Youth Research Paper ( I didn't edit this version very well so sorry for any errors)
Introduction
At 2 in the morning last night I just laid there, not because I was still excited at my win in an amazing game of H.O.R.S.E. with my roommates, on our houses’ in door basketball hoop. I wasn’t laying their reflecting on an rifting theological conversation that I had just had with my friends over some drinks. I was laying their because I was broken. As I lay there with my eyes closed, my mind drifted off. I started to think about the students at ___________, the sight of my Outreach project. Over the last ten weeks I have been substituting at _____________ Yet this time I wasn’t there just for the money I need to pay my bills. I was there because for the first time since I had started substituting there, I had to start to pay attention to what was really going on in the lives of the students at __________. Why? Because I had to for class, not because I wanted to or I thought it would be a good idea, being that I want to work with students. No, what made me do it was a project for a class. That’s what brought me to this point, a project for a class!
When I started this process I did not know what to expect, yet I never thought that at the end of this project I would feel so hopeless. This is the kind of hopelessness where you feel like no matter what you do you can’t do enough. It is the kind of hopelessness that brings you to tears just at the thought of students that are abandoned by there parents, teachers and any other adults that they might interact with during their day. It was with these thoughts that I lay awake, for how long I don’t really know, who does at times like this. I must have fallen asleep at some point because I awoke this morning, as I do every morning. Now I sit here trying to think about what it might mean to reach out these students. To share with them not only Christ’s love for them but my life, in hopes that I might enter their world as Christ entered this world, and love them as Christ loves them. Maybe then, and only then, will God use me to touch the students at __________________.
Observation
My First four Weeks (week 2 through 6 of the quarter)
I started my observation in the third week of January, exact date is unknown. For the first three weeks my observation was strictly in class or while walking around school to and from classes, lunch, arriving or leaving school. I had not really subbed at this school prior to this assignment, so my goal during the couple weeks was to be seen by the students in a normal substitute type setting. I did not want to move into their space to quickly. I subbed at their school about three times a week during these first four weeks.
Week Five to Nine (weeks 7 through 10 of the quarter)
Starting in week five I started to walk around at lunch. In the fifth week I ate half of my lunch solo and then walked around the campus eating as I walked. I soon transitioned to eating my whole lunch while out and about at lunch time. I would sit at different places during lunch and then walk around when I was done with my lunch I started talking to some students I had meet during class time. During this time I was still working at the school about 3 days a week.
Focus Groups
1st Focus Group
I set up my first focus group over March 2nd, 2007 during lunch. I asked a student that I had established a good relationship, on February 27th, 2007, if she would want to help me out with a project for one of my class. When I told her that I was doing the project to learn about whom high school students were, what they went through, and what they thought about things like school, friends, parents and what they did on the weekend. She was very willing and happy to help me out.
On March 2nd, 2007 I walked over to where she normally hung out at and she had 5 students there and ready to be interviewed by me. As we were walking toward the hall, where we did the interview, she got 3 other students to join the group. I opened up and told the students what I had told the girl a few days before and that they could as open with me as they wished. I told them that I would not tell anyone what they told me, unless it involved them hurting themselves, them hurting others or if it was about someone that was hurting them. From that point they were very open with me about everything, and also very excited to be doing the project. In this group I had 5 guys and 3 girls. The group lasted the whole lunch time, which is a half and hour.
2nd Focus Group
The second focus group was set up by another student that I met in one of my classes. This group was a little more random then the first one. I had been playing phone tag with the student for a week and we couldn’t find a time to meet and do the group. So, I decided to show up On March 6th, 2007 during lunch time and find the student who I had asked to set up the group for me. The student could not really find anyone to do the group with us so it ended up four students: two guys and two girls. Half way through the group a random girl came by and became a part of the group, so then we had five students total.
Questions
Since we are at school, let’s start there. What do you guys think about school?
Do you guys have a favorite teacher? If so why is he or she your favorite teacher?
What do you think are most important things to your parents?
Do you think your parents want the best for you?
