"Help Me! I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up!"

My grandmother is a wonderful woman but there are some things about her that makes you want to just sigh, shake your head and laugh.  One thing is her issue with certain commercials.  Some being the Gieco commercials like the one where a doctor tells his dying patient that he has good news but it's not that he will live but that he saved money on his car insurance.  She actually called Gieco to complain that their commercials were offensive.  This brings me to the title of this blog.  The other commercial she doesn't like is the one for LIfe Alert where the woman falls and says, "Help me!  I've fallen and I can't get up!"  I remembered this commercial while spending the past 2 weeks at sleep away camp with my students.

It was a real eye opener to be around my students 24/14.  I came to the realization that their generation is missing some pieces of social interactions that should have been taught to them by the middle school age.  

The first thing was their lack of knowledge on how to clean the cabin.  One student decided after getting her task of cleaning the bathroom sinks she would stand around by her bed.  She put off starting the task because she "didn't know what to do" or where to get the supplies.  This was a trend among most students during cabin cleanup and meal time.  The first few days I think the girls were a little put off that they actually had to do the work and couldn't rely on the adult of the house to do it for them.  This is when I heard the term "learned helplessness."  It perfectly describes how our youth are raised in a society where they are pampered and not expected to do the dirty work.  Of course this is not the case for all students, we had some extremely helpful ones among the bunch.  And I'll admit that I'm kind of among the bunch of "learned helplessness" kids.  The only difference is my attitude about it.  Some kids just have to be more proactive about asking for help when needed instead of avoiding the task given to them.  

The second was the lack of table manners among some of the kids.  It became pretty apparent that some of the girls were never taught proper etiquette.  Body posture was hunched, there was a lack of use of utensils, lack of serving technique, and most disturbing was the chewing with mouths open.  These are all manners that are often taught in the home during meal time.  After observing a student who lacked some of these manners, another adult and I inquired about her meal habits at home.  She said that most people in her house eat at separate times...bingo!  There's the reason.  In busy households kids don't have the opportunity to eat with the adults and therefore are not told to "chew with your mouth closed," "no elbows on the table," "use a fork and knife."  

This was something I tried to enforce at meals (the picking apart of beef with fingers was just not kosher).  Hopefully the girls remembered some of the lessons we tried to instill.  I tried to convince them it's better to have table manners so they don't scare away a guy on a date, since they're pre-teen and teen girls I figured it was the best motivation.  Unfortunately the girls don't have access to proper utensils during meals at school and often the food is finger food so it will be hard to continue the proper practice in school.  Maybe this can be an extra activity?  Occasionally having a sit down meal together?  I don't think the girls would mind a nice meal.

All in all camp was a decent success, but I'll share more about that in my next post.