Young Men's Club - 3/20/08

Today was actually rather uneventful. And I like uneventful. Especially with the Young Men's Club. Don't get me wrong. The usual suspects continued to be pains in my butt. However, I can say that a couple of them have calmed down and gotten a little bit better. Christian is one of them that has actually gotten better. I've realized that he just likes to laugh at everything. That's just his defense mechanism. So I let a little more of it go. Also, he's started to realize that the things that annoy me aren't worth doing anymore. Like dancing in the cafeteria during snack time. He's starting to figure out that if he stops doing them, he gets to participate in the fun stuff. Jourdan's still consistent. He continues to be annoying but then he understands that there's a point where he has to back off. Then he starts up again. He loves to test the limits. Nasir, unfortunately, doesn't seem to learn any lessons. I started the club with relay races. They thought it was fun. I thought it was a great way to tire them out so that we could get some stuff done. I had them run suicides. That's when you start at one end of the basketball court and then run to the foul line and then run back. Then you run to the half-court line and then run back, then to the other foul line and back and finally the other end line and back. After about 20 or 30 minutes of this, they were a little calmer. Nasir, sat out for the entire race. I then let him participate in the drumming portion and he proceeded to clown around again. He simply can't stop. It's an addiction. So I pulled him out again. Then I put him back in again. It got a little better. Who knows. He's in the 3rd grade now so maybe he'll figure out that there will always be consequences by the time he hits 5th grade. But we are moving forward slowly but surely. I want to have about 3 drumming pieces ready by the end of the year and I want them to be composed by the students. It should be very cool.