How can you make kids living in poverty feel more safe and welcome in school?
In a video shown in class, we can see how kids living in poverty go through so much negativity which makes them not want to try hard in school. This makes me question, what can we do to make these children feel safe about talking about their problems. In the video, the teacher said that he grew up in the neighborhood so he knew what the kids were going through and he wanted to make it a better place. I personally think that if every teacher at the school envelopes a mindset like this, then the kids will be more eager to learn in school. It mentioned stats where kids of color and/or latino children were the ones more likely to be in gangs and fail school. To fix this, I think the school needs a better support system. I do not think that just the teachers attitude is enough. The school should maybe have workshops join how to deal with real life problems similar to what the kids are experiencing.
Overall, I think that a better support system and understanding of the children at Fremont High School in Oakland will change the way how kids learn. The children might actually look forward to school and start working hard because they know they are safe on campus. If there were less students being involved in gangs such as the one in the video, and more focusing on their education, I think the graduation rate would start to increase. I do not think the school can just expect the kids to work harder when they already have so many stressful things going on in their lives.
Great post, Nishad! I strongly agree that we need to give people in poverty more support, mainly to break the Cycle of Poverty. The Cycle of Poverty is a social theory where people in poverty are unmotivated to escape poverty due to their poor living conditions and sense of hopelessness, thus leading their situation to get worse. I feel that if we can get more support to these people and give them a sense of hope, we can break the Cycle of Poverty and help millions escape their situations. What do you think?
ReplyDeleteNot sure if it's that simple. Our school has some support programs in process like AVID, and they're great, but obviously not all minorities care to join. I do agree that more support from the administration is necessary, but even then a lot of external things will prevent students from just magically turning away from peer pressure, drugs, whatnot. And how will these workshops be conducted? Who would conduct them? How are people's understandings of poverty supposed to change? Think about our school: can you envision how a class or group like this would function? We don't even have enough regular counselors, how are we supposed to create a program like this?
ReplyDeleteI think what I'm trying to get at is that what you're proposing is great, but leaves me with more questions than answers.