Common ground with the weak

I have done a majority of my work in a homeless shelter at an after school childcare program with about 18 students of the DCPS. I think the experience with the worst of the worst children is what has opened my eyes to the real world problems not only of education, but as well poverty. There was one week where the other leaders and I could not stop the children from hitting each other. I took several of the guys into a room and let them punch a pillow I was holding for 25 minutes. I made them yell and scream why they were angry and with every punch made them say another way to take out there anger. I felt as with doing this that I was alleviating some of their daily stress. If I could do this at the after school program, my thoughts were that I was hopefully preventing more fights from entering the DCPS that week.
It is moments like this that stick with me through out my week as well. When I got over to the homeless shelter (Community of Hope) on Wednesdays I transform. I act as though I’m one of them. I act as though I’m not traveling back to the rich white side of town. I speak the slang with these children. I talk about real issues and use their language, and let them get away with just about anything, besides harming their lives. This is because I want to establish a bond. A bond that white and black and rich and poor can help each other learn about the world. I have had fun learning about how to be accepted by this culture of Ebonics and poverty that I’m in pursuit of understand.
The experiment I tried when I first got there was one that has taught me how to learn about and interact with people. The children do homework in two groups. I approached the first group speaking proper English, and telling them “no” you can’t do this or that and acting almost as you would envision one of those babysitters that has never broken a rule (strict, rude, superior). From them I got a nasty eye roll or two and they proceeded to tell me “no” they didn’t have homework or they didn’t want help. Next, I approached the second group as a “brother” as someone who they could connect with. I greeted them: “Yo, yall gots any homework dats due dis week?” and shock hands with one or two as though I had some gang affiliation on the street corner. Let’s say the second group still to this day always says: “We want mister Alexx to work with us!”
It’s about building common ground with anyone and everyone. We’re all human and we need to learn to work together. I think this example is just one of several and I could write several more that fit into this category for my CSLP essay. The community service factor comes into play when you’re in the middle of your paper buried deep in statistics and quotes about these “children”. You think for just a second outside the box and remember them as people that you connected with, not a figure. This helped me to add passion to my writing and allowed me to think outside the basics. The volunteering of course adds basic drive behind writing these letters and allows us to have more passion in our writing. Overall it will remind me in the future that as I study economics and pursue a job in the world of commerce and law, that the little people are just as important in the society. There is a famous quote that says something along the lines of “Your Greatness is measured in the way you treat those that are not great”. I think this holds true in our situation and is something that we all must remember and take home from the CSLP.