I am taking a break from working on things, today was the biggest cluster (bad word) of my 3 years of running this type of program. It is a summer camp where they go to reading tutoring in the morning and then come to us for traditional camp in the afternoon plus field trips on Fridays. We had no clue which kids or how many we should expect, anywhere from about 50 to 175 potentially. My computer failed at internet until I called tech support, this was happening all over. Then the printer I finally got did NOT work, so I could not print all the things I needed for the parent board. No big deal right, because all these kids were going to take the bus. Actually a lot of parents picked up and I didn't have good sign out sheets because we didn't really know what we were getting, who was taking the bus, etc. I did not make sign out sheets for all 175 kids, and if I had then I couldn't print them anyway. We are trying to get all families on the i-pad system which requires registering online, I spent a good hour on Friday working with a family that speaks Lingali and French.By the time I was done the facilities staff wanted to lock the building so I figured I could just come early today and get the printer to work, nope.

The worst was a dad who came to drop off his son and wanted him to take the bus in the afternoon. He didn't want the drop off they planned and somehow the front office in taking care of it said something like he could have the other location. Well he couldn't, and the bus left over 20 minutes late because we had so many kids to process (175 kids not alphabetized on bus lists, argh). Complicated because he speaks Burmese and when I tried to help him he could not tell me what street he was walking on even. There is a cool 800 number we can call for translation, put everyone on speaker. That was past 5:30 and camp was out at 4.

I think my supervisor is pretty cool for this, he stayed a lot and helped, all my plans kinda went to crap on the first day. at least 2 of my staff were officially hired last Thursday. They have never done our tracking system but have worked in our district at least. 2 other staff took vacation last week so they were not there for planning. In general I took over this site with 1 1/2 weeks notice. I went and did more shopping tonight, re-did all the tracking cards with the teacher for morning and bus numbers and color coded. I still have better sign in/out sheets to make up and to check the list of who has registered in the on-line system. I just want to do a good job, and amazingly I did not have too much anxiety. Of course it is hitting now because I have literally not sat down or checked my email all day long. I am not sure there was any way to be fully prepared for this however, most camps you have a solid list weeks ahead of time. Oh yeah, the principal and all the teachers for the morning program were out ALL last week so we couldn't do any logistics.