Take Action.

"The only sure way to

change the future is

 to do it yourself."

After Friday's meeting, many different thoughts were soaring through my mind. We discussed the topic of educational inequalities across the country and watched a video called Black Males, Black Dreams which focused on the struggles of specifically black males in high schools all throughout America. Prior to watching this video, I was aware of some educational inequalities, but I did not know it was this severe. This situation really needs to change. I feel that school-to-prison pipeline is an extremely unfair system. Not only are the students already living and learning in a poor and unprotected environment, but, here you see schools enforcing policies in which they pretty much push these students more into jails and prisons and less towards motivation and success in academics, and overall, their lives. After reading the article, "Locating the School-To-Prison Pipeline," I was in shock. How could schools be treating these children like that? Not giving them a second chance or even a chance at all? This system is not displaying any servant leadership, let alone ANY leadership, at all. They are not listening, and are not trying to listen, to these students that are struggling. Their sense of empathy seems to be completely absent. Just because a kid is failing in his classes and severely misbehaving in school doesn't mean they have to be escorted out of their school by policemen to go straight to prison. In the "Locating the School-to-Prison Pipeline, I read that, "Even worse, schools may actually encourage dropouts in response to pressures from test-based accountability regimes such as the No Child Left Behind Act, which create incentives to push out low-performing students to boost overall test scores." There is a reason for this rise in failure and fall in motivation in these students. They just need someone to listen, be there, and not give up on them; the school-to-prison pipeline is doing everything besides that. 

I am currently a tutor in an after-school program at Gale Math and Science Academy in Howard, and I am witnessing a lot of similar negative attitudes and unwillingness to try in school, leading to many detentions and suspensions. So, not only as a STARS Leader, but as a tutor and a friend, I plan to raise awareness in the school and community about the educational inequalities taking place in the city of Chicago. I hope to practice servant leadership in a sense that I will trigger the motivation and care in the students at this after-school program. There is no reason for children to believe that they can't succeed in school, they just need to have the right resources and support to help them out and give them that boost. I will also get a chance to be a servant leader while working with the Empowerment Pipeline as one of our projects in the STARS Lead program. I am extremely anxious and excited to meet and talk to the students from Tilden High School next week and with Amundsen High School the following week. We will get a chance to talk to them about these issues, but more importantly we will get the chance to listen to what they have to say about how they feel about these unfair situations. Together, with these students, we will be able to create a great change and  lead suffering students down the right pipeline towards higher education.

So let's get motivated, and instead of waitin' on the world to change...let's do it ourselves.