Student Teaching - Week #12

by Rebecca Verhage - Walsh Elementary

Home Visit

The girls had a volleyball game and one of our students wanted to stay after school for it, but needed a ride home. My teacher offered him a ride as long as it was OK with his parents, which it was. After the game, my teacher told me she would take me home too since it was on the way. When we pulled up in front of his apartment, she looked at me and asked, “Are you ready Miss Verhage?” So I hopped out with her. Apparently we were going to make a home visit.

We followed the boy up two flights of stairs to his home. My teacher told him to tell his mother we were here. As he opened the door, his dog raced out and happily jumped around us sniffing and wanting to be petted. There was a bit of a commotion as he told his parents we were there. His dad went to hide in the other room and the rest of us tried to get the dog inside. As we entered, I looked around and noticed how small the place was. We were immediately in the kitchen which was a bit of a disaster. There were dishes with scraps of food on them on the table, and it generally looked like it could use a good cleaning. When my student walked in, he instantly picked up his nine month old sister and kissed her on the forehead. He looked like a little father the way he bounced her and held her close. His little brother ran up to him wearing an oversized t-shirt that could have been his dad’s and nothing else. He asked if he could use his brother’s tablet and after a little teasing, he obliged.  His little sister was there too; she was a third grader and was wearing clothes that could use a bit a washing.

The father works at a bar and the parents often go out to the clubs on the weekends leaving the boy to take care of his three younger siblings. You could tell too, by the way he cared for them little ones. My teacher had never spoken to the parents because she never had the correct phone number.  Instead she had always gone through the grandmother. Now this student is a sometimes a trouble maker, but we weren’t there to talk about that.

You see, this boy had a bit of a break down a couple weeks earlier where he and my teacher were talking about his behavior with his grandma. During the conversation, my teacher asked him when was the last time he had hugged his dad and when was the last time he had been told by his parents that they loved him. He shook his head and said that he couldn’t remember. His grandma said the same thing. My teacher encouraged him to try telling his dad that he loved him that weekend.  When he came to school on Monday, and my teacher asked how it went, he said his father just asked him what was wrong with him and why he was acting so strange. (It’s no wonder kids act up. They just want love and attention and if they can’t get it positively, then they go for the next best thing.)

We could tell his mother was a bit apprehensive when we entered the apartment. She was expecting to hear what her son had done wrong this time, but instead my teacher praised him. She told his mom what a good kid he was, admitting that he had his moments, but that we loved him and the other students loved him. We were there for about fifteen minutes and the whole time my cooperating teacher praised him and as she got to know the family better.

I’m glad I was able to be a part of that visit and it was cool to see the mom’s demeanor toward her son change as she heard the teacher say good things about him.  (And the boy beamed with pride!) I don’t know if anything will change with his parents but it meant a lot to him.

The next day at school the boy told the entire class how we both went to his house the night before. He told them how his dog attacked us (a little bit of an exaggeration) and how we met his little sister.  He was baskin’ in the lime light!

Grief Awareness Day

Francisco "Javi" Merino
January 2, 1993 - November 7, 2012

Thursday was the first anniversary of the death of a boy named Javi. He was nineteen when he died, just one house down from where he lived, from seven gunshot wounds. Javi attended elementary school at Walsh and was known by some of our students. Four of the students at our school either saw the shooting or were there to help move him to the car as they tried to get him to the hospital. Javi’s death marked the 449^th death in Chicago last year, but was never reported on the news. To this day, no suspect is in custody, so in a lot of ways, these students never got any closure.

A couple of weeks ago, the math teacher was giving her lesson and somehow Javi’s name was brought up during the discussion. Four male students and one female broke down crying. These kids obviously hadn’t dealt with their grief or really had the chance to talk about it. The teacher decided to allow time for students to share about loses in their lives. The counselor planned the day with both large and small group sessions in order to provide different types of opportunities for students to grieve.

