Yeah, the high school students of Mossyrock are really concerned with the environment. When this girl gave her two cents in biology class, I guess I wasn't very subtle with my look of disgust, because the teacher later commented that my "eyes glazed over" and I "tensed up" when I heard that comment. Stupid kids.
Words to describe this week: fulfilling....shocking.....sad.....busy....rewarding.....interesting.....GO GREEN.
Monday I worked really hard with a boy named Ricardo, who is one of my "target" students. He works really hard, cares about school, asks for help, seems like a good kid. I helped him prepare for an English test, typed up a study guide for him, and walked into his English class on Tuesday morning to talk to the teacher about the study guide. The teacher's response was, "let's talk outside." At first I thought I was in trouble, but when we went outside (as in outside the building), he revealed to me that Ricardo had been arrested and expelled on Monday afternoon for bringing a Co2 gun to school, and making a threatening gesture at another student. I was shocked beyond belief. The teacher went on to say that he likely lost any chance of getting his US citizenship, and Ricardo had indicated that he had no plans to try school again after a year. He was done, basically given up. So that was a tragic story of a kid with a lot of potential who just didn't quite get the consequences of his actions. He saw the gun as an innocent toy, but the school saw it otherwise.
That sort of put a damper on my day/week, I had to change my schedule around a little bit since I had a lot of slots working with him. However, I was able to put a lot more focus on these 2 sisters, one of whom has decent English, the other with almost none. They had 3 tests this week, so I spent a lot of time with them helping them out in the library studying and translating the tests for them. Rosa, the one without much English, struggles so much with understanding the tests, and even when I explain the questions, she still needs a lot of prompting to get an answer out of her. Once we have come up with how to word her answer, I literally have to spell every single word out for her. However, even though this has been hard, and both girls seem to need at least 2 class periods to finish the tests, I felt like I helped a lot, and especially with biology they both seemed to be able to come up with a lot of good answers. HOWEVER, I learned yesterday that, because they are a migrant family, they will more than likely be moving NEXT WEEK to Arizona. Soooo it kinda feels like my students are dropping like flies. I can't imagine how hard it would be to live in such a situation, where you literally have to change schools all the time.
I do still have students to work with, so I guess I'll be able to give more attention to them. One of them has been involved in some gang-related activity, and really shows no interest in doing any work ever, so I'm not eager to put a lot of energy into him. I guess it will be a good challenge. And I'm hoping to spend a little more time at the elementary level, where the kids hug you and love you without you having to win their affection.
Tonight we're testing out the Morton Bowling Alley (Victory Lanes!), and planning to do lots of lying around this weekend. However, tomorrow night we're hitting the homecoming game, before which the principal and his wife are going to cook for us and entertain us. Go Vikings!
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