Jomi Rocks Service

To make up for the prolonged silence, I bring you a heartwarming story that literally has made my week. It's longer than usual, so that you have more to enjoy.

The Backstory

Here’s this boy, we’ll call him Jomi. Jomi is one of the students on my behavior focus list. This means that he and a small group of children have lunch with me once a week- we play fun games and discuss topics like empathy and teamwork. We tell the students it’s “leadership development” (which it most definitely is) but it’s also (mostly) behavior coaching. Many of my students are assigned to lunch clubs because their discipline record warrants the intervention. Jomi ended up in my group in a slightly different manner.

He had been bothering me from day one be added to my lunch clubs. In the cafeteria, in the halls, during class, I found ways to deflect his request. “I’m sorry, I can’t”, “I’m not accepting more students at this time”, and, “I wish I could, but my boss is the one who makes these decisions.”  Finally hearing something he can work with, Jomi backs off only to return the next day. “I’m in your groups! Your boss says you gotta.”

“Oh yeah?” I ask, “You talked to him? What’s he look like?”

Missing only a beat, Jomi says: “he tall. And he uh… has a haircut!” I was amused but skeptical. My supervisor confirmed via text that Jomi had not spoken to him. By the end of that week, Jomi had indeed made the acquaintance of my boss and approached him about being added to my groups.  

Getting tired of my own refusal, I began to consider it more seriously. Jomi had trouble focusing in class, and could definitely use some behavior coaching. Plus, here was a boy who actually seemed to want to do the work for lunch clubs. Who could resist? The next time he asked me if he could join, I asked him a question right back.

“Why do you want to be in my lunch clubs?”

“Because…it seems fun”

“I’m glad it seems fun. But we meet for more than just having fun. We talk about developing as leaders, and about improving our behavior in class”

“Oh.”

“So, is there any other reason you want to do lunch clubs?”

“Leadership development…to be a better person!”. He gives me a winning smile. I give him a winning challenge- to behave his very best in my class for the next week. If he can do this, he will have earned a place in my lunch groups.

Jomi rose to the challenge. A boy who the week before had been rambunctious and focused almost exclusively on his friends was suddenly diligent and quiet, facing the correct direction in the classroom, and overall very focused on learning.

I was surprised and impressed (and very aware that his degree of self control is rare among my students, so many of whom want to behave but don’t seem to know how). Jomi joins my lunch club and quickly becomes one of the students I most look forward to working with. He is easily distracted if there are any other over-energized children in the group, but he’s phenomenal one-on-one. Calm, honest, and very funny.

50 Acts of Leadership

Within City Year lunch clubs, one of our incentive programs is called 50 Acts of Leadership. The idea is this: students perform acts of leadership of increasing impressiveness as the year goes on. They must record every act to get credit (by describing the act, why they did it, and who it helped). The goal is that they complete 50 Acts by the end of the year, and we have a big celebration for all the students. In the meantime, the students are hopefully reflecting on their choices and slowly becoming model leaders - getting suspended less and getting on the path to success more and more.

50 Acts of Leadership might not sound like much…but I promise you, it’s a very ambitious goal. There are all sorts of barriers to student success: Losing their paper is a big issue. As is thinking about leadership any moment that we’re not directly prompting them on it. Some of my teammates have yet to receive a single act of leadership from their students. I have taken to filling it out with my student during lunch club time, hoping that this initial effort will keep them invested in the long 7 days between meetings. Often, students are suspended between meetings and so don’t meet with the group for several weeks at a time.  

Anyways, I’ve recently been making a renewed attempt at successful completion of the acts of leadership. Because I’m desperate for them to succeed. I decided that instead of imposing an incentive program on them, we would create one together.

So Jomi and I sit down to brainstorm what his reward should be for completing 5 or 10 acts (because at that point, I think he had 3). “A whole bag of candy!” he said, his eyes lighting up. I concede him a bag of candy for performing 10 acts of leadership. For 5 acts, we agree on a drawing lesson. I have a lion drawn on the cover of my binder and the students are fascinated with the idea that I drew this lion myself, and that they might be able to learn to draw it too.

I introduce to Jomi important standard of “increasing impressiveness”. If one of his first acts of leadership is to hold the door open for his whole class, then his next acts should be more impressive. This is, after all, supposed to challenge him to grow into a better person. He seems to grasp this quickly, and begins to suggest more impressive things he could do. All the dishes for his mom. His homework for a week. Community service.

This last suggestion really captures my attention. Almost jokingly, I tell him, “Jomi, if you do community service outside of school hours, I’ll give you credit for 10 acts of leadership.”  In my mind, I imagined him working his way up to community service sometime in the spring, when trees were beginning to bloom and the DC dirt was thawing.

You wouldn’t believe- that boy came back the very next Monday talking about how he did volunteer work over the weekend. Only half believing him, I told him to write it on his leadership log and get his mother to sign it.

He did, and she did. Here is a picture of what he wrote.

"I volenteered for community service for two whole hours in the freezing cold. So when I first got their I got my volenteer vest and got started. Community service is very hard work. I saw all types of trash I saw CD's, cups, I even saw a dead frog. So community service is kind of fun."

You cannot believe my shock and excitement as we spent all of Friday’s lunch club discussing his weekend service. I told him how proud I was of him, and grateful that he is in my lunch clubs. “Oh yeah” he said victoriously, pumping his fist in the air.

I don't know why it surprised me so much. Maybe because I was oblivious to community service at that age, that I'm stunned when other little people aren't. Maybe because it was remarkably organized and mature of a child who can't ever seem to become mentally present enough to turn in homework every week. Maybe because I couldn't picture the students who receive my community service also doing community service for others. Maybe because it seemed like my actions and challenge to him had actually impacted the world.

No matter the reason, Jomi's actions and commitment to the City Year lunch club program were inspiring to me. His actions also reminded me of how vibrant and alive and creative my kids are. Of how important it is that I never box them in with too-low expectations. Of how important and uplifting it is for me, as a mentor/tutor/coach, to see my students succeed. Of how proud I feel of them. Of how frustrated I am that they are spending much of their time clowning around, fighting, or avoiding class work instead of applying themselves in the hopes of a better future. Of how much I am going to miss them when the year ends.

* * *

Thanks for your patience during my multi-month immersion in the City Year experience! Sometimes, I'm so busy trying to do a good job and learn about my new community that I forget how to include other people in that process. But I want to! And so I'm gonna try to do better in the coming weeks and months. This Thanksgiving break imposed some sort of calm on my life, and so hopefully that'll help me bridge the gap from living my experiences to reflecting (publicly) on them.

Stay tuned, keep rockin' your lives!