Psychology of Childhood and Adolescence in an Urban Context

For the first job I ever had, I was a tutor for elementary school students at a public school in Brooklyn. I was the assistant counselor and it was a class of some twenty-seven or twenty-eight students. They ranged from mostly Kindergartners to two third-graders.

I realized that students from a family with less income did not do as well. That is probably why universities have special admission standards for the students with less income. It is mainly because the parents of that child is not educated or do not have the knowledge of English hence they can not provide an enriched environment for the child at an early age. However, some students who come from a decent income family who’s parents are educated do not do well because their parents do not read to them or do any educational enrichment activities with their child. But there are some students that do extremely well despite their family’s low income. That is because their parents invest whatever money they had in tutors and other educational services.

Most of the students at the tutoring program is Asian and only a handful are Caucasian. From first-hand experience, Asian parents put a lot of emphasis on education and making sure their child(ren) does well in school. They do so by weekend tutoring sessions and learning to play other instruments.

Most of the classes had students from one grade, but my class was mixed because they were students that registered late and the other classes for their grade was full. It was hard administering the class because their levels of knowledge were so different. We tried to play games with the entire class but it wouldn’t work. The Kindergartners would find the game fun but the second and third-graders feel like its boring or that the game is for ‘babies.’ Meanwhile, games for the older children could not be understood or played efficiently by the Kindergartners because of their lack of knowledge. In the end, we gave them separate activities to do. If its an arts and crafts activity, the older children would have better end products. They have much higher control and coordination of their hands such as coloring within the lines. They also understand the color scheme more; for example, a persons face is not blue or green.

I also learned that the younger children are much more sensitive and couldn’t control their emotions as well. If I said a negative comment to a younger child, they could possibly start crying meanwhile an older child can take in the comment better.

I knew that you couldn’t expect younger children to do certain things or that they fail at it because they’re ‘young.’ I did not know that it was due to so many factors like grasping, the development of the lobes in their cerebral coretex, whether their environment was enriched or not. Through this course I understood why certain students acted the way they did and that it didn’t just happen because of no particular reason.