Monday & Tuesday
Yesterday I honestly forgot to post until it was after midnight (I like to post before midnight so it shows up as the day I'm actually talking about... OCD perhaps?). Today, I honestly procrastinated as long as I could before setting out to write this. I want to document how camp goes day-by-day, but I don't want to DO it. I'm so tired. But, here it goes:
Writing a Rainbow continues to chug along and I continue to be grateful for the class's small size. Even though I have only 5 kids in the class, I feel like I'm continually on the go--coaching, encouraging, scolding, spelling out loud and on scrap paper, checking on the kid hiding under the table, stopping another kid from pulling stuff off the walls... etc. They're so young, but I still enjoy them a lot. The prancing girl is giving me hugs several times a day now, which is so sweet. Her last hug of the day was a bit wet (runny nose, I think) but it's the thought that counts. The surprise color of the rainbow I decided on: turquoise. I was considering pink for a little while, but then while cleaning my room I came upon some Ancient Egyptian temporary tattoos that all featured the color turquoise and my mind was made up. Not all the kids wanted to apply the temporary tattoos to their bodies, but I assured them they could use tape to stick the tattoos onto their folders instead. I also brought in some Lisa Frank pencils that had been floating around my desk drawer forever. They got a little wild today, possibly due to the gifts, and one little girl took refuge under the table, complaining about how loud it was. The noise actually wasn't that bad to my ears, possibly because other times it's been louder thanks to that particular little girl's contribution! Monday's class marked the first day of the third week of camp, meaning that it's about half over, so I told them about the final project. For each color of the rainbow they've done drawings and stories. I'm going to mount them onto construction paper (or help them mount, depending on how masochistic I'm feeling) a story and a drawing for each color. I'll bind them together with those brass brad thingies. I don't know what to do about covers yet... more construction paper? I wish I could do something sturdier. Maybe I could cut up some cardboard boxes, but that would be a pain. Anyway, the kids didn't seem too excited or even comprehending of my plan. Then I laid out construction paper in the colors of the rainbow that we've done so far (red, orange, yellow, green) and told them to place their stories and drawings on the matching color. That did the trick, although the under-table girl complained loudly about how messy the piles were. I wonder what's going on with her. She was so cheerful the first two weeks of camp, until just last Thursday or Friday. Could she be growing tired of the daily routine? I've noticed the kids no longer have company manners and have started snapping at each other and even saying condescending things like, "That's easy to spell." Which reminds me, I got the prancing girl to write her own story by hand today, instead of dictating to me. She needed help spelling almost every word, but she persisted. I hope my praise really stuck, because I was genuinely proud of how it was hard for her and she did it anyway.
Phew! Okay, onto Fantasy Heroes. Not as much to report there. On Monday I also got the kids thinking about the final project, which will be displayed on the last day of camp. I explained how I'd like each of them to do a fantasy scene with figures and a background, using colored pencils. I showed them some examples. Then I explained about thumbnail sketches and asked them to do 5 or 6. I did some sample thumbnails myself and held them up. When I went around the room looking at their work, I saw full-page "thumbnails", random drawings that had nothing to do with their final projects, and lonely-looking single thumbnails all by themselves. There was one girl (the one who has trouble at school) who got really into the story behind her first thumbnail and ended up doing a kind of comic strip. It shows a prince and princess who love each other, the princess faints and the prince carries her, then the prince drops her and her head gets injured, the princess dies and the prince cries, then the princess comes back to life in time to see the prince kissing another girl. Interesting choice of subject matter, n'est-ce pas? This girl is 12 or 13 and has pretty poor self-esteem, so it's no wonder, but she was pretty cheerful while she was drawing it. Oh, today I finally got her to practice drawing hands. She's notorious among the art teachers for being a pretty lazy artist (she actually told me she's not very artistic and just picked the class because it was the only period 2 class that looked interesting), though she always works away at her drawings each day. She just wouldn't work on her hands, which were grotesque collections of corn kernel-like knobs sticking out in all directions. A couple of times I approached her with step-by-step hand studies from the fairy book but she wasn't interested. I told her I would get her eventually (with a smile on my face--the kids, including her, all found this amusing) and today was the day. She made some progress, but more importantly, I took the one-on-one time to talk with her about self-esteem issues. Essentially I told her that she should stop putting judgment on her drawings and on herself and just try the best she can, to not say "this is crap" but instead say "I need to try this again," and I also noted that I'm working on the same thing. I hope some of my message sunk in.
