Psychology of Women: Fall 2009

The week before my service with the program ended, I had planned to pull the director aside and ask how she normally handled “exits” by volunteers.  She’s normally very busy trying to pull the one or two children who are needing the most individual attention or taking some of the kids to a tutoring session with a teacher during the group session, so I felt the end of the day would be fine.  A student volunteer–like me–showed up halfway through the session, as we were listening to a presentation by Mr. Sapphire, but I will come back to the other volunteer in a few minutes.

Mr. Sapphire was a guest speaker, he was a tall mountain of a man; who could speak in a very quiet and gentle voice.  He loomed over the children, who had been asked to give their “best attention and behavior” to him because he was a friend of the principal.  I saw the director’s provision of a relationship between this man and the principal to be a way of conferring power to Mr. Sapphire.  The principal was someone who had legitimate power,  and by association…some of this power was being transferred to him.  The program director also advised the kids that “if they were good and participated, then they would receive candy from Mr. Sapphire (reward power).   I noticed that as he spoke to the children and asked questions, that he strove to get participation from all the kids and not just the ones who raised their hands. Some of his method of dividing the responders  equally came from the kids’ own choice of seating.  One table was one boy and the rest girls, the other table was one girl and the rest boys.  He would encourage answers from everyone, often alternating tables to elicit new responses. No one was silenced…everyone had a chance to speak. 

I found it interesting to watch the assignment of powers to this one-time speaker, as well as his performance in not silencing the girls and getting full participation in the group.  He would also revise his explanations of concepts and views until every person indicated that they could understand the message he tried to convey. In order to convey a message to girls and boys whose ages spanned 11-13, he incorporated styles of relating to each child on their terms…relating concepts to sports (one of the girls played football, another was a swimmer), school work, or parent-child relations.

Back to my “exit” plan…after Mr. Sapphire finished, it was announced that we were having cake because “someone was leaving.”  I was assailed by two of the girls, one of whom was asking if I was the one.  I explained that while it was Ivory who was saying goodbye to us today, that the following week would be my last day as well.  Most of the kids seemed to take the exits reasonably well–I did have the one girl–Moonstone– grilling me as to “why?”  I explained that I would have a lot of responsibilities next semester that would keep me busy, but that I really enjoyed working with them. 

I told the program director that she could email me when they had some of their “arts” activities, because that is something I enjoy a great deal and it was only one session in the semester.  I let her know also that I needed to spend more time helping my mother…something I hadn’t been doing as much of during the fall semester.  As the Lips text included, the connections and relationships that women have are supportive.  As I am aging, I am taking on the supporting role to my parents; particularly my mother.

The week before my service with the program ended, I had planned to pull the director aside and ask how she normally handled “exits” by volunteers.  She’s normally very busy trying to pull the one or two children who are needing the most individual attention or taking some of the kids to a tutoring session with a teacher during the group session, so I felt the end of the day would be fine.  A student volunteer–like me–showed up halfway through the session, as we were listening to a presentation by Mr. Sapphire, but I will come back to the other volunteer in a few minutes.

Mr. Sapphire was a guest speaker, he was a tall mountain of a man; who could speak in a very quiet and gentle voice.  He loomed over the children, who had been asked to give their “best attention and behavior” to him because he was a friend of the principal.  I saw the director’s provision of a relationship between this man and the principal to be a way of conferring power to Mr. Sapphire.  The principal was someone who had legitimate power,  and by association…some of this power was being transferred to him.  The program director also advised the kids that “if they were good and participated, then they would receive candy from Mr. Sapphire (reward power).   I noticed that as he spoke to the children and asked questions, that he strove to get participation from all the kids and not just the ones who raised their hands. Some of his method of dividing the responders  equally came from the kids’ own choice of seating.  One table was one boy and the rest girls, the other table was one girl and the rest boys.  He would encourage answers from everyone, often alternating tables to elicit new responses. No one was silenced…everyone had a chance to speak. 

I found it interesting to watch the assignment of powers to this one-time speaker, as well as his performance in not silencing the girls and getting full participation in the group.  He would also revise his explanations of concepts and views until every person indicated that they could understand the message he tried to convey. In order to convey a message to girls and boys whose ages spanned 11-13, he incorporated styles of relating to each child on their terms…relating concepts to sports (one of the girls played football, another was a swimmer), school work, or parent-child relations.

