{"id":5277,"date":"2022-01-11T15:12:08","date_gmt":"2022-01-11T20:12:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/imprint\/?p=5277"},"modified":"2022-01-11T15:42:20","modified_gmt":"2022-01-11T20:42:20","slug":"page-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/imprint\/page-15\/","title":{"rendered":"Page 15"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Eliana Alicea<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a particularly difficult day of programming, one of our volunteers criticized the students\u2019 restless behavior, saying she would\u2019ve \u201cthrown them out\u201d of our program space. She ranted for a bit about their behavior before we reminded her that some of the students are faced with different challenges than we are, to which she replied, \u201cI guess I wasn\u2019t raised like that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The volunteer is a UCF student completing a service-learning requirement at Page 15<\/a>, a literacy-based nonprofit in downtown Orlando. One of Page 15\u2019s programs is the Young Writers Society, an after-school program for kids in Parramore to explore themselves through creative writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Page 15 encourages young writers to write freely, openly expressing any emotions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In such a vulnerable environment, students often reveal personal hardships. More often than not, the kids we work with come from very different backgrounds than UCF students. They\u2019re sometimes put in difficult situations where we might perceive their words or actions as \u201cbad,\u201d or they might behave differently than we would in certain settings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amy Morin, a psychotherapist<\/a> and host of The Verywell Mind Podcast says, “Due to physiological effects on the child\u2019s brain, stress ignites a \u201cfight or flight\u201d response that might be beneficial in the short term\u2014such as preparing for a test\u2014but harmful over long periods of time. Given that [a] child\u2019s brain is in a period of rapid development, these hormonal responses can be detrimental to learning ability and behavior.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kids are under a lot of stress. Beyond stresses of standardized testing and social pressures, our students are also all people of color living in a historically Black neighborhood, mostly coming from families in lower socioeconomic classes, and tending to have low scores on our mental health surveys. While children\u2019s misbehavior as a result of hardship and trauma is common across all areas, the historical and systemic racism abundant in Parramore\u2019s history only adds another layer to the damage our students are already processing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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