Juxtaposition

Elena is an assistant teacher at an elementary school, working with children was never an interest of mine. When I first heard how happy she was when she said she worked with kids, I was shocked since working with kids sounds bothersome and too energetic for me. Instead of telling her how I felt about working with kids, I became anxious to hear why she enjoyed it so much, so we set an appointment at the library. I waited around for five to ten minutes for someone to let me know that they had also arrived at the library until I got a call from Elena. She wore somewhat dark clothing, a blue jacket, and blue jeans with a lavender sweater. Elena was very apologetic at the fact that she was late because of her phone acting up, and that was clearly shown because of all the hand gestures she used. After the sudden burst of apologies, she seemed very calm and ready to answer my barrage of questions.

A Born Leader

Before asking any questions, we had to find somewhere to sit, and since the second floor was full of people, I asked Elena if she would like to go to the third floor and she complied. After the elevator doors opened, she took the role of a leader and immediately starting looking for a seat while I followed around. I was not expecting her to take the role of a leader so quickly and readily but did not have an issue with it either. It took us a while to find seats, but we eventually did. From then on, we started the interview.

A Difficult but Enjoyable Job

When I first heard she worked with kids, I expected her to work at an after school program at her old elementary or middle school. But it turned out that she works at a non-profit organization who works with schools. That program lets the kids play with iPads on a game similar to Minecraft, a game in which you create anything you’d like as long as the item can be made with cubes. The kids use the iPad’s every day, and Elena has to pick up and drop off the iPad’s from the program’s studio and the school every day. Elena monitors the kids, gives them snacks at a certain time and makes sure that the kids are behaving. Elena’s relationship with the kids is almost as a big sister, “I play with the kids but they still respect me.” She helps the kid’s and in turn, they help her. She has even become more confrontational and less shy because the job consists of being vocal, which I could relate to since social anxiety has also been a big problem for me. Even with all the emotional value, she receives from the class, the job can still be very difficult. The job requires a lot of mental energy since the kids are playing games. If they are too loud, she tries to silence them by singing the “eyes on me” song. Just asking “How do the kid’s treat you?” gave her a somewhat saddened face because of one girl in particular. Elena usually has many issues with a girl who constantly asks for a second snack and does not understand that there are not enough snacks for seconds. Elena almost seems to dislike that girl since she does it every day, but I expected the kid she disliked the most to be a lot more disruptive to the class. Management and her new teacher also gives her a hard time. The teacher that she is working with this semester is problematic. While her last teacher was nice and supportive of the kids, her new teacher is not. The new teacher has a lot of attitudes with the kids and Elena. The kids are always given a new assignment to do in their game when the program begins. The new teacher judges the kids work and tells them they did something bad, even when the kids tell her that they were going to do something that did not match the class’ schedule that day beforehand. Elena does not support her actions and always helps to calm the kids down. The organization’s management is somewhat disorganized and rude also. Elena has met the owner of the organization numerous times, he was polite on their first meeting, but after her second meeting with him, he was rude and did not even remember who she was. This came to a shock to me and I remembered how people use facades to be in better social positions, which is also why Elena cannot tell the people she works with how she feels, at the risk of losing her job.

A Protector

While Elena has not worked at the job for too long, it is clear that she does care about it even with all the hurdles she has to cross. I had previous experience working with kids, but I was not expecting some of the information she gave me. I was shocked that she could put up with so many problems in the workplace because she was so invested with the kids. But it is very clear that the job does help her in many ways. She presents herself somewhat confidently when speaking in class, and when we were talking before and after the interview she was talkative and involved in what we both had to say. Elena would easily find another job if it was not for the kids she needs to help and comfort from the new teacher she was assigned to assist. While a single person’s experience working with kids is not enough to show the job as a whole, it does show a glimpse of the struggles her and many people have to endure and why they do it. While the job is not right for me, I can easily see why she and many others do like it.

Reflection

Writing this paper was a bit difficult because I had too much information, so I had to pick what to leave and cut out of the final draft and as a result, the flow of the paper might be a bit “choppy”. Elena’s subculture interested me because I wanted to see why she enjoyed working with kids so much since I never enjoyed it since kids tended to be hyperactive and not very calm. I wanted my opinions of disliking working with kids and her opinions of only staying at the job because of the kids to contrast, but that did not seem likely because of the maximum word count and my minimal use of my own experiences. The purpose of the contract was to help the audience decide if working with kids was right for them or not. The paper had no attempt to convince the audience about picking one side or the other, but instead, I attempted to let the audience decide if it was right for them or not by informing them about what happens at that kind of job instead. The medium of it being in an essay format might help the audience rethink ideas since they can constantly keep rereading the paper.But it was also to help me understand the mind of someone who enjoys working with kids. Majority of the paper seems almost one-sided since incorporating myself in the paper is not something that I am used to. The experience of writing this paper was very different than anything I’ve done before but it was almost rather enjoyable.