Child Study Blog Post

Many -if not all- of you know that I like and need to spend a great deal of time by myself. I am sensitive (overly sensitive?) to noise and need more time than others to decompress from the days activities. My first day at Abington Avenue Elementary most of the kids were screaming, running around, and playing with each other. At lunch I discovered that the cafeteria amplified the volume of the children’s voices (and gives me a bit of a headache). While I was looking around at the children, making sure they were eating and cleaning up, and just trying to take in my first lunch experience during the Summer Program, my eyes landed on a skinny boy sitting by himself at the end of one of the lunch tables. I knew right away that this young man would be “my child,” for this blog post.

Chamara and I sat down at the table with him, asked him some questions, and told him a little bit about ourselves. We learned that he is the youngest of seven children, but he only sees and is in regular contact with a few of his siblings. He has five brothers, varying in age from 15 to 24, and one sister, who is 21 and “likes girls.” I was surprised by how open he was with us and how willing he was to engage in conversation with us, answer our questions, and ask us about ourselves. He seemed very calm, collected, and comfortable around us. At first I thought, based on some of the information he shared with us, that he was making up some things up (he said he “wasn’t sure” of the age of one of his brothers), but after further interactions with him, I think he was either being honest, or we secretly caught him off-guard by interrupting his solitude in the lunch room. Either way, I enjoyed our conversation with him.

Throughout the duration of the summer program, I picked up some interesting tidbits about this young man. Last year he went to school at McKinley after moving to Newark from Florida. He currently lives around the block from Abington Ave. Elementary, and “may” be attending Abington in September. He told me that he misses Florida and wants to move back there and live with his Grandmother. He enjoys music and named Linkin Park as one of his favorites (I too enjoy their music). Basketball, baseball, football, and hockey!!! are his favorite sports, and he is an avid Ravens and Devils (boo!) fan. 

While the young man enjoys sports, I noticed that he rarely went on the day trips to the sports camps. (He did signup for the volleyball trip, but it was cancelled due to the weather during the second full week of the program.) I asked him if he was going on any of the big trips and he told me he wasn’t. I told him that I was excited to be going on the trip to Sterling Mill and Camp Lewis, and that Chamara would be going on the trip to the Turtleback Zoo. I was trying to ignite some desire in him to go of the trips, and it worked to an extent. He asked he what the other big trips were, which one of us residents were going on each trip, and wanted more information about each trip. After discussing the trips, he said he might want to go on the Camp Lewis trip on July 26th! However, after finding out that the bus was leaving around 7:30 am, he wavered in his desire to go on the trip. He told me that he doesn’t want to have to wake up early to go on the trips, and would rather sleep in and come to Abington at the normal time. By the time he decided he would like to go on the trip to Camp Lewis, it was full.

During lunch on the second day of the Summer Program, Chamara and I checked with him to see how he was enjoying the program so far. I asked him why he wanted to eat by himself, and he told me it was because he didn’t know anyone and he thought he was older than everyone else. While there weren’t a lot of older students the first couple of days, we let him know that there were some older boys going into sixth, seventh, and eighth grade sitting at a table on the other side of the room. At the time he didn’t feel comfortable going to talk to them, so Chamara and I talked to him for a bit, which lured a couple of the younger kids over to his table. His reaction to his new lunch-mates made me laugh out loud because he reminded me of myself... He told an energetic little boy who he found to be annoying that he would give him a Jolly Rancher to leave him alone. After the little boy promised he would sit somewhere else, the young man gave him the Jolly rancher and the little boy moved to a different table. However, the other two young children who came over to the table could not be bribed to switch tables.

During this short lunch period, the young man was smiling and laughing more than he had the previous day. I think he was becoming more comfortable, but I didn’t want to push him to ‘make friends’ with the other children before he was ready to. The first two days (Thursday and Friday) of the Summer Program the boy arrived early (before the gates opened at 12:30), but the following Monday he was absent. I was worried that because he didn’t interact with many of the other children, and the young ages of the other children during the first two days, that he decided not to stay in the program, but he was back on Tuesday. Over the next three weeks, I watched as he started to talk to the other children and get involved in some of the camp activities. His main pathway to getting to know the other children was through basketball games. I enjoyed seeing him bond with some of the boys and gain a core group of friends. He began to eat lunch with these boys, play cards with them, and go on walks to the store for soda and ice pops with them. We would still say hello to each other and chat occasionally (he even came up to me after watching me try to play basketball with the younger children and told me I should stick to football!), but I went from a very active role in my “Child Study” to a passive one. This progression was natural and almost subconscious; it was a little like being an imaginary friend that slowly disappears until they are no longer needed.

I enjoyed getting to know the young man and seeing him grow over the past three weeks. From my observations and interactions with him I learned some things that can help me this coming fall and in the future when I have my own classroom. I learned that while it is important to push students and help them grow, it is also important to give them time and space to feel out situations, make decisions, and adjust to their new surroundings. This September, I must remember that while Abington Ave. is new to me, the classroom, Mrs. Solarizano, and I are also new to the students. We, as a class, need time to learn about each other and find an energy and flow that works for all of us. We may have bumps along the way, but it’s these bumps that make the journey exciting and worthwhile.