First Day, and All Is Well...

Well, today was my first day volunteering at the Grandview Community Center. It was a pleasant reception, as the supervisors were nice and the children fairly well behaved. I was a little disappointed that the turnout was small--I was told that this was to be expected on days with nice weather, as most of the kids would be outside playing in the park--as this left me with little to do for the three hours I stayed, although I did my best to make myself useful in whatever capacity I could.

I did help one young girl with her math homework; not only did I show her a more advanced method of approaching substitution, which she picked up quite fast, I also introduced her to multiplication. For fun, I also challenged her to come up with large multiplication problems and see if I could perform it on paper faster than what she could do with the calculator. (Although I did well at first, I began losing once she started dishing out problems involving two sets of four to five-digit integers.) Not only did she seem to enjoy the challenge, it showed her that one didn't need to rely on a calculator to do more advanced math problems.

Although, like I said, the turnout was under-average, it did give me a good idea as to the cultural diversity amongst the children and teenagers. (I think I was the only person present who wasn't fluent in more than one language, which was actually quite impressive.) On the downside, two of the young teens, who were regulars, were caught stealing food from the kitchen, but this did give me an opportunity to see how the supervisors handled such situations, which was quite admirable.

So, despite being slow, my first day was a good primer as to what I can expect in the weeks to come. Hopefully, the children will become comfortable with my presence and not hesitate to ask for assistance with their schoolwork, which I enjoy doing, and which I feel I am fairly good at.

Until next week...