A chance to ask questions

Today I found somebody who qualified as a drama teacher and he knows a dance teacher who is starting to do some work with the Special Educational Needs department at a local school that I could get in touch with. I am so happy!! Any ideas and thoughts and anything really is welcome at the moment as I try to make sense of the Something To Say project in my head. If everything goes alright I guess I'll have lots of opportunities to ask interesting people who do interesting things all about what they do - which is actually quite an exciting prospect!

The things I say "yes" to...

...are numerous and sometimes rather odd.

Like, for instance, agreeing to lead a dance and drama group for people with learning disabilities.

Not entirely sure how that happened! But it did. And I've led my very first session of the drama group this afternoon. I know nothing about drama so the whole thing was rather stressful and I am rather euphoric now that it all seemed to go well (nobody's dead at any rate!). The group is called "Something to Say" and today was it's first meeting with me as the person facilitating the experience. The group as such has been going for over a year with a slightly different membership although it felt a bit like starting from scratch as there was only one volunteer who had actually been part of the group before. The rest of us were newbies. I decided playing a fair amount of games was a good idea - and thankfully that is something I can do after all this youth worker training I've done. And in all fairness I even enjoyed myself - although I'm still recovering from the shock of having done it. (And trying not to think about next week's dance group...)

We are concentrating on the theme of relationships so when I opened the floor up I got given the idea of East Enders. In some ways I guess that is a pretty good idea as what are soaps if nothing but full of relationship drama. I can already see the potential areas to explore. However, I'm also hoping there is a good Wikipedia entry on the said EE as I really haven't a clue of what goes on in it!:)

D'oh!

Yesterday as I was making paper with some children I managed to put my right foot in a bucket of water.

I was absorbed in the intricate details of explaining how to squidge water out of the paper pulp when I noticed a funny sensation in my foot and looked down to see my foot (and shoe!) soaking up loads of water. As a professional I merely shrugged inwardly, pulled my foot out and carried on making paper. Afterwards we all laughed, of course, as that really is a rather stupid thing to do! And to manage to get my foot wet without noticing I was doing it - that's quite something.

My shoe is still very wet.

A weak vegetarian?

After a morning/afternoon full of meetings I helped staff a trip with a group from a SEN school. We took off to Kingston to see Alvin and the Chipmunks (the music is very irritating!) and a meal in a chicken restaurant. Not so PC after all the ranting Jamie Oliver is doing on TV - and also not particularly vegetarian friendly. Most places manage at least a half-decent veggie option but it was truly awful here: processed junk that leaves a horrible after taste. It's such a shame we took our young people there even if we are constrained by a budget.

Pulling into the bus station near my flat at the end of our trip I was unable to open the mini van door prompting disparaging remarks from colleagues about my choice in diet! Not much to be said in my defence though, as I did feel pretty awful after that meal:)

Hooray for our fully organic veg and fruit box my flat gets every week. What a blessed relief it is to eat real food.

Training, training, training...

I love training courses and I've been lucky enough to go to loads of interesting ones over the past year. I am especially lucky in one of my volunteering placements where I tend to look for an interesting course and then my manager will just stick me on it. It's brilliant! (Currently I'm looking for a course on how to grow vegetables:)

This week has been almost over doing it though as I've spent the past three days in training. One was a child protection course (always heartbreaking) and the past two days have seen me in the first section of a course on sex and sexuality work with people with learning difficulties. It is absolutely fascinating. And very thought provoking. Being new to this area of work there are a lot of things I've never really given much thought to, and this is definately one of them. There can be a very unfortunate tendency to view people in the terms of the disability they have rather than as a human in their own right, a human fully alive. Ignorance can never be good with such a vulnerable group so anything we can do to increase knowledge and empower people we work with can only be a good thing. I guess increasing my knowledge and allowing space to reflect on these issues is very helpful too.

The scariest thing about this particular course is of course the implication that once I've finished it I'll have to deliver it others... At least I've been doing the course with a colleague so we can share this task, but I'm glad the next two days next month will deal with the more practical side of things of how to deliver such work to our clients.

In some way this is very typical of my work where I am, as the American's would say, flying by the seat of my pants. Not exactly blagging, but then again not that far off either. It keeps you on your toes - and is so exhilirating when you pull it off!

