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 They recognize that you have withdrawn so they settle down so that you can tell them what to do next.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.