I have an important rule for myself at the WOW Kids Tutoring Program that I run on Tuesdays and Thursday:
If I'm not having fun, the kids aren't having fun.
(I honestly think that I had more fun at the Kids Creative Discovery Museum than the kids did! It was a field trip this past Sunday for the well behaved kids at the tutoring program)
It's a simple rule, but harder than it seems. It's easy to print out a couple work sheets and be done with planning in five minutes. But I've learned that if I am not excited and jumping up and down because my lesson is just so awesome, than it's probably an blah lesson and the kids aren't going to like it either.
Another thing is that black children love sensory and they speak through touch. They are really kinesthetic when it comes to learning. If they're mad, they hit someone. If they're happy, they hug you all day. If they're curious, they want to touch it.
One example is when I was volunteering at East Lake Academy and I put together a 1,000 piece puzzle for the Social Studies teacher. She had me wrap it with some clear stuff to protect it so the kids wouldn't mess it up when they touched it.
Why in the world would they want to touch a puzzle? I wondered.
Of course, she was right. Those kids weren't in the classroom five seconds before they saw the puzzle and ran over. The first thing that they did was "Ooooh!" and run their hands all over it.
Sadly, kinesthetic learning is the last thing that they get in their inner-city schools. They don't even have art class! I interned at East Lake Elementary for 15 weeks and I've volunteered at East Lake Academy for three years. I basically try to run the tutoring program as different from their schools as possible.
We have a craft ready for them when they come in. It's interesting to watch them create because they never get a chance to. They don't do it at school and most of them don't have any art supplies at home. I have a love/hate thing about giving them glitter because they love to mix it with their hands. Again, they love sensory.
We enforce procedures and rules. We actually have a whole class devoted to Manners and we talk about the importance of eye contact and saying yes m'am and yes sir. We role-play talking respectfully to adults and teachers and their peers.
Something new that we started recently is decorating the rooms according to what they are learning. This is huge because the learning environment is very important. When I interned, I barely made it through my first day without screaming. I was stuck in a small room that had bad lighting and no decorations with 23 kids for seven hours every day. It was horrible! The kids hardly ever got recess because of bad behavior and I knew that if I was going crazy in that room, then the kids must be too.
The first room that we tackled was the Bible room as the kids learned the story of Jonah in November.
You can see how we decorated the room and the door. We also drew a picture of Jonah running away from God on the chalkboard. We also had a cool rain activity with shaving cream and food coloring one day.
The kids LOVED the Jonah room. One kid came back to our program after being gone a few weeks because he thought the program was boring and Iyssis told him, "They decorated the room! And we had a game where we popped balloons! It's SOOO much fun!" She kept gushing and gushing about everything we had changed and how much she loved it.
Our next big project was to tackle the Language Arts room. The kids had been complaining that it was boring so we decided to change that!
We decided to work on listening skills and picked Focus On the Family's radio drama of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for the kids to listen to. We pulled out costumes and decorations to make it even more fun!
Usually it's hard to get all the kids to participate during craft time. Today I had Eden dress up like the White Witch. The kids didn't know that we were decorating the room, so the White Witch passed out paper snowflakes for the kids to decorate and told them that if they decorated enough snowflakes, then the Language Arts room would have a spell cast over it and cover Narnia in snow.
The kids LOVED it. They were decorating snowflakes like crazy. Devon cracked me up. He said, "White Witch! I need another snowflake, but don't get to close 'cause you're a witch!"
They really got into it, especially Jarquasha.
These are some of the small, but fun, ways we are inspiring kids through learning! It's a big challenge, but we're enjoying every bit of it!
Paris Akins is currently a college student pursuing a degree in Education. She loves diversity, Jesus, and middle schoolers. She spends most of her time at school, helping with Chattanooga's Urban WyldLife, and with her kiddos in East Lake. She also blogs over at Attempting the Impossible.
