This past week, I was lucky enough to be able to work in the lab again during my volunteer experience in my school's tutorial program. Students were more accustomed to seeing me there and therefore called me to check their progress and help them.
Although as a career path, I would not choose solely computer lab work, I still enjoyed the difference in how I am able to interact with the kids. As mentioned in my last blog post, I have the opportunity to be more social with the kids rather than staying in 100% teacher mode. Some of the students really feel unmotivated to be there, or they have off days, and it does help them to have a chance to talk about their lives for a few minutes. It's always surprising to me some of the things that students will share given just a brief moment of time to let it out. One of the girls (who I have only worked with peripherally this year) mentioned to me about her sister getting pregnant at sixteen and having to give up the baby. Although she seemed very nonchalant about the whole thing, I could tell that it saddened her because she was waiting for the baby to arrive for nine months and never got a chance to see it. As soon as she shared, she turned back to her computer and started working.
I do feel like kids have these issues bubbling up inside of them with nobody to really talk to. Sending kids to guidance counselors is very intimidating, and often for drastic instances. Parents will shush their kids if they want information about something bad that has happened. Friends might judge them. I think kids just need to release this information or the things spinning around in their mind and move on. I don't believe there was anything she expected me to say or do after she told me that, because she didn't skip a beat getting back to work. It was simply something she needed to get out to someone who would be willing to listen and seemed interested.
In my classroom, we've had a "mean girl" issue in the past two weeks which led us to have a town meeting. We talked about cyber bullying and people bullying in general. Earlier in the year, two students from my school had their mother killed, went missing, and are presumed dead. One of my students mentioned that kids were making fun of the deceased children in extended day and that made him sad, but a lot of my kids had no idea that it even happened. Or, they had an idea that something bad happened to the kids, but not any details. I let the students have a discussion and didn't lead or intervene in the conversation at all. I was so surprised and pleased at the maturity and insight provided in their conversation.
The students didn't gasp in horror about it or say their parents didn't want them to know, they just never had the opportunity to TALK about it. This was such a tragic event in our school and in our community, but it was immediately shushed among the kids. We were told to send them in to get information from the guidance counselor instead of talking about it ourselves. Everything was so secretive, but meanwhile our school had lots of police and social workers talking to friends of the kids and teachers. Our kids had no release (other than a formal talking-to by the guidance counselor) with this type of event.
I also noticed that kids want so badly for adults to be proud of them. In the group I work with for tutorial (as well as my previous Tier III students), there are a lot of students who might drive their teachers crazy. But when they finish a lesson and they do well, they are so excited to get me and the other teacher, Ms. D., to come over and look at how well they've done. I can see how their attitudes have changed from the first time I worked with them and they were wary of me versus now. Just taking a minute to say hello to them in the hallway regardless of what I am doing makes them happy, or asking about them with their classroom teachers. These kids want to be recognized, addressed, congratulated, and made to feel important no matter what type of home they come from!
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