Work at Skyline

Hey all, sorry for the slight delay- didn't quite have enough hours in the day yesterday to get all of the things that I wanted done, so the blog had to take one for the team. Still in on a Wednesday, though!

 

The view from the Break Room

So I promised that I would do a little bit of talking about my work at Skyline and how it's going. Right now I'm in between classes, and have been for a while as I tried to figure out a way to improve attendance. Through my insistence and length of service here at the Towers I have been allowed to have evening classes starting the week of the 15th of February. So I've been a busy little beaver, getting all of my class materials prepared, putting up posters and whatnot. I'm trying for shorter classes now, say 2 or 3 sessions each, in an effort to not make it such a huge commitment for my students, and I am advertising them well in advance of my actual dates. Some hope for my efforts is that whenever I hear adults talking about my posters they mention that the time is a good one, so here's hoping!

I had a bit of a snafu this past week in that I forgot that the day after Valentine's day is the 15th. I knew that the former was a day that we didn't have work, but for some reason my brain didn't get the message and drew up a load of posters all with the 15th as the starting date for my programs. Fortunately I managed to figure that basic bit of calendar reading today and got everything switched around, so I should be good to go.

The only problem that I have with work right now is that I need to have residents accomplish 10 "life goals" before my year is up. This would be ok if they had anything to do with my programming, but unfortunately for the most part they do not. Life goals include things like getting a job, getting a GED or becoming a community leader. None of my programming does any of these things (well, except for the GED, but that isn't going to happen this year I don't think), so I'm left scrambling to find something that does. I'm currently banking on academic achievement and getting into college to garner me at least 5 goals. We'll see where the other ones come from...

Still, I am enjoying my time here. I love my coworkers and have gotten to know them much better this second year. My kids are AWESOME and make me happy (well, at least when they aren't driving me up a wall). Just the other day I was handing out newsletters at the apartments and one of them belonged to several of my kids. They all screamed "MAX!" and offered to help me with my rounds and were all really excited to come to the computer lab again.

That made me smile nonstop for a good hour :)

Until next time...

"What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn't have done it"
- Mark Twain "A Humorist's Confession," The New York Times, 11/26/1905