This week at my local Boys and Girls Club I worked with my partner to implement seed activities as well as work to create relationships with the students in our group. This week a student, Kai, stuck himself to me. From the moment they walked in on Monday he became my buddy. I learned this week that although he like to play football and video games he really loved to draw so while we were talking this week I let him draw in my notebook and he even drew me a picture while he was at school! Kai works really hard in school but he struggles with his behavior and has to be redirected several times. Over the course of our talks I found out that Kai's dad is not in the picture and that he lives with his mom and his grandmother. His mom works two jobs to help support her family and he only sees her on the weekends.
Hearing this made me think of Paul Gorski's article The Myth of Poverty where Gorski examines how the myths that many people take as fact about people who live in poverty are just that, they are myths. Another teacher may look at Kai and only see a misbehaving child and an absent mother, while I see an aspiring artist and a mother who works hard to provide for her son.
Hearing this made me think of Paul Gorski's article The Myth of Poverty where Gorski examines how the myths that many people take as fact about people who live in poverty are just that, they are myths. Another teacher may look at Kai and only see a misbehaving child and an absent mother, while I see an aspiring artist and a mother who works hard to provide for her son.
One of Kai's drawings, inspired from Anime.