The Imperfect Community

[Petulant Pixie]

I finally have a minute to write about our weekend!

Friday night, we had the second academic triathlon meet. Here’s the website--http://www.academictriathlon.org/ if you click on “samples” it gives example sheets for the events, to get an idea of what exactly the kids have to do.

Anyway…last time our team took 3’d place (out of 9 teams). They did incredibly well on the oral and written face off and incredibly well on the mindsprints. But, they bombed the party in a box. They have this skit and a box full of things to use as props—which varies each meet—stuff like aluminum foil, straws, paper plates, etc.. Anyway, my team used their 40 minutes of prep time to fight and argue the whole time and came up with a crappy presentation. But, they had so many points in the other two events that it still landed them third place.

So, the last times we’ve met for practice, that’s what we worked on. The time before break, I tried to just have them run through one to see how they worked together and well…one kid chose what to do, two kids argued with him and the other two played with the cat and ignored the whole situation. So, I printed out a bunch of sample scenarios and had the kids go around and say in turn what their individual idea for a plot would be, since it was my guess that during the prep they went through the box first to see what looked like fun props and then made a storyline around the things, instead of doing a good plot first and then supplementing it with the props. They all nodded, that yeah, they had fit the plot around the props instead of the other way around. So, they came up with plots and then voted on the best ones. The one kid who had (unanimously!) the highest votes was deemed “plot captain”. The next in line was “co-plot captain) and the other three were “Prop and background team”. Everyone but Alex was happy. He wanted to be on the plot team, but his plot lines were AWFUL. This is just not an area he succeeds in. He was very upset and we had to deal with that. But, the next time we met, he was over it and things were very smooth.

Friday night, the team was jazzed. We went to Old Country Buffet before the meet and the other team from our school was there, so the kids all ate together (the 4 girls sat at one table, 4 of the boys at another and 2 other boys at another and I got to sit with the other coach—I got to have a whole dinner with another ADULT, not having to cut up someone’s food or clean up spilled pop or keep interrupting my meal to go back up to the buffet and help a little person get more macaroni and cheese. It was heaven!). At the meet, I co-judged a mindsprint. It was a lot of fun. I have so much fun judging these things. And, since our team drew letter “C”, I was to judge party in a box, too. Teams A, B & C’s coaches judge and team D’s coach does the timer. It’s just drawing letters out of a hat. Our team was the last team to come into my room before the party in the box. They did my mindsprint and they scored so much higher than any of the other teams, I had to have the other judge go over my numbers to make sure I wasn’t being biased. They are just that smart. They had a few minutes before they had to go do the party prep, so they were chattering to me about how they scored so high on the other two mindsprints and how they only missed two questions on the written face-off, and they were just buzzing!

40 minutes later, I’m sitting at the judge’s table with the two other party judges. The other team from our school drew letter “B”, so that coach was also judging party. Team A went, and was good, team B went and they were very good. Our team was up and my palms were sweating. I had told the other coach (shelia) about our plan and the division of duties to help curb the bickering. Our team bombed. They were sooooooo bad. I was just sitting there watching the whole thing with utter disbelief. AND, you could hear them fighting behind the backdrop! They’d do a little scene, then some of them would go behind the backdrop to get more props or whatever and you’d hear them bickering! I wrote on their little score card “We can HEAR YOU BICKERING BACK THERE!” As if I might forget to mention that at the next practice. They left the stage at the end and returned to their seating area. Shelia leaned over and whispered to me, “Wow, that was really good, considering what they did in that room.” She was the adult supervising their party prep and she said that all they did was fight the whole time. She didn’t see how they came up with ANYTHING to present, because they literally fought the entire 40 minutes. So much for my plan!

I should have seen it coming though. The day before the meet, they asked me, they said, hey, what happens if we don’t like plot guy’s plot? I told them that this was the plan and that I, their coach was advising them. I said (I actually SAID it), if you want to spend the entire time fighting, then that’s your option, but this is the plan YOU as a team agreed to. If you don’t like his plot idea, then, I don’t know, work it out. So, apparently they took that as a dare.

So….what happened. They didn’t like plot guy’s plot. So, the one kid who took over at the practice took over again. Alex argued, saying that plot guy should come up with another plot, and plot guy agreed, but the other kid told Alex he’s a prop team guy and he had no business giving direction about the plot (true, but not very nice). So, that kid took over and as was typical for him came up with a ridiculously complicated plot that didn’t include ANY of the elements that the skit sheet asked for. Alex was pissed, the plot guy was pissed and the other two were just along for the ride, doing as they were told by the kid who took over, but also pissed because they assumed (correctly) that they’d be IN CHARGE of doing their props and backdrops, but the kid who took over directed them with that, too, telling them no, that wasn’t ok, do it this way instead. Not cool.

