I dove deep into the causes of the African American achievement gap in my first slate post. In that slate post, I explain how I found 4 major causes for this achievement gap. Those causes were home life, school, mental health, and the history of African Americans. I spoke of how African American children may have a stressful home life caused by financial issues and not enough guidance and love from their parents. I spoke on how ignored mental health is among the black community. Parents often dismiss their child or even ignore their own mental issues causing them to cause their own children harm. Treatments regarding the mentally ill seem to also be less effective on black people. It has to do with the difference in how African Americans are raised and their environment. In order to have effective treatment, people who work with the mentally ill would have to consider cultural and environmental differences. The history of African Americans has not been sweet. African Americans have experienced segregation in the past and African Americans are still going through it but in a different way. Predominantly black schools are severely underfunded and students are expected to thrive in a place where their building is falling apart.

Like I said in my last slate post, digging to find information on this topic is almost impossible. Although I was not able to find people who were working on a way to reverse this gap, I was able to find at most 3 websites going deeper into how to reverse this gap. I think that the website I’m going to reference is very informative and should be brought to the attention of more people. It talks about how teachers should be trained to deal with different cultural backgrounds. Teachers do not understand the role they play in a child’s life sometimes and this is one of those times. The website explains how teachers don’t understand the reason behind a child’s behavior and that can lead to them lowering their expectations of the child. How could this affect African American students? Well, as I explained in my slate post, when the teacher and parent give up, what do you think the child is going to do? Give up.

For my agent of change, I decided that I wanted to do a mini course with my classmate, Kyla. My initial thought was to educate teachers within SLA about how to interact with students from different cultural backgrounds so that they don’t go down a slippery slope. But then I thought a better method would be to target the youth. The youth are the people who will enter society not too long from now and they’re more likely to want to get up and do something about it. So what better way to spread my message than designing a mini course for freshmen? This was a big thing to do honestly. To design a whole lesson plan from scratch on our own? We had to go from student to teacher and it wasn’t easy. Me and Kyla had to figure out how long we wanted our mini course to be, what we would discuss, how much time we would each get, how our topics connected, and so much more. We also had to email Mr. Spry in order to approve our mini course. This project was a challenge, but fun. I also found amazing videos on things like generational trauma that almost made me tear up because of how real it was. Of course, we didn’t get a chance to put the mini course in action due to it being almost the end of the year but I do look forward to presenting it to the freshmen next year.

Our first email to Mr. Spry

Our second email to Mr. Spry

This project was really cool and a great way to push yourself to learn something new or to learn more about something. I think this project was a good challenge and it feels really good to be able to feel like you can change something in the world. I learned about the unknown stress many African Americans go through. I even found myself realizing that I went through a lot of the stuff mentioned and yet I didn’t see how bad it actually was until now. So many things mentioned regarding the lack of achievement in the African American community, I’ve seen in real life. I learned that African Americans go through a lot as a whole and we ourselves fail to realize how bad our situation is.

If I were to do this project again, I would start the slate post early on and as I go. I feel like the project didn’t need to be fully done in order to like half the slate post. Regarding my agent of change, I would’ve started planning the lesson on the lesson plan doc first instead of writing in my book. The doc gave a lot of guidance and made everything 100x easier.

In order to see real change regarding this topic, we need awareness. That’s why I chose my agent of change in the first place. I want to see more people talking about this. I want to see people upset about this. I want schools and families to take a step back and reevaluate how they treat the youth when this is brought to their attention. What has to happen from here is quite obvious. We need more people to know about this, spread the word, find solutions to these issues, and then execute those solutions.

African Americans are lazy. At least that’s what everyone says. But what is really going on within the African American community? Why are white people and other POC doing better than African Americans and what is the African American achievement gap? There are 4 factors that play into the lack of achievement in the African American community: Home life, school, mental health, and the history of African Americans. This topic is often ignored by not only white people/other POC but also by African Americans themselves. I think this ignorance comes from a lack of understanding and that’s what I hope to provide.

Growing up, I was fully surrounded by African Americans. In my predominantly African American public school, it was basically falling apart. Not only were grades on a decline but also the behavior of the students. It felt like I was the only one focused on success. I even grew apart from some of my peers. Why did it feel like everyone in my predominantly black public school was failing and didn’t care? I didn’t know anything about the achievement gap and I even thought sometimes that they were throwing their lives away. But their failure wasn’t entirely their fault. I mean, how were they supposed to thrive in an environment where books were falling apart, physical violence was an everyday thing, and parents just sort of… gave up?

History matters. When speaking of African American hardships, it feels like it’s almost impossible to not mention our history. The NAEYC says “African Americans have been exposed to generations of legal and illegal measures to deny them basic rights.” Schools are still highly segregated and not to mention that segregation ended in 1964, meaning my grandparents went to legally segregated schools. Thinking that the effects of segregation are not still very apparent is silly. Predominantly black districts are more likely to be underfunded than predominantly white districts. How can our environment affect our level of success? Well, our environment can create toxic stress. The Economic Policy Institute says “characteristics such as excessive litter, vandalism, deteriorated and overcrowded housing, graffiti, noise, public drug and alcohol use, and conflict with neighbors in close quarters—can exacerbate children’s toxic stress response to frightening or threatening events and impede parents’ ability to protect children from that response.” Kids may have to already deal with this at home but also imagine these things occurring in school. I know that I’ve witnessed all of this by middle school and many other African American children. So how are we supposed to succeed in a school with that environment? Almost impossible to not to give in to that stress.

