Fun Day With Students

This past trip to Classic City was really fun! I worked with several male students trying to catch up on work that they had missed or were behind on. These boys all in the same room trying to get things done was just kind of funny! The minute someone got on track, was the minute another one made some hilarious joke. It was even hard for me to stay on track because they were all so funny together. Fortunately, Kevin got a lot of work done! I think he knew that he really needed to get caught up :)

It was a really great time in Classic City, I feel like the students really opened up to me, respected me enough to get work done, but wanted to talk to me and we all laughed. It was the first time where the environment felt really relaxed and it seemed like the students and I were totally at ease.

Toward the end of my time at Classic City during this trip, I started asking some of the students the questions that I had really been wanting to ask.

• Do a lot of the students here have children of their own?
• Are there a lot of drugs?
• How does the "open campus" work?

• "Steven" told me that not all that many students had children of their own, and then they rattled off maybe 3 names of students that they knew who had children. To me, even that was a large number, but it was actually a lot less than I anticipated the answer to be after what I had been told about the Athens area and the schools here.
• The students were very open in telling me about the drug use that occurs within the student body. They told me that there wasn't all that much hardcore drug use, but that marijuana use was a fairly common activity for the students. They had a very relaxed attitude toward the use of marijuana which surprised me. In the town where I grew up, there was a much higher stigma when it came to any kind of drug use.
• I was very interested in understanding how the idea of "open campus" worked. The students told me that they were technically not allowed to just leave whenever they felt like it, but no one stops them if they do. They are allowed to leave between classes if they want to, which is when many of the students go outside to smoke cigarettes. I think this is a good method to keep students from feeling "trapped" at school, but I think it could be easily abused.  

I was very appreciative of the students opening up to me, and I am glad we all had a good time! I was also very proud of "Kevin" for resisting the distraction of his friends and continuing to work. He got a lot done and and continued to work (for a few minutes at least) after I went to sign out.