Eryn James Capstone

Abstract

This was more a learning and growing experience for myself and the young teenagers involved than a project. Over the duration of the time I spent mentoring the kids, I forgot about the fact that I was doing a project for a grade. I felt more like I was doing something that was helping me become a better person. At the shelter, I helped the young kids deal with their hard life situations by writing. Over the time,  I also chimed in on helping them better understand basic every day mannerisms, like being respectful, grateful and polite. In the beginning, everything didn’t start off as lovely as it ended. The kids were very unkind to me and they would clearly express that they did not want to be in my “program”. They would openly express their dislike for what I was trying to teach them. I thought that they didn’t respect me because we were only 4 or 5 years apart in age but soon I realized what it actually was that disinterested the kids. I realized that the kids were being rude for 2 reasons. Reason one was that they didn’t have much discipline in their lives, which explained why they were so rude and they also, like all other teenagers, didn’t  want to sit and write and listen to someone talk for an hour. After this realization. I decided to take a different route into getting them to like what we were doing, which was use active games instead of writing exercise  to start off with. They enjoyed that after a long day of school, then they didn’t mind the writing as much. In the end every went well and I just hope that the kids took a lot from this experience.