My First Visit

Let me start off by saying that I am horrible with directions, so naturally my morning started off bad. I made it to the school around 9:25 (mind you, I was supposed to meet the adviser at 9:30am). Once I got to the school I realized we were right next door to a hospital, parking was an absolute mess. I ended up parking a block away from the school and had to literally run to try and make it on time. When I got to the school, I had no idea how to get in! Every door I approached had a sign that stated "This door is locked, visitors must enter through the main entrance and obtain a visitors pass" but it didn't tell me which direction the main door was! I circled almost the whole entire school before I happened to find the main entrance, and once I entered I realized that I was the last student there, all the other students/volunteers were already signed in and waiting for our adviser to show up. Luckily, they were nice enough to point me in the right direction and I got situated pretty fast.
When our adviser picked us up, she brought us to the location where we should meet every morning. There, she gave us a brief introduction of herself and soon launched into the details of our purpose there. She walked us through out paperwork, told us we would be working individually with a group of 2-3 children, showed us the activities that we would be doing with our kids, and gave us some helpful tips. What I liked about my school was the fact that we got a sheet of "feathers", our adviser quickly explained the significance of the feathers (they are sort of like money). When a student is doing exceptionally well they are given a feather, but they aren't just handed out, students must earn them. At the end of every week, the school sets up a sort of store, where students use the feathers to purchase items they want. I haven't seen the store but I assume that it consists of things such as pencils, pens, candy, and little toys, my school had a store like this also, and I remember looking forward to every Friday to see what I could get next.
Anyway, after we went through the logistics of our purpose there, and the goals that the program has for the us and the students, our adviser took us on a tour of the school. The school was fairly small, and she told us that it was a circle. There was a bathroom set up one for boys and girls, but I found it peculiar that the sink was placed outside. It was one of those hideous foot operated sinks, the circle ones that only turned on when you pushed your foot down on the petal, eww. Anyways, everytime we passed by, sure enough there were a few boys and girls that shyly waved to us.
She took us to three different classroom, I think it was grades K and 1. The first classroom was the classroom that I would be working in, when we entered the kids were having storytime. All of them were sitting on a rug while the teacher was reading a book. The kids were excited when we got in, most of them saying "Hi!" and standing up, the teacher had to put her foot down and told the children to behave.
The second classroom we went to the children were having playtime and snacktime. When I first got into the classroom, a girl ran up to me and gave me a hug! She didn' t bother to say hi or introduce herself, but she gave me a hug then moved onto the next person. She gave almost everyone a hug but stopped at the only boy in our group. I assume that the girl thought the boy had cooties, because she looked at him for a split second then ran off to play with the computers. She was so cute! There was a case of fruitcups sitting on a table, the students ran up and helped themselves, from what I could see it consisted of slices of pineapple and apple. The kids were located at different part of the classroom, some were playing on the rug with blocks and some were playing on the computer. We were introduced to a "small girl with a big mouth" as they said, she was tiny but had loads of energy, they often placed her on the computer when they wanted her to "be quiet."
The third and final classroom we visited was pretty much the same as the first two classrooms. The students were sitting at their desks working on a particular lesson that I can't really remember. But they were polite, and surprisingly quiet.
After our quick tour we headed back to our "meeting place" where she informed us that next week was winter break so we did not need to meet that Tuesday. She then signed our papers and walked us out. Before leaving, I had to stop by the office to log out, and record how much time I spent at the school that day.
I'd have to say that I had a pretty successful first meeting, even though I didn't get a chance to work with any of the students, I'm sure that when I do get the chance I'll have even more fun. I enjoyed seeing the classroom and the different children, I loved how they were all so friendly and welcoming. I feel that I'm going to have a great time each and every time I visit.