“In All Things it is Better to Hope Than to Despair” ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We Got a Break!
We got Good Friday off!  You have no idea how excited I was about this.  I got my car fixed and tomatoes planted!  I got to stay up late on Thursday night eating pizza!  (I probably should have gone to a Maundy Thursday service, but I didn't leave work until 7, and after dealing with defiant Junior Highers, I don't think I was in the right mood.  Glad Jesus forgives!)

Friday work

Took me (and Barb) all afternoon Saturday.  Would never have finished without her.

Fundraising Update
If you look to the right side of my blog update, you should be able to see a handy thermometer showing my goal for monthly income on my fundraising and where it is now.  I will update it as I am made aware of new monthly donations, so keep checking back!

My job is unique and challenging in that, while working as the Volunteer Coordinator and the Kids Coordinator at Pomona Hope, I'm also fundraising my own salary.  Your money is going to good work.  And every little bit helps, so don't forget to tell your friends!  :-)

What to Do with Defiant Junior Highers...
I asked for tips a few weeks back about this.  What we've ended up doing is something that I didn't remember doing before until we started it again recently, and then I remembered Emily using this same tactic to a couple of kids a few years ago!  If they can't act they're age, they get to travel with the K-1st graders (who are usually far better behaved and less annoying).

Last Thursday was a double-whammy.  I spent the last half hour of programs bouncing around between dealing with 2 different kids who decided to be smart alecs and push buttons or just completely ignore any authority figure.  I had to get tough and take a phone away from one of them while having them both write Thank You cards to volunteers while they sat out away from the rest of their group and each other.

Weirdly, they came in Monday still on their guard and trying to cause problems again (because they were still mad at being punished for the last time they caused problems.  Oh, kids.), but for the most part, after I treated them nicely, they settled down again.  Tuesday, they seemed to be mostly okay with me.  I hope they start to figure out that we're not here to butt heads with them, but to help them with their homework, listen when they need to talk about something important, and do our best to get them to do their best.

Messy Kids
On  this past Wednesday,  my 4th-6th graders left me the biggest mess I've seen them leave for a normal day all year, maybe all the time I've been coming here.  I might have given them all a warning for it, but there's one student in the group who has been coming to us for years and has never gotten a warning.  Ever.  That's his claim to fame and something he's proud enough of to step up and take control of the group when I even threaten giving the group a warning for something.  Besides that, he mostly likes to fly under the radar.  And HE didn't leave a mess himself, his area was clean.  He just didn't help his group clean up either.  So, they got to write apology letters to Art (our janitor) and the Pomona Hope staff as well, before they were allowed to go to gym games.  Some of them were pretty cute.  I'm hoping they got the message and won't do that again.

Garden Workshop
We have SO many kids who love going to the garden that I get asked at least once a day if that's the day they're going (I don't know why they haven't caught on yet that it's on Thursdays... even when I tell them so).  Last week, I peeked in when they were picking radishes.

He is way more excited about radishes than I ever was.

Photobombed by radishes.  Really?!

I have no idea what's happening, but it's cute.

Sorry, they're just so cute!

This week, they learned about Rosemary (it's uses, history, lore it's used in, etc.) and then started to make a Rosemary vinegar, which will spend the next week or so getting heated by the sun until it's ready.

I'm a little jealous.

When did we get this table and chairs set?  It's adorable!

She's loving it.

Volunteer Appreciation Week!
This week was Volunteer Appreciation Week at Pomona Hope (although it may stretch out a couple weeks).  Our volunteers are wonderful to spend their free time coming in to work with our kids, so we want to be sure they feel appreciated!

This year, their gift was a T-shirt!  The La Verne Heights Presbyterian Church ministry group for Pomona Hope did all the research and design and ordered them for us (and covered most of the cost!).  We've had t-shirts in the past, but never so many color options (there was black, a light blue, kelly green, paprika, and another shade of red to choose from)!

This evening we are also having a BBQ for volunteers and their families at the home of our new Board Chair, who was kind enough to put this event on for us.  I think he likes doing this kind of stuff, he's definitely got the yard for it.

"Your Hopes, Dreams and Aspirations Are Legitimate. They Are Trying to Take You Airborne, Above the Clouds, Above the Storms, If You Only Let Them." ~William James

Still No Break
I feel like we hit the ground running these past couple weeks too!  The kids are back, and better behaved than I remember, which is great!  Especially since we've been trying to keep up with all the other things coming up!  Maybe the week they spent away helped them realize how good they have it here. (One of our Junior Highers started being a smart alec the first Monday back and was quickly shut down by one of his friends.  That was awesome!)

In the meantime, Emily and one of our Board Members spent much of last week interviewing potential interns for our Summer Enrichment Program (we had 10 people apply!!!).  So far it sounds like they wish they could hire all of them, but can only hire 5.  I'm excited about this because it means that they can run the summer program while I prepare for the next school year, which will hopefully start out much smoother than this one!  It also means I don't have to feel guilty when I go to Kenya this summer and miss the beginning of the SEP.

