Journal #4

While attending my fourth service learning session I finally began to see the dark side of my third grade teacher. Ms. Byrd-good was very unfair and rather nasty during a spelling test. She refused to repeat a word on the test twice. I found this surprising because this was like a middle school thing for me and here this class was being kicked around by the teacher. In the end, it turned out about eight out of the 20 students absolutely bombed the test. This even seemed unfair to me because there are eight foreign kids in the class and they have a hard enough time speaking English well as is. On the other hand, I was not about to speak up in front of the class and confront the teacher. While grading their tests which was very painful Ms.Byrd Good said "show no mercy" while grading their tests meaning do not even give them the benefit of the doubt. This was probably one of the grumpiest moods that I have ever seen a teacher in throughout my fourteen years in school. I just wanted to know why she was so hard on them that day? From my point of view I believe that she was in a bad mood because the class was behaving very poorly the day before or possibly she is trying to get them ready for fourth grade and has no idea how far overboard she is going. Another concern I had about this is the parents that would most likely complain after seeing their child's test scores. Especially after the top student in the class only received an 84.
Sure enough the parent complaints came in and Ms. Byrd-good apologized to everyone and discarded the tests. She said the reason she toughened up so much was because of the lack of respect for the teacher and other classmates. It turns out two children in the same class were involved in a fight (John K. and Brandon W.). This really got the teacher riled up and changed her mood significantly. The next day she was back to her usual self smiling away and telling funny jokes, which is doing what she does best by making everyone feel comfortable and putting a smile on everybody's face including myself. After the Pledge, she announced that Michigan may be switching to only healthy snacks in the nearby future and that the school policy was already 100% agreeing with possible law. So, she was informing everybody to start bringing healthy snacks only from now on otherwise, you will be unable to eat. While at lunch duty later that day I noticed the price of lunch and was shell-shocked at $2.25. That much money for just a slice of pizza or a corn dog and your choice of a small salad or fruit. This is just ridiculous with the whole state of Michigan's economy struggling and many families on the border of poverty line at our school they still charge $2.25. I came from an average area in Florida (middle class) but the standard lunch was a $1.50. Still too much! I chatted with a few students who were waiting in line about the high price of lunch. They even seemed a little concerned on child said he is scared to ask his parents for lunch money because they always give him a mean look because money is very precious in his family. He also told me there are days where he is money-less and how painful it is to go without eating lunch. I then told him about my experience back home in Florida about how some students had reduced lunch of 40 cents and others had free lunch depending on the child's parents financial background. I was curious and asked if they had something like this here?
He was clueless and said maybe I should look into seeing if they have something similar. This made me happy that I had potentially solved a child's need for lunch. After all, without lunch how can a growing seven year old boy make it?