First week in school

Another long week. I should stop being surprised that I don't have the energy to write a blog during the week.

It was our first week at Seabrook Middle School this week. On Monday we did our community launch and had an assembly to introduce ourselves to the students. They had standardized testing this week, so we're not actually starting in-class assistance until next week. After The Bell started on Tuesday, and we had a GREAT first week. We didn't have a lot of kids, but enrollment should go up in the next couple weeks. Tuesday we played lots of running around games, Wednesday we made name collages, and Thursday we went out and built nature/fairy houses in the woods. I've been working closely with a boy named Matt, who has some learning and developmental handicaps. He's such a great kid, and as far as he's concerned, if you're City Year, you can do no wrong. A couple of us have been doing lots of one-on-one work with him during homework time and during After the Bell; he's reason enough to go to work some days.

Yesterday we did physical service in Salem, NH for Comcast Cares day. My team and Dave's team were paired up there, and we painted this ENORMOUS playground structure. It was pretty disorganized, but it was definitely a transformational project. Pictures!
(The first one is the "before" shot)