Library Books, Little Kids and Mass Cooking
This morning I awoke to about 7 alarms between the hours of 5 and 7am. One of the few downsides of community living, no walls. I heard salsa music at 5, a portion of 'SexyBack' about 8 times over at 7, and a whole variety of beeps and buzzers in between.
Anyways, today I took a little break from the manual labor side of things down here and went to Pass Road Elementary School with two other volunteers. When we arrived there, we went to the library to sort books. They got so many donations after the storm and a lot of them still haven't been catalogued or organized so we went to work. I saw lots of books I read in my childhood, from The Boxcar Children to The Berenstain Bears to My Father's Dragon to Bridge to Terabithia. Looking stuff up on the computer and writing numbers on books isn't something to write home about, but I loved observing the classroom dynamics while the kids were in what they call a 'special', periods like library, p.e., or art. First of all the librarian was completely out of a 90s movie and used no method of quieting the children down other than repeatedly saying 'STOP TALKING OR YOU'LL GO TO THE CORNER.' An interesting approach. It did bring back the memory of how my brother used to try to get in time out in kindergarten because then he got to watch the fish swim around their tank instead of listening to the teacher.
Anyways, one of the more amusing things that the library teacher had them do was rewrite "'Twas the night before christmas...". They each added in their own little touches as she kept a thesaurus on hand to give them ideas for certain words. One kid wrote "'Twas the night before Feliz Navidad" and the librarian had no idea what he meant, but after a little explaining on his part she left him to his own creative license.
After library, we went to one-on-one tutoring with 3rd, 4th and 5th graders. Each was working on a letter to a pen pal in Compton, California. The funniest part of the day was probably a certain fourth grade boy named Jessie who was telling his pen pal that he was a rapper. He wrote, verbatim, "I go to talent contests to rap for them, you know what I mean?" He also was going to inform his pen pal that he "gets all the ladies", but I think he ran out of time. He didn't start off on a good note with me as he decided to take his short multiple choice quiz with 'eenie meenie mynie mo' at which point I informed him that was not how he was supposed to take this test, or any test for that matter! (SATs? haha) The day was over pretty quickly but I enjoyed spending the day talking to little kids instead of shouting through a respirator.
I came back to prepare dinner around 3. I cook from time to time, but I have never prepared any meal for 75 people. It's really quite the feat with three people on preparation duty. We made a baked potato and salad bar which ended up being a great success among HandsOn-ers.
Well, I have to get to SpinCycle for another exciting game of Catch Phrase!
Cheers,
Elysa Severinghaus '09
Anyways, today I took a little break from the manual labor side of things down here and went to Pass Road Elementary School with two other volunteers. When we arrived there, we went to the library to sort books. They got so many donations after the storm and a lot of them still haven't been catalogued or organized so we went to work. I saw lots of books I read in my childhood, from The Boxcar Children to The Berenstain Bears to My Father's Dragon to Bridge to Terabithia. Looking stuff up on the computer and writing numbers on books isn't something to write home about, but I loved observing the classroom dynamics while the kids were in what they call a 'special', periods like library, p.e., or art. First of all the librarian was completely out of a 90s movie and used no method of quieting the children down other than repeatedly saying 'STOP TALKING OR YOU'LL GO TO THE CORNER.' An interesting approach. It did bring back the memory of how my brother used to try to get in time out in kindergarten because then he got to watch the fish swim around their tank instead of listening to the teacher.
Anyways, one of the more amusing things that the library teacher had them do was rewrite "'Twas the night before christmas...". They each added in their own little touches as she kept a thesaurus on hand to give them ideas for certain words. One kid wrote "'Twas the night before Feliz Navidad" and the librarian had no idea what he meant, but after a little explaining on his part she left him to his own creative license.
After library, we went to one-on-one tutoring with 3rd, 4th and 5th graders. Each was working on a letter to a pen pal in Compton, California. The funniest part of the day was probably a certain fourth grade boy named Jessie who was telling his pen pal that he was a rapper. He wrote, verbatim, "I go to talent contests to rap for them, you know what I mean?" He also was going to inform his pen pal that he "gets all the ladies", but I think he ran out of time. He didn't start off on a good note with me as he decided to take his short multiple choice quiz with 'eenie meenie mynie mo' at which point I informed him that was not how he was supposed to take this test, or any test for that matter! (SATs? haha) The day was over pretty quickly but I enjoyed spending the day talking to little kids instead of shouting through a respirator.
I came back to prepare dinner around 3. I cook from time to time, but I have never prepared any meal for 75 people. It's really quite the feat with three people on preparation duty. We made a baked potato and salad bar which ended up being a great success among HandsOn-ers.
Well, I have to get to SpinCycle for another exciting game of Catch Phrase!
Cheers,
Elysa Severinghaus '09
posted by Dartmouth in Biloxi at 6:18 PM
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