Dinner Guest

Every fall, teachers at our school hold individual meetings with our mentees and their parents to talk about strengths and weaknesses, set goals, and talk about the important things that will happen in the upcoming year. This year I offered to meet with families at their homes instead of at school. Most families still wanted to come to school, but a few took me up on the home visit offer.

When I was in STEP, we were supposed to do a home visit for our adolescent development case study student, but I never did because I was too nervous. This year was the first time I've been to a kid's house--consider me a home visit convert now. I have been having SO much fun when I go over to kids' homes. The first home I went to was the least eventful, but the girl's dad--who I'd never met and who probably wouldn't have come to a meeting at school--sat in the background and listened. The next one was awesome because M. showed me his room that he'd tricked out with all his cool electronics and computer programming skills. I think at first he was weirded out to have a teacher in his room (who wouldn't be?) but then just ended up proud to show off his stuff.

Last week I had dinner with two families. The first one was really fun because N. has five younger siblings, four of whom had dinner with us. It was amazing to see a "cool" 15-year old boy talking baby-talk to his 2-year old sister so she'd eat her dinner. The best, though, was Wednesday night's dinner at E.'s house. E. is generally very quiet and shy in her classes, even though she is probably one of the most brilliant students we have. At home she was a completely different person, taking charge of her brother and his friends and ordering them around the kitchen. She loves to bake, so she bake me an apple pie--and put me to work chopping apples, rolling dough, etc. After dinner while we were waiting for the pie to cool, she showed me how to play the piano, another one of her hobbies. I feel like I learned so much more about these kids and their families that I ever expected.

On one hand, I really want to push for all of my meetings next year to happen at home. On the other hand, I am worn out beyond belief. Most of the days this week I got home around 8:30 or 9pm after working straight from 7:30am. That's just too long of a day to have on a regular basis, even when it's for something so positive. I have been thinking a lot about what it would look like for a school to provide sufficient support and resources to all kids while also offering teachers sustainable working conditions. My school for sure doesn't fit that and I can't think of any school that does. This shouldn't be the trade-off we have to deal with. But more thoughts on this later.