Back to my “exit” plan…after Mr. Sapphire finished, it was announced that we were having cake because “someone was leaving.”  I was assailed by two of the girls, one of whom was asking if I was the one.  I explained that while it was Ivory who was saying goodbye to us today, that the following week would be my last day as well.  Most of the kids seemed to take the exits reasonably well–I did have the one girl–Moonstone– grilling me as to “why?”  I explained that I would have a lot of responsibilities next semester that would keep me busy, but that I really enjoyed working with them. 

I told the program director that she could email me when they had some of their “arts” activities, because that is something I enjoy a great deal and it was only one session in the semester.  I let her know also that I needed to spend more time helping my mother…something I hadn’t been doing as much of during the fall semester.  As the Lips text included, the connections and relationships that women have are supportive.  As I am aging, I am taking on the supporting role to my parents; particularly my mother.

I went into the last time at Bragg Hill not prepared for saying goodbye to any of the children. Over the course of the semester, I had not gotten attached to any of the children, considering that I worked with different ones each time I came in. I also didn’t form a close relationship with anyone in the staff, so I felt as though it would be easy to leave. I started to notice, however, that there were a couple of kids that had gotten used to me and would smile and/or wave hello to me. I hope that they aren’t sad, but I think that they are used to volunteers coming and going in the program.

I spent my last day helping a boy with his homework and we worked on various worksheets about math and English and reading. Once he was finished, he zoomed off to the gym and I started helping R (who I’ve worked with before) with her reading. The next thing I knew, my time was finished and I could leave the building. Before I left, however, I had to get my form signed and I spoke with the woman who was in charge of the program. She acted as though she wanted me to keep on coming but I told her that I would be graduating and would not be able to come back anymore.

Over the course of the semester, I know that I learned from volunteering with these children. I helped many of them with their homework and learned a lot about my previous stereotypes – to realize that not everyone has my background and learned to listen to people as they talk about their experiences – and also got an inside look at the what some of the workers have to deal with (stress, double shifts, rowdy children, etc.). I learned about the importance of family and how many of these children rely on their extended family members for support and love. I also learned about myself in volunteering situations. I need structure to do well in a setting like this because I need to know how to react, how to have authority, and generally what I’m supposed to be doing. I also realized that working with older children is not really my thing – I much prefer younger children and/or adults. So, in the future, I’ll look for volunteer opportunities that fit my needs, now that I know what they are. Essentially, through this experience, I learned from Bragg Hill about women and about myself. I felt satisfied as I walked away from Bragg Hill for the last time.

My time at Bragg Hill is winding down and I just wrote the paper about my reflections on my experience. I thought it was really interesting to compile all of my ideas about my time there and relate it to the material in the text. I think it also helped me to really examine my own stereotypes about the children and how they impact how I relate to them. It’s really interesting to me that, despite all the adversity that they face, the children still seem to keep going strong. Though improvements could be made, I’m really glad that I have been a part of the programs there.

I plan to come back next semester, if I can fit it into my schedule, and I was pleasantly surprised when I asked the director to sign my sheet and she asked if I would be returning. My last day was not nearly as hectic as I thought it would be, mostly because I felt a weight come off of my shoulders after I realized that the CSL component for the course was done.

For the time on my last day, I helped a couple of little girls and one boy with their homework problems. One of the children, who was in seventh grade, needed help with her genetics assignment, that none of the other workers could understand. It was really strange to me that they couldn’t interpret the directions to an assignment that was so simple and it made me think about how the children would get along at home if they only had their parents to help them. A lot of the kids show up to homework help having forgotten their books or assignments at school. Most of them are not very worried about this and tell me that the teacher will just overlook it and let them turn it in later. It seems as though a lot of the kids are no getting very much support at home when it comes to school work. However, I know this could be due to the fact that their parents are stressed, or over-worked, or maybe their parents did not receive a high school diploma or GED.

Overall, I’m really glad that I decided to spend my time at Bragg Hill and I’m happy with the patience and knowledge of myself that I have gained from working there.

Like the past few times that I have gone to the center, not a lot of children were there for open gym. I think it has something to do with the fact that the holidays are coming and it’s getting colder. I’ve noticed that parents have started coming more and accompanying the children back to their homes- most of them walk. Today, we played a big game of knock-out and a lot of smaller games of horse. It was the first time that I saw the entire gym, both girls and boys, get organized into one large activity. Surprisingly, they even got along, until the boys got mad when the girls were winning. But, for the most part, everything went smoothly and some of the workers even participated in the games.

