This is why getting out of poverty is hard. Poverty consists of so many different problems in life. Living in poverty influences a person’s both mental and physical health.

Based on the situation illustrated here. I wonder how can we , as an educator, do to know more about a student’s family situation instead of asking them or their parents directly. I feel like you have to make a relation with the student first. But I don’t know what to do next.

This is also one significant difference between children who live in a safe community and those who don’t. Children, who live in a dangerous community for a long time, will spend more their energy to worry about their safety. If one’s energy is limited, children who lived in dangerous areas have to pay more energy on their surroundings instead of their studying, learning, and their personal development.

To be honest, the schedule is tighter than I expected. I went to a public high school in Bay Area. It was pretty chill. You usually went to school at 8 something, then left at 2 or 3 in afternoon. Some people might have extracurricular activities, but for those who didn’t have any activities, they were free to go home. It’s pretty much nothing for a day.

It is interesting to know if you were in a hard-studying environment, no body called you a ‘nerd’. To be honest, I love that! Every one just focus on their studies. There is not much competition from socio-economic status, clothing, and there is not much discrimination related to races, background, personal identity. It creates a more pure environment for children to grow.

After knowing the situation of the gangs involved schools, competition in study doesn’t sound like a bad thing. At least, they can focus on studying instead of some social issues existed in society. Students are too young to face the gangs problem, their minds can still be easily influenced by their surroundings.

This reminds me of the last week’s reading about the importance of role model in children’s adolescence. Even though they grew up in poor, a good role model will lead their way and teach them how to confront challenge.

I grew up in China, where is a free of gun place. And it is pretty safe that you feel safety to walk outside at night. There are always people even at midnight, especially in big city. Therefore, crime, gun, gangs activities are far away from me. It seems like from another world.

This quotation implies that a place that is safe will influence people’s mood in some extent. People live in a safe environment would more likely to show their friendly and kind to strangers.

It is surprising to see the gap exists so early and so large between two really close areas’ schools. Moreover, the gap will only become bigger and bigger after they get into college and go into society.

This is how high income family provide for their children to take advantage of other children. Lots of extracurricular activities, high quality teachers, and rich resources provides a really fertile environment for children to grow.

During the past four decades, the economic inequality keeps increasing. Even though the poor work hard and save their money, the value of money on their hands is decreasing. The harder they work, but the value of their salary before ten years and after ten years are different. If they didn’t invest or had a big increase on their salary, then they actually were losing money.

Does poverty increase the chance to have violence? Or it just because the rich has the ability to pay the policemen to patrol their community.

This also applies to students at different school level. Even in college, students who engaged more in school has more motivations to do well in school.

I am glad that it mentions the concepts of individualism and collectivism. For the American Dream, it links the individual success and the collective good together. But in the realm of education, we could see a lot of conflicts between individualism and collectivism. Moreover, while the America is promoting the American Dream, people from different races did not get an equal opportunity to access education in some ways.

As we all know, the social resources are limited, especially for the poor. We can say most of them lost at the beginning of their life compared to the rich’s children. I felt so bad to know that “they (the poor) are designed to steer poor students into trades, vocations, and jobs, not professions and high-paying careers. On purpose.”

It totally impact children’s development from multiple aspects. How could a child grow well if the environment around them is unfriendly to them. They did not feel safe to express themselves.

But why we need people to be poor? If everyone was richer, they were taxed more money and they were capable to spend more money so that our economic would be better. But the fact is 1% of the people in America have half of the country’s wealth.

Why students cannot “lift themselves” out of poverty through 12 years of schooling? Is it because the purpose of school does not serve as a tool to help the poor to lift up?

In the transformed classroom, the teachers need to explain more to avoid misunderstanding because there are so many different cultures’ students. They want every students to take it in a right way.

How do you apply different “cultural codes” in one classroom setting? And why students need to adapt this code as well?

Why students are much more willingly to surrender their dependency on the banking system of education than are their teachers? Is it because if you put the issues on the system of education, it became a “big problem” that a student barely can change it?

School should be a place that regardless one’s background, race, and identity. People go there is for study. School should be inclusive so that everyone can share their thoughts. Therefore, we can improve and learn from each other. In a school, the priority is to learn.

For people of color, classrooms are never a “safe” place because it is a white dominant space. They don’t know the cultural rubrics, language, and customs. They cannot understand the context. They cannot fully protect themselves if they said something wrong and they didn’t realize in that environment. It is reasonable to create a safe and open environment so that thoughts and ideas are sparking.