Adolescent Observation Paper Essay Example

During the summer, our local grade school provides library, lunch and supervised recess (in the air-conditioned gym) free of charge for our community children. This summer I have been employed by my school to supervise the gym activities. The ages range from 2 to 18, include girls and boys and some parents who are there to supervise their younger children. The racial composition of the school and the gym-goers is not representative of the US population. This smaller rural school is mostly Caucasian, with roughly 5% of the population being Black and 5% being Hispanic. Other races make up less than ½ % of the school’s demographic. This is also roughly the racial make-up of the gym-goers that I was supervising and observing this summer. The community has two local day cares that frequently bring several of the children up to play, along with some high school students that were former students here (we are a feeder school for the high school in the larger neighboring community). Because the grade school is small (K-8 with only one grade of each offered), the gym itself is also not very big. I am guessing that it is approximately 100 x 50 feet. The gym is open from noon to 2 p.m., Monday through Thursday the entire summer. I usually have about 25 kids show up and play continuously for a solid hour and then they dwindle away as the time passes. That hour is where I have done most of my observations for this assignment. To being, it has been very interesting to watch children of so many ages interact. The gym has been broken up into 3 parts – as a result of the games that the children want to play. One half of the gym is for basketball, the other end is for kick ball and the side portion is for scooters. The basketball court is mainly the high school boys. When they need another player, they invite me to play. I gladly accept, enjoying the sport myself. They tend to keep to themselves, occasionally and briefly joining in the kick ball game, but