No power!

Yesterday at 8:15 am I got a call on my cell phone from S, the resident liason at Housing Authority.  She informed me that there would be no electricity in the child care rooms from 9 to 11 am.  We had hints that this might happen, but had not been told directly.  We had called and emailed the previous day to confirm this possibility, but had not gotten any response until it was too late.  By 8:15 the buses were running to pick up students.  This has been typical of my experience with the Housing Authority.  We have been there for 20 years with two years elsewhere during that time.  And we are still forgotten when things like this happen.   We were informed the last time that the "lights" were going to be off--and we canceled class and then they never were turned off at all.  So I might not have canceled anyway.

The child care staff coped with a pretty dark classroom for two hours.  We turned the heat way up before anyone came so it didn't get cold.  We still had water.  We are flexible!  We had seven families and the adult students accomplished quite a bit.  So I am glad we had class.  The child care staff does not get paid if we cancel so that is another reason to keep going no matter what!

It's this kind of thing that strengthens my resolve to leave this program.  It's all the extra hassles besides teaching.  It occured to me recently that someone else will need to be a part of the hiring of childcare staff for next year.  One of our aides will leave for sure; I hope the other two will stay.  But that will be someone else's problem in August--not mine!  The best possible scenario would be to hire in May however so that we can see someone in action in the classroom.  Last time we hired we talked to someone who came across just fine in her interview and then was a dud in the classroom.  She didn't interact with the children and worst of all, she never said how cute our babies were!  The woman we did hire was a stark contrast to that.  The others on staff just knew she was the one we needed when they saw her in the classroom.