Please, Miss (GirlxGirl) ✔️

40 | first day

"Hello, it's Evelyn, right?"

"Evie," I corrected with a smile, shaking the outstretched hand before me. "I take it you're Melissa?"

She nodded. "Certainly am. Lovely to meet you, Evie." Melissa was maybe in the mid thirties, with shoulder length dark hair and kind eyes. We were stood in the entrance of Cherokee House, the home of my new job. From the outside I could tell the place was fairly large, but the green fields that stood opposite it made me feel at ease. "Follow me this way and I'll show you the ropes."

Melissa led me through the hallway and past a mahogany staircase into a small kitchen with a table, kettle and microwave. She placed a half empty coffee mug into the sink and pulled out a chair out from under the table. I did the same, taking a seat opposite her.

"Right, this is the kitchen, fairly self-explanatory. Now in a minute I'll show you around, but first I'll just give you a bit of information as to what we're about. So as you probably know, everyday we have two groups of children come here, the majority from foster care. We do activities with them, teach them to read and write and count. It's the stuff that they'd normally do with their parents or at school, basically. Mostly though, it's just more of a respite for them. These kids need a break. They don't have good lives, Evie. If we can take the pressure off just for a few hours, that's good enough."

I nodded. "That's amazing. I really am grateful for this opportunity."

"We're glad to have you," Melissa smiled in response, pulling back her sleeve and checking her watch. "Right, we've got our morning group coming in about half an hour, so let me show you around first."

She led me out of the kitchen and further down the hallway into a large colorful playroom, filled with toys and cushions and beanbags and books. "This is just a general play area for the children. We don't usually do much one-on-one stuff in here, it's more for the kids to play with each other." Melissa continued on into a room opposite, filled with rainbow knee-high tables and chairs. The walls were a collage of art made evidently by children, and I couldn't help but smile. "The art room. We normally do about half an hour with the group in here every day. They get a bit bored of it goes on any longer."

Next, she took me back down the hallway and into a room opposite the staircase. It contained two blue sofas and a large bookshelf that covered the entirety of the side wall. "Now this is a room that you'll normally use when you're reading with a child. You let them choose a book and then you can read it to them or they'll read it to you with your help. It all depends on the child, really. Some are more advanced than others."

"Right, sure," I said with another nod. "So how old are these kids?"

"We have two separate groups, aged 2-6 and 7-13. The older group obviously don't tend to need as much help with reading and writing, but their floor is upstairs. The ground floor is for the younger group."

"So what do you do with the older kids?"

"Come with me, I'll show you," Melissa smiled, leading me back out the room and up the stairs. The layout upstairs was pretty much the same. The room at the end of the hallway was still a playroom, just filled with slightly more mature toys and a couple of bright couches. There was also an art room, but the tables and chairs were slightly higher, there was a much wider range of supplies stocked neatly on shelves at the back, and the pictures that lined the walls were of slightly better quality. Melissa then led me back down the hall and into a room, once again with a bookshelf that covered the entire wall. There were couches, as there had been downstairs, but it was slightly cosier. There were also two rounded tables at the back by the window, with a pot of pens and pencils in the centre. "This room is pretty much the same as well, but obviously with different books suited for the slightly older children. The tables at the back can be used to help them with their writing, but also any homework they might have. Most of them don't really get any help where they come from, so any support is really good for them."