How many frightening experiences 1,007 kindergarten kids have had are displayed. The results are split by race and family income.

Many may be asking, what about the African American kids in a better situation? The Atlantic says “Even black children in the middle class are more likely to backslide into a lower class or stay middle class.” They also go on to say that parents in the top 50% regarding income, also backslide in their adulthood. This just goes to show that even when success is reached, it is not guaranteed to stay. Based on my experience with middle class African American kids my age, we do a lot of backsliding due to wanting to be “hood” or at least what they perceive as hood. That has to do with how people think an African American should act. Black people have expressed time and time again about how their community calls them “whitewashed” when they don’t exhibit stereotypical traits like: listening to rap, talking “proper”, or having straight hair.

Comparison of the income quantiles of white and black people in America.

The toxic stress put onto African American is already a lot to handle. Now think about the mentally ill Black Americans. One reason being black and mentally ill is stigmatized because of how expensive it can be. NCBI says “Differences in access to insurance and other mechanisms to defray costs, in levels of illness or patterns of symptom expression, in health-risk behaviors, and in beliefs, preferences, and help-seeking traditions can also explain disparities.” when referring to the lack of mentally ill representation of the black community. Black kids on TikTok even share their experiences with telling their parents that they are mentally ill. A lot are met with “no you are not”. How can ignoring mental health affect our achievements? Things like depression can leave a child with no motivation to do school work. Why not just seek mental help? “One study of clients discharged from State mental hospitals found that African Americans were substantially more likely than others to be hospitalized again during the ensuing year” and “In another study of treatment for depression, African Americans proved similar to whites in response to psychotherapy and medication, except that African Americans had less improvement in their ability to function in the community”. So is treatment even working for African Americans? Not to mention that a large number of black students are being suspended over and over instead of mentally evaluated or given real help. They tend to be punished more than helped.

Now the main question is how do we close this gap? I found that black representation could help this gap (something that African Americans have been fighting for for years!). Chalkbeat Philadelphia says “Black teachers, in particular, are necessary to help black students develop a positive racial identity and ensure they have the tools to combat all of the negative images and messages they receive about them, their people, and their community,”. Representation benefits African American students and White students as well. Chalkbeat Philadelphia also states that White kids need to have diversity in order to see the different viewpoints and culture of POC.

I was only able to touch on a small portion of this topic. There is a lot more to it that I won’t be able to to put into words. But I want to bring awareness to this gap so that we have more solutions to fix it. It takes a lot of digging to even find articles on the achievement gap. I’ve come to understand my old peers a lot more. I now understand that I was lucky enough to thrive through the madness and some may never make it out. I’m not even sure how long until we are able to make progress on closing this gap. But I do know it won’t be quick and a majority of African Americans will continue to fail before we can succeed.

Annotated Bibliography

I think the mix of Trevor’s stories about being ugly and his identity crisis with being black, colored, and white at the same time inspired this. Him talking about his step-father’s (Abel) community and their toxic practices also inspired this. In chapter 10 he talks about his bad acne and unruly afro hair which I relate to on a spiritual level. In chapter 18 he speaks of his step father’s toxic culture with men being the workers who can do anything to the women who stay in the house to take care of children and the house. It made me think of my culture’s toxic practices and how have they affected me? This idea came to me quickly because this had a huge impact on how I looked at myself and lived with myself. This was really personal. I think Trevor’s writing style stuck to me in the way that I tried to implement the way I talk while also not trying to completely lose the reader with my speech. I noticed he didn’t talk exactly “proper” in this book. It felt like he was actually speaking to me when reading. I don’t think I put any humor in. I knew it wouldn’t work out considering I can barely tell a funny story and it actually sounds funny. The serious route is the best for me. I gave background information on words regarding my hair in case they didn’t know what to imagine when I talked about it. I gave examples of how the culture was “toxic” and I even gave a personal experience that I know is common among the community I am discussing. I think my memoir shows the effects of not knowing enough about our culture. It shows the effects of my culture being twisted and molded into something that makes us forget our original identity, The stuff we were born with. I think it even showcases a glimpse of the mental effects.

I created this over the course of September throughout November. When the contest was first introduced to me, I knew I had to write about TikTok. I thought it would be somewhat original but it would also PERFECTLY explain my quarantine experience and others. It relates to the theme because it is explaining the impact of an app that got extremely popular over the course of this pandemic. It gives an inside look into how this app has shaped mine and other’s personalities and beliefs. That’s what we were supposed to show, right? Something that has shaped our year, quarantine, and this pandemic lifestyle we all now have to endure. Now that’s why I think my work fits so perfectly into the theme.