This week, I was in the Math and Science room.

I sat down at a table with two girls and one boy. The two girls were playing this game where we had to try to fill the board with colored pieces (similar to tetris pieces) but there weren’t enough pieces, so they just tried to fill one side. Calvin was quietly watching but wanted to join, so I asked the two girls if Calvin and I could join. They agreed, but after one round, they left to play another game. Calvin became more talkative and said that he wanted to play a game that he was sure he could beat me every time because he’s very good at it. He meant Connect 4. Haha. I saw ways to win, but I let him win rounds and even pointed out what he could do to win, to which he responded with “I saw it before you pointed it out!” He then said “Let’s play but we each get 4 turns. I’ll go first!” He promptly puts in 4 pieces in a row.

He then pulls out a chess board with insufficient checker pieces. Calvin wanted me to play chess with him, but we didn’t have enough pieces nor the right pieces; we played anyway. We essentially played checkers, but the pieces moved differently. It showed me that kids don’t care about rules and winning (only sometimes though), but rather they just want to play and interact with others. As an only child, I didn’t really have others to play with; my parents did not understand much English, so explaining the rules to them was difficult. Maybe I should’ve just made up my own rules so I could play with them.

This week I got paired with Paloma and read with/to her.

She led me over to the bookshelves about animals, picked up a fairly challenging factual looking book about cats, and sat down in her favorite spot. She was telling me how she always reads books about cats, how they are her favorite animal, and all about her pet cat. She opened the book, and I expected her to read with ease and help her with a couple hard words here and there; however, she took a look at the first line and tried reading. She promptly closed the book after reading a couple of words and got up to find an easier book. Haha. It was quite comedic in the moment.

After much contemplation, she picked out a book called “Kylie Jean: Cupcake Queen” and asked me to read to her. I spent the next hour reading the book to her while stopping to gauge her reaction and converse every now and then about what is going on. She asked me a couple times what a paragraph or sentence meant or what was going on in the book. When I was in 5th grade, I worked with Kindergartners and I used to read to them, so it was nice to do that after such a long time.

Reading with Paloma made me realize that the reading comprehension that we have now came from when we were at that age and just how important elementary school is, even though we might not think it is right now. As someone who teaches reading comprehension to middle schoolers and high schoolers, I never realized that exposure to reading comprehension when you are younger impacted your understanding so much until now. It also made me realize how I never read for pleasure anymore. Up till high school, I was always reading books. I did not watch much tv, so I spent all of my time at the library reading books and at home reading books I borrowed from the library. My favorite genre was fiction and I always tried to read a higher level book than the one that they assigned me to. I don’t read any books for pleasure with the excuse that I have no time, but maybe now I will try to make some time.

This week at BJM I got to work with Ms. Stacy in the gym before heading to the Media Room/Club.

At first, I thought the gym would be difficult because (in my mind) that was where all the kids went to spend their extra energy; however, it was quite calm. There were kids who were just playing basketball by themselves and moving around a smaller hoop on wheels. It was entertaining and a bit worrying to watch because I was worried they would get hurt, but they were all focused on having fun they were not worried at all. There were 3 other kids dragging each other around on jump ropes, which they got told off for, but continued to just roll around on the floor. There were other students just talking with Ms. Stacy, and I realized how little the kids needed to have fun. Whenever my friends or I get bored lately, we resort to watching videos, playing cards, or video games, but these kids just need a space and maybe some jump ropes.

When I went to the media room, I worked with the gossip girls and helped them spell and form a script for their first episode, seeing they would start recording the next week, but our attention got pulled sometimes to the food/history/rap battles group. They were quite entertaining to watch and listen to because they were arguing whether bread should go against Kylie Jenner or Donald Trump. I was surprised by how much they could come up with (and some of the lyrics were actually pretty good). I was worried that they couldn’t finish this project since it seemed so big, but I was really happy to see it go (relatively) smoothly. I can’t wait to hear the finished project when it gets uploaded on the website. These students are going above and beyond what I thought they were capable of.

This week I was working in the Art Room and it was an interesting experience.

In the beginning, I was just helping the kids draw and talking with them. I was asked to draw eyes and scales on a mermaid, had my drawing taken away by another kid so he could color it in (and then he proceeded to tell me that his was better, to which I said “definitely”), and asked to help draw a computer. The art teacher then came over and told me to draw as well, and it was really refreshing and relaxing because I haven’t done anything like this since high school. It was fun to just sit down and draw with the other kids and help them out because there were no standards of what looks good or bad, just drawing to draw and to have fun.

After a while, a couple of the kids had left, so I worked with the art teachers and the remaining students on their Happy Fall sign by sticking leaves onto the sign. It was nice to just let go and enjoy what I was doing in the moment with the other students and teachers.

During my first visit to BJM elementary school, I was assigned to the Media Room.

I thought I would be just helping kids with different types of medias of art. However, when I walked into the room, I met 3 students from Ithaca college and 5 pairs of eager eyes. The whiteboard read “Media Club: Podcasts.” I didn’t know what I was walking into, so I introduced myself to the 3 students. They were from Ithaca college and they were the heads of Media Club.

I waited and chatted with them and the couple of kids in the room. A few more kids came in to see what was going on, and they decided to start the club meeting. The topic was Podcasts and the goal of the club was to have the students make a couple podcasts by the end of the program. At first, I thought the topic was too complex for them, but I was really surprised when they were able to list examples and describe podcasts in detail. They thought podcasts were just about news, so they were pleasantly surprised with the idea that podcasts could be about anything.

We then gave the pencils and paper to write down their ideas. They were all very creative and some of them were really amusing. I remember one paper was just about Fortnite and Roblox, another one was about gossip and had “lol” “omg” “more omgs” written on it, and another one had rap battles as the topic and one example was Marie Curie vs Donald Trump rap battle. They then started to talk about politics, showing me just how much they are aware about the world outside of school and their friend groups.

This visit to BJM made me realize just how much these kids know about the world around them and their thought processes because of the conversations they had, the topics they came up with, and the enthusiasm they had with the podcast project. I am not sure if I am going back to the Media Room, but I look forward to listening to their final products.