Describe your group of friends to me?
Are you guys all good friends?
If you were to get in trouble and needed help who would you call or turn to, why?
Do you trust your best friends more then your teachers?
What do you guys do during the weekend?
Where do you guys hang out during the weekend?
Do you guys hang out anywhere other then your friends houses?
What else do you guys do in your free time?
Why do you guys drink and do drugs?
Do you only do drugs with your friends?
When did you guys start using drugs?
What do you guys usually do to get away from the stress of life?
If you could tell your parents and your teachers one thing what would that be?
Conclusions
The Classroom
Students in 9th grade and 10th grade were more open to trust adults than the 11th and 12th grade students were. In college prep classes students knew what they were suppose to do and did it. You could tell that they felt they knew what they needed to do in order succeed in the school system they found themselves in. The disabilities classes were less trustworthy of adults unless the adult was friendly to them. When the adult was friendly to them, they seem to open up more than other students. The older the student was the less they would interact with me, even if I engaged them first. In classes that were mixed grade levels you could usually tell what grade the students were in by how they reacted to adults.
Student/Teacher
Students felt that teachers do not understand who they are, respect them or care to find out who students really are. One student told me, “they (teachers) don’t think about what is good for us but just what is good for them.” Students feel like if they have a hard time succeeding in a class that the teachers put the blame on them. Student believe that if they are failing in classes it is the teachers fault for not helping out the student, not their fault. “How do they expect me to learn,” one student said, “if all they do is yell at me.” “Yea, like my math teacher,” another student said, “all he does is put the work on the board and expects me to get what they hell he is writing.” “Teachers are just there to get a pay check,” vented another student.
Most students that I observed or talked to said that they would like it more if the teacher was “real with them,” meaning that the teacher somehow becomes more than just a robot teaching a lesion everyday. The students want someone how tries to relate to them, who respects who they are and their differences. A girl I was talking to said that she likes one of her teachers because, “she is young cool and knows what is going on. She tells us what she did during the weekend, if feel like I connect with her.”
Lunch Time
I found it interesting that students would move away from where I was at or turn away from me when talking with their friends. Students that I had, had in class were more open to me sitting by them but seemed to find it weird that I was eating by myself sometimes. This is when I started talking to the students around me; it just seemed to be more natural. During conversations, where I was present with students, students would start a conversation with their friends about a topic but if the topic started to get to personal or to a point that they felt uncomfortable saying around me they would look me up and down, trying to sense something about me, or just strait up ask me if I was a sub. I would reply yes I am a sub, and try to let them know that I was cool, this means that I was trustworthy in a students mind. After students found out who I was, some would go on with their conversations and others would just change the subject. Students were uncomfortable with me being in their space if they could not feel they could trust me.
Music
It seems like every student has an ipod or some sort of mp3 player with them at all times. When students feel uncomfortable or know on one in the class, they put in their mp3 player and just drift away into music land. Students feel that music helps them relax and “escape” for their current situation. Music becomes a way for students to get away from everything else that is going on in their lives. “I just relate to the music,” one student said. Since they feel that almost no one can relate to them, music becomes their passage way into a land where people understand them, their problems and what they go through.
Parents
Students don’t know if their parents or guardians want the best for them in life. One student said, “They (parents) just don’t want me to be their responsibility anymore.” “Yea,” another student jumped in, “maybe my parents should have worn a condom.” For students how much their parents care for them is more about how were they rank on their parents list of important stuff. Students compare their importance to their parents along with the importance of money, their boyfriend or girlfriend, the house, work, and paying the bills. To students the way that their parents show they care for them is by keeping them off drugs, in school, home on time, or away from sex. Student believe that parent create rules because they don’t trust their own children. Over all students don’t feel like their parents understand them. “My mom was never a teenager,” one girl said, responding to the fact that she feels her mom doesn’t understand what she goes through. When students don’t feel that their parents trust them it seems to make students want to act out more to prove their parents right. Many students I talked to suffered through their parents divorces. They now feel that they are fought over for their parents love. “I like that my parents are divorced,” one student said, “I get money from my mom, I get two birthday presents, I get more stuff.”
