So many things happen during my day that when I look back on the day's happenings it seems like five different days squished into one!
This morning was my last day of swimming with my 7th and 8th grade girls gym class and we played water polo. It was a blast and everyone seemed to have a really good time. As they were changing, the girls who didn't get in the water were talking to me about hair products and why natural oils make your hair grow. They were commenting on the purple in my hair and how badly my roots were showing (it's like two inches of roots). Then one girl said, "Ya know, Miss Katie, you'd be so pretty if you weren't so pale." I just laughed and responded with, "yeah, I'm white and my Irish heritage doesn't help me much with gaining pigment. I'm working on it though." It was really funny and it reminded me of something I learned very quickly at the Shehan Center: kids are not afraid to be blatantly honest with you and they will not hesitate in their honesty. Over the past nine months I have learned that kids will notice if you're sweating, if you've got a zit, if you burped, if you're tired or even pale. They aren't afraid to inform you and everyone else about these "flaws" and I guess there's something beautiful about that honesty...you always know what to expect.
Then, I spent two hours folding brochure after brochure to mail out to schools for our summer camp. My fingers are lined with paper cuts because I have been haphazardly sliding my fingers across the seems of the brochures...I look like I was holding hands with Edward Scissor-Hands!
Around 12:30pm my next gym class arrived. This class is my favorite...it has been the most challenging and the most fun class so far this year. It's the COPE class with the four 16-year-old guys who are "at risk" youth, going to this alternative school. Well, today only two of them showed up and they wanted to play basketball...again. So we began playing but kept getting distracted by someone playing piano upstairs...needless to say, we put our basketballs down and began investigating the music. We got to the music room and no one was there so we had fun beating on drums, playing the piano and strumming the guitars. It was a lot of fun. We got bored and headed down to the gym to continue our game and within 10 minutes the two boys began spitting mean words to each other. One guy took it too far and started getting really angry...it went from 0 to 100 in a matter of seconds and he started puffing out his chest to the other student and started yelling; he was cursing and threatening the other student and I tried to break it up but they weren't even listening/noticing me. The angry initiator, stormed off, yelling F-bombs and then threw a folding chair to the ground before storming out of the building with his teacher. It escalated so quickly and made me so uneasy...I've only had to break up like three fights this year and all of them helped me realize that I have very little power int hat situation. Once these guys get mad, they're ears turn off and they aren't even thinking straight.
After that group left, I headed up to my office to eat lunch and as we speak, I am balancing lunch, writing this blog and writing up a survey for a grant I'm trying to complete. The many faces of the day have helped me to recognize that the day you think you're going to have when you wake up in the morning and the day that actually unfolds are two very different things. It's only 2pm and After School Program starts in about 15 minutes so I guess I need to buckle down for more craziness because the day has only begun!
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