Sweet Thank You's

Blogging two days in a row??? Whoa. It's like I'm a real blogger or something. :)

I've been thinking a lot about varying socioeconomic status lately. I talk about it all the time in my classes and I'm faced with at my work everyday.

Working with inner city kids is tough. They push me to my limits all the time. I look at some of our students and tell myself that my children will never act that way/will never disrespect adults how they do sometimes/will never do this and that. But I can't really know that for sure. I can't control what my children will do.

Parents get blamed for out of control kids a lot, which........yes, if you're doing drugs and abusing your children then you can be to blame, but many times it's not the parents fault. One thing that's been on my mind a lot lately is the cycle of poverty inner city families face and how it's hard to get out of it. I've been thinking about how poverty affects children and although they might have good parents....the situation they are in makes them act out.

It seriously breaks my heart looking at some situations some of my students are in. There is one little boy who just barely moved here from Mexico. He is the sharpest, cutest, and happiest kid. Oh my goodness, he's so great! I love talking to him.......but he only knows Spanish. .......and I guess I DO know Spanish.

Kind of.

I talk to him and get the gist of what he's saying usually.

The reason this situation breaks my heart is because now that he's here he's an ESL student and has a big disadvantage. He's at least two or three grade levels ABOVE the other kids his age. At least. But now that he's an ESL student he might as well be that many levels behind. I have no idea what kind of school he was going to in Mexico, but it was top notch! He's really good at math and reading.....he just checks out perfectly in so many academic ways.

This kid is a testament that stereotypes about immigrants should be thrown away and burned, because he really is so smart and well-rounded. He's always wanting to help, even though he doesn't speak English and doesn't know how to articulate what he wants.

I'm sure his family had a good reason for coming here, but it still makes me so sad that they are at such a big disadvantage with the language and everything else that comes from immigrating here.

It makes me wish I could clone myself a hundred times and do something more than I already am doing.

We went on a field trip today to the Punkinaze which actually turned out to be a blast! Although... I had so much anxiety over it before we went.

Forty kids........four teachers.......a CORN MAZE........

I don't know about anybody else, but my ONLY experiences with corn mazes have been going with my friends and getting lost for 2-3 hours. Like legitimately getting lost. Ha ha.

So yeah.....anxiety.

It turned out super fun though. {Minus the kids not listening on the bus and a little girl puking on the ride home.}

They have two huge slides (seriously huge) that are outside of the maze. Half of our kids spent the whole time just playing on those. And nobody got lost in the maze! (probably cause it was daytime and it was an easy maze, ha ha)

Going and doing things like that make me really realize how INCREDIBLY blessed I am. So. Incredibly. Blessed.

On the way there in the bus we passed Walmart and ten or so of our kids got SO excited! And I'm not talking about normal kid "Hey, look it's Walmart!" kind of excited. This was a different level.

"I love Walmart! I go there all the time!" .... "It's such a cool place!" ..... "Yeah, Walmart is the best!"

It sounds kind of funny, but it seriously opens your eyes to the lives that these kids have.

I know there is no way any of my students do the things that I did when I was little. I was always in dance lessons. I played the harp. I went on two week long vacations with my family every summer with smaller vacations in between. I took voice lessons. I was in musicals. I took art lessons. I did tumbling and t-ball. I did soccer till I decided I didn't like playing it.........my students don't even get to decide if they like things like that because they don't get those opportunities in their lives.

They get to go to Walmart....and that's a cool thing.

So when we got to the Punkinaze it didn't surprise me at all that they were all ECSTATIC. They were screaming and smiling bigger than ever. They had SO much fun and kept telling me that they were.

There is one boy in particular who probably is my favorite (but I would never tell any of them that) who came up to me and thanked me for taking him there. He was genuinely so happy that he got to go. 

Yes, in the majority culture we teach our children to mind their manners and say thank you when it's appropriate. But how often does a child actually truly feel that much gratitude and express it so sweetly (without being told) when someone has done a nice thing for them?

It brings me joy to see kids, who struggle through so many things, be so happy. Most of our kids struggle in school. Others struggle making friends or keeping friends. Some have hard family lives. It's nice to sit back and know that at least for that forty-five minutes they were able to be completely free and have fun.

I don't really think there is a reasonable answer to breaking the cycle of poverty, but it is comforting to know sometimes that even though you're not doing a lot, at least you made somebody happy for the day.