When I arrived at St. Thomas today, the girls that I usually work with were arguing with the fourth grade girls. Immediately I attempted to separate the two sets of friends and told each group to ignore the other and work on their homework. At first they did not want to listen to me, but eventually I was able to get the girls to sit down and do their work. They all had very hostile attitudes and brought up the idea of fist fights several times. I made many attempts to tell them that fighting was never the answer, but they argued that their mothers taught them to always fight back. One girl said that her mother told her than she cannot just sit there and take other people's bullying. Instead, she needed to stand up for herself and fight, or do whatever it takes to win. I was very shocked today and actually a little bit frightened. I knew the girls were just talking about fighting, but I still wasn't sure what they were actually capable of doing.
Finally, though, they were able to settle down and concentrate on their homework. It seems that each week they always struggle on their math homework. Most of these students have a lot of problems completing their math assignments. The textbook they use is very random. It does not seem like the math problems relate to each other in any way. The students have a hard time learning how to do the problems because nothing relates to other problems in the same section.
Overall today, though, it was very emotional from the start. The girls were very intimidating, and it makes me give the teachers at the school a lot of credit for being able to go through those situations on a daily basis.
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