Pi in the Sky

I have been trying to stick to the positive aspects of my experience here in St. Lucia, but sometimes everyone has a few days when things just don't go as planned.

I mentioned recently that this past week I would have meetings with the parents and secondary school students to get the afterschool program at the Infant School going. No one showed up to the parents' meeting, and only teachers from the Infant School came to the would-be training session on Wednesday. I had sent home letters with some Grade 2 students to inform their parents of the meeting, or to call me to schedule another time to meet if they couldn't make it. No one called.* I had asked the counselors at two secondary schools in town to find some interested students and have them show up at the infant school for a training workshop, but no luck there either.

*I can't say that nothing was my fault, since I realized later this week that I had put the wrong phone number on the letters, so perhaps parents had been trying to call me to no avail.

I didn't let the no-shows get off so easily. On Wednesday I sent the same Grade 2 students home with consent forms and another, shorter, letter, in hopes that their parents might fill out the forms and let their children attend the program. I'm requiring parents to donate either time, food, or materials to the program so that we don't have to charge for enrollment, so I need to make sure the parents get my real number so I can build a schedule.

I also had an encouraging and useful conversation with some teachers who want to help with the program. Their advice included advertising refreshments at meetings, calling parents directly, recruiting new Infant School students to participate, and holding the training workshops at the secondary schools.

Throughout the week, though it was disappointing, I was surprised that I didn't get stressed out or depressed about everything. Right now all I'm going to do is see if anyone comes to the program on Monday. I think I'll take advantage of the parent-teacher conference day the Wednesday before Spring Break, since most of the Grade 2 kids are in the same class, and meet with the parents briefly while they're waiting to meet with the teacher, to see if anyone else wants to participate.