It is always refreshing to come into BJM and be greeted by students from the last semesters.

Unfortunately, I had accidentally called one of the students by the name of another student, which they thought was hilarious and kept rambling on about how I “don’t know” any of them. It took quite a bit of time for them to settle down, especially since they were no longer getting any homework done cause this mistake was apparently very funny.

A group of students in the homework area were discussing the uncertainty of their attendance to the school dance. What I found the most interesting was that this group of boys, who I knew from last semester, had told me about their plan to wear matching suspenders and sun glasses to the Valentine’s Day dance. What had changed in the last few months? They group of boys were still friends with each other, as were a lot of the other students.

I felt that these boys has reached the “too cool for school” phase, and were no longer excited to participate in school activities along with the rest of their classmates.

As a fifth grader, you should expect the homework problems to be more challenging than the previous years. I was asked to assist in solving a problem of determine the weights of a pineapple and an orange. The only problem was, I could not figure out the question without using an equation, but the fifth graders have not yet learned algebra. Because of this, I resorted to using trial and error, to which one of the students thought “the college age girl doesn’t even know how to do it”. I finally did figure out the answer, but since it took so long to figure out the answer, they were disinterested and unmotivated to figure it out for themselves. Regardless, I thought it was interesting to see the difficulty range of homework problems and motivation to find the answer from the group of students I was working with.

Today at BJM I was cleaning up after second choice when I was approached by a second grader. He asked if he could help me finish a puzzle I had been working on. We were a great team, and completed three puzzles over the course of the hour. With the first two 100-piece puzzles, we were frustrated that one piece was missing both times. Finally, on the last puzzle, we finally found one that had all of the pieces and were able to successfully and fully finish a puzzle.

I was surprised at how vocal this second grader was, as a young student I would not have approached an older student (even though he thought I was 16) and would definitely not prompt conversation while completing an activity. With programs like A+ that allow interactions between college and elementary students, it makes it easier for college age students to be approached by younger students.

It was a light day at BJM today during second choice. Only one student and another volunteer were left in the library and there was no Mandarin lesson scheduled for today. I offered to play Uno with him, which proved to be quite the experience.
In our group game, it was tough to be serious during the game-play and watch the student’s facial expressions when he kept drawing cards. Additionally, he kept making piles of cards, but the other volunteer and I could not figure out what the piles signified until he began to file on “skip turn” and “reverse” cards. For a second-grader, he was quite competitive and tried to trick us with rules he knew of. Uno has different rules and game-plays based on who you talk to, but some rules are more well-known than others. In the end, the student played his piles of cards very well and strategically and showed both the other volunteer and myself the numerous ways the game could be played.

When I was a Rose Service Scholar last year, the A+ program at Beverly J. Martin Elementary School had a few options to choose from when it came to deciding where to spend your afternoon. When I arrived this week, I learned that they had expanded the number of options available, I thought I would sit in on the Chinese language class. A few students were ambitious and wanted to learn Mandarin. A PhD student from Cornell runs the program and creates an interactive power point and worksheet based on upcoming events and subjects. This week we learned how to say “My favorite ____ is”, with topics including food and holidays. I was especially impressed that younger students (those in second and third grade) were also participating and spelling out the pronunciations phonetically. My absolute favorite part, as well as the students’, was when the teacher had the volunteers help her into her Halloween costume: a blow up dinosaur.