Tutoring Tuesday

Tutoring began today, and much like the beginning of the universe, there was a great ball of chaos.

I got my paperwork taken care of yesterday. Got the names turned in, my lesson plans, their bus assignments. Of course, I didn't get them turned in on time, per se, but that's what happens when the email request comes at 8:34 am, and the deadline is set for end of the school day. I felt like sending an email back saying, "I was TRYING to read and send emails, but these pesky kids kept bothering me with questions!"

But at any rate, I got all that turned in. Then today, right before 3:00, we got an announcement over the loudspeaker: we could NOT clock out and log in for tutoring right after school, like we've always done. We would have to wait until 3:45 to clock in. This would necessitate leaving the tutorees unattended mid-stream in the room while we walked down the lengthy corridors to scan in our thumbprints, but we were advised that our neighbor would probably be happy to watch our kids for us while we did that.

Oh, and there would be no snacks. Actually, I managed a loophole around that one. I just so happened to have a few bags of chips left from a homework reward celebration last week, and a couple of the kids had their own bags of chips in their backpacks. So everyone DID get a snack during tutoring, at least in MY group.

The actual tutoring session was great. I only had 5 kids, and they were wonderful. They were doing all of the work correctly and with the right steps, and really getting into it.

Getting them out to the buses resumed the chaos. The kids had been divided into 3 buses. But only 2 buses showed up. The 3rd was rumored to be making a high school run and might be 15 or so minutes late. I brought my kids from that 3rd bus back into the building to wait, only to discover that the school's power had gone out and all the lights were off.

The last bus finally came. Or maybe it was the 2nd bus discovering they had more room, I didn't really notice. At any rate, all of the kids got home safely, and I was able to go home.

And thus began tutoring for the 2010-2011 school year. Maybe Thursday, we'll throw a helicopter into the mix.