Our circle, the past couple days, has taken a little longer than other circles, and that has been hard for me. I really appreciate that our leaders are really thorough and encourage corps members to share, but I felt SO impatient watching all my friends mingle in the lobby while we were still talking about things. And these things were important, and I should have been listening. Therein lies the growth. I need to work on being fully present until the very end of the day. It is SO easy to think that the day is over when we gather for final circle, but it isn't yet. Gotta TCB until the very end. That will get easier when it's just our school team at the school for final circle, so I'm not too worried about it, but there is still room for improvement!
5. This weekend, I am excited for a huge potluck that's happening tomorrow! I am bringing dirt pudding! There is going to be such a random assortment of food there, but it will be beautiful.
On Monday, we're going to go help another school team power greet their students since we're not allowed at our school yet. I'm actually really excited, because it will be a cool effect for the students for there to be 4 times the normal amount of corps members there. And it's the FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!!! I'm glad that even though we can't be in our own school for the first day, we can still be in A school. That's the next best thing. Nothing beats the first day of school. Except maybe the last day of school. :)
2. What are the high points of the day?
3. What are the low points of the day?
4. What is one experience that caused me to grow today?
5. What am I excited about for tomorrow?
1. Today went much faster than I expected it to! The sessions were much more pertinent to our actual school service, and every session was packed with information, so the minutes tended to move pretty quickly. Something that was interesting today was that I felt like everyone was jockeying for position as far as having something planned to do this weekend. I'm always pretty socially aware (which in NO way means that I'm popular) and I could tell that during break times, everyone had their sensors out to see which group, if any, they could latch onto for plans. There were groups planning on playing True American (look it up if you've never heard of it), watching a movie in a small group, going out downtown, the whole works. It was just interesting because it added a sense of urgency to all of our break times. The high-action plans that I made with Bridget and Andrew (ugh, I mean Twerk Team Captain) were to stay in and watch a documentary. I know you are all jealous. But it was awesome. I love doing nothing with other people; it's one of my favorite pastimes! And if you've never seen Half the Sky, you need to, and I'm serious about that.
2. High points of the day were getting a lot of stuff clarified for our school service, which starts Monday for some school teams! Our district has scheduled an emergency meeting for Monday to approve CY in their schools, so hopefully (cross your fingers!) we'll be able to start serving on Tuesday. Just to clarify, there's not really any danger that they WON'T approve CY, it's just a legal formality that they have to approve us before we're allowed in their school. So it's just a matter of when. Today, we discussed ad nauseum our Corps Member/Teacher relationship, which will determine the success of our service year in so many ways. I felt like I had such a good framework set up to gauge how to navigate that relationship, having just had a fantastic relationship with my cooperating teacher during student teaching. I am SO EXCITED to get to know my teacher and start helping them! I know that my primary focus as a corps member is to help my students succeed, but I know that I can also help change the school climate by supporting a teacher who might feel like no one is on their side.
3. Low point, aside from the slight insecurity I felt before I made plans with people for the weekend, was after I got home, when I was getting the movie ready, my roommate came flying out of the bathroom. I thought, "Oh, no big deal, probably another cockroach." (P.S. I literally JUST killed a cockroach in the middle of typing that sentence; it's an old building, kay?) But there wasn't a cockroach in the bathroom. There WAS a fountain of water coming out of the toilet though. It had flooded out of the bathroom and into the hallway before I could at least get it to stop. We called maintenance, and in the meantime, our downstairs neighbors came up to tell us that water was coming through their ceiling. Whoops. We used all the towels we own to mop it up, and the maintenance man got it working again. Hooray! Even though it was pretty bad to have the bathroom flooded, I count many blessings in the fact that my roommate had just spit into the toilet and flushed it, rather than any other number of terrible things that could have been all over our apartment floors. Silver lining! And it was pretty chaotic because my friends were on their way any minute and I still had to submit my time card hours online by a deadline. I think we handled the whole situation pretty gracefully. :)
4. I think I grew today because our final circle tested my patience, and my patience did not pass that test. So every day at the end of the day, our school teams gather round to go over joys for the day and to clear up any last minute announcements before we're dismissed. So around the building, all the different school teams are doing this simultaneously and getting dismissed all hob-nob at different times. Our circle, the past couple days, has taken a little longer than other circles, and that has been hard for me. I really appreciate that our leaders are really thorough and encourage corps members to share, but I felt SO impatient watching all my friends mingle in the lobby while we were still talking about things. And these things were important, and I should have been listening. Therein lies the growth. I need to work on being fully present until the very end of the day. It is SO easy to think that the day is over when we gather for final circle, but it isn't yet. Gotta TCB until the very end. That will get easier when it's just our school team at the school for final circle, so I'm not too worried about it, but there is still room for improvement!
5. This weekend, I am excited for a huge potluck that's happening tomorrow! I am bringing dirt pudding! There is going to be such a random assortment of food there, but it will be beautiful.
On Monday, we're going to go help another school team power greet their students since we're not allowed at our school yet. I'm actually really excited, because it will be a cool effect for the students for there to be 4 times the normal amount of corps members there. And it's the FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!!! I'm glad that even though we can't be in our own school for the first day, we can still be in A school. That's the next best thing. Nothing beats the first day of school. Except maybe the last day of school. :)
Mmmmm...dirt pudding. Have fun!
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