I’ve started talking to a couple of the workers that I have become friends with and some of the children about leaving the site for a bit when I go home for break. Some of the children have a hard time grasping that I will be gone for a while but I plan to come back. It’s hard for me since I have just started to really form a bond with a lot of the kids and now I have to leave. I’m planning to come in during the week of finals to volunteer for the Christmas dinner, if I can fit it into my schedule.

After the games, I spent a lot of the time playing jump rope and air hockey with a small group of girls or chatting with a few of the workers about their plans and how their holiday went. I’ve started to get really comfortable with a few of them and some of them have even offered to give me rides if I want to come volunteer in the future.

A lot of the kids were missing today; I was told it had to do with the upcoming holiday. I tried to talk to the kids that were there today about their plans for the holiday. I forgot, though, that a lot of the kids there don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, and most of them were confused and told me that they didn’t have any plans. A couple of the children speak very broken English and told me that they have only been in America for the past few months. When a little boy tried to tell me where he was from, he had a hard time getting it out and I still cannot quite decipher what he said. None of the other children there could understand him either, and he ended up getting upset because he thought we were making fun of him when we didn’t know what he was saying. Sometimes, when I go to Bragg Hill, I forget that my viewpoint doesn’t always apply to everyone I meet, but I can always count on the children there to bring it back into context for me. Most of the kids are shocked when they hear that my family lives in Las Vegas, and the automatically think that I gamble or some such thing when I go home. Even the workers have a hard time grasping that I go home to see my family, not to party. One of the workers, when he heard that I live in Vegas, started telling me about his lifelong dream to go there one day. It was kind of bittersweet to hear him talk about it. I know he does a lot for the children there- they look up to him as their father-figure. I hope one day he actually does make it out there.

After my work at the center today, I am left thinking a lot about the power structure of Bragg Hill. I witnessed a spat during homework help involving one of the workers and a young girl, who was maybe about 13 or 14. The girl wanted the worker to move to another table so that she and another girl could work on their school project together. The project involved a piece of poster board that had to be spread across the table so that they could draw pictures and diagrams on it. The worker refused, and continued to sit in her chair, because she “didn’t want to”. When the girl again calmly asked that the worker move, she once again refused. The situation escalated to the girl standing up and yelling and the worker, and even threatening her with physical harm. The whole time, however, the worker stayed put, but solely on the basis that she had “free will” and was choosing to exercise it. The girl was never once told that she shouldn’t speak to the woman in such a disrespectful tone, nor was she told to calm down. After a while, the worker moved, when she wanted to, but she continued to harass the girl about her work and kept looking over her shoulder. I was so outraged at the scene that I got up and moved to the table that was the farthest from them and I even considered leaving. I couldn’t believe that the worker would choose to keep the girl from doing her work for about twenty minutes over something so miniscule.

Other things happened that day that mimicked that interaction- one female worker would constantly chide the children for talking too much, but she never said anything about them doing their work, or the fact that they were picking on the younger children and keeping them from doing their homework. One of the older girls who usually does jump rope with me was sitting with another girl, helping her work on her multiplication tables, and the girl who had previously gotten into trouble came over and told her that she would be her friend because she was “cuter than so-and-so” and that the boys liked her more than the other girl. I was sitting at the other end of the table listening to them talk about the boys and it was apparent to me that, even at this young age, the girls were very much aware of their interaction with the boys and what they thought of them.

I began to really observe the ways that the girls dressed, too. Most of the older girls wore extremely tight pants and low-cut shirts. Most of them were very developed, as I mentioned previously, and were very aware of their bodies. The younger girls also dressed in similar ways, but they usually had some kind of character tee on, like Hannah Montana or High School Musical. The boys, on the other hand, usually had on over-sized tees and baggy pants. The gender differences in play and dress were very apparent and their behavior also mimicked these roles.

Tonight, I volunteered at the Thanksgiving dinner that Bragg Hill hosts for the surrounding community. Anyone can come for free and I was surprised to see how many people actually came to the event. When I showed up, I noticed that there were a lot more volunteers there than I normally recognized. A lot of people had come out to help and it was really nice to see the community getting so involved. I was put in charge of helping large families get food for the children who couldn’t hold their plates and I started helping right away. I ended up not really being needed, as most of the families I asked refused my help and instead chose to do it themselves. I also found that there was a language barrier between me and some of the families because the spoke Spanish. At one point, I was trying to help a little boy get back to his table with a plate of food, but I had no idea which family was his. We ended up wandering for a few minutes before his mother finally came and got us and led us back to the table.

