Volunteering As A Teacher’s Aide

I had a brilliant mind, no one knew or cared about thanks to poverty.

Jamaica’s classrooms were overcrowded with only one teacher and many children slipped through the cracks. School was a sanctuary for me, so I didn’t slip through the crack of more than forty children in a classroom. But I know many children that did. Having children of my own, I decided that educationally, they would do their best. I teach them before they enter school. I made sure they could read and write.

I learned that boys learn differently from girls and are treated differently, especially by female teachers. My son’s sixth-grade class in primary school had 58 children with one teacher. Parental involvement allowed most children not to slip through the cracks. I had them reading and writing by they were three and entering school. An early start allows children to do better in these overcrowded classrooms.

After my sons left primary school, I decided to share my ingenious methods of teaching them and getting the success I wanted with the slower class.

I volunteered.

Jamaica’s education system is different. The brighter children are grouped together in the top class and it goes down the line. In high schools it’s different.

I choose the class with the slowest children. Every child learns differently. There are visual learners and aural learners. And children who learn both ways. This is not under consideration in my culture. Children must find ways to learn and the responsibility for their lives is placed in their hands very young.

This causes many smart children to slip through the cracks.

It was five of the happiest years of my life. I became personally involved with my classes of more than thirty children. We became friends as I learned about their lives at home by their attitude and behavior in class. All of these children are from poor homes and it was hell. Parents are fighting life and don’t have time to be personally involved in these children’s lives. So, they can’t share or help them with their problems.

I met children who had to make adult decisions at eleven years old. I met children who had to learn to cook and clean at eleven, plus take care of their younger siblings. I had one child who had been molested by her stepfather, who told me instead of her mother, other family members, or the guidance counselor for the school. I did the right thing. I became the keeper of many secrets.

I met children with impatient lives. Where what was taught inside of the classroom stopped when they left school and restarted the next morning. This action creates learning disability for children as the teacher had to restart and reteach lessons that should have been reinforced at home by parents. With our overcrowded classrooms, most teachers can’t hold twenty, thirty, or forty children for the few whose parents didn’t try to help them.

That is how many children slipped through the cracks in the system, but with one person who cares, a miracle can happen.

I also met dishonest children. I learned that it was a learned behavior because that’s all they saw their parents do. My mother is on that list. I met children with beautiful hearts, who just need love and kindness’ direction. I met happy and sad children. I met super-smart children who gave up on life and stopped using their abilities. They shut down because of what life handed them through their parents. I turn that around for them.

I became their therapist, so I encourage them and pray for them. I was their teacher and showed them better ways to learn. I was their nurse and doctor and I showed them better ways to take care of themselves. I became their lawyer too demanding that they stay out of trouble, behave themselves, and focus on their school work.

I had to answer lots of ‘Why’ questions.

Many shared their dreams with me, and I helped to show them a better way of achieving them. I went back to their age with my wisdom and experience and grew with them.

Boy did we have fun.

I learned about their home life too and why our world is in chaos and will continue that way. How we treat and what we teach our children is essential to what they add to our world. How they live their lives too. Children live what they learn, it’s vital that what we teach them won’t harm them or destroy their future along with our world.

I met children with the kind of pain reserved for adults who have been through many years of hell. I met children who if nothing is done, won’t live to adulthood.

Many of these children had no sense of direction and parents who care less.

I motivate and encourage the parents who show up for PTAs or anything the school has. I became friends with them too. Today, in every area I walk in, a child or a parent calls out to me.

My intention was just to show the slower children a better way to learn. I didn’t expect to be overwhelmed with so much pain. Children are suffering in our world and many are fighting life too young on their own.

Children need to be children.

The best things I learned in life, I learned from children.

The school is begging me to come back. My heart can’t take so much pain in one place.

I might go back when I empty my heart. Lol. Volunteering made me realize and understand the behavior of many adults. The trauma never healed for some of us. Children have a permanent place in my heart that nothing can change or take away. I will assist a child faster than an adult. I help all of them every chance I get.

They are my reason for not adding cruelty and hatred to our world.

If your heart could speak, what would it say?

Humanity needs to put more focus on the children and create a better world for them to survive in. All of them, without regard to race, religion, culture, creed, and wealth.

Thank you for reading this piece. I hope you enjoy it.