"Hope is the Physician of Each Misery." ~Irish Proverb

So, I've clearly done a terrible job of keeping up with this.  One might ask how it is that I now am being paid full-time, and yet have no time to actually keep up with the blogging to tell everyone what's going on, when I was doing it just fine at half time.  Well, I have no idea what happened, but I can promise it's because they're keeping me very, very busy at Pomona Hope and not because I've forgotten altogether.

I can't even remember most of the things I need to catch you up on anymore, so I'll just do the recent ones:

Art Projects
I am terrible at art.  I can't draw a straight line with a ruler.  I could probably eventually copy something close to what it is supposed to look like, but that generally is something that takes me so long that my lack of patience wins out.

As the Kids Coordinator, part of my job is coming up with an Art project twice a week for my Kindergarten through 3rd graders and once a week for my 4th-6th graders.  This has tended to be one of my more stressful, last minute endeavors all year.  And the younger kids usually end up with some kind of coloring project.

Thankfully, one of our lovely volunteers from Lifesong Church (Thanks Susan!) asked if there was anything that she and her Bible Study group of women, most of whom were unable to actually come in during programs hours, could do to help out.  And it turns out, they're great at arts and crafts!  So they've been planning and creating examples, and providing some of the materials for art projects for our K-3rd graders for the past 2 months, and it has been wonderful!  More proof that God answers prayers people (even silly, little ones, like "God, please don't make me come up with art projects... it's hard.").

The 4th-6th graders, I've been a little more devious with.  They're not as widespread in abilities as our K-3rd graders, so it's a little easier to find something for them, and since they're at the age where math becomes fairly difficult (suddenly jumping from 2 + 2 = 4 and 2 x 2 = 4 to fractions and solving for variables), and I usually have a math professor (thanks Todd!) in the room with them at the time they start their Art time once a week, I've been giving them math-based art projects.

And starting in January, we're going to be working on Math Adventure Journals that are a mixture of history, bible study, math, and art in their art sessions, as well as on Fridays for workshops.  (This idea is very heavily based on the stuff that this teacher at a private, Christian middle school does with his kids: http://www.mathsquad.com/mathjournal.html.)  I already asked the kids about it and they seem pretty excited!  I've been working on my own example journal to show them, and it is interesting, but the art part REALLY slows me down.  Still not my spiritual gift.

Halloween: Haunted Tour
I have been kicking myself for almost 2 weeks for completely forgetting to take pictures on Halloween.  But it was a really fun day!  Usually on Thursdays, we have our weekly Garden Workshop for the kids, but that day our AMAZING volunteer (Thanks, Barb) who has been running it all year was unable to come.  She let us know well in advance, so we were able to plan around it!  Another awesome volunteer (Thanks Kevin), who happens to live and work at 1st Pres as the Residential Manager put together a really neat "Haunted Tour" of the 3rd floor of the building.

You see, the kids only go up to the 3rd floor to go to the computer lab once a week.  One of the rules in the computer lab is if you get a warning up there, no matter how many you've gotten (or haven't gotten) that day, you come straight back downstairs and hang out with the coordinator until computer lab is over.  We don't want the kids messing with (or around) the equipment.  The kids REALLY don't want to get a warning up there because for years the rumor has spread among them that the 3rd floor is haunted.  I don't know who started it, but it probably hasn't helped that they do pass the rooms where people are living and they have occasionally seen shadows pass windows in rooms they can't enter.

So, we decided to capitalize on that (I did remind the younger students that we do not actually have ghosts before they went up).  The rooms chosen for the tour were on the opposite side of the floor from anywhere they'd been allowed to go before.  They are also some of the creepier rooms in the building to begin with.  One was a giant room being used for storage (in a building that's at least 70-80 years old), one is a kitchen area that has windows leading out to a room that used to be the roof (but at one point it was leaky and they found it was cheaper to build a whole new roof than to fix the already existing leaky one), and one room, at the end of the tour, was nearly empty and had no windows at all (easy to make dark).  The plan was to set it up like a maze and have our high school volunteers be "ghosts" with the kids having the chance to pick up 7 or 8 pieces of candy on the way through, and then they would have to defeat the "Boss" ghost at the very end to leave, by playing a ring toss game with glow bracelets.  I believe the idea came from Luigi's Haunted Mansion (video game).

We were concerned that our Junior Highers (our oldest group) were scheduled to go through first, since they were supposed to go through before our high schoolers usually got there, and when it was still pretty light outside (all but one room had giant windows... even with light-blocking curtains, it's hard to make it REALLY dark), and plus, they're in Junior High, so nothing is exciting.  But they actually enjoyed it so much, that many of them finished their homework early just so that they could go upstairs again to help with the younger groups!

Halloween: Trick-or-Treat
At the end of our Program day, we usually offer an extra optional homework hour for the kids who know coming in for the day that they are not going to finish their homework in the time allotted to them that day.  But on Halloween, we cancelled it (no one would have stayed that day anyway, no homework for most of the kids who usually do!) so that we could take our kids Trick-or-Treating in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.  I did not know this before, but apparently there are a couple streets in that area that get so into Halloween that the police block off the streets to through traffic just so that people can Trick-or-Treat.  12 kids signed up to go with us, and we all had a blast.  We had about 1 hour for the actual Trick-or-Treating part, and it was the perfect amount of time to go through one whole street.  Two of the kids who came with us didn't have costumes, so we let them borrow some of the stuff we have for our Summer plays, and they were SO happy!  One of them just had a king's crown and a purple robe and people kept telling him that they liked his costume and he ate it up!  Very cute.

