Larchmont Elementary School

Just now finished my second half day at Larchmont Elementary School. Larchmont educates children grades K-6, there's about 350 kids. Upon arriving Monday morning, the first things I noticed were the numerous fences and blacktopped recess area. The fences are there due to the high rate of gang activity in the area, although our morning drive brought us through what looked to me like a passive suburb. Not sure where the gangs are, but I'll take their word for it. The blacktopped recess area is filled with paint lines to outline more games than I know. It makes for a lot louder recess than I remember from elementary school, since blacktop goes "thud" while grass goes "psshhhh". Here's a rough sketch of how the school is set up:



(Microsoft Paint is so refreshing)

For the first two days we've been going to each of the classrooms to see how each teacher commandeers their ship and to decide which grades we'd most like to work with. Yesterday I worked with grades 3, 4, 5 and 6, while today I did Kindergarten and 1 and 2nd grades. Kindergarten... Just no. I spent 1.5 hours their this morning and it felt like I had lead eyelids when I left. My mind was flying around at 1,000 miles per hour. This kid, that kid, what's his name?, who's this little girl holding my hand?, how do I deal with this kid continuosly stealing the other kids plastic hammer?, why does he keep hammering my arm?, where the hell are the crayons?. One teacher for 24 kids is insane. I respect her. So much. I also got kicked in the balls helping a kid get across the monkey bars. The pain went straight to the gut. Down I went. On top of me went the little rascals. Game, kindergarten.

Grades 4-6 were just too hormonal. And the teachers are pretty weaksauce up there. I wrote down that I'd prefer grades 1-3. But I assume everyone requested these grades, so we'll see how that goes.

The teachers overall are very supportive and always thank us for helping them out. You can see how stressed out they always are, so it feels good to at least give them some support in their never ending quest to control and teach. Teachers need to get paid more. Plain and simple. I don't know how to get them more money, but they need it.

The kids seem to want to kill each other, but are suffocatingly kind to us Americorps volunteers. Although I haven't seen any of the "bullying" we were brought in to squash, little arguments occur here and there that I coudl see escalating into something bigger. I hope not to have to break up any 6th graders fights. Some of these kids are not small. But so far they've acted tame enough. I'm very grateful.

Going to Larchmont made me think of my elementary school experience, where there were only between 8 and 12 kids per teacher. Not only that, we were all relatively affluent children with caring families. Having to deal with 24 kids in a classroom who get no family support is just unfair and unjust. Most of the teachers time goes into dealing with the 5 wild, out of control kids. The other 20 have to choose themselves whether to get left behind or not. Hopefully that's where we come in, to deal with the crazy mofos.

I've forgot half the shit I wanted to say. I've been making mental notes at school if something interests or intrigues me. Of coures, the term "mental notes" was only created to excuse people for being forgetful. More on this deep, faschinating topic later.