friday reflections

1. this is how i spend 80% of my time these days
2. i started GOTR this week!

my site is at the International School of Louisiana, which is less than a 5-minute walk from my house. i'm extra excited to be doing this because it's in the community where i live. i'm assistant coaching this year, and the two main coaches are both teachers at the school (one teaches fifth grade, and the other is a gym teacher). we had a great practice on thursday. they've kept this team to just 3rd & 4th graders, so they're young enough to understand the program and still be interested and excited about it (sometimes the 5th graders have one eye on the door).

the kids are profoundly different from the girls i coached last year, and it's immediately clear that they have had very different experiences than the girls i coached that went to Alameda, Beverly Cleary & Irvington. i've talked a lot in grad school about what New Orleans school kids go through, but it's so different to be there, and actually talk to the kids about their hopes, concerns, worries, goals, etc. we talked about what makes us happy, and about half of the group said "feeling safe," which is something i don't think any girl on my team last year brought up even once during the season.

i always forget how much i enjoy being around kids, and it felt great to be in the school, hanging out and chatting with the girls. they took to me right away (and one of them thought i was an eighth-grader at the school, but that's another story). both of the coaches complimented me on how good i am with kids, and that felt really great. it's going to be a good season.

on a much different note, i went to a lecture today by a professor who wrote a book called "Gendered Politics in the Modern South: The Rise of a New Sexism." She focussed her work around the Susan Smith case of the early 1990s, and used the political/media framing of that case to examine sexism and ideas of motherhood in the 1980s and 1990s, specifically focusing on the vilification of single mothers. it was a very interesting lecture-- i need to start keeping a list of all of the speakers i'm seeing. i'm quickly becoming a women's health lecture groupie.

then i had my first interview with Planned Parenthood Gulf Coast, where i'm hoping to volunteer. i guess i shouldn't be surprised that the process of volunteering for PP in the South is a bit arduous & involved-- background checks, reference checks, interviews & the like. but i'm excited to get more involved with there work here, and hopefully meet more like-minded people as well. all in all, it was a good & busy week. i'm starting to get really good at this unemployed thing!