"Hope Deferred Makes the Heart Sick, But a Longing Fulfilled is a Tree of Life." ~ Proverbs 13:12

Two very important things happened at Pomona Hope this week.

“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” –Proverbs 22:6

We've had so many volunteers lately that we've been able to have almost a 1:1 ratio of student to volunteers almost every day!  I LOVE it!  And I'm so grateful for all our dedicated volunteers who love our kids too!

Last Tuesday, we had a similar ratio, until the optional homework hour at the end of the day.  Our normal volunteers all had to go somewhere else that night (TOTALLY understandable!  This is not their job!), so for the first few minutes, I was alone with 5 or 6 students, who all needed help on different homework assignments at different levels.  (Don't worry, Jeff joined me later, but at that time he was making sure the kids were getting home safely.)

One of our 3rd graders, Dalia*, stayed for extra help on her math homework.  Unfortunately, it was in Spanish, and I'm terrible at Spanish.  She understands Spanish (as it is the primary language in her household), but she can't read it.  I can read it, without understanding it, but the kids laugh at me.  I'm not sure if it's because I'm butchering the language or because it just sounds weird coming out of me.  :-P  In addition to this language barrier, Dalia also has learning disabilities.  She has improved A LOT over the course of the year, but she's still very slow to understand many concepts, and may completely forget them shortly after learning them.  So it's a slow process, but she's also very patient.  I've never seen her give up.

So here's the scene: Me, alone in a room with 6 students who all desperately need help with their homework, reading out loud, in Spanish, math problems that I could do/teach in a heartbeat if they were written in English, but only understanding about 30% of what's actually written on the page.  All of the students are listening to me reading it and then arguing with each other over the proper translation to English.

And then this happened:

Isabel*, a 6th grade student with some very similar learning issues to Dalia (slow to understand, not confident in her ability to do the work alone even after she has shown she can do the problem without help, very patient, never complains), stepped in and took over helping her with her math!  She was explaining the problem to her and teaching her what she needed to do to find the answer!  It was so cute (and I was relatively useless at this moment) that I had to take a picture.

This is what we're doing it for, right?  Not just to help them with their homework, but to help them grow into human beings that want to help.  The important things that happened this week showed me that we're doing a good job.

Jelitza wins Miss Pomona

Miss Pomona Scholarship Pageant Honors 2013 Winner!

Jelitza Herrera, Pomona High School senior, is crowned the 2013 Miss Pomona Scholarship Pageant Queen. (Micah Escamilla/Correspondent)

Ladies and gentlemen, this year's Miss Pomona is one of our star students!  Jelitza (whom I've mentioned in the blog before, but changed her name) has been coming to Pomona Hope since 2006.  She was one of the first students I befriended when I started volunteering that same year.  And she was definitely a handful.  But she has since grown into a beautiful, committed, concerned young woman who is very involved in school, band, Bright Prospects, AVID, and of course, Pomona Hope. 

She was a Pomona Princess last year, and this year decided to run again, for the chance at more scholarship money.  Going into the pageant on Sunday night, she was already guaranteed a position as Princess again, but she is going to make a wonderful queen.

Her speech answered what she would do as the new Miss Pomona this year, and she brought in her experiences with many of the places she volunteers and leads to explain what her next steps would be.  She was amazing and she won!  And I couldn't be more excited for her!  She is a great example of Pomona Hope's work and a wonderful representative of the city of Pomona.

And then we went out for boba!

Showing off her dress.

Now I'm just showing off.

*Names were changed.

“Hope Finds its Fulfillment When Nurtured Through Faith and Shared With Love.” ~ Mollie Marti

Been a couple weeks since my last update.  After telling everyone to be careful not to get sick, I turned around and got sick.  Typical.  So I had a terrible cough and a fever and missed a day and a half of work before I got tired of lying around doing nothing.

Funny Stories

My first full day back to work, I didn't have much of a voice.  One of our more precocious 1st graders started chastising me for being there.

Some of our cuties (Troopers)

Her: Are you sick?  Why are you here?  You shouldn't be here!  Why are you here?
Me: I missed you guys.
Her: Awww, that's sweet!

Later that day, one of the 3rd graders came up to give me a cough drop.

Me: What's this for?
Her: My mom gives it to me when my throat hurts.
Me: Do you think my throat hurts?
Her: Yes.

I love these kids!



Coordinating

Extra math practice is always good.

I got to coordinate the program a couple days over the past couple weeks.  Last Thursday, Emily took the time off during the program to spend time with her parents, who were in town.  Well deserved, I must say. I also coordinated yesterday so that she could get extra work done and meet with a Board member.

Both days I coordinated, the kids who normally stay for the extra hour of homework at the end finished early!  Last week, the one remaining kid opted to study math flash cards with the rest of her time, rather than go home early.





Board Game Day!

The kids had this Monday off of school for Lincoln's Birthday (and they have next Monday off as well!), and then they had Tuesday off for one of California's infamous furlough days.  We normally close the program on the days that they don't have school, since they won't have homework those days, and that takes up a good chunk of their day with us.  But so many days off in such a short amount of time seemed excessive to us, so we opened the program on Tuesday anyway, and instead of homework time, the kids played board games!  It was great.  I got to play Yahtzee with a 3rd grader who had never played before.  She said that it was hard, but fun!

Battleship!

Figuring out how to play Takeoff

Takeoff-- I had this game as a kid!

Playing UNO

I swear we played it.  This picture is from the day before!

While setting up the games on Monday, I found Wizard's Chess!  I feel like I'm the only one nerdy enough around here to be excited by this.  But I'm posting the pictures anyway, dagnabit.

AND they played!

They played regular chess too, and other games not pictured here.  I regret (but only a little) that I was too busy playing games with the kids to take pictures of our K-3rd graders playing games too.  But they played Yahtzee, Junior Scrabble, Guess Who, Sequence, LIFE, and chess.

The great thing about board games is that they teach the kids all kids of things (math, colors, counting, probability, spelling, geography, strategy, following rules, budgeting, etc.), while the kids have fun.  And they really did seem to have fun.  I hope we can do it more often.

One More Training

I had to postpone a training because I was sick, so I ended up doing that one this week.  I trained an education consultant who is going to help us figure out how to improve the program to retain older students.  He had visited the building once before.  What he told his wife about it was that it reminded him of Hogwarts.  One more reason to get excited about finding Wizard's Chess!

Painted on the wall of the Cave.

Bible Study

I also managed to come down with a terrible migraine this week that hit really hard about halfway through the Bible Study on Tuesday, so I'm not sure what exactly was said, or how effective it was, but I do know it was about Hagar, and I'm posting my notes to the "Bible Study" page above.

So, moral of the story:  It's been a rough couple weeks, health-wise.  But I still love these kids.