Young Men's Club - 2/29/08

Today the boys learned that I do not bluff. If I say that I'm going to do something I do it. I told them yesterday that their behavior was unacceptable. I also told them that a 30 minute time out would be enforced at the beginning of today's club. Sure enough, at the the beginning of today's club I implemented the longest time out in the history of Young Men's Club. And you know what, I didn't feel the least bit bad about it. I constantly remind them that their behavior dictates what happens in the club. If they're good, we play games, have fun, and I give them prizes. If they're bad, we have time outs and lectures. It was their choice. After about 10 minutes I started sending kids to the bathroom break. (I'm tough but fair) At around the 15 minute mark, I allowed some of the better behaved children to come out of time out early. This is another one of my favorite tactics. I let the good kids have fun and let the poorly behaved kids watch. During that time, I would play some drum beats and then have them repeat it. At the 30 minute mark, all but two of the kids were released from time out. Those two were Jourdan and Nasir. Here's yet another thing about these two: They love to push me. They love to try and get away with things. And I always catch them. Not because I'm so good but because they can't control themselves. For some reason, these two love to dance. Which is fine but not at the beginning during snack time. Trust me, with all the other kids from all the other clubs running around, having the kids in my club dancing is not going to help matters. But these two always start dancing the SECOND by back is turned. I literally turn my back and then immediately turn around again in order to catch them. They get caught every time. And that's why I added an extra 10 minutes to their time out. After time outs and some warm up drumming, we ran the drumming part for the Black History show. Honestly, it's going to be really incredibly. They just have to take it seriously and commit to it. Then I allowed them 15 minutes of "free drumming." Which again, is just 2 kids playing drums and everyone else dancing. (See, I understand the love of dance and I will allow time for it) Unfortunately it ended on a bit of a downer. I got them all together to run the speech for the show. It took way too long for them to get it together. Especially since it's the same speech that they learned about 2 months ago. So I was not happy about the behavior and we spent the final 5 to 10 minutes in yet another time out with yet another lecture. I don't think I'm asking too much. I just want them to keep their hands to themselves and listen to me. I just don't think my demands are that outrageous. But at least two of the kids were extremely well behaved today and they were rewarded accordingly with Blow Pops. Nasir came up to me and said, "I don't get a Blow Pop do I?" I refrained from using any swear words.

Young Men's Club 2/28/08

Today I could have filled an ocean with all the "Smackdown" that I had to lay. They were just out of there minds. The Black History Show is next week. I will be so glad when that's done with. Today we did a full run through of the entire show with all of the clubs. That meant trying to wrangle in my group while the other group was being wrangled in. Which is extremely difficult to do. There's just too much wrangling. So the boys were back stage waiting for their entrance and they just couldn't keep quiet. So I had to keep reprimanding and reprimanding. Finally, I told them that as a result of their complete inability to follow the rules that after the run through, the remaining time of the club would be spent in a group time out. They thought I was bluffing. After the run through I took them all to the bathroom. They continued to act silly which in turn, fueled my ire. I told them all that it was good that they were being silly because I had something very special planned for them. I also told them to get it all out now. When we returned to the auditorium, I implemented the classic, "put your head down," routine. There was about 15 minutes left in the club at this point and that's how they spent it. Lying down and keeping quiet. Music to my ears. Oh there were a couple of jokers. And as a result, more time was added which will be enforced during tomorrow's club time. They're up to about 30 minutes now. However, they also know that if they behave, I will cut the time just as willingly as I will add to it. I then proceeded to give them an old fashioned lecture on how their behavior determines what happens to them. On the positive side, they did quite well with the drumming and pretty good with the speech. I also had a chance to work with some of the girls in my Drama Club and their scene is coming together. Cheyenne, of course, is still having trouble taking things seriously. Overall, I think it will be a good show. Hopefully the kids will get it together once they're in front of an actual audience. And if not, it's not like there's anything I can do about it. They'll either sink or swim. I'm pretty confident that they'll swim.

