SETTING UP the shadowing day

On tuesday, Leon and I had the opportunity to have two of our students shadow us for a full day. When setting it up, I definitely did not realize the various speed bumps we'd have to go over, to finally make it happen. Getting this together was a whole new learning experience. Initially I thought that a simple parental approval via their permission slip, and transportation provided by Leon and myself would suffice. But ofcourse, there was more to it! We discovered from Amy that we probably cant drive the kids ourselves because of liability issues, and this was confirmed by Ms. Lockheart, the Assistant Principal at Muir Middle School. There had to be either a credentialed teacher with us in the car or a parent. Luckily with the two kids we had chosen, they were able to call their parents during class on the same day we had chosen them, to ask if their moms could accompany us on this field trip. Both mothers agreed easily. Stephen's mom though, needed to be back by 3pm, as she needed to cook and clean, and couldnt afford to give up a whole day. Ideally we wanted have the group till 3 at ucla. When we found that a credentialed teacher is available to come with us, we then had an option of either taking the parents or the teacher. But later, we learned that we're not suppose to be driving at all, because somehow the school can be held accountable and insurance issues. Both mothers of our students did not own cars, and also could not drive back and forth the distance. This is when it was decided that the teacher would drive the students to UCLA and stay with us through out the the day. I think it was was one or two days before the shadowing date, that Ms. Eck, found out that SHE could actually be the teacher to drive and accompany the students!

So you'd think, the end, Ms. Muskan and Mr. Hong, had a wonderful shadowing day with their two hand picked students, Stephen and Kierra.

True, we did have a good shadowing day but not with those two students! at 9am on tuesday morning (the day of the shadowing), Etsu informs us that Ms. Eck called and says that both of those kids did not show up to school that day, and were not reachable! But somehow, she managed to move so quickly, and got two other good students from our class to come (with signed parent permission slips too).

Did I mention that all the prep for this event took 4 days to get ready? thanks to all the efficiency of emailing and information finding/delivering by both Ms. Eck and Amy, everything moved along quickly, despite all the details and paperwork that had to be sorted.