Observation at Arts High School

When going to Arts High School for my observation, I saw a much different side of Arts High School than the first time around. When first arriving I went through the metal detectors and signed in into the office. There was a line to get into the school, because I arrived the same time the students did. When I was in the office Dr. Brown asked a student if he could direct me to room 400, where Ms. Cotton was. Ms. Cotton is one of the Health/Physical education teachers at Arts High School. She has lived in Newark her entire life and loves the city and the students.
I arrived in the health classroom, seeing posters that promote healthy lifestyles. Such as being drug-free, and refraining from using tobacco. The first assignment for the students was to take there Phys ed. midterm. It was silent during the exam. After they were done with their test they were talking about was safety in schools. The kids read an excerpt from their health book, they they grabbed from back of the classroom. Something I found really interesting was that the kids WANTED to participate to read from the book, unlike other schools that I have observed in.
After reading the short excerpt from the book, they had a interesting discussion about safety in schools. Ms. Cotton asked the students, "do you feel safe in Arts High School"? Some of the kids snickered and said, "No!" But some students said, "yes". During the discussion they talked about all the different recent school shootings. One of the girls in the class mentioned that a lot of things happen like this in schools that aren't on the news very often.
During the class discussion they mentioned how easy it is to bring weapons into school. Even though the school had a metal detector. They were talking about how they knew people who would open back doors to let someone sneak something in. This discussion made me realize that maybe Arts High School wasn't the perfect school that I thought it was when I went there the first time.
Something I found disturbing though throughout this whole discussion, the kids were using terrible language to the teacher. The kids were cursing to describe how they felt about the safety situation in the school, and the teacher never said anything to the kids. I thought this was kind of disturbing because if nobody teaches these kids on how ignorant they sound, they will continue to use this language like its not big deal.
After the first block, the next couple blocks talked about their feelings of school safety as well. Ms. Cotton has high school seniors throughout the entire day. So I saw 3 senior health classes. All of them had the same routine of that day, taking the phys. ed midterm and then having the discussion of school safety. Along with school safety, they also discussed bullying. Ms. Cotton said that she noticed a lot of bullying going on in this school. The class started to discuss a boy named, Martin who had social issues. I heard one boy said that "Martin is going to be the next Columbine."
One of the most interesting comments I heard was, "Society creates the monsters that harm him". This student was talking about the kid Martin who every bullies in school and school violence as a whole. I thought that was such a interesting comment because Newark is always is always in the media, and gets a lot of bad exposure to society.
I thought this visit overall was very beneficial because I saw how some of the kids felt about where they go to school and live. The discussions for me were pretty intense when they said they knew people who were attacked at school. It was a real eye-opener that some of these kids deal with issues that I never had to deal with when I was there age. These kids have great opinions about society and how to stop violence in schools.

My volunteer experience/ group meeting

My volunteer experience is something that honestly I will never forget. My boyfriend plays on the NJIT hockey team, and they were doing a fundraiser that what you do is work at 6 flags and then all the money you make goes to your team. I decided to do that thinking it would be pretty fun. I was totally wrong. After a 1 1/2 car ride to get there, we have go into the employment building. We get there and a drill Sargent woman comes out and stats lecturing on how the boys need to shave and to get all the piercings out that we have. After that we pick our uniforms which were in huge laundry bins that looked like they have never been washed. My friend and I pick out the over-sized t shirts, put on our aprons, and a hat. After getting our uniform on we go to a brief meeting on all the stuff that we CANNOT do, or we would be fired and sent home. Some included not talking to any of our staff members, leaving our station, going on the rides, and eating at any of the food places. Pretty much anything that included fun.
As we went to our job assignments people most of NJIT group got split in to different food restaurants and one group was lucky enough to be assigned a game. My group which was my boyfriend Tommy, and my two friends Kevin and Dana. After we got to our restaurant that we would be working at we got our assigned jobs. Right way they assign Tommy and Kevin to be working at the fryers. They would not assign Dana and I cook fryers because we had nail polish on.
So back to my job, Dana and I got assigned to picking up garbage and cleaning off tables for the entire night. From 1pm- 10pm we were cleaning off the tables of everybody who ate and working with our pail and broom. The job really wouldn't have been so bad if we didn't have our extremely rude boss (who was maybe 15 years old) breathing down our backs the whole night, telling us that we are working too slow. When really we were doing the best we could.
During this time I was just thinking about the people who do this for work. I give those people so much credit. Not just for having a real mean boss because I'm sure we have/ will have a boss like this, but because of the way people treated you.
The people who were having fun at the park (aka our guests) were absolutely ridiculous. I do not recall one thank you, me and my friend were just scuffed at the whole night. There were teenagers there looking at us and throwing garbage on the ground, because they knew we were the ones to clean it up. There was also this one guy who made a comment to one of his friends after making a complete mess saying, "Now the white bitches have to clean it up". A lot of people who ask, "why did you say anything to him"? But to be honest, when I heard this comment it made me more upset than anything. I have only been working there for 9 hours, there are people that do this everyday of their lives...and do they have to hear that everyday they work? I really couldn't say anything to him because I was just in shock that anybody could be that rude and ignorant.
To be honest, after working in that park for 9 hours. I really don' t think that I will ever go to that amusement park ever again (ever for fun). I was astounded the way the people treat the workers there. But it also gave me a eye opening experience. One to never litter ever again because believe it or not somebody is going to have to clean that up, and two be appreciative of the job you have and make sure you love it. Some people do not have the luxury of going to college and being able to pursue what they really want in life. I think it's really important that we all realize that we are extremely lucky for being in college and hopefully being able with what our futures have in store for us.




My Group meeting experience
For my group meeting I attended a Morris Knolls High School football game. It was a cold, rainy Saturday but there were still a lot of fans there. Morris Knolls was playing one of their rivals, which was Randolph High School. I saw some kids that had their faces painted and holding signs. There were a lot of kids that showed a lot of school spirit. I also saw some teachers sitting in the stands, but not anywhere near the students and they all flocked together, which I thought was pretty funny.
During the game the young adults would start the usual chants and follow along with the cheerleaders. During the game (since I was sitting by the kids) I heard talk of a fight after the game. This kind of made me upset because during the whole game they were showing so much school spirit and showing a lot of pride in their school, then go and talk about fighting the other team just because they are rivals. The boys were mainly involved in talking about fighting with the other team and saying some terrible things. Some of the things they were saying were "I'm gonna beat that faggots ass". These are kids that are going to be graduating high school in a year and still have a very ignorant frame of mind, that will hopefully one day change.
I do not know if any of the high school students were involved in a fight that day, but probably not because there was a lot of security and police officers on duty to prevent them from fighting. This experience listening to high school kids talk about the excitement of fighting made me realize if I work in a high school I am going to have to be prepared to either break up a fight and to make them realize that fighting is just going to get you in trouble and if they really wanted to solve a issue, that isn't the way to do it.

ahhh.... : (

So... I am pretty sure that I am feeling so overwhelmed right now about everything. The inquiry project, my observation which is the last possible day it could have been (on this Friday!), and just school in general. : ( ahhh! one more week guys!