First Day with the Kids

Well, I'm still alive…with God's help and the help of much caffeine. Yesterday went relatively well--at least that's what the veteran staff said. I had the whole afternoon planned out and didn't really do any of what I planned. We were supposed to go over the rules and procedures yesterday, which I did a little bit. I was attempting to go over how the discipline procedure works, but I found myself having to give up teaching them how discipline works and just had to go ahead and discipline kids. I definitely learned I need to be a lot more firm with the kids, and I probably should have disciplined them a lot more.

We did have a few hitches in the logistics of the day (i.e. transitioning to dinner time, bathroom breaks, water breaks, etc.) but I think a lot of that will get worked out much more easily today and tomorrow. The kids were lined up in the hall before dinner for much too long, so naturally, they start messing with each other and misbehaving (or calling each other very very bad swear words). Anyway, hopefully most of that will be worked out a bit better today.

Please pray for one of the families of one of my kids J. (I'm just going to use initials on my blog). The mom called today with a bit of an emergency in the family, so we're trying to help her as best we can.

Thanks for your prayers for yesterday. If you can be praying for J. and his family, as well as for logistical issues during our programming time, that'd be great. To be really specific, PLEASE PRAY THAT MY KIDS SIT IN THE SEATS THAT THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO SIT IN AND STAY SEATED, ESPECIALLY WHILE I'M TALKING! I feel like if I can get them to just sit down, I'll have won a huge battle. It's difficult because they've been in school all day, they're testing me as a new person, and our organization takes on the most challenging kids, behaviorally and academically, and puts 22 of them in a classroom with a 23 year old white girl who doesn't know what she's doing. Ugh. But I love my job…