I have started my volunteer work at Tunbridge public
charter school and have been there twice. I am there for two hours every Thursday
but I am only in the same classroom with them for one hour because then they go
to their electives like art or drama. The very first day they were taking a
test so I didn’t spend much time with them but I did witness some very interesting
things. The second day they were working on a word problem and then they were
taught about absolute integers. I have yet to actually work one on one with
them but Mr. Graeff, my supervisor, says that I will soon begin to work with
small groups that need the extra attention. From the first day when Mr. Graeff
had me file graded assignments, I could see that there were a few of the same kids
who were repeatedly receiving poor grades on quizzes and tests. I believe that
my work with these kids will be the same message that is “Theology” by Paul Lawrence
Dunbar, “Tableau” by Countee Cullen, and Frankenstein
by Mary Shelly. They all state that discrimination of any kind is damaging and
harmful to human nature.
“Theology” was written in 1896 and is an epigram talking
about heaven and hell. He says that he knows there is a heaven because he can
feel it in his soul which yearns to go there. Then he says there is a hell
because if not “where would my neighbors go?” I sense that when Dunbar says
neighbors he is talking about all the people who discriminated against him and
his fellow African American people. He believes that they will go to hell for
what they have done because discriminating against for the color of his skin is
morally wrong. The students who need the extra attention should be discriminated
on because we will be able to help them understand the material. The class
should not move forward for the better of the whole class if some students don’t
understand the material and that is what I am going to help them with.
In “Tableau” the speaker writes about two boys who are
walking beside each other locked arm in arm, but one is black and the other is
white. The people stare at them as they walk together but the boys are
unconscious of the stares and words and know that what they are doing is not wrong
and what the future holds. Cullen writes “That lightning brilliant as a sword
should blaze the path of thunder”. I see the path of thunder as a path of
change. The kids at Tunbridge are the key to making a better future.
In Frankenstein
the first narrator in the story feels lonely on the ship and that is when he
meets Victor Frankenstein and he becomes his friend. Then when it gets to the
point in the novel where the monster is narrating his story of when he was
created from victor he also describes feelings of loneliness. The village
people were horrified whenever they saw him and would run from him and even his
own creator didn’t want anything to do with him. I believe that whenever people
are discriminated against they also develop a feeling loneliness like the
monster even though it showed how he had emotions against the people in the
cabin. At Tunbridge I don’t want the kids to feel lonely or discriminated against
so I will do my best to give them all the attention they need.
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