You Can't Always Get What You Want.......and sadly, sometimes, even if you try, you can't get what you need. What a day I've had. We started our new observations today at L. elementary school in the inner valley. I want to say inner city, but it's really the valley. However, it might as well be the inner city. The middle school we were at last week is only about two and half (fairly long) blocks away and as bad as that was, this elementary school is a thousand times worse. I feel like today was one of those seminal days that changes you forever. S. Middle School is like Beverly Hills compared to this K-5 school. The neighborhood goes from bad to really, really fucking scary in only 3 blocks. I parked on a busy street, but was still paranoid my car wouldn't be there when we were let out. There's absolutely no parking in the parking lot. The cars are stacked three and four high. The neighborhood is beyond poor. It is the very image of poverty, hopelessness, fear. It's a densely populated area, and the school is impacted with about 1200 students. About 98% are Hispanic and 100% are on both Federally funded breakfast and lunch programs.
According to our site manager, this place is the safest place the students will be in all day. This food is probably the most food, and the best food, they'll get all day. Most students come from immigrant parents. Many are agrarian workers. The site manager said that on average, the parents were only educated up until the 6th grade - maybe even less for the women. So not only do they not speak English, many of them are semi-literate or just completely illiterate.
Many children live with several other families in one room in one apartment. Sometimes they have no permanent address. Some kids live in a car. This is one of the few schools that has both a full-time psychologist on staff AND a psychiatric social worker. The problems at home for these kids are monumental. Divorces, abuse, alcoholism, drug abuse, incest, violence - and bad parenting...whcih isn't a crime but should be. The nurse at the school has the biggest job of any school nurse I've ever seen. She not only treats cuts and bruises, she gets the students glasses if they need them, medical care...even handing out soap. I mean, these kids don't even have SOAP sometimes! I took one sick little girl to the bathroom (she was a first grader I was observing - oh please don't let me get sick!) and she didn't even know how to wash her hands properly. So I gently asked her to use soap and explained to her why she should do that. Her name is Jessica and she was so sweet.
I have been placed in a first grade class all this week. I have to say, the teacher is really short, blunt and abrasive with these kids. She's not a bad teacher it seems; her style just grates on me. Many of these kids are very bright, although almost all of them come to kindergarten speaking no English. Yet these kids all spoke English pretty well. I could not stop thinking about the kindergarten class I worked with earlier this year and how much those kids have - not even in terms of material goods, but in terms of a place to live, and parents who are able to take good care of them.
These parents are at the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs. They are in total survival mode. One mother keeps bringing her daughter to first grade an hour late every day. The teachers usually need translators to talk with the parents. Many parents don't care; there are a rare few that do.
Regardless of how I feel about their parents coming to this country as illegal immigrants (somehow I get branded as racist for stating a fact) I do know that all they want is a better life for themselves, and possibly more importantly for their children. Most, if not all of these children have been born here, so they are U.S. citizens. Sadly they move around a lot, so the school has a very transient population of students. I fear the U.S. will simply become like Mexico one day. There will be two classes of people. The very rich and the very, very poor.
I will say they had a beautiful, colourful library with tons of nice, new books. I was so happy to see that. The school itself is quite old. The bathrooms were filthy. I thought I could handle it. I think of that cliched line, "You can't handle the truth!" No. I was stunned. It's one thing to hear about poverty in the abstract. It's one thing to drive through a poverty-stricken neighborhood or see the occasional begger. It's an entirely different thing altogether to know how these children live, and see them up close.
I was introduced as Ms. D, because my last name is a bitch to say. They all said "Hi Ms. D!" They were writing a sentence or two on the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Some wrote beautifully. One student should've been held back in kindergarten according to the teacher because he can't write at all. But for some reason he wasn't held back. This is why we have people at the college level who can't read and write. His mother didn't want him held back. The principal wouldn't back up the teacher. It's fucked. I walked around, said hello to each student and complimented their writings and/or drawings. They're sweet - they're just 6 years old. A lot of them seemed fascinated by me for some reason.
In other news, Fletcher abused her cone-free privileges and licked herself so hard it looked like she had internal bleeding. I called the vet from school and they told me to bring her in. So I missed the first class meeting of Educational Psychology. Thank God the professor was understanding. But it put so much pressure on me to miss that meeting. You get a feel for how the class is going to be in the first meeting. Although my friend P. will tell me about it and give me her notes, it's not the same as being there. I fucking NEW I was going to miss something due to this cat. I feel like even if I am sick and DYING I have to attend every class session no matter what. And little kids are always sick. I remember only too well how sick the kids at WR got me last spring.
At least they took Fletcher's stitches out. But that head cone is back on and back on for another week. I HAVE HAD IT with this cat saga. It's not her fault. But I knew in my heart I'd miss a class or an observation because of her somehow. I guess it was my own stupidity in freeing her from the cone.
Driving from the elementary school to our college for class, my friend P. said sarcastically, "We can't educate the Mexicans. Who will clean our houses?" Sadly I think a lot of people feel this way. But these kids do deserve an education. I just don't know if I have it in me to give it to them. God help me, but I don't know that I could do it. That makes me feel sad and ashamed. One thing I will always feel from now on, in a way that is completely different, is grateful for my upbringing. Grateful to the Fates, luck, whatever that I had two loving parents who provided me with a healthy, wonderful childhood for the most part. You think you have problems...then you go to a place like this. And suddenly, you have no problems at all.
