I Love a Parade

Posted by Elizabeth on November 9, 2010

After School Program

Oh friends, what a grand ol’ time we are having at the Loyola Park After-School Program this year.  We have fabulous students, many returning, many new, and they do so many great things each Monday that a couple of years ago we developed a system to reward awesomeness with a little thing we like to call Monkey Bucks.  Each Monkey Buck that goes into a special piggy bank of good deeds reflects such actions as respecting yourself or others, offering up a kind word to someone else, following directions, especially if it was hard to follow directions earlier, being ready to work and play, presenting a fantastic, ingenious and splendid idea to the group, the list goes on.  Each student can earn monkey bucks, but all the monkey bucks earned go towards special rewards that the whole group can enjoy.  Each of our age groups earned enough monkey bucks so fast, that we got to have a collective paper airplane throw (net value: 50 monkey bucks) in only our second week!  I told you, there is so much awesome that happens each week, we can’t even keep up!

All three groups moved up in their earnings around the same time, thus it was time for a class parade (net value: 100 monkey bucks).  The monkey teachers wrestled with ideas as to how to make the class parade as celebratory as possible, within the time constraints of 10 minutes before class ended.  The answer came to us like it has come to us in many instances past when we weren’t sure how to make something ridiculously celebratory:
Silly hats and streamers.  Obvi!

Here we all are, awaiting Joe’s (AKA Grand Marshall) instructions for the manner in which we would parade:

Everyone got into the parade spirit.  Volunteers Aaron and Jenny wore their crowns with pride, and Aaron took it to the next level by wearing that Hamburger Hat with a crown on top.  If that’s not celebratory, than, heck, what is?

Kassi brought her own bunny ears (sorry for the fuzzy images, my camera phone could not keep up with all the excitement)

Anthony provided the sweet jams on this boombox.  Yes, that’s a very fuzzy Anthony.  I’m tellin’ you, my camera phone could NOT keep up!

Here are the kids parading through the majestic stairwells of our beloved Loyola Park:

I regret not catching this on camera(phone), but wonderful members of the Loyola Park District staff met up with us along our parade route to cheer us on, only adding to our community Parade of Awesome.
I love Monkey Bucks because it reminds us all that there are so many things in life to celebrate and there are so many crazy ways to celebrate them.  I remember sitting in my living room this summer with the Loyola Park teachers dreaming up these different rewards.  I remember Anthony reading aloud some of his ideas.  He paused before he read aloud his next one and said “I’m not sure if you all understand what I mean by this next one, or if you think it’s cool or not, but how about…Wizard Visit.”
My living room shook with laughter, because one, we knew exactly what he meant, and two, because we all thought it was incredibly awesome.  I really loved my job right then.