Fantastic Stories is going much better now, at least in my mind, because the revision I had the kids do seems to be really helping! The one boy whose writing skills are a bit behind the others (I think he may be directly from Africa, I can't tell from his accent) has made SUCH improvements! His story used to read like a synopsis for a knockoff video game, but now you actually get a sense of place and a sense of how the events unfolded. That's exactly what I wanted from him and he has made the leap. I feel like doing a celebration dance! I hope he could tell how pleased I was. Sometimes I don't know what messages I'm sending the kids because I'm always so harried and sometimes so taken aback by them (both in good and bad ways) that I feel like my face is practically twitching! My thoughts really show on my face, I've been told this a lot, and at camp there are always several layers of thought running at once. On Monday I reviewed kids' stories as best I could and talked about the final project (a long story) and other stuff to have in the portfolio (writing exercises and prompts, plus maps and character sketches, which we haven't done yet). On Tuesday I introduced the map exercise and got pissed when they wouldn't listen and kept talking about their side projects. I managed to get them back on task and settle in with their maps, but no sooner did I bite into my sandwich (I hadn't had lunch yet and was SICK with hunger) but one of the two girls started talking about her mermaid drawing again, wanting to show it to me. I went over to look at it and tried to assess it well (it was a good drawing) but I really should have put my foot down and refused to look until I'd finished eating because I didn't WANT to look at it and I didn't feel I should HAVE to look at it. Instead I looked at it. Then when they started badgering me again about something else, I burst out something about how I really wanted to eat and "I already had to look at that darn mermaid." Ugh, I felt terrible! So mean! After some time had passed (and I finished my sandwich) I apologized for being so grouchy, twice. I even apologized specifically for the mermaid thing and the girl looked surprised, much more surprised than she did when I was first rude, and said she didn't mind. The kids know that I'm fond of them, I think, and perhaps they understand better than I expected that teachers are human too. And get hungry.
That reminds me, lunch sucked. Another teacher (the one whose son is in Writing a Rainbow and she praised me so highly for being a gentle, feminine teacher) offered to buy me lunch since she was leaving camp during the lunch hour anyway. I accepted, but after a while I regretted it because it took forever and I was so hungry, having had only a hard-boiled egg and half a Frappuccino for breakfast. Another wrinkle was how I got stuck watching Thomas's homecenter kids during the lunch hour. It went very smoothly--all they did was watch Daddy Daycare--but I still felt trapped. By sheer luck Honor Sargeant was handing out cupcakes that day and offered me one, which I accpeted gratefully. The little girl who switched into my class late kept feeding me pieces of her Airheads. The little girl who hid under the table offered me a pretzel stick. Note that these kids didn't KNOW I was hungry--I said nothing of it until I barked at the Fantastic Stories kids, which was an entirely different group. I have a theory that kids offer teachers food when they're fond of them. I'll have to expound on this theory later. Anyway, Nick generously offered to handle any discipline problems should they come up (it's always more threatening to say "If you can't behave I'm sending you to _________" instead of, "You need to behave now") and he also herded kids back into Thomas's center when it was time to clean up. Thomas's kids are the oldest in the camp, 12 and up, so they're trying out their teenage independence stuff and thus eat in the hallways and classrooms and such, not just in the homecenter where they're intended to. It's not breaking the rules, but it sure feels good all the same. Thanks to Nick's help--and one of the senior campers, who's made such a huge turnaround since I first got to know him years ago--we managed to get the center looking okay again before the period ended, but I still felt incompetent when cleanup time arrived and I didn't know where the mess had come from. One of the kids told me, "Wow, this is a mess. They wouldn't do this to Thomas." Great.
