Angele Mainhart, Instructional Assistant, Jones Elementary; Enrichment Specialist, I Have A Dream
“Ms. Angele, why is your nose so long?”
“Why is yours so short?”
“Ms. Angele, why are your feet so big?”
“Why are yours so little?”
“Ms. Angele, why are your hands white and mine black?”
This wasn’t a question I was ready to field as I held up my fingers for him to count out his math problem. In one simple question, a 9-year-old child had summed up an entire year of AmeriCorps service for me.
Every once in a while, a child speaks more truth than any adult. We’ve become trained to spit out what people want to hear, to sugar-coat what we can’t explain. As he prodded each of my fingers, counting out-loud to himself, I watched his face, filled with both innocent truth and wisdom beyond his years and mine.
I felt like I had no right to even attempt to pretend that I knew what it must be like for him or any of the other children in the room. My parents were married, living in the same house. Never once in my life did I worry about guns in my neighborhood or hear shooting at night. Never once did I feel the weight of my own skin, especially not as a child.
For a split second I wondered what I was doing sitting in that room, thinking I could make any difference in a world I did not belong to and could not begin to understand. I have a college degree. I could be sitting in an air-conditioned office in a business suit, scheduling meetings with politicians to discuss the next big newspaper article I would write. Instead, I was in an apartment in public housing, working two jobs and barely getting through by the skin of my teeth.
He had finished his problem, but I still sat in silence, elbows on the table, hands held up and palms spread wide, looking like the victim of an armed robbery.
“Ms. Angele, what’s eight plus seven?”
I stared at my white fingers, spread open. His small, black fingers twined their way in-between mine from across the table. We sat face to face, palm to palm, and closed our hands around each others’.
I smiled. This was why I was here. This was why in every social situation I’m in, I find myself turning conversation to “my kids.” This was why my voice rises and falls in passion every time I talk about the injustices they face every day and how they deserve better. They’re only children, but they have to grow up before their time.
I stared at our hands clasped together.
This was why I devoted a year of my life to service and now can’t leave it behind and wouldn’t give it up for the world.
“Count it out, buddy,” I say. “I’m right here.”
Victoria Tripp, Volunteer Coordinator, Big Brothers Big Sisters
The girl stood off from everyone else, threatening to hurt a boy. Her friend was holding her back, although the threatening girl was not adamant about getting to the boy. I gave her a few minutes to let off steam and then walked over to her. By this time I realized the boy had called her fat and she was angry and hurt. I asked her, what did she respect about the boy that made her believe his comment? She didn’t have a reply.
I talked to her, telling her that if she reacted to him she would be giving the boy her power. I said that a few minutes before, when she was teaching cheerleading moves, she was beautiful, and how, when she was with the group, was beautiful, but reacting to the boy and his comment would not be beautiful but would be like the statement the boy made. She listened and chose to ignore the boy. A little while later I asked her if she felt better, and she nodded yes. Then I asked if she felt powerful, and she nodded yes.
Alana Rade, Volunteer Coordinator, Key Center for Service Learning – UNCA
I had begun to become very frustrated with the lack of volunteerism on UNC-Asheville’s campus and felt bad because many of my fellow team members had approached me because they needed volunteers for their homework clubs. The first day Woodridge homework club met they had 30 kids and only 2 adults to help them all with their homework activities! Gray came to me immediately to let me know that they needed assistance. I put up flyers, e-mailed professors whose classes required service-learning, e-mailed the Spanish department because Woodridge has many ESL kids, and even spoke to a class and still got no reply from anyone who wanted to help out.
I felt like a failure until one day my advisor, Dr. Moseley, gave me a list of 203 students who had indicated on an entrance survey that they were interested in volunteering in the community, service-learning, or tutoring ESL students. As soon as I’d finished creating 3 e-mail groups I e-mailed these students and let them know about Woodridge and other programs our AmeriCorps team is involved with.
Two days later upon returning from my lunch break I saw that Gray was at my office and was meeting with a student who had received the e-mail and contacted her! Although they had only heard from one student it was motivating and made it seem so much worthwhile to continue to recruit volunteers. There was finally a light, or in this case an ESL tutor, at the end of the tunnel!
Soni Pitts, Activity Specialist, Pisgah View Apartments Homework Club
The other day, a few of the girls in my after school program were spending a lot of time erasing things and doing…something…with the shnibbles. They even asked for extra erasers to work with. I asked one of them what they were doing and it turns out that they write out stuff that makes them mad, or write out their negative feelings for someone else, erase it all, then pack and save the shnibbles in an eraser cap on their pencils.
Apparently it allows them to express their anger or other negative emotions without engaging in negative behavior. Not 100% sure what the purpose of saving the shnibbles is supposed to be, but I’m getting the impression that it allows them to “carry” their feelings around in a safe, non-aggressive way until they are dealt with and, one assumes, eventually discarded or scattered to the winds. I thought it was a cute and very creative way to deal with issues in a positive manner. I may have to try it myself some day to see how it works.
