Young Men's Club - 3/28/08

I was simply exhausted today. I had to wake up at 5:45am and go to work at my other job by 6:30am. Yikes! I was done there by 11:30 so I headed home, took a power nap for about an hour, and then headed up to teach. This was the final day of a very long week. So needless to say, I was quite drained by the time I got to the school. On top of that, Fridays are the longer days because the kids get out of school earlier. On the plus side, several of the kids don't come on Fridays. Either there in another club or their parents make plans with them. So today I had about 10 kids. The other issue with Friday is that I don't get to use the gym. I have to take the boys to a small area just outside of the auditorium. So they can't do any type of games where they can run around. So today's club was pretty much just about the drumming. This allowed me to just sit and gather myself. Unfortunately, the last thing the boys wanted to do was sit still. So there was a bit of battling on this day. Nasir, Christian, and Anthony just could not keep it together. I had to repeatedly put them in time out and take their drumsticks. More so than usual. But I moved forward. I think my complete exhaustion allowed me to keep my temper in check today. After some drumming games, I had the boys come up with their own beats and then vote on them. The funny thing was that three of them came up with the same beat. It just so happened to be the same beat that the girls used in their Step routine during the Black History Show. (I guess we all can't be creative types. Some just flat out steal.) The biggest surprise was Fernando. The thing about Fernando is that he completely irks me. He's constantly distracted, can't sit still, and goes into sulky moods for practically no reason. Yet, when he applies himself, he's amazing at whatever task he's doing. It turned out that he came up with a great drumbeat. I had him teach it to the other kids and I'll try to incorporate it in the Spring show. It is a little tricky and some of the kids had problems with it. But I'll stick with it. Unfortunately, I couldn't stick with it for too long because I started to have a mutiny on my hands. All the boys were having meltdowns. So I ended the drumming and had them play a little game where they could just hit a little beanbag around for about 10 minutes. Which they loved. I'm actually surprised that they lasted as long as they did. Lastly, I found out a little info about Fernando. Turns out his birthday is 3 days before mine! Which may explain why he annoys the hell out of me. We have the same sign. You know who else I share signs with? Nasir, and Anthony. Jourdan (who wasn't there today) is on the cusp of my sign. Can you say poetic justice? Although I damn sure wasn't this bad when I was a kid.