This is a really wordy entry.
Okay, last on the list is Paint Like a Master. The still life paintings are officially done! We will now be working on portraits. Yesterday I wrote up and photocopied a reminder notice for the kids to bring home with them, asking that they bring in a photo (or 2 or 3) to use as reference for the portrait assignment. It had some details and instructions on it, which I went over at the top of my voice, over the fan and the other screaming teachers. I begged the kids to bring the notices home folded up in a pocket and to not forget. One kid crumpled the paper and jammed it into his pocket roughly but thoroughly. I gaped. The oldest kid in the class, who seemed so uncertain of my competence as a teacher the first week, looked at the kid in horror and said, "That is so disrespectful. She worked hard to write that up." The kid replied, "But I put it in my pocket." The oldest kid answered, "But you crumpled it, that was so rude and disrespectful." It was really neat! I felt like he had finally accepted me and was on my side, instead of giving me that blank zombie look and asking if he could draw skulls. (He also gave me a Twizzler yesterday, which as I said seems to be some form of fondness, and at lunch he agreed with me that Daddy Daycare promotes anti-education sentiment, which is terrible because "Learning is cool!") Anyway, yesterday the notices went home in pockets (I can hope) and today no pictures came in. The kid who crumpled the notice said, "When did you want the photos?" D'OH! I forgot to mention that I wanted them ASAP! I thought that was kind of a given, but there are no givens with kids. Or with anyone, really. I asked them to PLEASE bring them in as soon as possible, tomorrow for sure. What will we do tomorrow if there are no photos to draw/paint from? We already did the critique class I wanted to do, at the beginning of the period today. I'll have to write about that later. This entry is long enough as it is!
I should also do an entry about my non-camp life sometime. I sort of don't have a non-camp life, but I'm still doing some stuff. Reading too much, playing tennis, taking long walks, pretty much the usual. I got some work done on my painting Sunday night, but not enough to really satisfy me. *Sigh*
Writing a Rainbow continues to chug along and I continue to be grateful for the class's small size. Even though I have only 5 kids in the class, I feel like I'm continually on the go--coaching, encouraging, scolding, spelling out loud and on scrap paper, checking on the kid hiding under the table, stopping another kid from pulling stuff off the walls... etc. They're so young, but I still enjoy them a lot. The prancing girl is giving me hugs several times a day now, which is so sweet. Her last hug of the day was a bit wet (runny nose, I think) but it's the thought that counts. The surprise color of the rainbow I decided on: turquoise. I was considering pink for a little while, but then while cleaning my room I came upon some Ancient Egyptian temporary tattoos that all featured the color turquoise and my mind was made up. Not all the kids wanted to apply the temporary tattoos to their bodies, but I assured them they could use tape to stick the tattoos onto their folders instead. I also brought in some Lisa Frank pencils that had been floating around my desk drawer forever. They got a little wild today, possibly due to the gifts, and one little girl took refuge under the table, complaining about how loud it was. The noise actually wasn't that bad to my ears, possibly because other times it's been louder thanks to that particular little girl's contribution! Monday's class marked the first day of the third week of camp, meaning that it's about half over, so I told them about the final project. For each color of the rainbow they've done drawings and stories. I'm going to mount them onto construction paper (or help them mount, depending on how masochistic I'm feeling) a story and a drawing for each color. I'll bind them together with those brass brad thingies. I don't know what to do about covers yet... more construction paper? I wish I could do something sturdier. Maybe I could cut up some cardboard boxes, but that would be a pain. Anyway, the kids didn't seem too excited or even comprehending of my plan. Then I laid out construction paper in the colors of the rainbow that we've done so far (red, orange, yellow, green) and told them to place their stories and drawings on the matching color. That did the trick, although the under-table girl complained loudly about how messy the piles were. I wonder what's going on with her. She was so cheerful the first two weeks of camp, until just last Thursday or Friday. Could she be growing tired of the daily routine? I've noticed the kids no longer have company manners and have started snapping at each other and even saying condescending things like, "That's easy to spell." Which reminds me, I got the prancing girl to write her own story by hand today, instead of dictating to me. She needed help spelling almost every word, but she persisted. I hope my praise really stuck, because I was genuinely proud of how it was hard for her and she did it anyway.