Javi’s mom was there and spoke with some of the students who knew him in a small group of their own. I later found out about some of that conversation. Javi was good friends with the older brother of one of our students. That brother was involved in gangs and drugs during high school until Javi came alongside him and encouraged him to get away from that stuff. Our student thanked Javi’s mom sharing that “Javi helped my brother be a brother to me.” After Javi’s death, the brother relapsed. Javi’s mom shared that it was Javi’s dream to get kids off the streets and working. He wanted to open a barber shop with lots of chairs so he could give everyone jobs because if people were working, there would be less gang violence. She spoke to the students asking them to help her carry out Javi’s dream. She told them they needed to stay away from drugs and gangs because those things don’t help and to work hard to do something meaningful with their lives…for Javi.

During the large group session, students and teachers alike shared the grief in their lives. One teacher shared that her brother had been killed, shot by a thirteen year old boy who had been promised a new pair of shoes if he killed this man. For a new pair of shoes, a widow was made and three children lost their father. My teacher shared that it was this incident that reaffirmed her desire to work with youth at this critical age to help them understand the choices they are making. It was a powerful story.

I was half shocked at all the examples of gang violence or other losses these students could name. A lot of these students have had a dad walk out on them or have parents who are separated and who are conflicted about it, being angry at their parents, but still loving them because they are their parents. One student shared with me that his cousin, a seventeen year old, who lived with him and his family had been shot two years ago in front of his school. He told me that they used to play basketball and video games together. He said they did not really talk about his cousin at home anymore but he would like to talk about him. It’s sad to think that these kids don’t feel able to share what they are going through with their parents or even other adults. However, it was really cool to see how all the students came together to cry and comfort each other. As my teacher pointed out, while most people did cry, it was the tough guys that were bawling, proving that there is always a reason behind their rough exterior.

On a bit of a lighter note, during the small group session I was in, we did some journaling first and then kids had the opportunity to share what they wrote. The first child to share spoke about how he deals with grief. He said that sometimes he gets really angry with his parents and that he draws as a way to relieve that stress. For instance, if he were mad at his mom, he would draw a dinosaur with a big nose and if he were mad at his dad, he would draw a Teletubby with a big belly. It was a great way to lighten the mood a bit because no one can listen to that and not laugh. I love this kid.

While this day came about as a result of the students who needed to deal with the death of Javi, I think it ended up being good for all students regardless of whether they knew him or not. In the future, they are going to try to do more things like this and more than just once a year because they want school to be the kids’ community, a safe place for them to come and share what they are going through and find support from friends and staff. And that’s what a school should be.  These kids need to deal with all the stuff that goes on in their lives before they are able to learn anyway.   As one teacher put it, “While I want them to learn and be prepared for further education, I want to teach them to be good human beings first. If they go away with nothing else, that is the most important thing I could teach them. There is already too much hurt in this world, we don’t need to add to it.”

Student Artwork

Art Event of the Week

Timeline Theatre

This week we went to the Lifeline Theater production of “A Raisin in the Sun.” It was a wonderful production with great actors. I have to admit that I was a little partial to the child in the play because he was super cute and funny even though he had a fairly small role. The story was especially interesting to me because it tied into what we are teaching in class this week. Our class is starting a poetry unit and we decided to use one of Maya Angelou’s poems. Then as we started planning, we decided that having some background on her would help the children understand the poem, and that led to us planning an author study where we looked at multiple of her poems would be a great way to set up the unit. Maya Angelou played a significant role in the Civil Rights Movement, working with both Malcolm X and Dr. King. In the play, the African-American family is confronted with racial discrimination and segregation as they plan to move to an area where there are no blacks.  They are offered money if they agree not to move.  The family must then decide what is most important, the badly needed money or standing up for their rights. I enjoyed the story a lot. There were many laughable moments but also some really sad ones. The characters had hard lives but in the end I think they all realized that family is what is important and that it is important to be proud of whom you are.