Ethical Questions Prompted by Free Newspapers

Walking back from the Lyceum Theatre along the Strand our group, along with every other pedestrian, was bombarded by hoards of people thrusting the free newspapers into our hands. A number of the young people were happy to take the newpapers and we ended up at Waterloo clutching newpapers left, right and centre.

As we were standing waiting for the Responsible Person to tell everyone else which platform we were headed for one of the young boys wandered over to a stand selling paper and took one. Fortunately I saw the event and was able to have a discussion and we returned the paper to the lenient paper seller, but it was interesting trying to explain the differences between free papers and one that you have to pay for, and then also the reasons for the difference. "Would you steal anything from a shop?" I got asked, "Would you steal a chocolate bar if you had to?".

My mind conjured up all manner of situation where I might HAVE to steal a chocolate bar while I was busy saying "No, I would not steal a chocolate bar."

When I questioned further for a rational about why I might have to steal chocolate, a revealling: "Because your friends told you to" came out. What an opening for a discussion on ethics and our rules of engagement with each other! That's one thing I love about youth work: the creative opportunities and the thinking on one's feet that any engagement with young people offers.

"What would you do if you saw a fiver on the street? Would that be stealing?" was slightly more tricky. But I turned it round with the get-out-of-jail-free trick of just asking the same question back and carrying on the conversation from there!

The Lion King

Another work trip, another musical. This time round we took 15 young people to a matinee performance of the Lion King. It involved a rather complex set of logistical maneuvering to get everyone to the same place at the same time, but things like this have a tendency to fall into place somehow. I only got to see the second half of the musical due to being paired up with a delightful young girl who was not interested in seeing the Lion King at all. But what I saw I did enjoy! The set design, costumes, and lighting were very clever and I thought the giraffes were particularly brilliant.

However, I cannot wait for our adult social club trip - that has got to be easier I reckon.

On Monday I got given a more definate area of responsibility, volunteers and volunteering, which is helpful. At least I've got something else to say that "I don't really know" when people ask me what I do at work... We also got told that working unauthorised overtime is going to become a disciplinary action which is a novel approach (in my experience) to the pervasive problem in the Third Sector of people working 50-70 hours a week while being paid for 20. Okay, so maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but probably not by much.

Taking myself out for lunch

I'm celebrating the end of two+ months of unemployment and no benefits and feeling hugely excited about actually receiving a paycheck at the end of December! Because I got perilously close to the red line I feel euphoric to have money in the bank again. So on a whim I popped into a cafe and had a proper sitdown lunch today in between work. It's so nice to not be counting pennies every time I walk out the door. Although given the price of food around here I might be back to square one soon!

The Phantom of the Opera

Last night I had a work trip to see the Phantom of the Opera. (I know, I know, sometimes work can be such a drag... ) There was a huge group of us that jumped on the train to Waterloo and then onwards to the theatre just in time for the show to start. We had one incident where a boy refused to get off the train at Waterloo and so got escorted back to his parents, but other than that it was merely a matter of trying not to lose anyone. It is so difficult to count a group of 27!

I was first introduced to the music of the Phantom of the Opera when I was about 8 years old and in Nepal. A woman who was living with us in our flat had the CDs and I was entranced. During my teens I did buy a copy of the music and listened to it but I never saw either the play or the film until yesterday. It was interesting to try to allign the version in my head with the one unfolding in front of my eyes. They were surprisingly different. Not so much in essence as in the nuances. Also, I think the rather more adult themes glibly flew over my head when I was about 8...

It was a bit scary for some of our group, but we also did get renditions of the Phantom all the way back along with a fairly philosophical discussion on whether or not the Phantom is evil. One definition put forward by one of the volunteers was that the Phantom knew the difference between right and wrong which meant that he could be evil. Interesting thought.

On the way back we ended up waiting outside on an open air platform close to midnight for about half an hour for our train to come, which hasn't made my cold any better. In fact I've only just emerged out of bed and I don't know if I'm going to venture outdoors at all today. (Sniffle.) I might just try to find cookie receipies instead, as my Flat is hoping to make several batches for people as gifts.