Phew! Okay, onto Fantasy Heroes. Not as much to report there. On Monday I also got the kids thinking about the final project, which will be displayed on the last day of camp. I explained how I'd like each of them to do a fantasy scene with figures and a background, using colored pencils. I showed them some examples. Then I explained about thumbnail sketches and asked them to do 5 or 6. I did some sample thumbnails myself and held them up. When I went around the room looking at their work, I saw full-page "thumbnails", random drawings that had nothing to do with their final projects, and lonely-looking single thumbnails all by themselves. There was one girl (the one who has trouble at school) who got really into the story behind her first thumbnail and ended up doing a kind of comic strip. It shows a prince and princess who love each other, the princess faints and the prince carries her, then the prince drops her and her head gets injured, the princess dies and the prince cries, then the princess comes back to life in time to see the prince kissing another girl. Interesting choice of subject matter, n'est-ce pas? This girl is 12 or 13 and has pretty poor self-esteem, so it's no wonder, but she was pretty cheerful while she was drawing it. Oh, today I finally got her to practice drawing hands. She's notorious among the art teachers for being a pretty lazy artist (she actually told me she's not very artistic and just picked the class because it was the only period 2 class that looked interesting), though she always works away at her drawings each day. She just wouldn't work on her hands, which were grotesque collections of corn kernel-like knobs sticking out in all directions. A couple of times I approached her with step-by-step hand studies from the fairy book but she wasn't interested. I told her I would get her eventually (with a smile on my face--the kids, including her, all found this amusing) and today was the day. She made some progress, but more importantly, I took the one-on-one time to talk with her about self-esteem issues. Essentially I told her that she should stop putting judgment on her drawings and on herself and just try the best she can, to not say "this is crap" but instead say "I need to try this again," and I also noted that I'm working on the same thing. I hope some of my message sunk in.
Fantastic Stories is going much better now, at least in my mind, because the revision I had the kids do seems to be really helping! The one boy whose writing skills are a bit behind the others (I think he may be directly from Africa, I can't tell from his accent) has made SUCH improvements! His story used to read like a synopsis for a knockoff video game, but now you actually get a sense of place and a sense of how the events unfolded. That's exactly what I wanted from him and he has made the leap. I feel like doing a celebration dance! I hope he could tell how pleased I was. Sometimes I don't know what messages I'm sending the kids because I'm always so harried and sometimes so taken aback by them (both in good and bad ways) that I feel like my face is practically twitching! My thoughts really show on my face, I've been told this a lot, and at camp there are always several layers of thought running at once. On Monday I reviewed kids' stories as best I could and talked about the final project (a long story) and other stuff to have in the portfolio (writing exercises and prompts, plus maps and character sketches, which we haven't done yet). On Tuesday I introduced the map exercise and got pissed when they wouldn't listen and kept talking about their side projects. I managed to get them back on task and settle in with their maps, but no sooner did I bite into my sandwich (I hadn't had lunch yet and was SICK with hunger) but one of the two girls started talking about her mermaid drawing again, wanting to show it to me. I went over to look at it and tried to assess it well (it was a good drawing) but I really should have put my foot down and refused to look until I'd finished eating because I didn't WANT to look at it and I didn't feel I should HAVE to look at it. Instead I looked at it. Then when they started badgering me again about something else, I burst out something about how I really wanted to eat and "I already had to look at that darn mermaid." Ugh, I felt terrible! So mean! After some time had passed (and I finished my sandwich) I apologized for being so grouchy, twice. I even apologized specifically for the mermaid thing and the girl looked surprised, much more surprised than she did when I was first rude, and said she didn't mind. The kids know that I'm fond of them, I think, and perhaps they understand better than I expected that teachers are human too. And get hungry.
