TGIS (thank god its saturday!)

So work went fine this week, but sitting in an office is certainly putting a cramp in my "style." (Is that the correct saying? Or is it a CRIMP in my style? I'm not sure. Cramp sounds good to me.)

Right now, the office isn't at all busy, so I don't have a lot to do. It makes the time go a lot slower, and I keep thinking of all the things I SHOULD be doing at home. Not that I WOULD be doing them.
It would be great if I could sit at my desk in the office and play on the internet, but my work computer is not attached. The only thing I can play is solitaire.

Flo came in to the office the other day -- I told you it's a family business, right? And it operates out of the family household. It's a separate room on the side, kind of behind the garage. It's attached to the house. So Flo, the Mom, a sweet older lady, came in to the office and offered that I could bring my laundry with me if I wanted something to do during the day until it got busy.

I really thought that was SO NICE of her to offer! I can't imagine ever taking her up on her offer, but I know she was serious. She is a very generous and considerate person. My first day, she told me to go into the refridgerator in her kitchen if I ever wanted a soda. She also stocks up on chocolate and other candy in the bowl on her table, for anyone who wants it. She even bought Peppermint Patties for me, because she remembered from the last time I worked there that I liked them.

So that's one job.

The second job, aftercare, is going especially nice now that we can get outside. Kids need to run around after school. Now that the weather is warmer, they can play on the playground after they do their homework.

Speaking of which, homework help is an issue this week.
The kids ask for a lot of help, and I'm always glad to help anyone who asks. Especially when they need help, but don't expect me to just do the work for them. And especially when they are willing to sit still for a while and get the work done. It drives me crazy when one of the kids asks me to help with homework, and then keeps popping out of the seat and running around the room and losing focus, and then blames me for not helping.

Anyway, I was talking to some of the kids, and apparently last week one class got in trouble because they got so much help in aftercare. Mind you, I try really hard not to ever just give the kids answers. I try to make them understand the question in the first place. The question was along these lines:

Joe had 215 frogs. All but 187 frogs died. How many frogs did Joe have left? Show your work and explain your answer.

That was the only question on the paper.

So every kid subtracted 187 from 215 and gave that answer, and then came up to ask me if they did it right.

And of course, the answer was "No." And then I had to explain why the answer was no. So I re-read them the question. For some kids, I had to re-read the question several times before they understood. And even then, I'm not sure some of them understood. They may have just accepted that I said the answer was 187, and even though they didn't understand why, they knew I was usually pretty good about this stuff.

So all of those kids got the question right, and all of the kids in that class who didn't go to aftercare got a "D." But the aftercare kids were yelled at for getting too much help in aftercare. By me.

I can't tell you how many times a kid will come up to me with seemingly no earthly idea how to do a problem, as though they had never ever seen it in class before. And then I usually try to explain it from the beginning, and teach them how to do the problem themselves. Like Greatest Common Factors. Fun stuff like that. But I always try not to give them the answers, just to explain the question, or how to do the problem. Sometimes, though, like with the frog question, I'm trying so hard to explain the question that the answer just pops out of my mouth, because in order to really understand the question, you need to know what the answer is.

But now, I'm really wondering if my role should really be to tell them to just try their best, and if they get it wrong, they get it wrong.

Maybe my real role should be to try harder keeping those kids who would rather run around to keep focusing, and not answer any questions at all.

I don't know, it bothers me.