Drama Club 2/27/08

So the Black History show is next week and I knew that I had to get the Drama Club in gear so that they would be ready. My goal was to just run the scene over and over again until it was at least running smoothly from start to finish. I also knew that I had to make some hard choices. Several kids had been flaking on me over the past couple of weeks. So I made the announcement that only the kids that showed up today would be a part of the show. I think that really helped. It took a load off of my mind and it allowed the remaining girls to take ownership of the show. I also knew that I needed to resort to bribery to keep them motivated so before I went to work I bought some Blow-Pops. It started out fairly well. They ran the scene 3 times and each time it got a little bit better. There were fidgeting issues and missed cues but at least it was moving forward. Then, after the bathroom break, all hell broke loose. And I have absolutely no idea why. Cheyenne, my class clown, just decided to shut down on me. Which really sucked because she's the leader of the scene. I really couldn't just cut her out of it. So basically, I just decided to wait it out. She held the entire club hostage with her hissy fit for about 5 to 10 minutes. Which, in retrospect, doesn't seem like that long. But it felt like an eternity at the time. Finally they got back into their places. Then Jamir, whose a bit of an outcast, got distracted because some girl moved her script that she had carefully placed on her spot on the stage. And by got distracted I mean became accusatory and argumentative. I reprimanded her and told everyone to start again. She responded my crawling under the piano and crying. Now here's the thing, I've clearly been working with kids for too long because I have grown completely indifferent to the cries of a youngster. For them, crying is like breathing. So I simply told everyone to get into places, allowed her to, "let it out," for a minute or so, then told her to get into places. Thankfully she complied (although it was clearly under protest because she chose to crawl to her appropriate place) and forgot all about whatever it was that was bothering her. We were able to run the scene 3 more times and I decided to leave it at that. I think it's in fairly good shape and we've got 2 more rehearsals before the show. Despite the meltdowns, everyone was rewarded with Blow-Pops.

Young Men's Club - 2/26/08

Before today's club started, Nasir walked up to me with a big, two front teeth missing smile and said, "I'll bet you $5 that I'll be good today." Of course, I let him know that I don't bet children. I also let him know that if I DID bet children, he would lose that bet. Sure enough, about 5 minutes later, he was running around the cafeteria and acting very silly and unruly. I walked up to him and told him that he owed me $5. (He knew I was kidding) Today also marked the return of Joseph. He had been missing for about a week or so and I thought that maybe he didn't want to be involved in the club anymore. It turned out he was in the hospital for asthma. I didn't get into the details, I just know that he's fine now and that his absence wasn't about me. Which is all that matters. In general, the kids had a lot of energy today. It took them a while to walk down to the auditiorium. I would simply wait until they settled down before I would allow them to walk any further. I just had to get all of that energy down. I managed to get them into the auditorium and we went right to work on rehearsing the show. It opens next Thursday. I was really trying to focus on tightening it up and making sure that everyone was working together. Joseph, despite the time off, was able to pick up the new drum beats rather quickly. Christian, despite being there since the beginning, was having trouble. His mind and his eyes would start to wander during the performance. At first, I was really upset by this. I thought maybe it was a sign of disrepect. But then I calmed down and realized that he just needed more attention and encouragement to get it right. And that the real reason he was tuning out was because he was lost. I mean, I don't want to sound cruel, but he's not the sharpest knife in the drawer. So the next few times through, I stood right in front of him and kept pointing to him when it was time to play. I also had to keep my energy really high in order to keep him engaged. The good news is that by the third time he really seemed to get it. So hopefully he will retain it for the next club. The boys did a really good job with the drumming and it was decided that they would close the show. Extra juices for everyone.