That reminds me, lunch sucked. Another teacher (the one whose son is in Writing a Rainbow and she praised me so highly for being a gentle, feminine teacher) offered to buy me lunch since she was leaving camp during the lunch hour anyway. I accepted, but after a while I regretted it because it took forever and I was so hungry, having had only a hard-boiled egg and half a Frappuccino for breakfast. Another wrinkle was how I got stuck watching Thomas's homecenter kids during the lunch hour. It went very smoothly--all they did was watch Daddy Daycare--but I still felt trapped. By sheer luck Honor Sargeant was handing out cupcakes that day and offered me one, which I accpeted gratefully. The little girl who switched into my class late kept feeding me pieces of her Airheads. The little girl who hid under the table offered me a pretzel stick. Note that these kids didn't KNOW I was hungry--I said nothing of it until I barked at the Fantastic Stories kids, which was an entirely different group. I have a theory that kids offer teachers food when they're fond of them. I'll have to expound on this theory later. Anyway, Nick generously offered to handle any discipline problems should they come up (it's always more threatening to say "If you can't behave I'm sending you to _________" instead of, "You need to behave now") and he also herded kids back into Thomas's center when it was time to clean up. Thomas's kids are the oldest in the camp, 12 and up, so they're trying out their teenage independence stuff and thus eat in the hallways and classrooms and such, not just in the homecenter where they're intended to. It's not breaking the rules, but it sure feels good all the same. Thanks to Nick's help--and one of the senior campers, who's made such a huge turnaround since I first got to know him years ago--we managed to get the center looking okay again before the period ended, but I still felt incompetent when cleanup time arrived and I didn't know where the mess had come from. One of the kids told me, "Wow, this is a mess. They wouldn't do this to Thomas." Great.
This is a really wordy entry.
Okay, last on the list is Paint Like a Master. The still life paintings are officially done! We will now be working on portraits. Yesterday I wrote up and photocopied a reminder notice for the kids to bring home with them, asking that they bring in a photo (or 2 or 3) to use as reference for the portrait assignment. It had some details and instructions on it, which I went over at the top of my voice, over the fan and the other screaming teachers. I begged the kids to bring the notices home folded up in a pocket and to not forget. One kid crumpled the paper and jammed it into his pocket roughly but thoroughly. I gaped. The oldest kid in the class, who seemed so uncertain of my competence as a teacher the first week, looked at the kid in horror and said, "That is so disrespectful. She worked hard to write that up." The kid replied, "But I put it in my pocket." The oldest kid answered, "But you crumpled it, that was so rude and disrespectful." It was really neat! I felt like he had finally accepted me and was on my side, instead of giving me that blank zombie look and asking if he could draw skulls. (He also gave me a Twizzler yesterday, which as I said seems to be some form of fondness, and at lunch he agreed with me that Daddy Daycare promotes anti-education sentiment, which is terrible because "Learning is cool!") Anyway, yesterday the notices went home in pockets (I can hope) and today no pictures came in. The kid who crumpled the notice said, "When did you want the photos?" D'OH! I forgot to mention that I wanted them ASAP! I thought that was kind of a given, but there are no givens with kids. Or with anyone, really. I asked them to PLEASE bring them in as soon as possible, tomorrow for sure. What will we do tomorrow if there are no photos to draw/paint from? We already did the critique class I wanted to do, at the beginning of the period today. I'll have to write about that later. This entry is long enough as it is!
I should also do an entry about my non-camp life sometime. I sort of don't have a non-camp life, but I'm still doing some stuff. Reading too much, playing tennis, taking long walks, pretty much the usual. I got some work done on my painting Sunday night, but not enough to really satisfy me. *Sigh*