“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

"Sanity May Be Madness But the Maddest of All is to See Life As It Is and Not As It Should Be." ~Don Quixote

Spring Break, Part 2
We started off OUR Spring Break with a Car Show!  Monday brought the beginning of 3 days straight of crashing college campuses, Tuesday I spent the day un-decorating classrooms so that night and Wednesday volunteers could paint them, and Thursday I helped out with the last Parent Orientation of the school year.  This Spring Break, I kinda felt like I was along for the ride, but I was just fine with that.  But having reviewed everything we've done this week, I have to ask:  What's Spring Break?

Car Show
Gold's Barber Shop organized their 1st Annual Car Show and we were the charity of choice!  We got to have a table out among the other booths, so people knew what they were supporting with a portion of their entry fee.  Emily, Jeff, and I split the time our table was up, and a few board members came out to help us, as well as some awesome volunteers lending their face painting abilities to the occasion.  We had a whole stack of Pomona Hope keychains ready to give out, as well as pens, popcorn, flyers, and, of course, face painting.  Several people came to our table to find out what we were all about and ended up just giving us cash right there!  It was pretty cool, having only heard of us that one time.

This lovely Board Member came to hang out with me, then spent most of the time she was there making popcorn while I painted faces.

I got there at noon to relieve Emily and Jeff, but our face painter at the time also had to catch a ride home with Jeff, while the next one wasn't scheduled to come for another hour.  And wouldn't you know it, just as he was walking away, a little girl walked up wanting her face painted.  I was standing at the table assessing the situation, and asked her if she wanted one of the two things I felt comfortable enough in my abilities to paint halfway decently: "Do you want a butterfly?"  "Sure!"

Then her family followed, and a whole bunch of kids, some of whom seemed to know each other.  The requests got increasingly more difficult as time went on, which made me work even slower, which made the line longer.  By the time my relief arrived, I had accumulated a line so long that it didn't ever actually disappear until we were packing up to leave hours later.  (File this under Reasons Why Liz Cannot Be a Face Painter)  For a good hour or so after my relief came, we had 2 people painting faces and the line still did not die down!  And they did a WAY better job (and faster) than I did.

Miss Barb stopped by to take pictures of cars, then posted these on Facebook.  :-)

Proof I'm a real person!

She wanted to be a skeleton, but I didn't want to mess up her lipstick.  And then she wanted a flower on each cheek.

My savior!  She's wonderful!

See?!  TWO!  I wasn't kidding!  They both were so amazing I bet the kids that came to me regret coming so early.

Campus Crash
Jeff has been planning Campus Crash for MONTHS.  It's a great opportunity for our high school students to see what different colleges look like.  These kids gave up three days of their Spring Break to hang out with us and see the colleges.  At the end of the day on Wednesday, Jeff came into our office and told me how genuine our only male student sounded as he thanked Jeff for taking him along this week.

The event lasted 3 days, but I only went to Monday: Azusa Pacific University (APU) and the Claremont Colleges (5C's).  It was SUPER fun (our kids are awesome and the tour guides were great), but at the end of the day I was exhausted.  I managed to make it through dinner and a short movie before passing out on the couch while Kevin and his friends played Magic: The Gathering for 4 hours.  I have no idea how Jeff and the kids made it another 2 days!

So please enjoy the pictures I remembered to take on our journey with 6 high school students across 7 campuses in 7 hours.

The games you play in Christian schools... Sadly, THIS is what reminded me to take pictures.

Showing us around APU's Theological Department.

Professor/Pastor/ Reverend Paul Boles, thinking about what else to tell us in that hallway.

COFFEE MAKER!  Wait... no... (Science Building, West Campus)

He made his own path a lot, which often caused hilarity to ensue.

English Department Courtyard

The bridge outside the Prayer Chapel.

All 3 of Jeff's former students who attend APU found him while we were there! (This is two of them.)

Review of what was learned at APU.  They will now never forget "The Shire"

Brianne's friend took us to visit Cafe con Leche at Scripps, where Latina/Chicana students could find resources specific to their needs.

Despite it being an all female school, he learned to look for similar resources wherever he went.

We got a really neat, in-depth look at Scripps.

They have lots of courtyards.

And we found one of our other volunteers waiting for class to start (he goes to Mudd!)

The mural in the background remains unfinished because the artist passed away before it was completed.

Inside the theater Brianne works for.

The outside was designed by a native of Pomona.

New tour guide for CMC: volunteer and President of the CMC Student Body!

He liked the reflecting pool.

View  (of the Library) from the top

We're on a roof!

View from our Board Member's office.

Not bad!

There's that reflecting pool again.

Almost the whole group...

He tried to jump over and got stuck.  This is him desperately trying to get down before I can take the picture.

Walls made of White Board?

He's creating a masterpiece... right?

Right?!

Well, in his defense, he did remember the hyphen.

<3

Review of the 5C's- Students earned prizes for answering questions accurately.  They were even taking notes!

Repainted Rooms!
This Tuesday and Wednesday we had groups of people from Baseline Community Church come to help out with adding a fresh coat of paint to some of our classrooms.  The need was desperate, and they delivered.:-)

To prepare for them, I spent most of Tuesday pulling posters off of walls in the rooms and moving furniture around to make it easier for the incoming help.  Emily stayed late with the group who came Tuesday, and I stayed with the Wednesday group.  Yay Teamwork!

Homework Room at the beginning of Wednesday

How the back hallway looked overnight.

Study Hall

More hallway

Painting the Jr High Rm.

This was the big task on Wednesday

Making it look easy.

Wednesday's group!  They finished up the amazing work of Tuesday's group.

Parent Orientation
Thursday marked the final Parent Orientation to add new students to our program for the school year.  We tend to get a bunch of parents calling asking to enroll their students around report card time.  Not much space for new students at the moment, but if they're on the wait list, they can get into the Summer Program!

Luckily, for me, one volunteer forgot we weren't in session, so she helped out with testing the students while I continued to work on other things.  Happy accidents are still happy.

Computer Giveaway!
Since we have new computers at Pomona Hope, we decided to give away the computers that are still somewhat functional to our families.  We gave them a flyer at the end of last week saying to come in this Thursday between 5:30 and 6:30, first come, first served.  As families were leaving the Parent Orientation just before 5 pm, we already had a line of 4 families waiting to come in!

As the first family came out of a different door, one of the waiting boys saw them coming out and squealed and danced in delight. He was clearly excited to have any kind of computer.

Coming Soon...
This is not a Pomona Hope sponsored or affiliated event, but I do think that it is something worth attending if you have the time and care about peace and safety in Pomona.

Consider joining the rally for Peace!

 In Other News...
I got my first haircut in 2 years and 3 months!  Not even a trim, guys. I was going to ask if I could come in on Friday, but she could only do Wednesday morning... which turned out to be perfect since I was set to work noon to 8 pm for painting purposes!

Why do I let my hair get so long?!

And then I worked until 8.

I think I'll take tomorrow off.