I believe this because as a high school student I witnessed what I perceived to be an injustice in the education system. Friends of mine, who I knew had the ability to be academically challenged, supported, encouraged and guided were instead housed into classrooms that led to nowhere. Then I went off to college. After my first year of college, I came back to San Diego for the summer and it was my younger brother's first year of junior high. I was so excited to see what courses he had been enrolled in. When he came back home that day he was very frustrated with the class placements they had given him. As he shared his course schedule with me, my blood boiled and I insisted that my mom come with us the next day to the school office to get my brother into the right classes. Even though I was 19 years old, I knew that at that school my voice would not be heard unless I had a parent with me. So although my mom didn't understand what was happening, I promised her I would do all the talking, that I just needed her there because she was the mom and at that junior high they shoo away all the students who show up to the front counter without a parent. My mom did not fully understand the educational system in the U.S., but trusted that my brother and I knew what we were doing and supported our decision.
The next morning, my mom accompanied my brother and me to the front office. There were many students trying to get their schedule changed. The front office clerk was very rude to all the students who showed up without a parent, just as I expected she would be, and made it very clear that they all needed to go to whatever classes they had been enrolled in and that without a parent, they would not be seen or heard. She wanted to shoo me away too, however, I pointed out to her that I had a parent with me. She got very upset and told us to write our name on a sign-in sheet and that my brother's academic counselor would see us as soon as she was done with the current student she was servicing. Even though it had been 6 years since I had set foot on that campus, I knew things had not changed and what I was experiencing at that moment confirmed my suspicions.
When it was our turn, the counselor came out to greet us. She seemed very flustered and didn't make eye contact and just asked us to follow her to her cubicle. She asked what she could do for us and I told her that we were there to change my brother's schedule to college prep courses as opposed to the unnecessary remedial courses in which he had been enrolled. At first, she said she could not do that for us and to trust the system. That made my blood boil and I advised her that we are not an uninformed family. She said that my brother's placement of his current remedial courses had been based on assessments he had taken in elementary school and that those assessments indicated he needed those courses. I informed her that if I, the first born, had not ever been placed in such courses when I attended that school, and my sister had not ever been placed in such courses when SHE attended that school, then there was no way the third born child, who had been exposed to a whole lot more than I had been by the time I was his age, needed such courses. I told her that he will follow in my, as well as my sister's, footsteps and that I have already taken the liberty of creating his new course schedule. She took a good look at the piece of paper I handed to her and said that based on the test scores she was looking at on her computer, there was no way my brother would be able to handle those courses. I told her we were not going to leave until she made those schedule changes.
She was very upset and said, "Fine, I will enroll him in those courses you are requesting him, but do NOT come to me at the end of the semester when he's getting all F's." I told her, "Oh, no, we will come to you at the end of the semester to show you that his report card reflects all A's". From that moment on, my brother was always enrolled in college-bound courses and ALWAYS earned a GPA of 3.75 or higher. He went on to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to major in Forestry, graduated in four years, and then he became a forester for the San Bernardino Forest Department. Recently he graduated from the Cal Fire Academy and now he's a battalion chief. He was recently featured in the Cal Poly Alumni magazine:
"Henry Francisco Herrera (B.S., Forestry and Natural Resources, 2005) is a registered professional forester (RPF) with Cal Fire in the San Bernardino Unit. Before starting that job Herrera was a seasonal firefighter, forester, lands and special uses officer, and public information officer for nine years in the U.S. Forest Service. He gained experience working the San Bernardino, Cleveland, and Sierra National forest fires and several large fires throughout the state."
My brother, obviously, has been and continues to be very successful. That academic counselor had no idea of my brother's potential and based his placement of courses on some simple data that meant nothing. Had I not gone to save him from a dismal future…I don't even want to think how differently his life would have turned out all because he had been placed in remedial courses when he should have been placed in college-bound courses. His junior high buddies, who we had known since kindergarten, asked him if I could please do the same for them and represent them and talk to their academic counselor as well so that they could be taken out of those extremely boring classes and be able to enjoy the fun classes in which my brother was enrolled. My heart hurt knowing how bad they wanted out. However, I was not their sister and I could not go represent every single one of them. The counselor already extremely disliked me because I forced her to change my brother's schedule to one that would lead him towards a more successful, happy and fulfilled future. I told my brother to tell his buddies to talk to their own families and see if they would go and help them out. My brother's buddies said their family members said they didn't have time for that and the ones who did have time, did not know enough English to be able to communicate their point across. As a result, no action was taken and they stayed in those boring courses, year after year after year. Soon enough, some of them lost interest in school in simply dropped out.
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The experience of my brother having had been incorrectly placed in courses that lead to nowhere, had not been the first time I witnessed academic injustice. However, it had been the first time that it had made my blood boil and I had to take action. I could not go back to my beautiful college life I was having at UC Davis that September knowing that my brother was not being academically challenged in his courses. I left satisfied to start the new quarter of my sophomore year after I had made sure he was enrolled in the correct courses.
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Here is an example of a different situation I witnessed while still in high school that also motivated me to become an educator and shaped my beliefs that every child deserves the right to a rigorous education, to be respected regardless of background and given the same opportunities as anyone else:
The first time I became aware that all classes were not created equal was when I was a senior in high school. Obviously, I knew there were different levels of difficulty and that's why there were different classes, however, I assumed the rigor was still there even in the "easy" classes. It wasn't until my senior year of high school that I started really looking around me and questioning why some students were "making it" and others weren't. I remember going on a quick bathroom break on occasion and peeking into a classroom that one of my friends was in. Every time I would peek into her classroom, her teacher would be seating at her desk minding her own business and the students would just be sitting at their desk with worksheets. It seemed odd to me that that was going on because I would never see that happening in any of MY classes. In my classes my teachers were always actively engaged with us guiding us through different hands-on activities or stimulating our mind some other way. But they would never just give us worksheet after worksheet while they sat at their desk.
I finally ended up asking my friend what exactly do they do in that class. She said they didn't do much. Then she told me that it's very relaxed and they just pretty much do whatever they want. This made me wonder how that type of class was going to prepare her for college. Of course, it didn't prepare her for college or anything else and that type of classroom environment negatively affected MANY people I personally knew. I perceived it as an injustice to their future.
That, along with noticing that many of my peers were being misunderstood, labeled, stereotyped and not being given a fair chance made me want to become a teacher so that I could guide, encourage and challenge students who were perceived as "not worth it".