Mentoring Field Trip

Last week the mentor program took the kids and their mentors to BYU. The whole purpose of the trip was to inspire the kids to begin thinking about their futures -- whether they would like to go to college, join the military, or turn gay. (JUST KIDDING! I'll explain in a second.)

Anyway, we started the whole day at the Hinckley Center, which was really awesome because even though I was on campus when they dedicated the building, I had never actually been inside. (Side note: I got AWESOME parking for this whole thing. Best parking I've ever gotten on campus. Period.)

I walked in and couldn't spot my little mentee and they started 10 minutes early, the punks. The BYU representative was an older man, he said he was 70 or something, and so right away I was bored. I don't know how the kids endured it. I did try to watch the whole thing the way I thought I would if I had been their ages (anywhere from 3rd to 9th grade, I believe).

Riley Nelson was the next speaker. The old guy really built him up as being the most popular athlete on campus and all this jazz. And Riley spoke about adversity and putting the work into making your dreams come true. He had a few good quotes that I would've written down if I had come prepared. After what seemed like a long time, he opened up the time for questions. Little kids ask dumb questions. And they ask the same dumb questions that have been answered 3x already. But that's fine. Riley handled it really well. He then let the kids line up and he signed autographs and shook everyone's hand. My mentee waited until they were clearing the room and going on to the next thing before he had the guts to ask Riley a question, and then he asked something that had already been asked.

Sigh.

But we did get some good pictures. (I don't know the rule about posting children's pictures online without parental consent, so... I'm not going to post anything questionable.)

We moved outside where the BYU ROTC 5-man drill team did a little presentation. It was cool, and it turns out that BYU won first place at their competition this year. They usually do really well, too, and that's against all the military schools, like West Point. The boys especially loved handling the sword and the 12-lb. guns they toss and twirl about.

After the presentation, we went back into the room so the ROTC guys could talk about being in the ROTC and what their goals and ambitions are. Ramon told me that he wanted to join the air force and was quite taken with the guys. He was also starving, and couldn't wait until lunch.

We played tag walking to the Canon Center and were the first people in. They opened up the whole place to us, and we got to go and pig out. I had a salad. Ramon had everything that could fit on his plate. He also made sure that he kept an eye out for the ROTC guys, because he was determined to sit with them; he did find a spot, but that left me without a lunch buddy. If only I had had my Kindle or my book! I would have sat and read, happily, but without reading material, I didn't want to look like a loser, so I decided to sit at another table with a lone ROTC guy, and then we were joined by some other kid that I chatted with all through lunch. It was very extroverted of me: very out of character.

After lunch, we headed over to the Planetarium. I was excited about this, but it turns out that they forgot about us, and we spent a lot of time playing with everything they have out at the science building. Which was fine. When we finally got up to the Planetarium, I realized that we were in for a long afternoon. The lady next to me couldn't stay awake and was snoring quite loudly; on the other side, I had Ramon begging me to go to the bathroom. (Again. He had literally just gone before we walked in the room.) The lady showed us a movie and it was terribly boring and even though I had been most excited about going to the Planetarium, it became drudgery and I hated it. Ramon got mad at me because I wouldn't let him go to the bathroom. He said, "Fine. I'm not talking to you. And I'll just hold it!" And I said to myself, Great! You shouldn't be talking anyway and holding it is exactly what I want you to do!


After the Planetarium, though, I let Ramon go to the bathroom. The guy in charge told me that they were headed to the RB, so Ramon and I walked ahead of everyone because I knew where we were going. After going down the RB stairs, and then climbing them again because Ramon took off, and then going back down and up one more time, I began to wonder where everyone was. We did finally find them in one of the dance hall areas where the Young Ambassadors practice.

Now, the Young Ambassadors is a cool group. I know people who were in it. They get to travel all over the world doing performances and singing and dancing and all kinds of musical-ly things. I'm just not completely convinced that they let straight men perform. I think that the guys in the band part aren't gay. But the singers/dancers... I just don't know. Ramon hated everything about this portion of the day. He was tired, cranky, and ready to go home. AND he didn't want to dance in front of everyone. He did a few of the stretches, and that was it. He refused to participate in learning the dance they taught and he refused to go and sit where they were mingling with the kids. I couldn't get him to do anything, and honestly, I was having my own issues and couldn't participate. So we sat on the window ledge looking like complete boobs. If I had known anything about Young Ambassadors when I was in school, and if I had a teaspoon of talent, I would have tried to join up. They have such awesome opportunities! In fact, they had just gotten back from Cuba! (I didn't know Americans could travel to Cuba? Haha...)

By the time I got Ramon on the bus, I was tired and exhausted and extra crampy. How do teachers take whole classes on field trips? One 9-year old was enough to drive me batty.

Over all, I think the kids enjoyed the day; though, I found it to be really boring. I hope Ramon does join the Air Force though, or decides to do something really respectable and worthwhile with his life. Although, I wouldn't be surprised if he forgot all his ambitions to join the Air Force before I see him again this week.

Mentoring

I haven't mentioned much about the fact that I mentor a third grade student for about an hour, once a week. He's a funny kid that requires a lot of patience. When they first assigned me to him, they mentioned the fact that he had gotten in trouble for shoplifting, that he was sneaky but cute. His teacher made a comment that he was having a hard time following directions the first time they are given.

We started out the year by playing Connect 4, and I quickly got bored so I brought in a Scrabble card game and Mancala; we tried out a few different crafty things like working with clay and painting tote bags. He took to wanting to play hide-n-seek in the classroom where we play. There's not a lot of places to hide in a classroom, even if some of the cupboards are empty; and, he's not exactly quiet. I found him easy enough.