I then found several children that I recognized from Homework Club and open gym and they asked me to sit with them. In between helping people with their plates of food, I sat with them and listened to them talk about their day at school and their home lives. One lady that I helped was getting food for an elderly couple that she worked for. She explained that they couldn’t get out of their house to come get the food on their own but that they needed the free meals because they didn’t have a lot of money. I helped her pack up the plates and returned to the table of little girls, where they were oohing and aahing over getting the signature of the DJ on a picture. They were also admiring one little boy who was nonchalantly dancing at the front of the room.

Later on that night, as I was waiting for my ride, I was talking to a couple of the workers about the way the night had progressed. Once again, we talked about how a lot of the events hosted at the center are really poorly organized and ways that it could be improved. While we were talking, the little girl that I had previously had an incident with walked up to me and kicked me because I wasn’t paying attention to her. I was really shocked at how violently she was behaving and I saw her mother watching us as the whole thing happened. I kept reminding myself of how nice the other girls at the center were and how much I was getting along with the workers, who at this point, were really nice to me.

Though my hours are about half done, the stress of school has started to catch up to me and I find it harder and harder to fit in the service hours.

Today, when I went to open gym, I was determined to talk to someone about what had happened the day before. When I asked the younger worker what she thought she expressed that she felt as much frustration as I had and that she and another younger worker had tried to confront some of the other workers at that staff meeting about some of their concerns with the program, but they had been ignored. They were told that “this is how things were always done, and that’s how they should stay”. I found myself talking to her about a lot of the stuff we have discussed in class, like how it’s hard for girls to work and learn in hostile environments, like that of homework club, and she agreed that something needed to be changed. I felt really sad when I realized how little change could actually occur because of the way the center was run. The family that is in charge of the center have a really firm grip on all of the programs- I noticed that a lot of the programming has some kind of religious aspect and that they require the children to pray before the free dinners given every night.

On another note, I ended up playing with a lot of girls today, which was really exciting for me. I saw all of them working together, and they even talked to me some about their life at home. I gathered that a lot of them have some extra family members living with them, like a Grandma, which is something that Lips talks about. Most of them also have a lot of siblings, some of whom attend Bragg Hill. One of the things that I noticed was that a lot of the girls were expected to act very mature. I also noticed how developed a lot of them were, and the workers even commented on their bodies being very developed for their age. I noticed how preoccupied the girls were with the idea of having a boyfriend, and they would ask about my relationship status. At one point, one of the workers even had to hunt down a boy and girl who were about thirteen or fourteen because they kept making out in the hallway or bathroom. I noted when I left that there were about ten different brochures on the front desk about STD and pregnancy prevention.

Today when I left homework help, I thought there was no way that I could possibly go back to that site. Not only did I feel completely lost in the throng of people and other volunteers, but I also witnessed some of the most badly behaved children I have ever encountered. Most of the workers, like they always have, just ignore them. The majority of the boys were running around and hitting or stepping all over me. One of them even refused to leave me and one girl alone so that I could help her with her homework, which resulted in her leaving and me feeling very frustrated. I definitely noticed what Lips was talking about-most of the girls were sitting quietly and trying to do their homework. I can’t understand how anyone could accomplish anything in that setting, though, I could barely here myself think! I found myself having to yell things over the bustle and it was really hard to get anything done.

At one point, the daughter of one of the workers came up to me and asked if she could join the game of scrabble that a little girl and I were playing. I was actually helping the girl with her spelling words, which I explained to the girl who walked up, but instead of listening, she took her arm and slapped the entire board across the table and onto my lap. She then ran away laughing as the girl I was helping quietly picked all of the pieces off of me and assured me that she would put it up and that we could start over. I was extremely upset because we had just found a way that the little girl liked that would help her remember her spelling words!

Later that day, I talked to the younger worker that I had befriended about the incident. She was just as shocked as I had been, however, when she heard what girl it was, she reluctantly told me that there wasn’t much that she could do. They had already had several complaints about the girl making trouble, but her mother was the director of the center and wouldn’t do anything about it. I was incredibly taken aback that any place would treat volunteers that way and I tried my best to avoid the girl for the rest of the day. However, the incident really put into light the power structure of the place. It seemed as though the worker’s children were pretty much allowed to do whatever they pleased, while the other children were treated as nuisances. I then took note of how the other children avoided the little girl and would even give into her to avoid conflict, though the girl was much younger and smaller than most of the children there.