I'm Not Accommodating

There have been days when long before I get to La Follette Park, I already know the day is going to be a waste of effort.  One of the reasons I feel like that is the continuing lack of participation and interest that's been happening from the first day I began working there.

In the youth class: I believe Koreon has dropped out.  I haven't seen him for a little over a week.  When Koreon was showing up, it was usually a half-hour after class had begun, leaving him with twenty minutes to train after putting on hand wraps and warming up.  If Koreon showed up any later than that, I would send him home to start over the next day.  His smart-aleck sister once tried to challenge me about the rules about class times and training.  I shut her up quickly.  Fortunately, she hasn't come around recently to make any more smart cracks.

Damaris is back, but she's displaying the same lack of motivation and discipline that she's been doing since April.  I don't say much to her because I'm done with constantly repeating myself.  The other day, she had the nerve to tell me, "I need to be exercised more."  "You know what to do," I told her, and I left her to remember what she had been previously taught over and over again by both Sahia and myself.  Sahia has more patience with Damaris' attitude than I do so I let her deal with Damaris.  But Sahia hasn't been in the gym since it was closed due to construction issues during the last two weeks of the summer session. 

As for the teen class, recently Malik told me his basketball coach changed the time of the team practice so Malik can come to boxing practice.  That sounds odd to me since I've never heard of any coach being that accommodating to any of their players who are trying to participate in another sport at the same time.  I've never done that, and I'm not going to do that. 

Ariel's mother signed her up over a week ago, but Ariel hasn't been there.  "I miss boxing," she told me.  But apparently, she hasn't missed it enough to make it a priority to show up to class.  Being overextended is a problem that most of the youths have; that's why Ariel dropped out of the class a year ago. 

I fail to understand why parents, guardians, kids, and teens, and some others who have eyed taking the adult class think I should accommodate people's lack of time management skills.  It never seems to occur to people that I don't have control over when the boxing class is scheduled.  I've given myself a little wiggle room in there in order to register people and take care of other administrative tasks, but that's as far as I can go.  The Chicago Park District runs after-school programs for youths and offers a few activities for adults that either run earlier in the mornings (usually for the senior citizens) or after normal workday hours.  There only a certain window of time to have activities each day based on the hours the field houses are open. 

As long as people don't get that, a lot are not going to be able to participate in most of what goes on in the gym and there will be no getting fights at the boxing shows.  Because of that lack of understanding, the boxing program, at least at La Follette, doesn't run as well as it should even after four years.  I feel like I'm just spinning my wheels most of the time.