I don't know that I'm making much of a difference with him, but he seems to enjoy the hour that we spend together -- even if it is more because he gets out of class than it is anything else.

I haven't figured out a way to make his listening skills better. When I try to talk to him about it, he says, "I'm so good at listening to my teacher, she doesn't even have to ask!" He doesn't like to appear weak or ignorant. For instance, when I brought in Mancala, I was intending to teach him how to play as a way to hone his taking direction skills. He refused to say that he did not know how to play the game, though, I am certain he had never seen it before. When we went bowling a couple months ago, I asked him if he knew the time and the details and he said that yes, he knew everything about it. I got a call from his teacher the next day to say that he did not know anything about it!

Despite all of that, one thing that we have been able to do is increase his social skills -- or, I'm trying to, at least. He mentioned that the kids sometimes makes fun of him, and he doesn't seem to have a lot of friends. So, we started inviting a couple of kids from his classroom to come and play games with us.

The first week was a disaster. We went outside to play basketball. The two kids that we brought were quite good for third graders, and my little mentee couldn't keep up. He figured that out in about 15 seconds, and spent the remainder of the time kicking around snow and ice and wood chips. I had a hard time giving him the necessary attention while keeping an eye on his cohorts. The next week, we played Uno.

Uno is a favorite of mine, because it's a game that I grew up on. Of course, the Armstrongs have their own set of rules, and I had to teach the kids how to play to make it bearable. The two "friends" that were there, were hilarious and cute and caught on to the rules quickly. My mentee was jumping off the walls. He doesn't hold the cards in his hands. He gets frustrated if he doesn't get the "good" cards (i.e. Draw 2 cards, wilds, etc.) and he's a sore loser if he has to draw too many cards. He's never won a hand.

Because he doesn't like to lose, I should have known that he wouldn't want to play again this week. He brought two other little boys, and like the last two, they were cute, funny kids. We played a round of dominoes, and my mentee hated it. Then we played Uno, and he was bouncing around, hiding behind the boxes and not playing by the rules. We only played one, maybe two, hands before he broke out the Play-doh.

He hasn't wanted to play with Play-doh for months, but these two other little guys were so creative, making noses and Shrek ears and all kinds of things that they were all giggling and goofing around. I think it was a pretty positive afternoon.

Picking their "noses".

Next week, I'm insisting that he bring a girl or two, just to make it fair. And hopefully we'll have new games to play with because the program director said that they had purchased some for the school.

Maybe one day, this extra special attention will do some good for this poor kid. Until then, we'll continue to laugh at booger jokes and listening to me say, 1000x, "Come sit down!"

Sandbagging

For FHE last week, we wanted to do something service-oriented. Since the people in Utah are continually praying for moisture, and spring has been particularly snowy and wet this year (who says prayers aren't answered?) that means runoff puts us at the risk for flooding - click here if you want to see the areas of impact expected.

Personally, in the seven years that I've lived in Utah, I haven't seen a real need for the moisture that people keep praying for. I remember walking to a graduation party in Ohio, saying how glad I was that I would probably never have to walk through wet grass again, because I was moving to a desert.

Well, that's not quite true. Not only did I not move to a desert. (Utah County is considered a steppe climate), I also have to walk through wet grass all the time. I have not yet seen a need for prayers with regards to precipitation, but I'm not a farmer and water has always run freely from any tap of any place I've lived. I'm sure I take water for granted...

Anyway, in preparation for the flooding, the Provo mayor has written a whole blog on what to expect and how to get sandbags (here) and the city is accepting volunteers to bag sand. (Did you know? Provo has the highest volunteer rate in the nation. Between 2006 and 2009, our average annual volunteer rate was 63.6%, and Provo residents, like the BYU student in the photo above, devoted an average of 149.7 hours of service per year.)

Bag sand... It's something that, from what I can tell, has been done for a really long time in order to curtail the raging waters of snow melt, saturated riverbeds and flooded natural levees, but it isn't something I've ever done. I guess growing up in Ohio - and more specifically Troy - we were lucky that the levee was built in such exaggerated terms that unless God decides to flood the earth again (multiple sightings of rainbows already this year tells me that it won't be this year!), I don't think flooding from the Ohio river is much of a threat. Still, Ohio is wet. And I'm surprised that we haven't done more sandbagging when I was growing up.

It was hard work, and I didn't expect to like it. The weather was rainy and nippy, and before I warmed up to the task, my fingers were numb with cold, making every time I hit them against something sting with pain. But sometimes it is nice to get your hands dirty, and get sand under your nails. No, that isn't right. It isn't nice to get little granules under your nails, and I should have definitely worn gloves before I decided to plunge my hand into the sand, but whatever. After a while, my hands were numb and I didn't notice when I took a chunk of skin out of my knuckle. My little group of three worked alone on one side of the sand dune while the rest of the group was on the other side.

We were trying to come up with the most efficient way to fill the bags, and came up with a very quick method of having one person set up the bags under the "funnel" (an orange construction cone, mounted upside down on a wooden horse) while another shovels in the sand, the third person removed the bag from the station and tied it.

It was hard work, and we were complaining of back aches and pains, and if I had gone much longer on the shovel, I would have definitely gotten blisters. But the efficiency and the tangible evidence of our labors made it worth it. And our groups was really kicking butt! Six shovelfuls filled the bag (probably a little too full) and we did almost five at one time. At one point, we figured out how many bags a minute, but I don't remember the figure.

This picture isn't from our group, but it shows the tools we were using. The girl on the right is using a sandbag as a chair. My group didn't do that - I was on my knees most the time, moving from one cone to the next. There wasn't time to just sit in one spot.

It was nice to do something different than childhood games and such for FHE, and afterward, we were treated to an ice cream cone from Macy's.