I always intend to post during the week but always wind up on Sunday night having not posted at all.

Monday was MLK day. It was so icy and awful that morning--we were supposed to have about 400 people in attendance, and we wound up with just over a hundred. Considering the horrible weather, it was still a pretty decent turnout. We still got a lot of great people to show up--the mayor of Portsmouth was there, as were both of the women who were scheduled to speak, and the Leftist marching band played! Apparently we were on the evening news as well. The community art project went really well too. Lots of kids showed up to paint, the City Year staff and corps participated, and lots of other community members too. We wound up having extra canvases and sent some home with a couple local teachers to work on the project with their students. I'm going to take the canvases that are left to after school next week when we combine our program in Seabrook with the Hampton after school program.

Tuesday we were on a two hour delay because the roads were still really icy and gross. We wound up doing a debrief of the day and then unloading the vans and stuff. Our site has a pallet of goldfish crackers courtesy of Pepperidge Farms, and we wound up building a giant fort out of them in the GT and then loaded them all in the back of a 15 passenger van to take them to our offsite storage space. Once we got to the storage space and its super icy parking lot, I climbed in the back of the van and spent a good 15 minutes throwing huge boxes of goldfish crackers at Sara while she serenaded me and danced to silly songs on the radio. Yes, this is actually part of my job. Will and I had a good meeting with our DI team to work on the team challenge--it was the first time that we'd actually started serious work on the challenge.

Wednesday was a rough day. I made it clear to my team on Tuesday that I was leaving the Timberland parking lot at 7:35, because Stephen and I were chaperoning the band field trip, and I didn't want City Year to be the reason that my kids were late for the trip. I knew that two teammates would be out, and Sara is in the office on Wednesdays, but I still was expecting a team of five for the day. In the morning, two of my teammates called to tell me they wouldn't be in, and then the other two called to tell me they'd be late. 7:30 comes and goes, I circled with the Hampton team because I didn't have a team of my own. 7:35, 7:40. Nothing. If I had stuck to my word, I would have been the only member of my team to show up to school. But I waited for my other two teammates. Stephen and I went on the field trip, which left Matt as the only member of the team to provide in-class support on Wednesday. The field trip was AMAZING. The kids were on their best behavior and had a blast. They got to play their music for the UNH music students, had sectionals with music students, and listened to the UNH wind symphony. We went on a campus tour (even though it was one of the coldest days I've ever experienced in my life) and had lunch in the food court. We got back to school and realized there was NO plan for after school. Luckily I have an amazingly creative team leader, and Sara came and saved our asses. She basically ran our whole after school program because we wouldn't have known what to do... At the very end of the day I wound up having this really intense conversation with one of the after school kids. It was one of the kids that I barely even knew before that day, but I guess it was good that she felt like she could open up to me. It was really awful, but everything wound up being ok in the end.

Thursday I spent the day doing MLK workshops with my seventh graders. Instead of their normal social studies class, Matt and I faciliated a workshop about seeing the world from another perspective. The workshops went pretty well overall. The kids seemed mostly engaged (which is about all you can ask for). One of the teachers aides that has been notoriously critical of City Year and had particularly hard on me in class told me that we did a really great job. Will and I had a great day of DI and played improv games with our girls for almost 2 hours. They had a blast (and so did we!). We had a really intense team meeting after the programming, but it needed to happen. I ended an already long day by going to the band and chorus concert with Sara. It was especially amazing because the chorus sang Christmas songs... in January. Oh, Seabrook.

Friday was not terribly notable. Office work blah blah blah. Seabrook team lived up to our reputation and made ridiculous posters while we were supposed to be doing something mildly serious. Finally got to have a relaxing weekend of doing nothing. And suddenly its Sunday night and almost time for bed....