Oh, Cookie! by esti- on Flickr

When I do something badly, I get upset.

When people around me make decisions I disagree with that impact me, I get upset.

When I set a goal and then am moved in a different direction, I get upset.

Someone asked me why I let these things upset me.

The answer is change.  Because when I’m upset, I think harder, faster, and more creatively to make the situation change.  When I’m upset is when I say, “That’s it, I’m not letting [mistake] happen again and here’s how,” or “I know [answer] is the right answer and I just have to make sure I’m heard,” or “Ok, [goal] just got harder but so help me I’ll get there anyway.”

Because if I don’t get a little pissed off sometimes, a one-time goof becomes a habit, what was once a mishap becomes normal, and the standards bar slides down unchecked.

A life of anger is not the answer, but neither is one of complacency.

Well, I didn’t fill my office with balloons, but I did snag the last 20 minutes of each level of class to write happy things.

In My Craft or Sullen Art by chrisjohnbeckett on Flickr

I wrote a note to each teacher explaining the assignment and my motivation for it, and I included suggestions on how to explain it to their level of student. I asked them to introduce the activity to their class… and then have everyone get up and walk over to the big classroom to do the actual writing.

We had some music in the background and students sat at random tables. They wrote on colorful slips of paper about what makes them smile, what they’re proud of, etc. When they finished a piece, they brought it to the front and taped it onto a poster.  They were encouraged to do multiple pieces, and the teachers enjoyed participating too.

At the end we had a colorful patchwork of student (and teacher) writing at all levels. More importantly, everyone left with a huge smile on their face.  Success!

Epilogue: One of the librarians offered to run it through their giant laminator for us, and our now very shiny poster is on display between our classrooms and the circulation desk.  I’ve seen students and general library patrons reading it, and several students who were absent on writing poster day have come to me hoping they’ll be around for the next one and suggesting future writing prompts.  I’m very pleased and plan to do this again soon!

As the coordinator of an all-volunteer teaching staff, a large and fantastic part of my job is volunteer support.   I don’t know how I ended up with such great people, and I hope they stay forever.  I write this in hopes that more volunteers will contribute the way mine do.

I’d like to put it out there for whomever is listening that the most effective volunteers are not the ones who arrive with their own agenda.

Super Boy by Łéł†Āķ Mă3ý on Flickr

Super-effective volunteers have their eyes and ears open to the needs of the organization. When something comes up and they have the ability to help with it, they speak up and dive in.

And you know, any help is help. Coming in and telling me exactly what you’d like to do is something, and I’m as grateful as I should be and I try hard to work with you.

But take a step back and think how amazing it is when a program realizes it needs something, asks for someone to do it… and then someone does it.

And now think about how well a volunteer gets to know the organization by helping where it’s needed.  Think what a great position this puts the volunteer in to make suggestions, push for change, and bring a relevant and mutually beneficial to-do list to the table.

Are you that kind of volunteer?

I kicked off my first round of teacher observations ever this week with just one, and it seriously blew me away.

Grammar Class by durian on Flickr

I hadn’t done it before for multiple reasons, many of which now sound like excuses. To be fair, I found it genuinely difficult to make the major time investment required based only on the promise of future, possibly intangible returns. There are a good many concrete, measurable, predictable things I need to accomplish at the learning center, and the amorphous notion that I “should” conduct teacher observations just couldn’t compete.

What finally made it happen? My volunteers asked to be observed.

Well, ok, it’s not just that I’m a pushover. I’ve gotten better and better at my job, and more importantly, I’ve gotten better at receiving help. I managed to free up some time I used to spend on the day-to-day admin grunt work so I can now do non-survival things like laminate our previously pathetic classroom signs, clear junk out of our office, and observe my teachers.

The volunteer I watched this week is quite new to teaching.  He used to assistant teach with an experienced teacher; this evening was his first solo class.  It was a resounding success. Watching the learning happen, seeing how his preparation was paying off, and taking note of his natural talent for leading a classroom was simply a joy. I jotted specific notes for him throughout, and it was fun to give him the feedback and debrief. We discussed his challenge for next week: at least 20 minutes of small group work for the students. He seems really excited about it, and I am too!

I really didn’t know what to expect when I walked into his classroom.  What I found there was a beautiful success filled with potential for even more.  Being right there to watch and encourage it was just fantastic.

Observations are officially my favorite.

Paperwork by luxomedia on Flickr

I’m happy to say that I had a chance to read through the feedback from last week’s Volunteer Training party, and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. The evaluation was very open-ended, and I was pleased to receive specific comments and suggestions.

There was general approval of the presence of food, and universal enthusiasm for meeting each other. Many commented that they gained new activity ideas, and several mentioned “inspiration.” I was a little surprised by that last one – I wasn’t focused on it at all. Woo positive by-products!

The highest and most convenient praise was the near-unanimous request for more trainings, perhaps quarterly, like the one we just did! In other words, I don’t have to ask yet more of my volunteers by implementing quarterly trainings; I get to deliver something there’s a demand for.