Drama Club - 2/25/08

Well, after a week off I was ready to tackle the rest of the school year with vim and vigor. OK that's just a flat out lie. I was not ready to go back to school. I was not ready to work. I wanted another week. At least. But I went on anyway and it wasn't too bad. The kids started out fine. Or maybe the week off had helped more than I thought. My spirits seemed pretty high. I spent the first 15 minutes of the club just catching up with the kids. Talking about what they did over the break. I was planning on about 5 minutes of this but they love to talk. So after that, I went right into trying to run the scene for the Black History Show which is happening in a little over a week. Once again, they just couldn't get it together. They just like to wander. And then, when they did the scene, there was very little focus. One of the students who I've made the, "leader," is Cheyenne. She is the ultimate class clown. She is not shy by any stretch of the imagination. And she loves to be silly. My plan was that if I gave her some responsibility then she would step up and use her energy for good instead of evil. Unfortunately, when it's time to work on the scene she completely tunes out. All of that wonderful energy is just drained right out of her. She can't stand still and on top of everything, she suffers from psycho-somatic headaches. I mean that is truly unbelievable. She gets bored of the work (which lasts for all of 20 minutes) and decides she has a debilitating headache. So I allowed her to sit down and we ran the scene without her. After we were done and it was time to play a little game, she was miraculously healed and ready to play. Needless to say, I told her that if she was too sick to work, she was definitely too sick to play. I spoke with her after class and tried to explain to her that I needed her to step up, to challenge herself, to focus, and to be a leader. I asked her if she wanted to be a part of it and she said yes. I told her that she wasn't acting like she wanted to be in the show and that I expected more from her on Wednesday. I guess we'll see how it goes. Despite her behavior, she too was given an extra juice like everyone else. But I made her wait it out a little bit. Just to prove a point.

Young Men's Club - 2/14/08

The boys were really testing my patience today. In their defense, because I they had done such a good job with the drumming in the last club, I had to add a new section to their routine in order to make it longer. And because the Winter recess starts in two days, we were pressed for time. So my patience was pretty short to begin with. I tried to get them together and get started on the the drum routine but they were taking a little while to calm down. Fernando, was especially difficult. After I reprimanded him, he proceeded to pout. At least he was quiet so that I could talk. Then, as I started to hand out the drumsticks, he refused to participate because he was too busy pouting. I decided then and there that I did not want to deal with Fernando's nonsense today. So I put him in time out for pretty much the rest of the club. He ended up being picked up and leaving early. Which was fine with me. Now, because the new section is a little tricky, it took quite a while for them to learn it. Justin, my incredibly well-behaved student, had trouble. He's simply not a natural at it. He was getting a little frustrated with his progress. The sad part is, he really wasn't bad. He was just getting mad at himself when he made a mistake. But I was able to work with him and just reassured him that he was doing fine. The usual suspects were actually doing fairly well for a while. But then they just got out of control. At one point, somebody passed gas. Which of course means game over at that age. So I let that one slide. But they kept interrupting and giggling at their own private jokes and carrying on so I finally had to sit them down for the remainder of the day. About 15 or 20 minutes. And it was not suprising that the remaining boys seemed to pick up the new drumming section a lot faster after that. After the club, I spoke with the key players one on one. Anthony is one who used to be very disruptive. He's gotten a lot better but he's still a bit of a bully. I told him that he was doing a lot of really good things but that he's got to cut out all of the bad stuff. I spoke to Nasir and Christian together. I flat out told asked them if they wanted to be a part of the show. They both said that they did. So then I told them that they had to act like they wanted to. I didn't have the energy to talk to Jourdan. One more day until the break.

