Tattoos on the heart

Every body should have compassion for gang members because they are a human beings ,but their priorities are just not correct. Gang members typically have no father so they find a group of men that support one another or their father must be the leader of the gang so they follow in his footsteps. They can be worked with if someone is willing to change their lives. I like how they set up a spot where the gang members  can hangout instead of roaming the streets looking for danger. Every body in a gang is someone's child and we should care for that person because their parents hearts are broken when they die . "I don't know who that kid is, but he was some mother's son"(Boyle23). At the end of the day that gang member was just a human being associated with the wrong crowd. Even if you quit a gang you will still always be known as that person in that particular gang for the rest of your life. Gang members will allow teenagers to follow in their footsteps, instead of telling them that they don't need to be around bad stuff. Maybe if parents had a more closer eye on who their children were associating with then they wont be the ones to see their child there lying on the floor dead.

9 pragraphs

 

Sabrina Head

Williams

English 1A

6 October 2013

Bad Teachers

            The lack of good teachers in poorly funded schools create homeless families. The parents of these helpless children are the ones who dropped out of school. It’s terrifying to read how these children are stuck suffering with the mistakes that their parents made. Bad teachers create dropouts who end up getting pregnant because there’s nothing else to live for. They become pregnant and put their child through the same thing that they went through. “She has been homeless for a year, he thinks that this maybe one reason she is so reflective and mature”. (Kozol184) Kids in that area have to grow u faster than they wanted to because they have to find a way to care for themselves. Parents set them up just to fail, however they can learn by their mistakes and get their lives together. “They don’t have it. What they mean is lack of brains, or lack of drive, or lack of willingness to work”. (Kozol192) Parents just have no desire to give their child a better life than they had. It will be extremely hard for a dropout parent to survive outside of their territory so they just live with what they have. By the lack of good teachers creates young high school dropouts who look for nothing better to do but get pregnant or go to jail.

            The lack of good teachers creates students who choose to end their lives early. When teachers don’t care about students, the students don’t care about the teachers. Good teachers encourage students to be enthusiastic about wanting to learn. When the students feel that they have no purpose to be at school they won’t make that their priority. The earliest kids feel neglected is the earliest they are going to get into trouble. “At eight years old, some of the boys are running drugs and holding money for the dealers. By 28, they’re going to be dead” (Kozol182) Drug dealers get kids to be in the industry young so as they grow older they will be experienced. Maybe if teachers were more caring to younger generations they won’t have the urgency to run away. 

            Prisoners are created when students drop out of school due to the lack of good teachers. When kids don’t feel like they are being loved they will run to anyone who they think cares for them. Dropouts have nothing better to do than to get involved with in violence, gangs and drugs. The longer they stay affiliated with those things the more corrupted they become. “He does not at all resemble the shy child that I knew ten years before. He is regarded as a kind of monster now. He was jailed for murdering a white man in a wheelchair”. (Kozol195) Who knows why he would do such a violent murder to a helpless man. Was he on drugs? Did he do it for gang initiation? That all creates more and more violence, if only teachers do their job extensively to not let children go down that path.

            Reading, math, and writing should be at the highest standard after high school. Those are the three basic essentials that will help you at the next level going to college. By senior year you should be reading every night, math should be at the level you need to attend college and writing should be taken to the next level, for example, well thought out long essays. Holding teachers to a specific standard, makes them really do their job. “Test scores in math and reading in America are graded not against an absolute standard but against on a “norm” or “average”. (Kozol200)Teachers around that are don’t have a set standard; therefore, they go off of what other students are performing at. In the local districts nobody is above average because you either below or at average. When you set standards and students rise above it teachers get recognition of a teacher actually doing their job.

            Making it to high school graduation is a big accomplishment. While growing up students couldn’t make it through all four years so they mainly dropped out by sophomore year. School boards should make it a standard to get at least 80% of the senior classes to graduate prior to passing the states exit exam. “ Of an entering ninth grade class of 20,000 students in Detroit only 7,000 graduate from high school and of these only 500 have preparation to go on to college”. (Kozol198) Some kids just disappear then later on find them either in jail or pronounced dead. By a standard of these students graduating pressures teachers to do whatever they have to get these kids to through all four years. There may be times when you can’t control a student’s actions, but at least you’re trying hard to get them as far and educated as you can. Having a graduation standard ensures that students will highly graduate school and attend college.  

            You probably don’t realize it but every day you wake up to start your day you are motivated by something and or someone. My motivation for going to school every day is graduating college. When I enter my classes especially my morning classes, I expect my teacher to be as motivation as I am. The day my day isn’t going well, my teacher should be the one there to motivate me when I am feeling under the weather. Students can also motivate the teacher for it makes the teacher realize that their students are eager to learn. “I have a room of 39 over-age, unmotivated sixth and seventh graders… I am not prepared for this, I have absolutely no idea of what to do.’ (kozol 64) Teachers need to be more prepared for anything that may come up. If you see your students unmotivated, do whatever you have to do to uplift them. Without motivation kids will never have a purpose to attend school.

Bad teachers are ones who fail by getting their students on the right education level. Students should be at or above the level they are currently in. Teachers who don’t teach the curriculum leave students still behind from the rest. By not being up to speed with your education not only affects the student but the teachers and parents as well. It affects teachers because they are not preparing students for the next level, however parents are affected worse because they send their kids to school to learn not to just get by. Counselors affect student’s level because they are assigned to any class and may not be ready for it. “In a mathematics learning center, seven kids are gazing out the window while the teacher is preoccupied with something at her desk.” (kozol 69) Growing up I have had several teachers like this one for example. It made it extremely hard to even learn at least one thing in that class. By these teachers not teaching wastes their whole year in that class when they could have been up to speed with the high schools out of that area. The way to improve student’s education is to discard all teachers that ry to ruin and hold back students right to get a good education.

Teachers are older than students so it’s the teacher’s job to guide them through the education journey. Bad teachers have an effect on students when they show no guidance counselors also play a huge role in a student’s education. Counselors keep students on their right path leading to college. When the school doesn’t have enough counselors it makes it difficult for counselors to keep track of all students. “Every fish swims on its own “(kozol 219) Mrs. Hawkins teaches her 5^th and 6^th grade classes to be independent. She actually teaches the class even the other staff agree. The way to be a bad teacher is if you teach your kids nothing, even if it’s not related to school at least you put some knowledge in their brains. The effect of not having any guidance is the sense of being lost and no one there to help you.

                        We can’t get rid of bad teachers because we have money to hire a new teacher. If their school already has no money to fund for children then how will they be able to pay for a new teacher with a higher salary? Most of the good teachers quit and went to find a job that will pay more. The rest of the teachers teach at the school because they are happy with the salary they are getting. The amount of their salary is how well they teach. For a low amount of money they do nothing but basically supervise the children. Then you have caring teachers who will try and teach you the best they can with limited resources. “It isn’t surprising that morale is low among these teachers or that the best of them are looking for work elsewhere”.(Kozol204)  Some of them are substitutes so they do nothing but pass papers out and tell them to do it. These kids waste their time and education and a school that will get them nowhere but they have to deal with it because they don’t have enough money to live anywhere else and everything with the segregation. Kids couldn’t go to another school if they wanted to because the rich people won’t let their kids get involved and brought down to suffer .