Thursday, May 12, 2011

You Shouldn't Be This Stressed!

Today was supposed to be my well deserved reprieve after yesterday's torture.

And it mostly was. I had a quiet, low key day in the LRC helping kids with math and reading in groups of 2 or 3.

The stressful part of the day was when I meet with a 5th grade boy for a half hour. The poor kid was enormously stressed about the prospect of middle school next year. He talked to me for a long time about how he was afraid the kids there would make fun of him and beat him up. He also told me how he knew this would happen because middle school kids are bad and they curse and do drugs and get taken out of school in handcuffs. I tried to reassure him that not all kids were like that, and that he just needed to be around the right people. I also told him that they have counselors and teachers at middle school that can help him and talk to him and that they school wouldn't allow people to beat him up. He seemed basically unconvinced of my assertions and kept saying he knew it would bad. I encouraged him to ask questions when the middle school folks come to talk to his class. Maybe knowing what to expect would help him be less worried - maybe I'd be right and he wouldn't even have many, in any, classes with the older kids he was so worried about. By the time he went back to class I was exhausted! I'm not cut out to be a counselor!

1 comment:

Betty said...

What a stressful conversation to have with a student you really don't know well. I feel bad for that boy to be so stressed over something that he fears will happen months from now. Hopefully he will take your advice and ask some questions. Who knew you had to be a counselor too?
Love you!!! MOM