Drama Club 2/13/08

I got caught in a torrential downpour before I went to work today. So I was not in the best of moods to start. I also came to a bit of a realization today. The Drama Club has been feeling a little draining lately. I've realized that, although I love acting, theatre, and drama, I don't think the kids really care. Certainly not on the level that I care. I guess the reason that it's taken me a while to come to this understanding is because it's a Drama Club. Hello. I figured that the kids were there because they were interested in Drama. But now, I think it's simply because they've got nothing else to do. And no choice. But now that I know, I'll make the most of it. So it was very difficult to run through the scene for the Black History Show because I was missing about four of my students. In fact, of those four, one of them, a girl by the name of Storm, has not been there for the past week. So I'm not sure if she's going to be a part of the show. In fact, I'm not really sure who is at this point. Because it's a small club, when kids flake on me it makes it very difficult to produce a quality show. It may end up being more of a staged reading. Since the turnout today was a little lower than usual, we ran the show twice (as best we could) and then played games. There is a game I use almost everyday where the kids each say the To Be or Not To Be speech one word at a time in succession. As they say each word, they pass a little beanbag when it's their turn. This time, as they said each word, I had them say it with a specific emotion. If they were to say the incorrect word, take too long, or drop the beanbag, they had to take a seat in the center of the circle until someone else violated a rule. In fact, I played the game with them and was guilty of dropping the beanbag myself. They got quite a kick out of watching me having to take a seat in the center. Quite a kick indeed. I also had kids work on a scene that I had my special kid, Jourdan, write. Yet another thing about Jourdan is this: I think is mother is a Jehovah's Witness (or somebody is) but anyway he is not supposed to participate in any shows. Even though he participated in the Christmas show. Go figure. So, to play it safe, I haven't put him in the Black History Show. But he still show's up to Drama Club so I have to have something for him to do while I work on the show. So I had him write a scene. It kept him busy long enough for me to work on the show without him being a complete and total disruption. Then I had the other students perform the first two lines from the scene that he had written. It seemed to go allright. They didn't love it. They didn't hate it. I finished with some good old-fashioned Simon Says. But there's always some kid who takes losing way too personally. At least there were no tears this time.

Young Men's Club - 2/12/08

I will start the good news about today. Two of the fatal foursome were not in the club today. Neither Jourdan nor Fernando were there. That made the day go a little bit smoother. Secondly, we combined the Young Men's Club and the Dance/Step Club so that we could do a run through of the Black History Show. This meant that I didn't have to spend the entire hour and a half or so entertaining and controlling the kids by myself. And on top of that, the kids actually did a very good job on their presentations. They were a little quiet with the speeches but in general it was very good. And the drumming portion of the presentation was, dare I say, excellent. Now here's the bad news. Which actually isn't really bad news at all. It just means more work for me. What happened was the kids did such a good job that the drumming part actually went very quickly. In fact, it went too quickly. I had no idea that it would go that quickly. It took so long for them to learn the piece that I just figured it would take that long for them to play it. But once it was all together, it just flew. So, after the run through I had to take the kids up to the gym, and then create and teach them a new beat to add to the drumming program. Now I've got about two weeks to pull it all together. Which shouldn't be too difficult. I mean, it's definitely going to take some time for them to pick up the new beat. And, I really want to give them something fairly challenging. Actually, I think that this is a good thing. This may provide that little bit of spark that I need to get through to the Winter Recess. I think I may have gone into vacation mode a tad bit too early.

Drama Club - 2/11/08

Today I was feeling a little under the weather. My throat was sore and I banged my toe into a door over the weekend. Also, in exactly one week, the winter recess starts. Hence, I was having a very difficult time getting enthusiastic about today. I decided that with today's club I would use more of a passive approach to containing the kids. I chose to remain silent until the kids decided to settle down. It's a very common technique for calming kids down. They recognize that you have withdrawn so they settle down so that you can tell them what to do next. Believe it or not it usually works. However, I did not count on Fernando. Fernando is a kid who loves attention. It's clear to me that he doesn't get any at home. So he loves to talk, act out, and pick up various little pieces of trash and claim them as prized possessions. Unfortunately for me, my patience for Fernando will never outlast his ability to keep talking. But because I was so low on the energy, I decided to see just how long this would play out. There were only about 7 kids in the club so I didn't think it would take that long. But after most of them would start to settle down, Fernando would chime in with something. Then someone else would chime in with something else. Then yet another kid would tell everyone to be quiet so that we could get started. This went on for a good 25 minutes. Yes. 25 minutes. That's an unusually long time. After I eventually came to the conclusion that they would not work it out on their own, I finally reigned it all in with a very stern lecture about how they all knew how to behave and simply weren't doing it. After it was all said and done, we managed to rehearse the scene for the Black History Show. They actually ended up doing fairly well. The energy could have been better but for the most part they are getting more and more confident with the show. I chose to give every kid an extra juice for doing a good job. Whether their behavior warranted it or not.

