Success!

Monday the afterschool program went a little more smoothly, largely thanks to the help of Ms. Elsa, one of the teachers there. We got some homework done, and since I explained how they should behave upstairs, the kids weren't crazygonuts all afternoon.

But Wednesday was even better. After my meeting Monday morning at Campus A (it's where the first two forms [equivalent of grades 7-8] of VF Comprehensive Secondary School take place, in VF Town), two girls showed up on Wednesday. My Grade 2s didn't have homework, so we read together for an hour, and I went home feeling totally content--rather than tired and with a sore throat like many days at VF Infant School.

Next Monday will be the last day for the term, but next Wednesday I'll meet with the parents of children in the program to sign them up to volunteer time and donate food for the program, and to let their other Infant School kids in. Awesome.

In my role as a PCV, I am "working" 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I knew that already. What I didn't expect was that I would get so much experience in occupational roles I didn't imagine before. In the 6 full months since swearing in, I have gained some of the basic skills for substitute teacher, special needs educator, nonprofit developer, school secretary, and most recently public advocate.

Wednesday while watching my afterschool kids outside I met a young woman who looks somewhere around my age. Her daughter is a Pre-K girl at the Infant School, so she's in the phonics lessons I teach. This girl is pretty bright, though, and at the top of the Pre-K class. She doesn't seem to need to be in this class, all but for the fact that she's very quiet. I suspect that at the beginning of the year she was put into the class rather than regular Kindergarten because she was shy and overly cautious of the adult administering the diagnostic. She and her mother live in Belle Vue (a $2.75 bus ride into VF Town each way for adults, which the mother makes as many as four times a day, five days a week, to take her daughter to school), and earlier this term the mother tried transferring her to BVCS (where I work on Fridays) without success. All the relevant administrators except for the BVCS principal (whom I love working with, by the way) approved the transfer. The reason: BVCS doesn't have a Pre-K program. I said I'd talk with the principal.

Today I showed the principal the results from the test (a "game," I told the children) I gave my phonics groups on Wednesday, illustrating that this girl is farther ahead in phonics than her classmates. Perhaps, I suggested, she might take some tests from BVCS to see whether she would be able to jump into a Kindergarten class at a different school after having been taught mainly preparatory content in Pre-K. I know it's a long shot, and I told that to both the principal and the K teacher at BVCS. They also seemed skeptical, but guess what--they agreed at least to let me give her some tests.

I'll start seeing on Monday whether this will be a sucess or just a learning experience.