All posts by Haley Robertson

Teaching is mentoring

Reaching Adolescents and How to Respond

“Rhodes proposes that mentoring affects youth through three interrelated processes: (a) by enhancing youth’s social relationships and emotional well being, (b) by improving their cognitive skills through instruction and meaningful conversation, and (c) by promoting positive identity development by serving as role models and advocates.” – Caring Connections

Mentoring and teaching are as interrelated as the above mentioned processes: nether teachers who only want to provide content knowledge without making personal connections with students nor people who only want to mentor but not provide quality instruction will be successful in the role as an educator.  The human element of teaching has always been what has drawn me most to the profession: connecting with others is what drives me and brings meaning to my work.  I would quickly sink into a depression if I had to retreat to a cubicle every day and work in a solitary state.

While mentoring is what draws me to teaching, it is often exhausting and overwhelming.  Many people are well-intentioned  in their desire to help others, either through volunteer work or their profession, however too many are unaware of the real commitment they are making.  Mentoring is the same as any other relationship, it must be cultivated, cared for, reciprocal and significant.  The high-minded person that begins a mentor-ship to feel good about themselves is doing no youth a favor.  Working in a community school for 4 years I saw many volunteers come and go.  In our current society people often want things to people fast or convenient.  Mentoring is neither.  It is a challenging, frustrating, time consuming job.  Yet there is nothing more rewarding than seeing  someone grow, achieve and come into their own.

Classroom buddies

Friendship, Love, & Sexuality, Urban Adolescents

“My studies… indicate that emotional support from close friends during adolescence in more predictive of psychological and academic adjustment than support from parents”  – The Hidden Landscape of Boy’s Friendships

Before starting my journey to be a high school teacher, I knew that teaching was complicated and complex, but just not how complicated or complex.  Today I sat down with my cooperating teacher for 45 minutes to decide on a new seating chart for one of the classes.  Something has been off in the class, and several students have asked if they can be moved.  In a language classroom, we frequently work in groups or pairs and having a helpful and friendly deskmate makes all the difference in the world.  My CT and I went through the class list, deciding who would make good class “buddies” pairing stronger students with weaker ones, shyer students with more outgoing students, and students with IEPs next to thoughtful and kind students.  While doing all this I was mostly concerned with the dynamic of the class.  This article however validated the importance of nurturing friendships, or at least healthy partnerships amongst the students in the class.  We have found that having a partner that they enjoy working with increases their desire to participate and engage with the material.   This article is a reminder that  I would like to work on community building more within the class, it is important not just for classroom dynamics, but also for helping our students be healthy, adjusted individuals.

Why are they so angry? But then again, I’m angry too.

Gender Socialization & Identities, Urban Adolescents

“The single greatest risk factor in school violence is masculinity.  The analytic blindness of previous work runs deep runs even deeper than gender.  All but two if the twenty-eight school shootings profiled in the FBI report were committed by white boys who lived in suburbs or rural areas.  As a result, the public had assumed that these boys were deviants, their aberrant behavior explainable by some psychopathological factor” – “I am not insane; I am angry.” – Michael S. Kimmel

The number of school shootings and gun violence as a whole for me represents one the greatest crises that we are facing as a nation.  A couple of weeks ago in my student teaching placement we had to practice being on lock down in the case of a shooter and it made me angry.  Angry that it has become such a problem that we have to have “drills” in case of a shooting, angry that we are perpetuating this culture of violence, angry that for young people coming to school no longer means that they are coming to a safe place and angry that our government as a whole chooses to ignore this problem.

When “Straight Outta Compton” came out a few months ago I remember news stations warning about violence at movie theaters and then when nothing went wrong remarked on their “surprise” that the movie premiere had gone off with no violent incidents.  My black friends were quick to take to Facebook, reminding the public that it is not black people that go around shooting up movie theaters.  The stereotypes about black people as “violent” or “thugs” are most quickly dispelled by the reality that white males are extremely violent, and arguably they have less reason to be so angry.  How did we become so entitled that if we feel bullied we feel that we are allowed to kill people in response?  When did taking someone else’s life ever become a solution to our inner problems?  Many blacks are constantly being barraged with insults and discrimination, yet when white male’s sexual identity is threatened and he feels so angry that he gets a gun and kills innocent people?  Throughout all this talk about racism and blaming of black people for their anger over systemic racism, we never question the white man’s anger.  What are they so angry about?   What has our society taught them that they even consider such mass violence an option?  I do not know, but I am angry that we are not doing more about it.

How can we protect our immigrant youth?

Newcomers & Perpetual Foreigners

“Poverty limits opportunities and frequently coexists with a variety of other factors that are associated with risk in adolescence, such as single-parenthood, residence in violent neighborhoods saturated with gang activity and drug trade, and segregated, overcrowded, and understaffed schools.” – Adolescents from immigrant families.

Immigrant youth face a myriad of difficulties following their migration to the United States: acquiring new language skills, adapting to new cultural norms and leaving behind friends and family members.  What this passage and the author attempts to shed light on is that as challenging as the aforementioned experiences are during assimilation, they are only the tip of the iceberg as to what immigrant youth face in this country.  Although entrance into the United States is seen by many immigrants and Americans as an arrival to a proverbial “promised land”, sadly, many of the factors that caused these people to migrate in the first place follow them to their new home.  I recently read an article about how MS13 (the powerful Salvadorian gang) was recruiting youth who had recently moved to the United States, capitalizing on the fact that they were vulnerable and looking for community.  All too common are stories of family members in the home country being kidnapped, with the kidnappers demanding money now that presumably their family in the United States will be able to provide it.   While it is impossible to be aware of all the conflicts and issues going on around the world, having knowledge about the countries that out students come from and the potential difficulties that they may face will help us be better equipped to offer support or services.

Integrating diverse communities into our schools: it can be done.

Blurring the In-School Ouf-of-School Line, Urban Adolescents

For four years I worked with the immigrant population at a charter school in Washington, DC that served the most vulnerable among that group.   Reading (Re)Constructing Home and School: Immigrant Parents, Agency, and the (Un)Desirability of Bridging Multiple Worlds, I was reminded of many of the struggles our immigrant families dealt with and also brought with them to school every day. Many students I worked with were hesitant to access services because they thought that either their immigration status would be revealed and ICE would be informed or that using government services would negatively affect future petitions for residency based on myths that exist within the immigrant community.

The most important things I learned working in that school was how to make immigrant families (or any family) feel comfortable in the school environment.  I had not heard of the term “bridging” before, but it was a practice that was integrated into our school philosophy.  My director made it clear, first through our mission statement that our families are not just people receiving services, rather they are important members of our community and interaction is as beneficial to our school as as it is to the participants.  This idea was made clear due to the fact that almost all staff were bilingual in Spanish-English, Amharic-English, French-English or Bengali-English (amongst others).  We hired current or former students whenever possible: meaning that staff were diverse and mirrored the population that we served.  Also, we had a student council made up of our adult students that was an important body within the school.  Additionally, several adult students with higher English levels sat on our board of directors.  All of these actions created an environment of inclusion, where immigrant students felt as though they had power over their own education.  I was taught to really listen to the needs of the individual and to do whatever in my power to help students, whether it was school-related or not.  What I am getting at, is there are ways to engage immigrant communities in the American school system, in fact, respectful integration is already taking place in some schools, although it does requires a change in mentality that many schools are not willing or aware enough to make.