powerless

He sat hunched against the wall in my office, sweatshirt pulled up to cover his face.  He'd been in more or less the same position for hours now.  I wondered what to do.  He didn't want to talk to me and tell me what was wrong, he wouldn't eat lunch, he wouldn't write how he felt, he wouldn't even shake his head to respond to yes or no questions.  Nothing I could say or do would convince him to let down his guard.

My heart ached.  What do you do when a child won't let you help them?  How do you break through walls of silence?  How do you mediate when you don't even know what the problem is?

And so, powerless to change anything, I prayed to the only one who knows the heart of silence, the one for whom nothing is impossible.

which side up?

Today was my first day back after vacation.  I came in to a desk that looked suspiciously like this:

The two weeks preceding vacation were a hectic whirlwind of activities.  We had fun, the kids had fun, and NOTHING administrative got done except sending out permission slips.   

Our 2 weeks of in-school vacation didn't start off too well.  We had a field trip to the park planned.  It rained.  Fortunately for me, I have an amazing staff, and one of them led some indoor games with the kids, then as the kids insisted that the rain had stopped, we headed off into the drizzle.  The sun came out for a bit, the kids had fun, and it didn't rain enough to get us soaked.  We were a sight to see when we pulled out 20 matching bright orange ponchos and walked back to the school through the drizzle in the afternoon.

 The fun continued on Wednesday with a presentation from a juggler and some mad scientists.

 The kids weren't the only ones fascinated.  I wanted to get in on the fun with the awesome bubbles made from dry ice, hot water, and soap.

 Thursday was my birthday, and since I'm the academic director and can pull some strings with the scheduling, we had the best field trip of all.  ;)  We headed to a town an hour or three outside of Bogotá, depending on the traffic.  In the middle of the country side, surrounded by hills and meadows, it's a peaceful contrast to the constant traffic and pollution of Bogotá.  Even one of my 12 year old students commented on it.  "The teachers can really rest here" he told me.

The main attraction was the blessedly heated swimming pool.  It was almost as good as stepping into bath water. I repeatedly counted heads.  1, 2, 3, . . . . 18, 19.... wait, where's 20?  Was my mantra, over and over again.  

 When I took a break from counting heads, I went to photograph the flowers.  There were some lovely ones.

 Apparently, giving kids a couple of hours of pool time is a good way to tire them out.  Pretty much the whole bus looked like this on the way back.  Which, was a really good thing since the ride back was at least 3 hours, half of which was stuck sitting in traffic right as we entered Bogotá.

Friday we all showed up tired, but the fun wasn't over.  We had a different group of scientific clowns come for a program.  They had us all laughing and afraid to touch their electric globe.

The next week I mostly forgot to bring my camera to work.  It started out well with a puppet show and plans for a group from Venezuela to be in charge of the activities for the rest of the week.  My peace of mind was shattered when I got a phone call mid-morning.  "Annie, you know the Venezuelans who were coming?  The ones who were planning activities for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday?  Yeah, they're not coming after all".  We had just a few hours to come up with 3 days worth of fun activities for 20 high energy kids between the ages of 6 and 15.  And we had a budget of "oh wait there's no food for breakfast, can any teachers pitch in and help today?" As I think I've already mentioned, I have an amazing staff.  And also, awesome friends.  Becka suggested salt dough for the next day.  A quick call to Edwin and we had a field trip to the jungle set up for Thursday.  Another quick call to Alex and he was willing to drive the bus to the park on Friday.  And, another phone call or 2 and our budget was suddenly expanded to $75, which is a quite a bit better than $0.

So, Wednesday we made, baked, and painted salt dough statues, played at the play ground, and watched a movie.  Thursday we played at the jungle and made kites.  Then, Friday, all the fixings for a picnic lunch packed, we headed to the Simon Bolivar Park, a giant park that almost makes you feel like you've left the city.  The kids tried to fly their kites they'd made the day before, buried themselves in sand, climbed all over the jungle gym equipment, and, because it wouldn't be Bogotá if it didn't rain, we had to look for some sort of shelter to make our bologna and cheese sandwiches in and pass out chips and bananas.  After lunch, with the weather cleared up again, we headed off around the lake to the boat rental.  Just as we got all the kids into life jackets and were working on pairing us students unlikely to try throwing each other over board, it started pouring.  We dashed under cover into the boathouse.  It rained.  It poured.  It drizzled.  It started raining again.  Finally we decided to venture out into the drizzle.  We loaded 19 kids and 9 adults into 7 rowboats and set off across the lake.  Or, maybe more accurately put, started slowly turning in circles on the lake.  The kids might not have been very good at steering, or even going in a straight line for that matter, but they had a blast.

So, between those 2 whirlwind weeks and a week enjoying the historic city and beaches of Cartagena, is it any wonder that I'm still trying to figure out which side is up back at work?