Culture Shock

As most of you know, I am currently an employee of a solidly middle-class suburban private Catholic school. The class size in kinder was less than 15. The students are not 100% Caucasian but I don't think there are more than 10 students in the whole school that English is not their first language. It is my first real long-term job and the entire campus has welcomed me with open arms. I am flabbergasted everyday by the amount of knowledge in these young minds. Seriously. Today, I over heard two preschoolers (about 4 years old) discussing a bible story and one little boy pointed to a group of people in the illustration and correctly identified them as Philistines. Really?! Geeze, it's amazing. Most of the kindergartners can read first-grade level books and write simple stories. The assigned math book seemed too easy for them so we practiced mental addition and even some subtraction daily.

As some of you might also know, I recently began tutoring after school for a company that has a government contract with LAUSD in compliance with the No Child Left Behind Act. Three days a week, I do one-on-one tutoring with a kindergartner in a low-income district. Her mother speaks very little English and she is in a classroom with more than 25 other 5 year-olds. She is very smart but has a language disadvantage that we're working on adamantly.

It is culture shock in the truest sense of the word as I go from interacting with my classroom to the one student. She cannot read. She can barely write. She cannot express herself in coherent sentences. It is actually mildly frightening. For Dr. Seuss Day I read Yurtle the Turtle to the class and they thought it was the most hilarious book ever. I read the first two pages while tutoring today and she was so lost that I decided that maybe we should get through Green Eggs and Ham first. I enjoy the change of pace that a 1:1 provides and she tries so hard during our sessions, I know she'll learn very fast. Its weird to think that I might be making a bigger difference in this one little girl's life than in all the kinder class combined. Still, the culture shock is extreme.

xxOOxx