{"id":137,"date":"2014-12-18T21:29:53","date_gmt":"2014-12-19T02:29:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-fall-2014-acawley\/?page_id=137"},"modified":"2014-12-19T15:29:58","modified_gmt":"2014-12-19T20:29:58","slug":"reflection","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-fall-2014-acawley\/reflection\/","title":{"rendered":"Reflection"},"content":{"rendered":"

The school-to-prison pipeline stands in direct opposition to the American ideal of liberty and freedom for all.\u00a0 This problem in our society disproportionately affects certain social groups \u2013 it often compounds the problems of social groups that already have the odds stacked against them in our patriarchal society where white men, like myself, are inherently granted power.<\/p>\n

Despite the backwardness of what seems to be occurring, the pipeline remains an active part of the United States, and our school system.\u00a0 Misbehaving students get kicked out of schools.\u00a0 Last year, in Chicago, a silly gun gesture from a sixth grader to a teacher received an immense overreaction and ended up with the student getting arrested.24<\/sup><\/p>\n

\"Gun\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This occurred after many suspensions in response to previous misbehavior from the student.\u00a0 It seems to me that if the student was not having any more success after each suspension, then it should have been obvious to the administration that something other than exclusionary discipline needed to be done.\u00a0 Students everywhere are disciplined, and often suspended for minor infractions.\u00a0 Stories such as these show the dangers and the wrongness of zero tolerance policies and exclusionary discipline.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, steps can be taken to plug and reverse this pipeline and stop students from being enabled and forced to proceed down this negative path.\u00a0 This has been an uplifting thought as I\u2019ve researched the school-to-prison pipeline and the organizations that are acting against it.\u00a0 For people are recognizing the obvious aspects of schooling that cause problems.\u00a0 We must put an end to zero tolerance policies.\u00a0 We have to be careful about high stakes testing.\u00a0 We have got to understand which students are being disproportionately incarcerated and why these students in particular are having these problems.\u00a0 This is a lot to change, and it may seem overwhelming, but it is not.\u00a0 There are solid, concrete suggestions being provided by experts that we ought to follow.\u00a0 We must understand students and their backgrounds and their problems that may be causing them to misbehave in class.\u00a0 We should try to cultivate relationships between students and teachers.\u00a0 We should encouragement youth engagement in fighting against the pipeline and thus get students more excited about school.\u00a0 We should show students who are at risk of entering the pipeline the benefits of higher education rather than shunning them from the classroom.\u00a0 We should recruit more teachers of color.\u00a0 We should prepare teachers to teach students of all backgrounds.<\/p>\n

By installing these new approaches of educating, we will put ourselves on a new, more constructive pathway towards the success of all social groups and away from incarceration of our nation\u2019s youth.\u00a0 The research that has been done on the topic seems to be extremely promising.\u00a0 And yet, the pipeline itself is still extremely prevalent.\u00a0 While the research and methodology seems to be available, it is not being put into practice enough.\u00a0 The suggestions are there, but the application of said suggestions is not.<\/p>\n

Why are these steps not being taken?\u00a0 While the fact that possibilities outside of the pipeline do exist is uplifting, the fact that they have not become major factors in teaching is extremely depressing.\u00a0 We can, help, so why aren\u2019t we?\u00a0 What I’ve realized from my research is that while the education system may not be changing from the outside in, change is coming, just from the outside in.\u00a0 This is where grassroots organizing comes into play.\u00a0 I’ve used \u201cwe\u201d in this writing because it has been the biggest takeaway for me after doing this work.\u00a0 A movement away from the pipeline will have to be a movement that starts with us, the people, the public. We are the ones that will make this difference.\u00a0 This sounds like a communist, rallying cry, but I believe that it actually does carry legitimacy.\u00a0 Grassroots organizing has contributed a lot to the destruction of the school-to-prison pipeline.\u00a0 With youth, parent, and community engagement, organizers across the country, in Texas, Colorado, and California just to name a few of the places, have helped in the decline of zero tolerance policies and have promoted more focus on children who have not been given a chance to succeed. \u00a0These people care about their communities and they show it by instilling practices including restorative justice, training for security guards, and promoting values such as equal rights and economic justice.<\/p>\n

Education is a personal endeavor.\u00a0 The people who care about an individual\u2019s education are the same people that care about that person and their success in the world.\u00a0 This is why grassroots organizing works so well, not only in combating the school-to-prison pipeline, but in urban education in general.\u00a0 These close knit, geographically central communities can evoke change in ways that other groups cannot.\u00a0 And they have shown it.\u00a0 I think that future change lies, at least partially, in a focus on grassroots organizations and their efforts.\u00a0 We can only help by continuing to support grassroots organizers and helping when we can to actively change urban education for the better.\u00a0 By doing this we can secure more benevolent, equitable, and secure lives for future generations that will receive urban, public school educations.<\/p>\n

\"grass\"<\/p>\n

Imgs:
\n23<\/sup>
\n24<\/sup><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The school-to-prison pipeline stands in direct opposition to the American ideal of liberty and freedom for all.\u00a0 This problem in our society disproportionately affects certain social groups \u2013 it often compounds the problems of social groups that already have the odds stacked against them in our patriarchal society where white men, like myself, are inherently […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":173,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-137","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-fall-2014-acawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-fall-2014-acawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-fall-2014-acawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-fall-2014-acawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/173"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-fall-2014-acawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-fall-2014-acawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/education-2272-fall-2014-acawley\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}