Volunteering in an Urban Setting

 To complete my volunteer hours I ventured back to my old middle school. When I attended the school it was a predominantly black school, with slightly more whites than Hispanic students. Upon returning it is not 99 percent minority students— mainly made up of black and Hispanic students and students receiving free and reduced lunch. This was not shocking to me, seeing as the neighborhood demographics were changing. I was however, in a disturbed awe at the fact that I was volunteering in a classroom with a teacher described in our class text—white,middle class, female with little ability to relate to her students, thus lacking classroom management. This was evident to me when the students could instigate a fight with other students and the teacher simply walked around the students and in a faint voice asked the students to sit down and be quiet, which was typically overlooked. That was her approach to much of the students misbehavior. Most of the time the students calmed themselves down but I cannot help but wonder how much teaching and learning time was lost. Due to my volunteer duties being only to organize her bulletin boards, I only observed the students instead of assisting them or the teacher. As well as, I was told I could not discipline the students since I was not a teacher or administrator. This was hard at first because these students seemed out of control, but then I realized that me scorning them may not be sensible in that they do not know me and I do not know them, i.e. secure relationships were not established between myself and the students. My heart hurt for the students and the teacher because it was so apparent that neither wanted to be there. My teacher even voiced to me that she was going to be leaving soon, after only being there for two years. It is unfortunate because of the lack of inconsistency this produces for the school.  By the end of my first day at the school, I was so sad to see such great potential for learning be suffocated by the students’ social and ethnic status and burned-out teachers.