My very own Red Jacket.
This is one of the most important things to remember to look for when working at City Year. It's so much harder to go through a week, let alone a day, of service without pinpointing and recording them. I've made myself get into the habit of using the whiteboard in my bedroom to record these small wins on a daily basis. It not only helps to motivate, but it helps to track the progress you are making.
For example, this past week I had several small wins with my students:
-AC admitted to me that our 4th teacher, Ms. Bean, "wasn't so bad" and is "actually kinda funny". Considering how resistant my class was to her teaching style in November, this is HUGE.
-DH, who knows himself very well and knows he has some difficulty controlling his temper, for once did not fight the teacher when she called him out and asked him to move his seat to the front of the room. Sure, he had a nasty scowl on his face the whole time, but he didn't answer her back, he didn't escalate the situation, and for that, I am extremely proud.
-The 3 boys on my math focus list get extremely competitive with one another, which makes my job a lot easier. If I can make multiplication drills into a competition, they literally want to do nothing else than see how much faster they can do multiplication tables than the other two. AND one boy went up 20 whole points on his Winter MAP test, and is now only 2 points away from being Proficient (for middle schoolers, going up even 1 point is huge; so this is astronomically awesome).
-For all of Wednesday, AW sat and focused and completed ALL of her math classwork (correctly, no less), even while chaos ensued with her classmates around her.
-My 3 girls on my literacy focus list all improved their fluency scores, and I made them some bomb-ass trackers for them to see their improvement.
-This last win has nothing to do with students, but I made myself and my team a comprehensive after-school resource binder, with spaces for session plans, unit skeletons, and other worksheets, student contact info, and other awesome things.
That's been my week in a nutshell. Other than the fact that I was 90 minutes late for work on Thursday, but it's fine. It happens.
Now, off to Whole Foods to food stamp me some lunch, and then off to my favorite Alterra coffee shop in Milwaukee to work on some logistical stuff for Black History Night and my Senior Corps application. WOOHOO!
Stay awesome.