I'm glad we went to that as early as we did (still mostly daylight/dusk) because it was pretty dark by the time we were leaving, it was getting really crowded and pretty scary for our kids.  I want to go back next year.

Veteran's Day
Yesterday was Veteran's Day, and while we didn't do anything the day of (except have no programs), I did have the last minute idea for an art project (what?!) for the kids to make cards to send to deployed service men and women.  I found an organization to send it to called "Operation Gratitude" and just had the kids make cards.

But then, I figured I know enough Veterans, it wouldn't be too hard to find someone to come in, right? I had planned to ask Mr. Bob back, but he wasn't at church that Sunday, so instead, I asked Mr. Don, whom I've known almost my whole life, and I didn't know he was a Veteran until I randomly walked up to ask him on that Sunday.  Much less did I know that he was roommates with Elvis while he was in the Army.  One more reason I love my job:  I get to know people better by asking questions I would never have thought to ask in the first place.

He even wore his old uniform! Over 50 years later!!!

Garden Workshop Board Game
Any down time I've had has either gone into the Math Art Journal curriculum or the Garden Knowledge Board Game I've been working on in collusion with Barb for days that she can't come or the weather doesn't lend to a good learning environment outside.

The idea came to me when she got sick at the very last minute and we had our kids play board games instead.  As the daughter of a hardcore gamer, I was horrified to learn that even our Junior Highers were not interested in playing any games more difficult than the 3rd grade level (ex: Sorry, UNO, etc.).  This made me sad (and we will definitely be having more board game days soon), but in the meantime, I decided it would be best if we could still at least stick to a Garden theme.

With help from Barb, I came up with questions and answers (she mostly did the answers, I can't actually grow anything).  With help from Kevin, I came up with rules and board game design, and with help from another volunteer from Lifesong, I learned that I don't have to reinvent the wheel to actually create a game board, the internet has everything!  Then she edited the PDF I found in her fancy professional version of Adobe so that I could type in the spaces on the board!  (Thanks Christine!)

Now I have the dice, everything is printed up, most of the cards are cut out, and I just have to start pasting everything into the folders.  Maybe I'll have my sister do that when she comes to visit tomorrow. :-)

Volunteers
A big part of my stress lately (as the volunteer coordinator) has been finding enough volunteers for some days.  We usually have just enough on Mondays, we're pretty short on Tuesdays, we have volunteers coming out our ears two Wednesdays a month, and then struggle a little on the others, and Thursdays are mostly manageable.  It has been weighing on me heavily for the past few months that there just were not enough volunteers, especially for our youngest groups of kids (since they demand the most attention and there are SO MANY of them!), but also most days for our Junior High group (they have 3 separate classrooms to divide up into, but we have not had 3 volunteers available to be with them on most days, so they all do their homework in one giant room, which tends to be distracting for several of our Middle Schoolers), and our 4th-6th graders, probably our best-behaved, most low maintenance group, has been slipping by with the bare minimum because they are so well-behaved, but I know on many days they could use more help with homework especially.

I've finally made my peace with the lack of volunteers and started getting creative:  when there aren't enough adults helping the K-3rd grades, I ask the Junior Highers who are done with their homework if they're interested in helping out.  I've even asked a few of our 6th grade girls if they wanted to help the little kids instead of going to gym games.  Our kids are wonderful and definitely rose to the occasion, and I've been so impressed by them.  But I also don't want to rely on them regularly.  They need to have a chance to be kids too.

I've held several extra volunteer trainings (which are a lot of work to set up for and find the time for), made appearances at several different events asking for more volunteers, posted on websites, etc.  Other volunteers have told me of their efforts to reach out as well, and it still seems like not enough people.

I have been blessed with so many wonderful volunteers who come regularly and often and do a wonderful job when they're here, I just didn't understand why it still felt like I was falling short.  I finally asked Emily last week what I was doing wrong and she said that it's not that I was doing anything wrong, we probably have the same number, if not more volunteers than we usually do at this time, but that we have so many more students than we've ever had before and that almost half of them are all in one room and need help on a more 1:1 or 2:1 ratio of student to volunteer.

I am so SO thankful for my volunteers.  They are amazing.  Much of my concern comes out of asking them for extra help, so often, when they are just volunteering, it's not their job.  I don't want to overwhelm anyone or burn them out.  And so many of them are so wonderful and rise to the occasion every time, I just love them.  Even some of our high schoolers go above and beyond and it's overwhelming for me thinking about how awesome they all are.  Surely, there must be more out there! :-)

TRAINING: Shameless Plug
That being said,  are you bored in the afternoons and looking for something to do?  Between jobs or done with jobs or have a job that has flexible hours?  Do you like kids or Jesus or both and want to see them succeed?  I have one more regularly scheduled volunteer training for this calendar year, TOMORROW, November 13, from 3 to 5:30 pm.  If you are interested in become one of the awesome few, please let me know if you can make this (if you can't and you're still interested, contact me anyway, we may be able to work something out).  You can RSVP to me at liz@pomonahope.org

Funny Pictures
I shouldn't encourage this, but it's really funny to me: all the students have their own wallets to keep track of the money they get for doing good things like homework.  One of our Junior Highers threw his high up in the air in the gym and it got caught on the light above him.  What are the odds?!

Seriously, someone do the math, I want to know.

And this one is more cute than funny.  During our optional homework hour, sometimes the kids finish early, and sometimes students who have no homework (or have finished) stay so that their siblings with homework can finish theirs and parents only need to make one trip.  Had to find some way to entertain them while I helped kids with their homework.  Started chess club.

It's like Fight Club without the messiness.