I’m glad somebody said it….
We Need to Talk About Injustice
Economic status determines a lot for our children especially with the public school to prison pipeline being a very prevalent problem here in America. On the video above, Bryan Stevenson has a frank discussion about injustice in America.
How does our justice system reflect the inequalities of the public education system?
How can a true investment in a child’s education change the likelihood of them being found on the wrong side of justice?
Are Our Students Allowed to Flex Their Decision Making Muscles?
“Simply put, we have fallen in love with the illusory certainty of making a choice, and abandoned any shared commitment to investing in the long and careful deliberative process that is necessary to ensure that the decisions we do make are both well informed and thoughtfully constructed.”
These sentiments came from: the Education Week article In Modern School Reform is it We the People or Me the Individual?
I agree whole-heartedly, I just haven’t articulated it the way they have. As a middle school teacher, this is what you lose when you create “zero-tolerance” policies. This is what you lose when you evaluate instruction with selected response assessments. There’s no wiggle room, no second chances, no mercy and no grace. We are teaching our children that making “good” decisions is a natural innate ability. We give little room for growth to reflect that one’s ability to make the right decision comes more easily over time and maturity, or that decision making is more like a muscle and only gets better with exercising. When an adolescent makes a mistake now-a-days, they are severely punished …imagine how this discourages their faith in their ability to make good choices throughout life?
I know that is not the central thesis of this of this article, but I couldn’t help but pull it out. It is definitely a problem in our schools.
Time is a major factor. So much as to get done in a certain amount of time, and we simply ignore the differences in time it takes different individuals to process information.
How can teachers and parents help students flex their decision making muscles?
How do you feel about “zero-tolerance”?
In what ways can we teach children to enjoy the process instead of focusing solely on the product?
While School Doors Close, Prison Cells Open
Four major cities are closing several schools next year: Philadelphia (23), New York City (23), The District of Columbia (15) and Chicago (54). I’ve often wondered what the ramifications might be for so many school closings aside from larger class sizes and already overwhelmed resources such as wrap around services (social workers, resource teachers, etc) being abused, and I found an article that outlined many more problems for districts in the future. Here, Education Week argues why closing so many schools only temporarily saves district budgets.
I also watched, “The House I Live In: Takes a Hard Look at the War on Drugs” yesterday on PBS and found that so much money goes into the war on drugs. With the privatization of the prison system, prisons in this country are looked at as more of an asset while our schools are considered liabilities. Convicting felons is a business that turns a profit. Hence why while the U.S. contains only 5% of the global population we have more 25% of the world’s prisoners. More money is invested in convicting non-violent offenders than educating our children. The lack of investment in education causes the overpopulation of our prisons. When are our priorities going to change?
It is important to put a proper workforce engaged in keeping our streets safe, but do you think there is a disproportionate amount of money and human captial invested in the war on drugs versus what is spent on schools? Why or why not?
In what ways can law enforcement work with and within schools to decrease the number of convicted felons in the future?
According to the documentary, the drug problem in America is only a symptom of larger problems related to social structure, public health, and economic issues. In your opinion, what are these problems and how can community organizations (schools, law enforcement, religious organizations, social workers, etc) ban together to find a resolution?
180 Days: American High School
PBS follows one struggling District of Columbia school’s journey to redemption. This is probably one of the more realistic depictions of what really goes on in urban schools across the nation. Here, you get to hear from the CHILDREN, teachers, parents, and community leaders who all come together to support the school. There aren’t any assessment companies, sponsors, or politicos recording this to insert propaganda or political agendas. They instead delve into the lives of the people interact with the children the most. I’ve seen this story play out in so many places. Parents, teachers, and communities do in fact care for their youth…I’m just glad someone caught this on camera for a more accurate picture.
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The Battle at Kruger: Community Comes to the Rescue
While reading, the founder of the Children’s Defense Fund Marian Wright Edelman’s, The Sea is So Wide and My Boat is So Small, she wrote about this Ytube video. She used this video to illustrate just how important the entire community is to a child’s life. Had only the mother attempted to protect her calf, it wouldn’t have survived. It took the entire community of water buffalo to save this calf. In a world where there are plenty of the lions and the alligators in the world preying on our children, what role do you play in protecting them? If we all surrounded our children with love and protection, how many children can we save?
It takes the ENTIRE community. We are ALL responsible for the children in our community–not just the parents and the teachers. What role are you playing in the children in your community’s lives?
What Does School Really Teach Children?
What can we do to change this senario? At home, at school and in the community? What is your role in educating the children in your community? What are some more unintended lessons children are learning in school?
Count Your Lessons 