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.