November 2007 Archives

This week I finally was able to go to PLUS Time. While I was there I observed Anna (one of the student teachers) as she prepared for the kids to come. What most people do not know is that there is a lot of work that needs to be done before the kids come. I also got to see how the volunteers and teachers interacted with the children as they came.

This week I also got 12 different forms and sheets from PLUS Time staff. These sheets are different things that they use quite regularly.

I had a very slow week for my honors project, because I was still very ill. On Tuesday I finally went to the doctor and found out that I had not only bronchitis but most likely also strep. So I decided that I should be on medicine a couple days before I spent a lot of time with the kids. Not that I am starting to feel better, my project should start to take off.

This week I have only worked on Chapter 1 and talked to some of the leaders about getting paperwork from the start of PLUS Time. I was planning on going to PLUS Time and doing a lot of observations, but I came down with a pretty nasty bug already Sunday night. It hit me the hardest on Tuesday, and so I spent most of the week in bed or on a couch. I did really poorly on the project this week, but I learned that sometimes you need to take care of yourself before you reach further into homework. The more I tried to push myself the worse I felt, so I finally gave in and spend most my time in bed. Also, its not far to the kids to have me bring my sickness to them, when they may have a harder time fighting it then I do.

Not much was done this week, but I have started to research different after school programs, and books written on after school programs. This week I hope to actually start getting papers and instructions to put the book together.

I learned that this project is not only going to challenge my witting and creativity skills, but also my organization and commitment skills. I will have to work on this even when there is no real motivator. I also discovered that I will be working on the project a great deal over winter break so that I have more time to commit to the project.