Volunteering

Okay, I will resist the urge to catch you up on all things Munich in order to write about my humorous tale about volunteering at Dawson's school yesterday.  I promise I will do my best to catch you up on all of the other adventures of our trip, but keep in mind that most of my days involve work, sweatpants, Spotify, and Shelly.

In order to keep up with Dawson's learning progress I decided to volunteer at the school every other Wednesday morning.  The first volunteer event was perfect as I got to watch Dawson's amazing teacher break the class into small groups for projects so she could do the lesson with 4-5 students instead of the whole class.  My job was to help them sort out word sounds and write the words.  I loved seeing the kids from countries around the world trying to figure out the English language. So yesterday I was excited about my second trip to help out in the classroom.  When I arrived I was told that we were going on a walking tour in small groups around the community to see and document ,with pictures and words what these places do to help the community.  I had 4 kids in my group, Dawson, Mitchell, Anabel, and Alexandra.  Our locations were the gas station, bank, town hall, post office, and dentist.

I should have known there may be issues when I couldn't  get all 4 of them to sit still to take a picture before we left.  As we went towards the town they were jumping, running, pulling, etc.  No big issue..excited 6/7 year old kids outside on a field trip.....or so I thought.  Let me start by saying that my own son was bad, but not at the same level as the others.  I often took him aside begging/threatening him to listen and set a good example.  The behavior continued throughout our trip through town.   No one listened as I tried all my tactics that did not involve screaming (okay towards the end the screaming made an appearance).  Here are a few highlights:
 - One boy kept hiding so I thought he was lost
- They all kept running into the streets to pretend to be hit by a car
- When told that wasn't a play toy they all looked at me and said...yes it is...for us.
- Climbing on statues
- Hanging upside down from whatever straight item they could find.
- When lined up to discuss my disappointment in their behavior I advised them that I may have to tell the teacher they didn't listen and they may not be able to go to the fire department field trip the next day.  They looked at each other and then the spokesman of the group nicely informed me that it was the German teacher taking them so it wouldn't matter.
- At the dentist office their was a nose blowing break and the tissues were promptly put in the slot mailbox of the dentist
- I advised that they may each get a time out once we arrived back in the classroom.  All but mine looked at me and said Time Out, what is that?
- On the way home their was a path that one of the girls told me was the way they went to the school when she was dropped off from the bus.  On our way to the other side I was promptly fussed at for trespassing.  When I looked at the angelic face of the little girl and said, "so I guess you don't take this path every day?"  She shrugged her shoulders and said "no, but I have always wanted to".

Once back in the classroom (where I was promptly wishing for a shot of Whiskey) they were perfect angels and talking about all the things they learned on our trip..so maybe they had listened?  When Jason asked Dawson at the end of the day if the kids talked about how mean mommy was, he said "no, we were really bad".  

It seems funny to me now because I am picturing what I must have looked like walking through town with these four crazy kids and me telling them Nein, Nein, Nein (which one girl told me I should just say no).  In the end they all had fun and learned even though I had NO control over the group.  So what did I learn from all of this?  ....NO MORE VOLUNTEERING FOR FIELD TRIPS!!!!!