I spend my Sunday mornings with frenetic kindergartners. On the first day of the week, the only thing that motivates me to get up before 9 AM is my volunteering position as a teacher’s assistant in Bridgewater Chinese School. The day before I must submerge myself into the sea of high schoolers, I choose to step into the chaos of elementary school.
About a quarter of the way through the school year, as I entered the list of red As and Bs into the gradebook, I noticed that one student, Chloe, was getting grades significantly lower than her classmates. Chloe was the smallest kindergartner, the one who carefully positioned her Ariel and Belle princess figurines on her desk before getting out her books, the one who spent most of class undoing and redoing her curly hazel pigtails, and often the last one to toddle up to my desk to hand in the weekly quiz, when the …show more content…
As the year went on, Chloe fell more and more behind as she occupied her time playing with erasers and gazing out the window. The teacher was frustrated with Chloe’s unbreakable cycle and her inattentiveness, but did not have time to pay her individualized attention, as the rest of the class was progressing on task. One day, the teacher instructed me to help her with the quiz, and I rushed over to spell out the dictated words for Chloe, trying to catch her up to her classmates when I realize that Chloe is determinedly printing, slowly but steadily, with correct spellings and neat penmanship. She picked her head up from the table, looked up at me with big eyes and simply stated, “I can’t write fast. Can you repeat what word the teacher said?” Chloe was not a “bad student”. In my focus on pleasing the teacher and only doing as asked I had forgotten about my humanity and role to be there for the students. Chloe was frequently distracted, needing a sip of water from her tiny tightly-sealed Costco water bottle, a manual pencil sharpener, a trip to the bathroom, towels to
About a quarter of the way through the school year, as I entered the list of red As and Bs into the gradebook, I noticed that one student, Chloe, was getting grades significantly lower than her classmates. Chloe was the smallest kindergartner, the one who carefully positioned her Ariel and Belle princess figurines on her desk before getting out her books, the one who spent most of class undoing and redoing her curly hazel pigtails, and often the last one to toddle up to my desk to hand in the weekly quiz, when the …show more content…
As the year went on, Chloe fell more and more behind as she occupied her time playing with erasers and gazing out the window. The teacher was frustrated with Chloe’s unbreakable cycle and her inattentiveness, but did not have time to pay her individualized attention, as the rest of the class was progressing on task. One day, the teacher instructed me to help her with the quiz, and I rushed over to spell out the dictated words for Chloe, trying to catch her up to her classmates when I realize that Chloe is determinedly printing, slowly but steadily, with correct spellings and neat penmanship. She picked her head up from the table, looked up at me with big eyes and simply stated, “I can’t write fast. Can you repeat what word the teacher said?” Chloe was not a “bad student”. In my focus on pleasing the teacher and only doing as asked I had forgotten about my humanity and role to be there for the students. Chloe was frequently distracted, needing a sip of water from her tiny tightly-sealed Costco water bottle, a manual pencil sharpener, a trip to the bathroom, towels to