Survived! 2 days of camp, an extra uber long Wednesday, a pretty damn long Thursday ending with a family night and now I can sleep in.
We have family night events several times a year. They are pretty low key but fun. This one is the multicultural one that I have done in every place I have worked with kids for many years. The kids have been researching their multicultural topics for months and slowly creating boards to display what they learned, and bring food and we did a gym game and craft. We had a family who is Serbian do a table, one who did Colorado, another who has older children in the military and did military culture, 3 super blond girls who did Ghana together based on what they learned last year, etc.
So last year the head of our department said she would like to be invited to our family night events and I sent an invite and she accepted. Then I have been building programs with Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts so I invited both of them to set up a table and recruit (the Boy Scouts cheated by bringing candy). There is a set of AmeriCorps members at our school, 6 of them and 2 supervisors, who do loads of support for programming after school and 2 of them came to help set up and participate, lifesaver since I had staff off today. And the whole thing was a success! Here are some things that I am feeling extra good about because it felt natural and normal in how I work, not stressed or pressured, and it was noticed. Apparently having the relationship with Americorps is a huge thing. The head of our department commented on it when I told her there was a member and a supervisor at my event. Other programs co-exist in buildings with Americorps and do not work together. At the end of the night I thanked the Americorps supervisor for helping me and he said that they find working with me 'amazing'. Apparently this is unique in programming. He wants to bring me into their headquarters to talk to the Americorps members on their Friday training days about how to do after school programming as well as we do together. This is awesome because we are also working with the volunteer reading support program to put in some after school tutoring for select children, who also are in my after school childcare so to really contact the family they need my support. Then there are Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts, etc.
Just ahhhh, what you are good at is supposed to feel like this right? Maybe tiring and sometimes stressful but with a level of ease and confidence. I opted to work late Wednesday to support a training and planning session and it felt like this as well. In my zone. BUT I am still going into work at 1 pm tomorrow for payroll and program time only!