The Pizza Guy by keltickelton on Flickr

There was some constructive criticism as well, asking for more depth and suggesting starting out with more general questions such as “What’s working?” and leading into more specific ones during the level-discussions. Well-taken. They’ll definitely be present in next quarter’s (requested and delivered!) training.

Relatividad de la distancia by Victor_nuno on Flickr

Today was one of those rare days when I was able to not only handle a situation well that would have knocked me flat 8 months ago, but I also realized it.

What was this situation?  Registering six new students and realizing 60 seconds after Advanced class started that I was the only one there to teach it.

It could’ve been easy – we’re watching The Wizard of Oz.  Perfect!  Pop in a movie and focus on the new students finishing their intake exams.  Nope, because the laptop is dead and the library computers refuse to play DVDs.  So I gave some quick instructions to the new students, rescheduled one of them, had one of them test in the Advanced room so I could keep an eye on him, and then taught a pretty successful, high-energy class with zero preparation.

During the class, I realized that this would have been completely overwhelming to me in September, and still a huge challenge in December.  This evening I was definitely kept on my toes, but it was well within what I could handle.  Being able to do it felt good, and noticing that I wouldn’t have been able to do it when I first started felt better.

Kyllian gaat tekenen by inferis on Flickr

This evening I set up an information table in the front of the library to advertise my free classes for adults that take place in the back.  My goal was to increase our presence in the library and to see if people who were in the library at around class time wanted to be students or volunteer teachers.

People were milling about near me or walking by.  Nobody came up to talk to me for a while.   Then a boy walked by and looked at the giveaway pencils I had out.  He touched one but started to walk away.  So I asked him if he wanted one.  This led to a simple conversation, after which he walked away with a big smile and a sharp new pencil.  About 15 seconds later, a man who had been sitting nearby pretending to ignore me came up to ask about classes.  And a small line formed while he and I were talking.

Smiling and having shiny materials did not cause potential students to line up to talk with me.  Seeing me be nice to that boy is what started it.

My conclusion: people want to work with people who treat people like people.

Hello! I’m back!

I was thrilled this evening when one of my teachers asked me for advice because I was actually able to give her some!

She had two points of frustration, one being that side-conversations would break out at the far end of the table from her, the other being one particularly overly-participatory student.

And Renner came through for us.

I suggested changing the seating arrangement now that the class has about a dozen people in it, moving it from a long banquet-style table to more of a square so that everyone was closer together.

To address the combination of the extremely talkative student and several shy students, I suggested “Spend-a-Penny” to help equalize things. She really liked the idea, and is thinking about starting with four tokens and seeing how that goes.

I’m very excited that some of the ideas I had felt would be relevant have turned out to be so.

I have to say, I think today’s presentation went well.  I didn’t see anyone fall asleep even in the dim lighting, I got a few questions at the end, a couple offers for help, and people laughed.

"Important Statistic"

I’m particularly proud of one of my images, a graph.  It was my one and only statistic.  I didn’t mention it yesterday because I wasn’t positive it would go over well.  My audience was appreciative, for which I was grateful.  Yay.  (Also, in case you were wondering, it is a real graph of the first 8 numbers in the Fibonacci sequence.)

The Jeopardy! rip-off game was really fun too.  It always surprises me how much fun that game can be.  We decided to have the teams wave a scarf in the air to buzz in with answers, and it actually worked really well.   Notable team names were “Bad Reflexes” and “The Table.”  The most popular category was “Two Truths and a Lie: Staff Edition,” in which teams had to pick the one lie out of three statements about me and my officemate.  The ESL and GED categories were fine too though.

Based on comments I got after the presentation, my chosen strategy of using pictures, a conversational approach, and an interactive (and not too difficult) quiz game was well-received.  I seem to have hit upon a lot of information that people were actually interested in by using this model.  I also had a “wish list” slide to talk about our big dreams, and a couple of coworkers came up to me to say we should schedule a time to talk about how their programs could fulfill some of my site’s wishes.  Sweet!

So I guess I’d call it a success.  Now for a nap.

I have to say, being productive was extraordinarily difficult today.  It was just kind of an “off” day.

It was sort of disappointing.  Last week I was on and outrageously happy and nothing could stop me.  Today… I guess I felt like everything was stopping me.  A couple of emails I just didn’t know how to respond to felt like a huge derailment.  I also had a borderline bizarre phone conversation with someone who didn’t want to register his wife for our classes but did want to tell me all about his own parochial education and the Franciscan nuns who administered it.  And then a library patron decided it might be cute, welcome, or in some way complimentary to hit on me while I was walking by.  Not exactly exchanges that helped me get back on my A-game.

The day was still a success in the end.  My students were served, my teachers were supported, and my other projects were addressed.

The only reason anything got done today was because I’d made a plan and a rough schedule last week when I was feeling like a superstar.  Today I just blindly, doggedly followed it as best I could.  And it was all ok.

May I always remember to use my “on” days in part to prepare for the “off” days.