Journal 5

I walked into my service learning school with frustration in my mind, because I kept feeling like I wasn’t doing enough. I knew I was doing a lot more than I should’ve, but I just knew I wasn’t doing enough. Contradiction in itself. I was cramming to make up a lesson plan for this Friday’s advisory. And I couldn’t find myself to create or learn about new inclusive activities. I don’t have a book I don’t have a website I don’t have away to create a better experience for my students. I walked into that school worried because I wasn’t sure what I was going to do that day. That I was going to wing it, and I was overwhelmed thinking how am I going to help these students find a way to cope or heal the situations they’ve been put through. I was worried because the students started explaining that they don’t feel they are club is being taken seriously. That they have had multiple replacements or subs when coming to class. That bothered me a lot because I thought about August and where August said a safe space needs to be somewhere where people can speak about the topic and the issue if not solve it. This safe space was not A safe space. The bell rang so fast that I couldn’t give my advisory some sort of advice besides I’m here for you guys to listen when no one wants to do, it’s a listen when everyone feels like you guys are just drama friends.

I started staying at Esek, A little longer than usual because not only did Karinaa need a volunteer/advisor she also needed a translator and a teacher to distribute food bank backpacks to students in need. The students go home on weekends with not much to eat, and with their parents praying the weekend goes by faster so that their kids can go back to getting free lunch. That in itself is overwhelming because you are responsible for trying to feed a student for three days. The requirement for this program was to bring back the backpack you took the past Friday. Some students did not bring the backpack back and at some point we wouldn’t be able to give them the food. Most of the students were Hispanic and only spoke Spanish, so this was really difficult for me and I really wish I had someone guiding me through the conversation. Giving the food bank bags away to students on a Friday was definitely for filling and it warmed my heart knowing that the school did this, but I needed someone there to help me explain to those students why they couldn’t take the backpacks.I couldn’t have texted Carina every five seconds of my day whenever I needed someone to translate something, which was often.