To begin this week’s entry, I’d like to quote an excerpt of Closing Time, by Semisonic — “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end”.  That line pretty much sums up what I felt going through this week.  Endings always feel somewhat bittersweet; looking forward helps lessen the sting a bit, but sometimes, I like to look back, relive, and reminisce.  And we shall begin that process with this post!

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Our initial plan for this week was to put together a resource package filled to the brim with art, music, and drama resources.  Of course, this plan sounded like it would tide us over until the very end… well, let’s take a look at what we accomplished aside from that goal:

• Volunteer as an above-ratio staff at one of the Neighbourhood House-run Out of School Care centres from Monday to Thursday
• Submit a good draft, professional version of the workshops we designed for the SHIFT initiative
• Help with food prep for the Volunteer Appreciation Day event hosted by the Neighbourhood House on Friday

Our supervisor’s relaxed and detached management strategy helped my colleague and me settle into a natural rhythm and as a result ended up much more relaxed and productive than if we were assigned specific tasks with performance criteria and deadlines.  I think this might make another intriguing inquiry topic — applications of “choice” to assignment design to increase student engagement as well as the quality of their work.  The Social Studies and Science projects I designed for my units during my practicum showed me a shadow of a response.  It only seems natural, since children are growing up in an interconnected and easily accessible society that bombards them constantly with multiple stimuli, each offering choices that compete for limited resources (time, energy, even patience!).

Volunteering at the Neighbourhood House was an eye-opening experience.  I particularly appreciated the opportunity to work together with a colleague from a different cohort.  Granted, we could have easily chosen to work by ourselves on different projects (we had plenty to choose from) — as luck would have it, my colleague and I got along quite well, we interested in similar things, and both wanted to work together.  Hopefully other students going through the CFE experience benefit from a synergistic partnership!

Also, I found the pacing to be rather nice — I am very thankful that the CFE experience came after our extended practica, as I cannot begin to imagine how enjoyable it would have been otherwise.  Furthermore, the experience felt richer with the trials and tribulations of the extended practicum under my belt — I can definitely say that it informed every aspect of my endeavours as a volunteer!

Finally, I am happy to share that the Neighbourhood House is staffed by a team of diligent, hard-working, talented, and appreciative individuals.  They’ve helped my colleague and I felt right at home, inviting us into their world, treating us like human beings as opposed to being a cog in the big machine.  With the dozens of projects happening simultaneously throughout the centre, it would be very easy to think that!  All the children we’ve worked with are very appreciative of the staff and volunteers — it was very reassuring to see that students, while easily distracted and often engaged in their own interest, are still able to take a break to offer a heartfelt “thank-you”.  Let’s hope we can keep that alive for a while longer yet!

Hello, and welcome to this week’s edition of the CFE Experience!  It’s been a busy and hectic week!  Without further ado, let’s jump right into it!

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Good news is that my colleague and I had completed all of our activity planning the week prior; we began the week with a bit of touching-up and fine-tuning our itineraries.  I do have to say that experience as a teacher helped immensely with this process — I’ve experience with planning activities and implementing them from my years at an afterschool care centre, but this time around it went much more smoothly.  Monday saw us on an excursion to a nearby park with a nice wooded area; my colleague and I decided to plan our activities around a Ranger “bootcamp” theme.  Manhunt (a combination of hide and seek and tag) became “endurance and pursuit training”, and camouflage (variation on hide and seek) became “reconnaisance/spy training”; we even prepared some “Ranger in Training” stickers and “Canadian Ranger” buttons!  We were both really excited to see how our activities would take off!

To begin, turnout was rather low due to the original scheduled activity (“Gardening”).  While our supervisor did mention to the students that we would only be watering the plants before partaking in fun activities, a few of the students were turned off by the prospect of “gardening” and chose not to show up.  That particular centre had more older participants, so they had more autonomy… nonetheless, it was a little sad to see such a low turn-out!  I was a little bit worried about how the older students might react towards the “Rangers” theme — on one hand, it might have been a novel idea, but on the other, it could easily be seen as “lame”.  Fortunately, due to our rapport with the students and their enthusiasm for male leaders, all those who were present chose to participate.

The students’ friendly and engaged nature reflected their view of us as “friends” as opposed to be “adult activity leaders”.  They were all really receptive to everything we gave to them, and often engaged us in conversation.  Occasionally their enthusiasm for conversation and socializing translated to additional time spent getting them refocused on the activity at hand; while it could have have quickly turned into rapport-shattering “hey, I’m the teacher, listen to me!” moments, the supervisor had a very strong framework of expectations in place that we readily called on.

As for the actual activities… it was a really hot day and we forgot to mention water bottles!  We had plenty of snacks for before and after the activities, but by the end of the day the students were all really thirsty!  To throw a wrench in things, the supervisor was not expecting a “field trip” to the park — fortunately, she was able to quickly throw together a permission form and because the students lived in the same complex as the care centre, they were able to quickly run home to get the form signed.  Manhunt drained the kids of their energy, but it was generally well-received; a few of the students tired quickly, but my colleague and I transitioned before the novelty of the activity wore off.  Camouflage initially started rather successfully — the child who was first to hide was so successful in choosing his hiding spot that our supervisor was worried he may have strayed out of bounds!  That was one issue that we had not considered in planning… fortunately, the hiding student was well aware of the boundaries my colleague and I defined — he simply found a really good hiding place!  None of us expected him to be lying in the grass, in plain sight, with only a small gathering of branches covering his body!  My supervisor decided to observe the “hider” during the second run.  Our only female student was the first to find the hider the previous round, so she set out to hide… and was so successful that she eluded our our grasps for a good 5 minutes!  At the end of the day, every single student found success and walked away with something they were really proud of.  Success!

The second day was much more challenging — our group of students joined another out of school care group (which was also operated by the Neighbourhood House) for a day of fun in the gym.  We were informed of the challenges that this group would provide, but we never imagined how challenging it would actually be!  There were a few ELLs, with one student not having any knowledge of English at all.  There were quite a few younger students, which made implementing our activities much more difficult.  While our planned activities did not actually fall apart, it was rather difficult to bridge the gap between explaining the expectations and actually running the activity — the older students tried their best to facilitate, but the younger children just wanted to run around and play with their friends!  The good news, however, is that everybody enjoyed themselves at the end of the day, and we walked back to our centre triumphant and in high spirits, albeit slightly more tired than when we left!

The rest of the week consisted of field trips to Southlands Farms.  It was very interesting to see how three different groups of students responded to the programming in VERY different ways.  Thursday threw a wrench into things, since it started raining shortly after our arrival… the students were still very engaged (they actually got to see everything on the farm!) but their enthusiasm was dampened somewhat by the surprisingly wet weather.

While all of this was happening, my colleague and I somehow found time to finalize our initial submission of the “lesson plans” for the workshop project.  I’m very thankful for the chance to work together with him — we converted our different background knowledge, experience, and teaching styles into excellent learning opportunities.  What began as interesting ideas evolved into polished, targeted, and engaging workshops that naturally embedded engaging material into what we wanted them to walk away with.  Our vision of creating a naturally paced and enactive learning experience actually materialized!  We will be spending next week touching up our proposed workshop plans and making them more visually appealing… but the hard work is completed and out of the way!

All in all, the balance between “admin work” and “hands-on work” worked out beautifully.  Next week will be a little bit sad at the end — while it’s been fun, we will need to say our goodbyes to the Neighbourhood House.  To lesson the sting of departure, we will be helping out with the Volunteer Appreciation Day festivities.  It tickles my funnybone to think that volunteers will be facilitating the Volunteer Appreciation Day 🙂