I had my first day at work at my Off Campus Work Study Community Service Job this past Wednesday. Providence College is luckily home to Feinstein Institute for Public Service which encompasses the academic efforts of majors like that of Public Service and Planning (PSP) and Global Studies. One of my two majors is Global Studies, so that is why I am working where I am! I do not want to expose the real name of the place or the people that I work with's names just to assume some amount of respect of persons. By the way, my major was nationally recognized as one of the best of its kind recently this week for some award thing! Cool! PC is a great school. I love it a lot. Okay, so down to the knitty and gritty. I was not sure what to expect on my first day, but seeing as I have been a camp counselor, I was ready for any missing goldfish or nurse trip that could have possibly been thrown at me. I walked in and went to the front administrative desk. Apparently the school is split in half by elementary and high school which I suppose would make sense. You'd never see a kindergartener (gardner?... gardener? Hashtag confused with spelling even though I am in college -_0 - opening a locker, or an 11th grader shoveling elmer's like their getting paid. Hell. I finally made it through to the elementary school after looking like my friend Caroline puts it "wonderbread white boy" on campus. The school is your typical underfunded urban city school with a vastly diverse make-up. It is sad, but the kids love it and you can tell. That is for sure all that matters. I signed into the front desk (in my brain) and just proceeded to the room. It was at the end of the hallway... near the nurses office. I had a feeling I would be visiting the nurse often, and when I peed in her bathroom and saw her dyed cheetah pink leopard hair... that's when I knew. The kids love her because they can pet her! Lord. Anyway, I entered the classroom and met the teacher whom with which I had been in contact with earlier those two weeks. She was and is superb. So sarcastic, young, upbeat, and hilarious- just the way someone who teaches 5 year olds that drop bombs in their pants should be! She introduced me to the kids as Mr. Zach. It made me feel like totally super special inside. Official kindgarten God status. I was just sitting there, looking like I got hit by a bus considering I went to bed at 3 am and woke up at 7, but the kids kept glancing at me anyway as if I farted or something. They are so cute. There are a couple of them that just intrigue the hell out of me. You can just tell exactly the type of people these kids are going to be when they are older. You can read them like a book. They cannot read books. That is for certain. We got started right away though. The Teacher who I will just refer to as "t" from now on, speaks with an affirming yet cautionary hand. She lets her students know when they aren't behaving well or trying their best in the most appropriate ways. She knows what's up. We began with Mathematics- MY FAVORITE. I just took an exam on derivates tonight. I don't know what it means to derive a number from another number. That just sounds like number inception to me. I told one of my friends that I wanted to draw a giant blackhole on my tests once and say the question got sucked into sector 4 on the graph. I'm thinking I will definitely do that, soon. It will be one of the few things my professor has laughed at since stonehenge was erected. So, math. We got whiteboards up and had the kids go at it head to head adding tens and ones with one another. T explained to me how math and specifically addition is taught a new Singaporean way. Ah, look at those Singaporeans... always adding to math and science in someway. You go math and tech superstars, you go. Apparently adding is now expressed in what you may call "number bonds". Who knows, maybe when the students are older, they will be able to do chemistry right off the bat. She showed me a diagram of a number bond and I thought my brain left my body through "insert orifice here". What in the living hell is a number bond? My goodness. After finishing that, I have observed the academic reaches of these kids. There is one of them who will go by "A". A has been diagnosed with some form of ADD or attention disorder. Sometimes we doubt the existence of these diseases, but when compared to a social norm... there seems to be some sort of deviation. It is so clear that A does lack some sort of missing component socially than the other children. He is not the only one, however. You talk to him and he just cannot pay attention. He fidgets and constantly picks his skin and cannot stop. It is sad, but A is remarkable. When he goes up to answer a problem or academic question, he does so with flawless grace and agility. He impresses me and reminds me something of myself, sometimes. Although, I don't know who I was in elementary school... I used to write sorry notes to my friends and put their favorite candy in them when they were mad at me and play epic tag on the playground. Life. It was nice to be back in elementary school, too. When I was with the kids, there was something about them that made me feel young again- which is not to say I'm not youthful anyway. I have a ton of fun at school and have a smile on my face most of the time, but these kids have an uncanny ability to fix that smile permanently. We went onto lunch at one point. Not only until I started working here did I realize how vile elementary school lunches were. How are these kids not on the chamber pot all day? HOLY HELL GOD MAN. That salad looked like wheatgrass and starburst pieces, to sub for carrots. The pasta? Smelled nice. Cool. One of the girls that is in my class had every single cookie she thought she ate all over her dress from head-to-toe. I said, hunny "your stomach is under your dress not on top of it". She laughed and knew I was just being funny.
Then it was time for recess. Out we went. One word- mania. Tag has become the quintissential elementary school game. I had about 25 little five and six year olds nearly tackle me in excitement. They were literally falling over one another in a stampede of crazy. I can't say I didn't love it, though! It was so much fun playing with them. They make me laugh a lot and I cannot stop when I'm around them. They rock and I am so excited for my time at the site. I'm going to be learning a lot about how to teach, myself, educational systems and programming/ urban development, and how to effectively make real academic progress in light of real and challenging learning disabilities/ obstacles. I have been given a project- which is to improve scores of a select small group of kids. There's about four or five of them. I am looking up plans and strategies of how to improve a few things while they are learning in kindgergarten- otherwise known as "el jardín de infancia"- literally translated the garden of youth. They got it right, those Spanish speakers, it is quite the garden. I'm about to weed it. So excited to make some change and see them grow by my hand.
