visit 7

Visit Number 7

Today was my seventh visit to the Sunnyvale Trailer Park. It’s back to chilly weather today and I was hoping it was not going to have a negative effect on the kid’s work ethics and focus. The weather keeps playing games going cold to warm to cold to warm. Just when the hopes of nice weather are here to stay it’s raining and cold again making everyone miserable. I was both happy and impressed to see that almost every trace of the once vulgar spray paint was gone from the side of the school building. I was happy to see that the school administrators took the gang problems very seriously and were very intent on keeping it out of the schools. I walked in and went into Mr. Lahey’s office and said good morning to him and Randy. We talked for several minutes about the spray paint from the side of the building and we were all very happy to see it gone. Hopefully the hoodlums in the neighborhood don’t put it up again and realize that these young kids do not need to see that garbage. I then stopped by Mrs. Peterson’s office and grabbed my folder which still contained new materials for the kids. When I left the office something struck me for the first time I had never really paid attention to before. The school lobby contained a wooden carved bench with Native American marking and carved eagles at either end, and next to stood a full sized Native American cutout in full battle attire. I thought this kind of a strange thing to be found in the lobby of a school that contained only 2 Native American students out of just over four hundred. Putting it off my mind I made my way down the hall to my trailer. As I walked in I was greeted with my hellos and questions to join the group. I made my way over to Barbs and we talked for several minutes about what I would be covering in today’s lessons. I called the first group of students and Ricky, Julian, Sara, and the new student J-rock all came over. I made them the same deal that if they behaved and we were able to cover all the materials without mistakes that we would be able to play the special version of candy land again. The kids all got very excited but quickly settled back down. We began an activity that involved reading a story where every kid read his own page out loud. This helped them with their reading, pronunciation, and courage to read in front of others. After we finished reading we filled out a sheet with characters from the story, settings, problems, and solutions to the problems. The kids did a very excellent job and I was very impressed. We then moved onto an activity that dealt with fluency again. The kids all did another excellent job and I was again very impressed. We were then able to move onto the candy land. I added a special rule that didn’t allow the kids to move spaces unless they had the correct pronunciation of the words on the back of the cards. After forty five minutes I again had to deal with the sad faces of students as they headed back to their seats to join the rest of the class. I then called up the second group and Bubbles Cory Trevor and Trinity all came running over. I made the same deal with them that I had made with first group candy land. We then went on to read the story and made our way through the story web afterwards. It took a little bit longer than the first group but we finally finished up. We then went onto the fluency activity and the kids made it through this one with less difficulty than the first group. The kids all behaved well and did a fantastic job with all the activities we did together. We then moved on to candy land and the kids were all having a good time. After another forty five minutes I again had to deal with sad faces and pleas for me to stay. I felt bad having to leave, but I was happy about another successful day.