Advanced Essay 2 - Educational Equality

This essay is about the importance of teachers who care about the futures of students and who's driving force is to propel kids far out into the world. The essay reflects of the fact that this isn't present in most of our country and for very specific groups of people. Hopefully this comes through in my work, and next time I hope to articulate even further with my points. I think I did a good job here but I want to hit the audience even more clearly next time. Enjoy! https://docs.google.com/a/scienceleadership.org/document/d/1BgKRvlnzcitgnd82BoWh8RtUbw79gX7jTAUMVC5H8Hk/edit?usp=sharing Bea Gerber Educational Equality I’ve never been ashamed to admit that I love math. Since elementary school, I remember correcting the mistakes on the whiteboard and turning in my worksheets early. Math has right answers, leaves nothing up to chance, and can always be solved, even if the solution is that there is no solution. I’ve taken geometry two times, two summer math courses, and have been taking math with seniors since sophomore year. This may come across as bragging about my smarts, but in reality, it’s me bragging about my opportunities. Freshman year, a few of my friends and I were ready to take our learning to the next level. Geometry had been a breeze for us and we wanted a challenge. Without hesitation, our math teachers and parents helped guide us through the process of taking a summer math course, and even gave us extensions to accommodate our exciting summers. I remember on the final day, clicking the last submit button and running down the stairs to my parents singing We Are the Champions by Queen. I was finding joy in my education on my own time and was accelerating my learning with the support of those around me who believed that I could be successful. The following year, our schedules were rearranged to fit our special math classes, and teachers constantly checked in with us to make sure we were able to keep up and stay afloat. We were encouraged by all who heard of our situation, and taking a harder math course felt a time to prove myself while being grateful for the chance to learn. This scenario is not typical, and I’ve realized this as my high school career has continued. While I was able to jump ahead easily and gain the support of others, many students across the country can not. At my school, being smart isn’t “nerdy”. Participating in class isn’t lame. We strive to be smart and push each other to our highest potential, something I now realize is not gifted to everyone. The author of I Just Want to be Average, Mike Rose, corroborates this while describing vocational school in LA: “If you're a working-class kid in the vocational track, the options you'll have to deal with this will be constrained in certain ways: you're defined by your school as "slow"; you're placed in a curriculum that isn't designed to liberate you but to occupy you, or, if you're lucky, train you, though the training is for work the society does not esteem.” I see the education system to be flawed because of this. The fact that one child is encouraged to achieve while another is seen as less than and not given the chance directly impacts education they can and will receive. This comes down to the school environments and the people who run them. If teachers believe that the end goal for students is to go to college as free thinkers who can make change and do more than stay in one neighborhood and live the lives their parents live, then those students have a chance at that life. If their teachers just believe in getting good test scores for their schools, the children they educate will reflect that. Jimmy Santiago Baca, the author of A Place to Stand, recalls, “I first got to talk to someone who made me feel human at the age of 22,” when speaking about how his relationships with people in and out of school during his lifetime. Our education system is too good at this. It is too good at looking at students as numbers and statistics rather than people with futures. Everyone, simply by attending school, should have earned the right to an education that actually wants to create a better person at the end of it. Currently, our education system only does that for certain people who fit a mold of a certain type of citizen. These are white middle class Americans, and that can be narrowed depending on your part of the country. If you don’t fit into that guideline, your education is streamlined into “what’s best for you” or how others feel you should learn. America is taught by white people. We learn whitewashed history and we read whitewashed books. We have special weeks or months where we take in literature written by people of color instead of that being the norm all year long. We learn through a white lens. This probably won’t change, since America feels comfortable here. What can change are the teachers and the motive behind the way they teach. A good teacher has the power to change a student’s life. Whether it be supporting children who want to jump ahead or the one time they learned their future actually mattered because there was someone looking out for them when the rest of the world wasn’t, a good teacher is life changing. Without good teachers pushing children, black children, forward, they fall victim to a system that is designed to ignore them. Designed to say “that’s enough.” Fully ready to assume children don’t want to achieve higher, therefore making the children believe they don’t want to achieve higher, perpetuating the cycle of being too cool to be smart. Continuing a circle that leads away from higher education and back into jails and prisons. The school system leaves behind children. Two kids can go to school for the same number of years and still have different different options and opportunities for their futures. Teachers have to teach to the students’ world and experiences, and not their own. Until teachers can meet children where they are, lift them up, and grow them as people, educational equality will not exist.