Tonight was my orientation to tutoring for this school year at the hampden family center. There was a new staff busseling with enthusiasm, ready to start the school year off to a fantastic start. A fresh coat of paint on the walls, and no Jessica Gunnell to be seen, the family center felt a little different than before. We sat around the table together, there were about 10 Hopkins undergrads and myself. Mostly girls, mostly Asian girls. They were young and quiet. I took there shy attitudes to mean that they were unsure of themselves, which is probably very inaccurate. A woman spoke to us about our job there in the future weeks and months. She was wearing two necklaces and had small eyes. They've changed the responsibility to two days a week instead of one, and a request to arrive early so we can prepare a lesson for the kids.
it was when she said "you can ask them their favorite color and what movie they recently saw and where they went for summer vacation" that I got strange feeling about this situation. It was when she said "you'll get a chance to meet their parents and write them letters about how your student was cooperative and intelligent, etc." that I understood that this woman had no clue what she was talking about.
last year about two weeks into my session I got a letter from Chelsey's Grandma. The letters were large and written with bubbly handwriting. From the way it was constructed, it was obvious from this letter that her grandmother was barely literate. Chelsey lives with her grandmother because her father disappeared and her mother lives with another man who doesn't really want her around. At her dance recital over the summer, her grandmother grimaced when she saw her daughter hug her granddaughter and leaned into me to say "she hasn't been to anything like this in five years." Chelsey was polite, but treated her mom like a stranger. Her Grandma gave her a doll to celebrate the dance recital. Watching her hold it was an eerie forshaddowing of what I see up and down my street on Elm. There are dozens of 14 to 16 year old girls pushing strollers. If they don't have babies (or even if they do) I see them at ten o'clock at night going down to the park on my street to get high or drunk. The kids here travel in gangs and get 40s from who knows where: their drugged out parents, drugged out vagrants, liquor stores and carry-out places just trying to scrape by. I wanted to tell all of the Asian, quiet, Hopkins girls: your student will know more about sex than you do, they will know more swear words, they have probably witnessed more of what makes this world difficult to live in than you might ever see. The student you tutor will probably be pregnant and dropped out in a few years no matter how many flashcards you make them. It's just the way things are.
I do have hope for Chelsey, I tried to share a little of that with them. But I get nervous when I see her hanging out with the girls who smoke, knowing that those girls are probably already having sex some are already having sex for beer or drugs. I get worried that I can't ever say these things to Chelsey because it's all she sees around her, she doesn't know another way to be, hampden is the whole world and when you turn 18 you have a couple of kids and yell at your boyfriend from the doorstep to come back home, you sleep in a three bedroom house with two full families of cousins and step siblings. It's just the way things are.
They might place me with Chelsey again and I think that might be really beneficial, because no matter how often she called me a nerd or a geek, I think she ...Or I know she, had some other thoughts or curiosities about why I was different than what she got to see from day to day. I don' t know if she wants to be like me. I'm not as tough as the other girls she sees, but maybe she'll want to be a nerd or a geek a little bit.
it's just really scary that even if she wants something different for her life, and she has the opportunity to see something different and decide on it, I don't know if she will have the opportunity to get out of hampden. Could it be even worse to show someone what they might not ever be able to have or create?
that's all for now, internet. If you want to tutor with me I bet they are still recruiting. Especially if you are a boy, they need guys.
let's be friends for a long time.
xo
it was when she said "you can ask them their favorite color and what movie they recently saw and where they went for summer vacation" that I got strange feeling about this situation. It was when she said "you'll get a chance to meet their parents and write them letters about how your student was cooperative and intelligent, etc." that I understood that this woman had no clue what she was talking about.
last year about two weeks into my session I got a letter from Chelsey's Grandma. The letters were large and written with bubbly handwriting. From the way it was constructed, it was obvious from this letter that her grandmother was barely literate. Chelsey lives with her grandmother because her father disappeared and her mother lives with another man who doesn't really want her around. At her dance recital over the summer, her grandmother grimaced when she saw her daughter hug her granddaughter and leaned into me to say "she hasn't been to anything like this in five years." Chelsey was polite, but treated her mom like a stranger. Her Grandma gave her a doll to celebrate the dance recital. Watching her hold it was an eerie forshaddowing of what I see up and down my street on Elm. There are dozens of 14 to 16 year old girls pushing strollers. If they don't have babies (or even if they do) I see them at ten o'clock at night going down to the park on my street to get high or drunk. The kids here travel in gangs and get 40s from who knows where: their drugged out parents, drugged out vagrants, liquor stores and carry-out places just trying to scrape by. I wanted to tell all of the Asian, quiet, Hopkins girls: your student will know more about sex than you do, they will know more swear words, they have probably witnessed more of what makes this world difficult to live in than you might ever see. The student you tutor will probably be pregnant and dropped out in a few years no matter how many flashcards you make them. It's just the way things are.
I do have hope for Chelsey, I tried to share a little of that with them. But I get nervous when I see her hanging out with the girls who smoke, knowing that those girls are probably already having sex some are already having sex for beer or drugs. I get worried that I can't ever say these things to Chelsey because it's all she sees around her, she doesn't know another way to be, hampden is the whole world and when you turn 18 you have a couple of kids and yell at your boyfriend from the doorstep to come back home, you sleep in a three bedroom house with two full families of cousins and step siblings. It's just the way things are.
They might place me with Chelsey again and I think that might be really beneficial, because no matter how often she called me a nerd or a geek, I think she ...Or I know she, had some other thoughts or curiosities about why I was different than what she got to see from day to day. I don' t know if she wants to be like me. I'm not as tough as the other girls she sees, but maybe she'll want to be a nerd or a geek a little bit.
it's just really scary that even if she wants something different for her life, and she has the opportunity to see something different and decide on it, I don't know if she will have the opportunity to get out of hampden. Could it be even worse to show someone what they might not ever be able to have or create?
that's all for now, internet. If you want to tutor with me I bet they are still recruiting. Especially if you are a boy, they need guys.
let's be friends for a long time.
xo
posted by j-e-s-s-i-c-a at 7:46 PM
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