Ugh. So, this is what they have to work with! See, these kids are all smart and they’re all used to being the top dog in any group. Well, the three boys (plot guy, Alex and the take-over kid) anyway. The girl and the other boy don’t seem to want to be involved in this pissing contest. My plan is to make it concrete. Alex has no business giving input on the plot, but the plot guys have no business dictating how the props and backdrops are done. So, I’m having the two boys be the plot guys as they were before, but encouraging the voted plot guy to stand up for himself and the other one to back down. Alex and the girl will be prop/backdrop team and the last boy will be the coordinator. He has that personality, he’ll be great at it. And we’ll run through these practice skits from now until the next meet with ME watching and stepping in. Any other suggestions? I don’t want them to hate doing this thing because of the bickering, and I don’t want them to start hating each other! But, again, this is tough for 12 year-olds, especially 12 year-olds who have this kind of personality. Learning to work in a team is one of the hardest things to learn, even as an adult. So, they’re really lucky that their personality traits are being exposed to them this young so they have that much more time to learn when to stand up and when to back down and so on. But, wow, is it hard to be the one guiding this. Alex was just livid all the way home from the meet, just going on and on about it.

Oh, and that’s the other thing. I heard from the other coach what happened, so I’m telling these kids on Friday—look, I KNOW what happened, Mrs F- told me exactly who said what and how it all went down, I don’t need to, nor do I WANT to hear a blow-by-blow account from all 5 of you of how you weren’t to blame for it. I already KNOW, so let’s move on and find a way to fix it so it doesn’t happen again.

But, back to Alex, so by the time we got home, the other family was here and Mike was packing stuff into their van to go to the tournament. I was so happy then that Alex has school friends and karate friends and that they’re separate, so he could just switch gears and leave the meet behind him. They left here at like 9, so they didn’t get to Sheldon Iowa until like 1 am. At the tournament, Alex took two second place ribbons (sparring and weapons) and 1 third place (forms).

Katie took 1st in sparring and weapons and second in forms. She was so sweet, she told me the next day that after the sparring match, she saw that some of the girls were crying. She said she went up to them, one at a time, and asked them what was wrong, what happened, and they just rubbed their eyes and said, “nothing”. She said it finally occurred to her that they were crying because they didn’t win. That just broke her heart! But, that is so Katie, clanging around with her first place medals around her neck, trying to console the other girls, totally oblivious to their jealousy. I didn’t want her to feel guilty for winning though, so we talked about all the times she hasn’t won, and she agreed that she’s lost plenty, so she doesn’t feel bad about winning. Her next testing is ON her birthday on the 27th. We’re really hoping that she’ll be asked to join the leadership team after that. She’ll be 8, and that seems to be when they start asking the kids to join.

So, that was the weekend. Liz and I were just here by ourselves Friday night and Saturday. We had a nice, quiet time. Sunday and yesterday, we all just recovered. It was really nice to have that extra day off (thank you Dr King!), and we got a bunch of snow Sunday night, too, so they kids went out to play in it for a short time (it’s also like 0 here now, so they couldn’t stay out for long).

[Scout]

Wow! That sounds like a lot of fun but I'm exhausted just from reading it. I feel so slack because my kids are not involved in anything, really. well, Calvin is in science club and they are doing bridges for science olympiad. We were planning for him to take guitar and Joshua really wants to take piano in the after-school classes this semester, but we just found out those are both year-long classes so they will have to wait until next year. Somerset wants to take ballet, which is open to the pre-k kids, but now we have taken her out of the full-time Y program because it was getting sketchy and there are only two of them now, one of whom is a kid who gets in trouble all day and pushed Somerset into a wall and busted her lip a few weeks ago because the other boy's mom is on maternity leave. So, she just goes on T/Th now for CLUE and then is in the Y class just a couple of hours, and of course ballet is Wednesday. She's just going to the sitter with genevieve on the other three days, bu of course wed I have faculty meeting a lot of weeks and pick the baby up after the boys instead of before like I usually do, so I had thought I could just drop S off for ballet when I pick up the boys, but now I'm realizing that won't work. Oh well, she can do it next year when she's in kindergarten.

[Petulant Pixie]

Yeah, it sounds like they do plenty, Kristy!

A&K do karate basically because of Alex. He is not athletic at all. This school he goes to doesn't even have PE. Well, they do, but if you're in band, then you only do PE during "may term", this month long "semester" at the end of the year. They give the kids a membership to the Y and if you do PE then there's an hour each day when they go over to the Y to work out. So, he NEEDS karate for the physical activity, otherwise he'd do nothing during the cold months. And, of course, since he does it, Katie does it.

Band is a class for him, so there is no extra stuff for that. Katie doesn't do scouts anymore, so karate is it for her extracirricular activities. Oh, and faith formation once a week. Alex does the AT thing, which meets once a week and has the 4 competitions. It's not all that much.

Liz, I think will do preschool two mornings (two hours each) next year, and we'll start doing that little gym thing at the Y next fall, too.