Sunday, January 10, 2010

I'm not your momma....

Some of you may or may not know that I'm a dorm parent at a private boarding school in Central Florida. The school has about 250 boarding students from 40 different countries and on my floor I have 23 boys from 6 different countries. The job is very demanding, but the times where you get to sit down and have a conversation with a student and learn more about them and their culture makes the job amazing. Anyway, the students returned from Christmas break and have been very lackadaisical with some of the things that I expect from them such as: being in their room/going to bed at the proper time, following instructions and getting out of the dorm on time. I sat them down today after it took the students an extra 15 minutes to get out of the dorm for brunch and had a talk with them.

I've decided that raising my voice or showing my frustration does very little good with most of these kids so I am trying to approach each situation calmly and to be very picky with the words that I choose to use. I gathered all the boys in the rec room and looked at each of them and stated, "I am not your momma...so I do not clean up after you!" I basically calmly lectured them about cleaning up after themselves and being respectful. I'll let you know how it works...now if I can only figure out how to get the point across that hot water for the showers isn't an unending supply and that once it is all used you have to wait for it to reheat.....anyone else want to help with this one? :)

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