Day N Nite

Just like the great rhymes of Kid Cudi, 'it's Day N Nite (womp womp)' the emotions of working at an Oregon school in a rural town, are like day and night, and they change frequently too. Let me set the scene for you... so I'm sitting in the 5th grade hallway at my school, standing by a table with a bunch of sign up sheets, some water and a calendar and I'm prowling on parents. Today is parent teacher conferences at my school and there are no kids (for the most part). Just us "adults" as I like to call them.

I've realized that to get any programs going here or to have them work well, I can't do it alone and I need some help. The teachers work so hard and help out as much as it is, they don't need me bugging them anymore than I already do. So I decided what better way to find volunteers than at conferences? I can reel parents in like it's my job (which technically it is right now). However, when you like like a kid, wear a purple tie-dye t-shirt your dad bought you, yoga pants and are trying to get rural kids doing yoga and tae kwon do, people look at you funny. Good thing I'm not wearing my star of david, then they'd really steer clear of me.

So like I was saying, I'm here, telling people my ideas to get these kids active and having fun. I'm offering classes on Fridays like yoga, tae kwon do, rock climbing, biking etc. (because our kids don't have school on Friday), we doing "Walking Wednesdays" where the kids, teachers and I meet downtown and walk up "high school hill" to practice active and healthy modes of transportation, I'm teaching bike safety and taking kids on bike rides and I need parents to help me chaperone. AND we're trying to start a school garden and I'm just trying to gather support and see what the parents think. Some parents are ALL over this stuff, think it's great, they're really supportive and are willing to help out too. (Some of these parents, about 5 of them are the same ones who volunteer for everything and are just as burnt out as the teachers are.) So that's great.

Insert extremely, negative, close minded people and there's my other half of the parent population. WHOA crazy mom who went let her kid do yoga because it's stupid. Do you even know what it is? Probably not. Now I realize, I'm new, I'm coming into this community and a lot of these people don't know me, don't know what Americorps is and are skeptical. That's fine, I get that. But if I'm taking my time to meet you, explain to you what I'm doing, please don't be rude and please don't come up with a lame, negative excuse comment after every sentence I speak. If you don't want to sign up or allow your children to have some extra fun, fine, but please just walk away and don't expel your negative tude on me. Ick.

So there are people like that, who get me down sometimes. And then I remember, there are a lot of parents here, who are supportive, who are into trying new things. Then I think again, all the kids, that's what I'm doing this for. I can't let negative Nancy's get me down, when all those kids out there are dying to learn about new stuff all the time. So even though parents are like day and night here, I know those little kid brains are growing by the minute so I'm gonna throw some knowledge out there and get them thinking critically about their surroundings. And try to drop some positive attitude their way, in case they're not getting one all the time.

P.S. Another highlight, I've been teaching bike safety (solo) for the 7th and 8th graders for a few weeks now and as a culmination we wanted to take the 8th graders on a bike trip. Despite a tough time scheduling, an initial lack of signed permission slips and plenty of pessimism from some others involved, we pulled it off! We had 32 kids out of about 50 in the 8th grade, join myself, my friend Shannon and Tammy (a B.A. parent volunteer) on a 15 mile bike ride to a local park! It was a great day, some sun, no rain and no broken bikes or kids! Woot woot!

I'm working on getting pictures going....

Love Molly