Young Men's Club - 2/7/08

There are four students in this club who are very difficult to work with. Three of them have formed a very strong click. The fourth just has a way of pushing my buttons. The three are Jourdan, Christian, and Nasir. Nasir is probably the worst of the three because he just can't take anything seriously. He was placed in time out for at least 20 minutes and as soon as he got out, he started something with somebody. Christian was actually fairly decent today. I only had to put him in time out once. The thing about Jourdan is that he knows the difference between right and wrong, he simply tests me constantly. And I never let him slide. So it's an endless cycle. The fourth, Fernando, is just really annoying. He is clearly starved for attention. Oddly enough, he's very capable of many things. He's a good drummer, he's speaks clearly, and he's not shy about performing. I just wish he'd focus his energies on being productive. On the whole, despite the great efforts it took to get everyone together, the kids were able to perform the drumming piece successfully. More victory dances ensued. As a reward, I allowed them to have 5 minutes of, "free drumming." That's where I allowed them to just play whatever they wanted for 5 minutes. Somehow, I managed to tune them out and put the room back in order. They chose to use that time to play different beats and dance. At the end, everyone was rewarded with an extra juice for their good work. Also, I rewarded the line leaders with fuzzy toys. Line leaders are the kids who behave the best. It's usually the same 4 or 5 kids.

Drama Club - 2/6/08

The kids were in rare form today. It took them a really long time to settle down. Since this club is mostly girls, there is a completely different dynamic. Their acts of defiance are a little more subtle. They just have this feeling that whatever there doing or talking about is more important than anything that I have to say. And because I am a control freak, this bothers me. They did manage to get it together long enough to do a couple of run-throughs of the Black History show. And it went fairly well. It's going to take some work but it was a good start. But then all hell broke loose. After the run-through, I told them to split up into three groups. Now this one girl, Jamir, is a bit of an outcast. And since no one wanted to be in a group with her, she went into a corner, buried her head, and started crying. I decided to end the club right then and there. I was just very pissed off that they weren't listening. And because I'm sadistic, I'm always coming up with clever and cruel ways to make them pay psychologically. The school provides snacks for the kids and usually there's extra. I tell them that if they're good, I'll give them the extra. But because of their meltdown, I gave them a lecture instead. Then I gave the one good student her snack and then promptly threw the remaining snacks (Oatmeal Raisin cookies) in the trash. Right in front of them. Yeah. That's how I roll.

Young Men's Club - 2/5/08

I don't know what I was thinking when I decided to start a drumming program in the Young Men's Club. Once you put drumsticks in their hands and a bucket in front of them, it is extremely difficult to keep them from making a huge amount of noise. It is also very tough to get them to listen to anything you have to say. They were in a very restless mood today. Having a very difficult time listening in general. I had to put the entire group in a time out for about 10 minutes. Today was also the day when a lot of students who weren't in the club on Friday returned. This meant that we had to take time to teach them the new drum beats for the Black History Month show. This, in turn, created a bit of a mess. The kids who knew it were frustrated by the kids who didn't know it. The kids who didn't know it were defensive and moody. So, unfortunately, the victories that we achieved on Friday were not able to be re-created. However, the good news is that there's plenty of time and we will definitely be able to pull it together in time for the show.

And just a quick little tangent. Before my club started, all of the kids from different programs were waiting in the cafeteria. Thankfully, because the rules have been established early, the kids in my club are relatively tame. The kids in other clubs, however, are wild. They run around the cafeteria with reckless abandon. And they fight constantly. There's one particular kid, not in my club, who I can't stand. He ended up getting into a fight. He also happened to be getting his ass kicked. Quite frankly, they made me feel pretty good. And even more frankly, I decided to take my time going over their before I helped break the fight up. There were other adults there to step in but it turned out that my strength and size were definitely needed. And I provided them with that. Eventually.