Eric Adams, Outreach Counselor, YMCA
The afternoon started off with a bang. It was only our first day without the help of our program coordinator and a child jumped off of the YMCA bus and refused to come with us to the Outreach program that day. After we dealt with that situation the day seemed like it would run pretty smoothly. That was until it was time for our daily activity. That day we were cooking macaroni and cheese, a choice we counselors knew would win the hearts and minds of the kids.
Well we were wrong. Dequan* decided he wasn’t participating and stormed off to sit in front of the computer to play games. The computer requires a password and I told Dequan that if he wasn’t going to cooperate with us I wasn’t going to cooperate with him. Dequan sat in front of the computer sulking while we cooked mac and cheese with the other kids. When our activity was finished I asked Dequan if he wanted to play some inside games since it was raining outside. He wanted to throw the baseball. I told him that baseball is an outside activity and he got mad at me once again and stormed off down the stairs, said he was leaving and that he hated me. I told him he couldn’t leave and asked him to come upstairs. He stormed up the stairs and began sulking on a couch and I asked him why he was acting like this today, of course he had no response. I reminded Dequan of the rules of Outreach and left him.
A few minutes later he came up to me and said he was very sorry for how he was acting that day. He said he hadn’t been feeling well that day. We talked about good was let people know you aren’t feeling well instead of acting out. At the end of the day, as we were walking out, Dequan covered his face with his book bag and said, “I’m gonna trust you, you have to lead me to the bus!” I knew that I had gained some respect and trust from Dequan that day, and I counted it a victory.
Sarah Mine, Activity Specialist, Pisgah View Apartments Homework Club
I serve with a great group of second-graders at an elementary school four days a week. Generally, they are excited by and engaged in the learning process. Trevon*, however, seems to have more than his fair share of bad days. Very often, he will work so painstakingly slowly—with many breaks to get up for water or a tissue or to tell a friend a joke—that he will not finish his morning work on time and will have to do it for homework. He is a sweet kid and also very sensitive so small failures like this hit him pretty hard.
On one occasion when Trevon was struggling with staying on task, I spotted him reading a book when he was meant to be completing a math worksheet. I was conflicted: I am reluctant to tell any child to stop reading, but, at the same time, I knew that if he didn’t finish his math sheet he would have homework that night. So I made a deal with him that he could keep reading the book, but told him that once he finished it, he would have to do the math sheet. He gave me a small nod of agreement and, sure enough, as soon as he had finished the short book, he picked up the math sheet and blew through it in no time. When I checked in to see how the math sheet was going, he smiled at me and said, “We had a deal!”
Ryan Wiedenman, Activity Specialist, Woodridge Apartments Homework Club
Felix* came to our homework club very highly recommended. After sending out a note to all the teachers in our school requesting recommendations for our club, his teacher stopped by my office personally to explain how dire his need was for help. He was unable to attend the school’s Title I homework club because of a younger sister he had to care for who was too young to be admitted to it. Despite being overwhelmed by the number of students we were already serving in the club, my partner and I decided we would accept Felix and his sister if we could track them down.
Eventually we did and found that he and his family spoke almost no English so, to the, I explained the basics of the legal forms to his mother and had her sign them, allowing the kids to join. All three seemed fairly hesitant about the club and the first day Felix showed up, it was clear that he wasn’t exactly sure what to do. He and his sister mostly sat quietly as we helped the other students and seemed content merely with eating the snack that we provided for them.
Finally, towards the end of the day, I got a chance to help Felix with his work. As I was explaining what his homework for the night was, I could see that he was slowly starting to become more outgoing and was excited to actually understand what he had to do for once. We completed it rather quickly and afterward, went outside to play basketball where he swiftly beat me in five straight games, a fact that he would point out to me several times the next day.
My experience with Felix on his second day was one I will not forget. I was helping another student with homework, when Felix came up to me and handed me a piece of paper. On it was a stick figure drawing of a man with spiky hair. “Who is this?” I asked him in Spanish. “Is it you?” “No,” he smiled and replied in Spanish “it’s you.” “Oh, well thank you Felix” I continued “is that my spiky hair then?” “No,” he said again “it’s a crown.” After realizing I was looking quite perplexed, Felix explained himself in the first word of English I had ever heard him speak: “Prince” he said as he patted my chest. I almost broke down laughing and crying at the same time. It was the nicest and funniest gesture I had ever received. Then suddenly Felix grabbed the picture from me and returned a few minutes later with a few additional drawings stapled to the original. One was of a girl who was apparently was my princess and the other was our house showing us sleeping on opposite sides of the house because we were apparently in a fight. This made me smile again and I thanked him and we hung the drawing up so it could always remind me of this story.
*All names of minors changed for the sake of privacy.