Adults/ Student relationships (other than teachers or parents)
“A lot of older people just stereotype us,” a girl I talked too said. Students don’t think that any adults really understand them or even want to understand them. When I told my focus groups that I was doing this project in order to understand high schoolers more they were excited that I would want to find out who high school students really are. “I wish I could tell adults how I feel inside and about the world around me,” one student said. Students feel that adults don’t want to understand high schoolers today. Therefore, students don’t feel that they can trust them. Student are weary to let adults into their lives because they feel that they can’t be themselves around adults.
Substance Use
Drug and alcohol has become the social thing to do. For many students’ drug or alcohol use is a weekly activity. They usually do these activities in groups of friends at someone’s house. “We do it to have good time,” one student said, “it not like we are depressed and that is how we get it out.” Student say that they do it because they are bored and have nothing else to do. “It (drugs and alcohol) brings us closer to our friends,” one student said. When student do these activities they feel that they become closer and more excepted by their group of friends. For many students the times they were “wasted” brings memorizes of funny stories and good times, furthering their bonds of friendship. In fact many students said that they started doing drugs or drinking alcohol when they were asked to by either older brothers or sisters or when they were talked into it by friends. No students I talked to started using drugs just on their own, it was always a matter of fitting in with others.
Friend Group
Students during classroom time would act differently in each class depending on who was in the class and how the structure of the class was set up. The more people they knew in the classroom the more they talked. The people they talked to in the class were of the same self-concept level or close to their self-concept level. It was very rare to see them talk to someone, even if they sat next to each other if they were not in the same self-concept level.
During lunch time students would always hang out in the same groups. These groups where based loosely on grade level, race, socio-economic status, language, and interests. Yet, most of their group make up depended on their self-concept level. Most groups seemed too made up 3 to 4 smaller groups of students, or clusters. Some members of clusters would talk to other members of other clusters but not all members of one cluster would talk to all of the members of another cluster. You could usually tell as cluster because it was group of about 4 to 7 students that rarely left one another’s’ side. There was also what I will call floater students. Floater students walk around solo from group to group not really staying in one group for all of lunch.
For some students, friendship is the closest thing they have to safety the feel they have. This is why I believe students have formed smaller groups or clusters, were they feel they can protect themselves. The students I interviewed all said that they feel like they can trust their friends more than they can their teachers or parents. Even though students form clusters; they only have a few close friends that they let see who they really are, if that. “I don’t talk to anyone when I am in trouble or need help,” one girl said, “I just keep it all inside, that is just easier for me.” Another student said that if he needs to talk with someone that he would go to the Internet and talk to friends over the Internet, he feels that it is saver that way. The most important trait that students want in friends is understanding and trustworthiness.
Student Dating
When there is a couple among a group of students, they usually stand off to the side of the group the larger group they were apart of. They are attacked to each to other throughout their time together through hugging and kissing. These students rarely talking to their students around them. Usually the couples’ friends liked or did not like that the couple was together. I could not tell why this was.
Sex/Sexuality
Sex is a semi-open topic for the students. Sexual acts are referred to in everyday conversation but sex between two members as a couple is taboo in open conversation. After the couple has broken up the sexual relationship of the couple is now fare game in conversation. Girls I are degraded to sexual hopes or “sexual conquests” which guys use to elevate their own selves egos.
Ethics
Lying is an everyday activity to survive throughout the day. Students have no problem cheating on tests, homework or class work, whatever they can do to get it done. A student will lie to you strait in your face without even thinking twice. Most unethical decisions are done to protect themselves or other students. One of worst things you can do it to turn in or rat on another student to an adult. There was one instant where I was substituting and two students walked out of the classroom 10 minutes before the bell rang. I did not know who the students were so I asked other members in their class to tell me who they were. The students would not tell me who they where unless I threatened them in some way with punishment. This example shows that students will go to any extent to protect there fellow peers.