Creating Home - Hanukkah and overcrowding
Dec. 4th, 2011 02:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingToday was the first day I taught RE since, I think, early October. The Creating Home class has five teachers in a scheduled rotation, and there are occasional off weeks when the kids are all in another part of the building doing a multi-class "children's chapel" thing, which means I feel I have hardly done anything this year.
That may soon change, though.
You see, my class this year is a combined K-2 group, because the kindergarteners were bright enough it would be awkward to combine them with the Pre-K class, the 3rd and 4th grade are, I think, already in a combined class of their own, and while there are more than enough 1st graders to make a single-grade class, the same cannot be said of either kindergarten or 2nd grade, and anyway, we don't have adults signed up to teach such hypothetical classes.
This problem was disguised for a while, because the 1st graders spent the autumn shunted off to the OWL program -- which at their age is basically two months of "where do babies come from?" rather than the actual sex-ed they'll get when they're in junior high -- and while kindergarten and 2nd grade is an odd combo that wouldn't work long-term, it at least made for manageable class sizes. But OWL is now finished and the 1st graders are back.
So Molly and I were trying to deal with 17 kids this morning. 17 very wiggly kids, and a lesson we had to rush through in order to get them to children's choir rehearsal at 11:30am, and potato latkes we had to serve because today we learned about Hanukkah. (Hurrah for the grand old UU tradition of teaching everybody else's holidays, since we have none of our own! Well, we have Water Communion and Flower Communion, but those are more church services and less actual holidays. Give it a couple generations, though, and that may change. *is hopeful*)
I had to beg for more plates and cups from the kitchen, because they'd only given us about nine of each. We also only barely had enough latkes -- every kid got one, no seconds allowed, which left us with only two extras that Molly and I gratefully scarfed down while trying to keep an eye on the three dreidle games we'd set up, because there is no way to get 17 kids into a single game.
We are going to meet with the DRE next Sunday before class to discuss ways to cope with this. Probably we'll end up having three teachers in the room every week, with one person assigned to nothing but crowd control. We may also have to move into a larger room.
We shall see what happens.
(I came straight home after that and took a nap. With a bit of luck, I will manage not to fall asleep at work tonight. *crosses fingers*)
That may soon change, though.
You see, my class this year is a combined K-2 group, because the kindergarteners were bright enough it would be awkward to combine them with the Pre-K class, the 3rd and 4th grade are, I think, already in a combined class of their own, and while there are more than enough 1st graders to make a single-grade class, the same cannot be said of either kindergarten or 2nd grade, and anyway, we don't have adults signed up to teach such hypothetical classes.
This problem was disguised for a while, because the 1st graders spent the autumn shunted off to the OWL program -- which at their age is basically two months of "where do babies come from?" rather than the actual sex-ed they'll get when they're in junior high -- and while kindergarten and 2nd grade is an odd combo that wouldn't work long-term, it at least made for manageable class sizes. But OWL is now finished and the 1st graders are back.
So Molly and I were trying to deal with 17 kids this morning. 17 very wiggly kids, and a lesson we had to rush through in order to get them to children's choir rehearsal at 11:30am, and potato latkes we had to serve because today we learned about Hanukkah. (Hurrah for the grand old UU tradition of teaching everybody else's holidays, since we have none of our own! Well, we have Water Communion and Flower Communion, but those are more church services and less actual holidays. Give it a couple generations, though, and that may change. *is hopeful*)
I had to beg for more plates and cups from the kitchen, because they'd only given us about nine of each. We also only barely had enough latkes -- every kid got one, no seconds allowed, which left us with only two extras that Molly and I gratefully scarfed down while trying to keep an eye on the three dreidle games we'd set up, because there is no way to get 17 kids into a single game.
We are going to meet with the DRE next Sunday before class to discuss ways to cope with this. Probably we'll end up having three teachers in the room every week, with one person assigned to nothing but crowd control. We may also have to move into a larger room.
We shall see what happens.
(I came straight home after that and took a nap. With a bit of luck, I will manage not to fall asleep at work tonight. *crosses fingers*)