Emily has also been finishing grants and putting together a report for the Annual Board retreat last weekend.  So I've been editing grants and putting together data for her to interpret and make pretty.

I've also been juggling schedules a bit, as we have several new high school volunteers.  I'm almost to the point of not knowing what to do with them all!  Which I'm not complaining about in the least!  Just explaining that it's taking a little longer to figure out scheduling every morning now.

Attack of the Nerds
This is all game related, but I hope it continues.  Our Junior High students almost beg to play Magic: The Gathering every day.  Last Tuesday, my 4th-6th graders were fighting over who got to play chess.  I had to get out another chess board for them.  I don't even have words for how gleeful this makes me.  Thanks, kids.

Luckily, we have multiple sets.

Kindergartner vs. Junior

They don't just play board games anymore.  They've been playing a smartphone version of Charades during their snack time.  One of our newer high school volunteers brought it in and they love it (and her).  These are junior highers actually acting like they like something!

More Teacher Contact
Report cards are coming in for their second trimester, and we're finding a few kids are struggling.  One student in particular was given several of my cards to hand out to teachers, because he is normally a good student and is very bright, but it turns out he has not been doing all his work (though he tells us he has).  So I've made contact with his Homeroom teacher to work out a deal and a communication schedule.  We're gonna gang up on him and make sure he improves.  :-)

More Kids Asking for Extra Help
With the second trimester report cards out, we've had more kids asking for extra help (outside of their homework) in specific subjects, to understand well enough to bring their grades up.  I now have a Common Core website for 6th grade math that I'm printing extra work from for one student, I'm in contact with at least 2 teachers, one principal, and several parents, and I have 5 students staying after the program most days to either make extra sure they're finished with their homework or to improve their reading skills (and if I'm lucky, I'll have one more volunteer there with me to help give the extra attention they all require).

On the bright side, one of the students who started staying later this week to work on reading skills has already gone from 53 words per minute (WPM) to 89 wpm, in a matter of 2 sessions!  I think it's mostly a matter of confidence, with a touch of needed vocabulary expansion on the side.  The curriculum provided to us for free by a former volunteer (who worked to develop it himself) definitely helped a lot!

Pomona Beautification Day!
CalPoly sent us 7 awesome volunteers for Pomona Beautification Day last Saturday, so I got to be the point person for organizing them and telling them what they were doing.  We had them clear out a room that was pretty full of random stuff on the 3rd floor of the building that we're hoping to use as a classroom next year.  Looking at it before they came in, I would have had morale failure if I had to do it by myself.  But those volunteers had it cleared out faster than I expected.  The room was way bigger than I had even realized!

They may have only come for one day, but they were great.  I'm really glad we had a couple of engineering students among them, since there were some really big, heavy desks.  Moving them was an engineering feat unto itself (and that's coming from the daughter of 2 engineers).  Well done, guys!

Too big for door...

Too big for hallway

It's on a trolley which is rolling over plywood and cardboard boxes to protect the floor.

I promise I have more pictures, but they're all on my camera, and I'm not sure where the cord to upload them is in the little bit of the house that is still not unpacked.  I'll post them later!

Safety Talk
This Wednesday, we had a Pomona Police Officer come in to talk to the kids about staying safe while walking anywhere in town.  For the younger kids, I understand they talked about the basics: don't talk to strangers, look both ways before you cross, etc.  I was with our Junior High group for the day, so they got a little bit from Officer Carrigan, and most of the Safety presentation was from a representative of another nonprofit based out of First Baptist Church of Pomona about human trafficking.  The kids listened carefully, and we'll have a discussion time with them about it next week.

Garden Update
Miss Barb seems to be having a lot of fun with the workshops.  She keeps saying that she thinks whatever she came up with will be boring to the kids, but they seem to be enjoying it.  This week, one group planted a Butterfly Garden, while another made compost tea.  If you've never heard of that last one, you're not suppose to drink it.  Just FYI.  It's actually a natural alternative to pesticides and it gives the plants extra nutrition!  (See Barb?  I pay attention!)

Explaining the compost tea.

Last week they may have talked about Earth Day

Sorry for the Delay
I didn't quite get to publishing an update last week because I may have had a concussion.  I was mostly finished, but it was time to start the Math Workshop, and one of the kids kicked a soccer ball and nailed me in the head (completely by accident!).  Took me a while to realize that what I was feeling was not just the burning sensation of being struck by a soccer ball at high velocity.  So I spent the first hour after that teaching about Ancient Egyptian math and how lucky we are that we have zeroes, fraction values besides just unit fractions, and the ability to use a symbol of some kind in the place of an unknown variable.  Perhaps they will appreciate math a little more now.  And I really only had to ask them to slow down their speech once or twice.  (Okay, I'm willing to admit that maybe I should have seen a doctor, but it seemed like a lot of work that I didn't have energy for, and I still didn't have any proof of insurance-- and not for lack of trying!)

Then Kevin took care of me the rest of the evening.

And For a Moment of Awesome
The kindergartner in this picture dropped some of his stuff (I guess he was overloaded with homework and snacks), so 2 older kids and a volunteer rushed to help him clean up. <3