High School and Great School District Essay

Submitted By gissiromo830
Words: 2122
Pages: 9

While growing up in Jersey City I experienced so many things some children in the town I live now didn’t, but I also didn’t have some of the benefits they had in their schools while growing up. As an inner city girl, at the age of thirteen, I moved to a suburb town called Livingston. The move was a huge impact to me, coming from an all Hispanic and black school to being one of the only Hispanic girls in my class. Besides that they said my education level was behind. I had so much catching up to do. I was used to seeing a bunch of fights throughout the school day to seeing none; I was so use to having a substitute teacher throughout the school year to having barely any. I remember resenting my parents for moving, I didn’t understand the meaning of a “better school district.” As a child I didn’t notice how these little things can affect a child’s learning, but from reading Savages Inequalities I learned so much about different schools and how some schools really don’t have any great benefits or choices. I am grateful to have studied in one of the greatest public high schools in New Jersey. Savages Inequalities incredibly opened my eyes in many ways. I knew that some schools have a very poor school district and don’t have a high education level, but I never really thought how and what made them say that the school district was bad. I didn’t know how bad it was until giving the examples of the inner schools in Chicago and New York City. “At Bowen High School, on the south side of Chicago, students have two or three “study halls” a day, in part to save the costs of teachers,” when I read this part I thought to myself, “ Wow really?! I remember in high school while choosing my schedule with my guidance counselor, he would tell me not to take study hall and to try to choose something productive, and I did as he said. Which throughout the year I thank him for giving me that advice. The worse thing is that they made them choose two or three study halls to save themselves from paying the cost of teachers. Aren’t students supposed to learn in school and not have free time to do nothing productive? The chapter that impacted me the most was a Life on the Mississippi. “A teacher at an elementary school in East St. Louis has only one full- color workbook for her class. She photocopies workbook pages for her children, but the copies can’t be made in color and the lessons call for color recognition by the children,” this upsets me because as a child color is very important and more fun. I have three little sisters and they are lucky to be studying at a great school district. I remind them all the time, and they get homework every night even my little first grade sister gets homework. Some of the homework they get has color and pretty images. I believe that students especially the younger ones would have more fun learning if the actually see color. Many of the students in East St. Louis don’t have equipment or textbooks in their classrooms, which makes them unfortunate to study and learn out of nothing. Some of the books are old and have most of the pages are missing. These type of things upset me and makes me wonder how do they learn if even school doesn’t shows no interest in them learning and providing them with new supplies. Many of the students in this book show interest in learning but are deprived from quality education. I feel that if I was given the opportunity to work in environment such as St. Louis or Camden, I would take it. The reason I would take this opportunity is because I would want to make a difference in one of those children lives. As a teacher I would tell them that education is important and I would try my best to show them what they have to know for their grade. In Savages Inequalities some of the teachers just sat around their desk and didn’t do their job as a teacher. I understand that in some cases there were no supplies but I would at least try to teach them with my knowledge and find fun ways they can learn.