Mischief and visitors

We transplanted our plan of action from Tuesday to Thursday. Lynne and Courtney were scheduled to visit for the first time, and they came and observed.

Right away, we were alerted that it might be a challenging day when Matt said to us, "I think we're ready for you guys now," and added, almost as an afterthought, "They're not listening today."

They certainly weren't listening very well. We had what seemed to be a full cohort of kids, which means the troublemakers were all there. The kids' manageability is mostly dependent on the absence/presence of a few key players.

We started with a slo-mo activity to try and fix "Slow-Motion Race" from the first day. We talked about slo-mo at the beginning, asking who knew what it was, if they could name examples ("MOVIES!"), and so on. I demonstrated the difference between moving at a normal pace but not moving very much, and actually moving in slow motion. Then we got in two lines facing one another and tried to lead the kids in slo-mo actions. Some of them got it, some didn't, and some refused to seriously try. It was impossible to get everybody quiet at once. We are still working with figuring out how to get some of the kids calmer while not boring the kids who are already calm enough. It's a difficult balance and we've never quite struck it.

We played "Slow-Motion Race" again thereafter and it went better than the first day, though the kids still cheat, and when you try to get them not to, tend to respond, "But she's cheating!"

Next we'd planned to do walking games, but things started to fall apart. I think that when kids don't see "the point" of the activity right away, they start to lose interest -- and/or impose their own "point" on the exercise. So here, the two kids doing the game first started to turn it into a race (and Milik and Aochen wouldn't stay seated, throwing their own wrenches into the works). Aochen and Aliyah came close to getting into a fight, at which point Patrick suggested to me that we play a game that they all know and like to calm them down, so we started a round of "Indian Chief."

That worked to get them focused, although it ended on a bit of a sour note: Milik and a cohort or two "gave away" that Donald was the leader during the last round. It was clearly more than a bit mean-spirited: some of the kids tend to look down on Donald and Victor because they're younger. Donald was really upset, and said quite a few more words than I think I've ever heard him say at one time ("You can't do that! He's telling him, you can't do that!"), and struggled with tears for a little bit. He bounces back pretty quickly though, probably because he's used to that sort of thing. I had a sharp word or two for Milik, but since we aren't really in charge of their privileges or of chastising them it can be hard to discipline them at all. So basically it comes down to saying, "Hey, that's not very nice, and you wouldn't like it if he did that to you."

We did occupation charades next, which actually went pretty well: had the kids pair up, leave the room, come up with an occupation, and then come back and try to get everybody to guess without talking. They were generally successful at it and seemed to enjoy it. I think we played for about the right amount of time, too.

We used the last ten minutes for Modified Duck-Duck-Goose, which they liked more than I thought they would. They're good at coming up with animals, generally, since it's one of the things that age group learns (lists of animals, animal noises, etc.), and they even liked acting like animals as they'd chase one another.

Lynne had an appropriate/interesting comment, which was that a big challenge for us is going to be creating a cohesive final performance with these kids: something that's somewhat rehearsed and semi-repeatable. I think my basic philosophy on the matter is that if we manage to avoid mass chaos, we've done pretty well.

Crazy to think we're coming up on the halfway mark.