A Full Day

Wow. This was a pretty full day. It started with school, of course. This morning, me and 13 kids jumped in a van and headed out to Wailuku. Why? Well, to go watch County Council hearings on the Wailea 670 project, Silly. Duuuh.

It's a bunch of rich people (and corporations) who are trying to screw up even more of Maui with more golf courses and over-priced housing. Our kids are starting to figure out just how stuff works around here and a few of them have been pretty amped up to get involved. So, two of them (and me) planned on speaking. We got there on time, but couldn't find a place to park. 25 minutes later I decided to illegally park in the lot of an abandoned office building. Luckily, the van didn't get towed.

On the way into the building, we get to the elevators...all 14 of us, and the kids turn to me..."I don't think we're all going to fit in the elevator, Mr. Atias." That's fine, we'll just take two.

"Hey, we can go up the stairs!"

"Uh...it's on the 8th floor."

"So." Bam...they all take off.

I have these 3 old guys looking at me. "Are you going to go with them?"

"Guess I gotta."

Those little bastards. I'm glad they were sucking wind when we got there. Social Studies AND P.E. I'm a teaching god!

By the time we got to the hearing room to sign up to speak we ended up being numbers 33 & 34. Not good. The hearing started at 9am and the kids were getting picked up back at school at 11am. And of course being the Chinese New Year they opened up the hearing with a performance by some folks in those big-ass dragon costumes with a big-ass drum. Nice, but it did drag on a bit...(ha! I get it...dragon...drag on)

So when they took a break at 10:30 they were on speaker 13. Some minor chaos ensued and eventually we got the Council Chair to agree to let ONE of our kids speak right after the break. And they really were killing me about how they NEVER change the order because if they did it for one, they'd have to for everyone, blah, blah, blah. So one of the councilmembers went to the chair and they conferenced so we got our ONE speaker. As the Chair is explaining this to everyone he says that it's great to have the kids here - even if we should be in school. {sigh} We ARE in school...that's what we do! But we'll show him (see below). So our one speaker goes and she's nervous and ended up talking about the wrong development project...doh! But she's a cute little kid so all the newspapers interview her and we're all congratulated.

So all that ends and we go back to school. I'm asking the kids what they thought about the whole thing. A lot of them thought it was pretty cool, which actually surprised me. When I mentioned that comment by the chair, one of my kids says, "Mr. A. Why don't we send him a thank you card for letting Amber speak and we can include a brochure about our program."

"Brooke! You DA MAN!"

"I'm Da Man."

So we get back, only 15 minutes late. (the kids have a half day every Friday, because it's the only way we get to plan) I grab lunch and go over to the High School...today was my first sign language class with a bunch of 10-year-olds from the Virtual School. They were so freakin cute. I had a blast. Next week I get the 5-year-olds.

So then I swung by the Kihei Community Center to check on another group of our kids who were at the district Science Fair. Included in that group was two of our biggest pains in the ass and one of our misfits. They all did great. Got along, were supportive of each other...it was cool. We had 9 kids enter and 5 of them got some kind of recognition. One of our 6th graders is going to the state competition in Honolulu. Seeing as how this was our first year in the fair and our 6th & 7th graders were going against other middle schoolers AND high school kids, we did pretty darn well.

I got to stop home for a half-hour to throw some CD's in a box and here I am at Mana'o...playing The Dollyrots. Not too shabby.