Community Club!

Part of my role at Kaleidoscope after school programing is to teach a 'Free Choice' class.  This is a class at the very end of the day where the students choose between 3-4 options for the week.  Since we started programing in September, I've tried to run quite a variety of classes.  I've had some success with different arts and crafts.  The challenge is that the group of 10-15 students are K-8th grade, so it's really hard to find a craft everyone can do, and is still interesting for 45min.  I thought that board games could be fun... but somehow I ended up with a lot of students arguing, and had to get out the first aid when a little girl dropped a wooden game on her foot!  Yikes!  So as you can see, this was my roller-coaster part of the day...I never quite new how things would go. 

A few weeks ago, I worked with an extraordinary group of students.  They were many of the same students that I’ve worked with before, but when they signed up for Community Club, I saw a whole new side of them.  As we wrote our community club contract on Monday, they were bursting with great ideas on how to give back to Kaleidoscope.  They were eager to clean, organize, and even to write thank you cards to volunteers.  We all agreed that Monday through Thursday we’d work hard to improve Kaleidoscope, and if everyone did their best, on Friday there would be a party.  Each day these enthusiastic students worked hard at every task from sorting through markers and glue sticks, sharpening pencils, to cleaning the snack room.  They kept a positive attitude and great work ethic through the week.  For a celebration of their hard work, on Friday we baked cookies from scratch.  They took turns pouring in each ingredient, mixing it up, and putting the cookies on the pan.  Their faces lit up as they got to eat the fresh baked cookies that they each had put something into.  You could see how proud they were to have made a difference in their world at Kaleidoscope! 

This is what makes it all worthwhile, when you can see these students build their own self confidence while building a community that they're proud to be a part of! 

~Lindsay Perala-Dewey