Volunteering

A few weeks ago in church, while in the midst of a discussion, a woman asked a rhetorical question.

"Doesn't it just make you feel wonderful when you're helping someone?"

And I thought about my latest foray into volunteerism, and honestly answered:  No.

I have been volunteering since October at Jonathan's school, running a once-a-week after school math program for kids.  I wanted to be able to include all the kids who were interested, so I paid all the up front expenses myself (particularly the background clearance fee to work in the school), and have been charging the kids nothing with the idea of helping them have fun with supplementary math.

It hasn't really worked as planned.

The first issue was that too many kids were interested.  We had 25 sign up and turned 10 away in a single day.  I have not been trained in managing 25 kids that age.  The meetings have been chaos.

The second issue was one I discovered later.  I want to include kids who like math, who come there for the fun of it. I have a couple of kids who haven't been participating, who complain all through the hour long session, and can't wait until it's over.  When I pulled them aside and suggested they stop coming, since they clearly hate it, they said their mom would be mad if they didn't come.  She wants them to attend and learn something.  So the kids show up and resent having to be there and drag the class down because Mom thinks that they should be learning something.  I'm not running the program for Mom.  I told the kids they would not be able to come back if they don't start participating.  We'll see whether my talk has any effect.

Another problem is location.  Because of space issues, we're borrowing a teacher's classroom.  The teacher has almost no blackboard space at the front of the classroom.  I can't plug in my laptop.  That means I get to communicate via interpretive dance....  ?

So how does volunteering make me feel?

Completely exhausted.