Kandice Sumner's Ted Talk: Education Poverty

In Kandice Sumner’s Ted Talk, How America's public schools keep kids in poverty, she passionately delivers a message about the “education debt” (Sumner, 2015) that many schools, especially those in poor neighborhoods are suffering from. Through her experience as a both a teacher and a student, she constructs an influential speech that argues that we need to help and change the school system, as to include kids of minority races and give equal opportunities to each and every student. Unlike some kids, I have lived outside of New Mexico, I have experienced different things, gone to different schools, and seen different cultures. I have seen the difference in resources, first-hand, in which some of the schools I have been to had many resources …show more content…
(United Kingdom), I went to school on an Air Force base, I lived in a nice neighborhood, in a nice house, my dad had a good paying job, and as a result my school was well-funded, it had many resources, to say the least. The school had new computers (at the time), and they were numerous, there were many classes and clubs that the school offered, and the school was large. As compared to the schools that I went to when I came back to Cruces, the schools were small, the computers were often a little older or outdated, the buildings were not as nice, they looked dirty, just overall the schools were not as nice as the education facility that I went to in …show more content…
Sumner talks about the disparity in resources that she has noticed as a teacher in a poor neighborhood, as opposed to learning as a student in a school that was in a rich suburban neighborhood. Her experience as a child within the school district is that she went to a school in a nice white neighborhood, the school was well funded and gave quality education, Sumner (2015) states, “But as I got older, I started noticing things, like: How come my neighborhood friend don't have to wake up at five o'clock in the morning, and go to a school that's an hour away? How come I'm learning to play the violin while my neighborhood friends don't even have a music class? Why were my neighborhood friends learning and reading material that I had done two to three years prior?” Sumner’s school, as a child, gave students many opportunities and better education, while her friends received poor education in the schools that were near their neighborhood. I have experienced nearly the same things that she has, in my own life, when I lived in Virginia, I went to a school in a nice suburban neighborhood and the curriculum that they had in place was highly advanced compared to New Mexico’s, the subjects and skills that were taught in Virginia, during my 3rd grade year, were highly similar to what was being taught at the 4th grade level in New Mexico. Another thing that she points out is that she was learning violin, while her friends didn’t even have a music class. Going back to