I suppose it is good to start regarding my role at the school. My role has been ambiguous at best and nonexistent at worst. Because conduct in my classroom can be out of control, and is always teetering towards chaos, my role in the classroom has understandably not been a high priority for the teachers. Fortunately, this week I will start to have a more consistent job. I will be running a center in the classroom focused on the students that are either doing well or are on the verge of success. Even the kids that do well on tests fail to complete and turn in work, because concentration is such a grind in my classroom. There is so much movement and action going on, that even if the noise level is reasonable, the students' attention is perpetually diverted.
Every week I find that I enjoy more and more what I am doing. This is mostly due to the relationships I am developing with my students. In the past two weeks, I have made breakthroughs with most of the students that were the most resistant. It is so exciting. Students that really struggle to do work in class, and apparently everywhere else, sought me out to see if they could work with me in the hall. I even had a group of the most disruptive students in the hall with me, and they were working silently and independently on their work.
One of the girls in that group will do anything to avoid work: going to the nurse, getting a folder, binder, pencil from the classroom next door, the bathroom, and sometimes she just leaves the classroom without asking. Another girl in the group has been in the past the student that has shown me the most disrespect. She has yelled at me in front of other students, demanding to know why I am at the school, saying that I need to back off and mind my own business, etc. This week, for the first time, she did what I asked of her without challenging me, she participated in this group with her best friend (the before mentioned spas) and she worked silently. There were two other boys in the group as well, one of which is one of the lowest performers in the class, and the other performs well, but in the meantime distracts everyone around him. They both did their work and I only had to redirect them to focus twice in 45 minutes (this is really good for those of you that are unimpressed).
When students have missed days over the past couple of weeks, I have had the opportunity to take them out in the hall and catch them up on the book, "Number the Stars", that they are reading in class. I had to read four chapters with a tough group one day, and the last two chapters they were really struggling to concentrate. I recalled that one of the senior corps members had mentioned doing something called readers theater with his kids. I really didn't know how that worked, but I thought maybe if I mix up the way I read the kids will be more engaged. So I read the remainder in accents. Later that week, I decided that it could be even better if I acted out what exactly was happening as I read, and this worked pretty well. I think next time I will encourage any students I do this with to do the acting themselves.
The other day I was working in the hall with one of the lowest performing students on independent work. Independent work is supposed to be independent, so I was trying to lend the least amount of support possible, while still encouraging her to keep at the work successfully. She was really struggling to think of an antonym for town, so I started asking her questions that I thought might help her in the thought process. She wasn't getting it. I was so tempted to tell her the answer, because I thought, "She is so far from getting this answer that maybe I should give her just this one", but I just couldn't do it, we had spent too much time on the question. Finally, I physically saw a light bulb go off in her head and she shouted, "City". We were so excited that we did several celebration handshakes before returning to work.
Another kid, D, that I don't have a chance to see very often, because he is in a resource room with one of my teammates, but that I feel unusually drawn to, is another that would just dismiss me like I was dirt on his shoulder the first several weeks. A while ago he was not able to go to the resource room, and he so he chilled on the carpet in my room reading a NFL magazine. He finished with the magazine and was about to go to sleep, so I decided to take him to the library thinking that maybe we could find some more sports magazines he would be interested in; at least he would be reading.
In our walk to the library, our discussion of sports somehow morphed into one on animals, and we ended up spending about 45 minutes in the library looking for books on animals. He is especially intrigued by spiders. We finally ended up talking about aliens and the universe and how he enjoys watching the discovery channel. He asked me some questions that I could not answer, so he asked if we could search for the answers on google. Reluctantly, thinking that I had not brought him to the library to get on the internet, I said yes. Well, each time we found an answer on google, one of us came up with another question to ask, and we got progressively excited. Finally, we ended up searching what would happen to the earth if it would lose the its atmosphere. I think I learned more than he did.
D makes himself coffee many mornings, takes care of younger siblings, and doesn't seem to have many close friends, although people in the class seem to revere and respect him. He is passionate about basketball, football, and aliens. He seemed to me strangely independent. I made headway with him in the library, and since he has respected me and responded to me in a way I wouldn't have imagined after the first two weeks in school. He had a really rough day recently and was sent to the disciplinarian's office. Turns out an agency was coming to take his brother away the following day.
Growing up I have been aware of similar stories, but for me they seemed so overwhelming that they became insurmountable. I wonder if despite all D has had to deal with, someone like me, someone who is only in his life for one school year, can make a lasting difference. I suppose I am doing City Year, because I do believe in the power of an individual who really cares and believes, but at the same time, D is a twelve year old who has had to work against nature. It is hard to imagine anyone growing up and moving beyond such circumstances. I love what I do more and more because I understand more fully every week that I am part of a movement to empower these kids to rise above their experiences. City Year wouldn't exist if this really wasn't possible.
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