What's that on your forehead?
Last night after tutoring I went to get ash Wednesday ashes with Virginia. I hadn't been to mass in so long, I was surprised that I remembered all of the parts. (Except when they were singing that thing, in Latin, I didn't remember the Latin.)I've never been to St. Thomas. I liked it. It was a little church with tall, buttressing rafters, an a tall, arched ceiling, and pretty, tall stained-glass windows. But, at the same time, It didn't look too fancy at all. It was nice.
I survived this Wednesday at tutoring. Wednesdays are hard. My "study buddy" is 14 and in the 7th grade. She wears tight jeans, smokes pot, drinks, hangs out with boys, shouts anytime she wants to be heard and never has any homework to do. She promised me she'd bring her make up packet her teacher is putting together for her next week. And there will be a lot of work in that packet for her to finish. Apparently I'm a lot harder on her than her Monday tutor and that's why she doesn't like me as much. Does her Monday tutor just not expect anything from her? Or is she essentially just kinder and more patient than I am?
I'll see her on Monday and I can have a conversation with her about how things are going. I know she's frustrated to. This Monday, All of the tutors sat around the table for a short meeting. I don't know why we don't do this every week, it seems so important to talk to each other about what we're doing and how we feel about it, and what progress we've made. To commiserate when we have a bad night or rejoice when we've accomplished something. Well, Brian and Emma and I ~ I guess this is what we do, a little more informally at Fraisers at $1 a boh.
At last Mondays meeting with all of the tutors there was this interesting debate that sort of came up. It became really easy to say "All these Hampden kids have this problem" or indicating that because they are from Hampden that they have developed a lot of the discipline problems that they have. I noticed it a little and wondered if we were giving credit to the kids who were doing well. But one woman piped up. I was sort of thankful she did. But then she went on about how these kids are exactly the same as any other group of teenagers, and, although she doesn't live here, she knows that they could be described as misbehaved kids, and not Hampden kids in such a general sense. Yes, Generalizations are bad, and everyone admitted that and apologized but continued to point out that the majority of students here have difficulties dealing with their home lives and it is much different than other parts of Maryland, even than Baltimore City. Our drop out rate and teen pregnancy rate, are higher per capita than most public schools in the entire city. The woman went on to announce that she was a civil defender and she knew about these things, but does she? She was fiery and wouldn't drop it and it made all of the tutors uncomfortable.
What an interesting situation. When you're somewhere and you hear people making generalizations, are you strong enough to stand up and say "that's not right"? Sometimes I wish I was more comfortable with that. It's also interesting, because when she was learning statistics from people in the group about why this collection of kids is different than any other, she didn't step down or change her argument, maybe she was afraid to do that. I think that I also have trouble with that.
I could be all wrong about all of that, but it was still an interesting situation to be in. When was the last time you saw a bunch of grown up strangers engage in a fiery conversation ?
Last night after tutoring I went to get ash Wednesday ashes with Virginia. I hadn't been to mass in so long, I was surprised that I remembered all of the parts. (Except when they were singing that thing, in Latin, I didn't remember the Latin.)I've never been to St. Thomas. I liked it. It was a little church with tall, buttressing rafters, an a tall, arched ceiling, and pretty, tall stained-glass windows. But, at the same time, It didn't look too fancy at all. It was nice.
I survived this Wednesday at tutoring. Wednesdays are hard. My "study buddy" is 14 and in the 7th grade. She wears tight jeans, smokes pot, drinks, hangs out with boys, shouts anytime she wants to be heard and never has any homework to do. She promised me she'd bring her make up packet her teacher is putting together for her next week. And there will be a lot of work in that packet for her to finish. Apparently I'm a lot harder on her than her Monday tutor and that's why she doesn't like me as much. Does her Monday tutor just not expect anything from her? Or is she essentially just kinder and more patient than I am?
I'll see her on Monday and I can have a conversation with her about how things are going. I know she's frustrated to. This Monday, All of the tutors sat around the table for a short meeting. I don't know why we don't do this every week, it seems so important to talk to each other about what we're doing and how we feel about it, and what progress we've made. To commiserate when we have a bad night or rejoice when we've accomplished something. Well, Brian and Emma and I ~ I guess this is what we do, a little more informally at Fraisers at $1 a boh.
At last Mondays meeting with all of the tutors there was this interesting debate that sort of came up. It became really easy to say "All these Hampden kids have this problem" or indicating that because they are from Hampden that they have developed a lot of the discipline problems that they have. I noticed it a little and wondered if we were giving credit to the kids who were doing well. But one woman piped up. I was sort of thankful she did. But then she went on about how these kids are exactly the same as any other group of teenagers, and, although she doesn't live here, she knows that they could be described as misbehaved kids, and not Hampden kids in such a general sense. Yes, Generalizations are bad, and everyone admitted that and apologized but continued to point out that the majority of students here have difficulties dealing with their home lives and it is much different than other parts of Maryland, even than Baltimore City. Our drop out rate and teen pregnancy rate, are higher per capita than most public schools in the entire city. The woman went on to announce that she was a civil defender and she knew about these things, but does she? She was fiery and wouldn't drop it and it made all of the tutors uncomfortable.
What an interesting situation. When you're somewhere and you hear people making generalizations, are you strong enough to stand up and say "that's not right"? Sometimes I wish I was more comfortable with that. It's also interesting, because when she was learning statistics from people in the group about why this collection of kids is different than any other, she didn't step down or change her argument, maybe she was afraid to do that. I think that I also have trouble with that.
I could be all wrong about all of that, but it was still an interesting situation to be in. When was the last time you saw a bunch of grown up strangers engage in a fiery conversation ?
posted by j-e-s-s-i-c-a at 11:07 AM
1 Comments:
I just wanted to drop you a line and thank you for your efforts to make an impact in the lives of those kids. I think it’s wonderful whenever I read these stories of tutoring here or on Brian’s blog. You are making a sacrifice of your time and displaying a true compassion for the community that should be applauded. That’s a generalization about tutors and others that volunteer their time to help people that I’m not afraid to make.
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