Every Thursday I volunteer with the group Coe Friends. The group of third grade students never cease to amaze me. I have previously volunteered with students, but these children are much different from the children that I have worked with previously. I usually tend to work with younger aged children, which might also factor into why I had never really worked with children like these. The act almost like miniadults, wanting to tell everyone what to do and how to do it. My little Johnson buddy, Mashyla, is very cute, but I have come to learn that she is much more than what I thought she was going to be; it thought that she was going to be very shy and soft spoken. She is not shy at all and is one of the loudest kids in the group. She is constantly yelling at the top of the lungs, sometimes wanting to have screaming contests with the other kids. I tend to feel guilty when I have to scold her for breaking the rules, but I know that she will not learn how to follow the rules if I do not inforce them for her.
And then we will sit down and she and I will have these immensely deep conversations. She will tell me about her family and her day at school. There have been a few times that she has not shown up at Coe Friends because she has had a bad day; she does not see that when she had a bad day that she should feel like she can come to Coe Friends because we are supposed to be there not only to have fun with them, but also to make them feel like they have a place where they are welcome to share their feelings about anything, whether it be about having a bad day or having gotten a good score on a test.