Competition makes everything better. As do funny hats.

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 was pretty on par with what I expected. I may change this question, because I'm getting bored with it and don't really have an interesting answer to it every day. What would you guys like to know? 

2. High point during power reading before school: 3 corps members were reading books that I lent them!

I finally got to sit down with my teacher and hash out some goals we have for the year! It was fun to get to know her a little better but also come up with fun stuff we can do with the class. For example, one goal they have is to read 40 books during the school year. My teacher and I are going to challenge them by reading books ourselves and competing with the classes. We haven't decided what the prize will be if they beat us, but it will probably involve us making fools of ourselves in some way and may involve silly hats. So far, I have read 3 books this school year. Some kids are kicking my butt and some haven't finished 1. 

3. I had to take my student to the principal's office today. Since I've talked about this student a lot, I think I'll give him a fake name for blog purposes. So, henceforth he will be known as Josue (Ho-Sway) because I really like that name. Since I've given Josue that journal, he's used it in most of his classes and told some other corps members about it, which is great! The only thing is that it's not helping enough. He still curses at teachers and other students so the teachers kick him out of class (understandably). So he was just bumming around the hallways and I left our class, with permission, to see what he was doing. A teacher came into the hallway and said he needed to go to the principal because he was being disruptive all day. So we tried to track down an administrator, but they were all busy, so I just took him back to the class he was supposed to be in and the teacher let him come back in. Also, Josue usually turns his journal back into me at the end of every day, I rip out the pages he wrote on to signify a "new start", and give it back. Today I didn't see him after school, so I didn't get it back. Fingers crossed he didn't leave it at home! Or, even worse, left it somewhere that someone could pick it up and read it, because I tell him that he won't get in trouble for anything he writes in there as long as he doesn't say it out loud. And he takes advantage of that.

4. I grew today when I sat outside with two school employees during their lunch break. One of them was the data clerk for the school, and she handles a lot of the attendance issues that the school has. So Alex and I were telling her where we were from and why we are serving, and she told us some of the problems that kids have. It was really interesting because most of the kids she deals with we have no contact with because they're the ones who simply don't come to school. She described a 17 year old who has come in to enroll in our middle school, but came in to sign up 12 days ago and only just made it back in today. He sat through lunch and then told her that he was going to leave. It was so sad to listen to, but it reminded me that there has to be a point where a student decides for him or herself that they are going to try and be successful or that they are just going to give up. On one hand, I am so distraught for their situations and I worry about them, and on the other hand, I'm just dumbfounded. That there are people out there with no middle school education who work every day, maybe even get married and have kids, and have life satisfaction. For myself, I can't imagine being satisfied with my life if I knew that I could have achieved more or if I thought I wasn't trying my hardest. It's just confounding to me and I'm not sure I'll ever understand that people are satisfied with much LESS than the status quo. 

5. I am excited to hear back from the principal about our after school proposal and hopefully roll out the student survey. To stay on track for beginning our after school program on October 7, we've got to get the survey back ASAP!

Also I'm excited to be back to playing volleyball tomorrow night.