Overcoming Diversity In Urban Schools

When parents send their students off to many urban public schools in the United States they unknowingly entrust their child’s future to a failed system that only proves successful for few and detrimental for the rest. Some students have the privilege of being sent to private schools or top tier public schools since many non-first generation parents know the barriers urban schools face. For newly immigrant parents, however, inequities in schools are not apparent. From conversations I have had with my parents and other family members, it seems that the only perception they had like many others from their country is that education was always upheld to the highest standard regardless of where someone got an education within the United States. What …show more content…
These forces made it hard for me to get up every morning brave enough to face my reality. It took me five years to finally grasp this foreign language, but my battle to integrate at my school was never-ending. I was placed in remedial classes when I entered middle school. In those classes, being on different tracks, they never tell you but everyone in the same classes knows who are the dumb kids and who are the smart ones. It not only “fostered lowered self-esteem… [it also] lowered aspirations,” aspirations that were put in place by those who felt they knew enough about us through a test to examine future outcomes (Oakes, 1985, p.8). I can never forget when we had to present for career day with one of the advanced classes. Although this seemed like a good idea at the time we were all “randomly” assigned careers to research and more than 2/3 of my class researched technical and trade jobs while almost all of the students in the advanced class were given jobs that required professional degrees. When I told my older sisters, my eldest sister had my sixth-grade counselor change all my classes for the upcoming …show more content…
546). I started to believe in the idea of meritocracy. Going into high school I began to advocate for myself and seek resources in order to pursue a higher education since it was a path I knew was now possible. This path that was paved by those who looked past my academic and linguistic barriers allowed me to have the self-confidence to go forth and achieve something greater than I thought possible. I somehow still felt that the only reason I was doing good and being allotted these opportunities was solely based on my hard work. It was not until my senior year of high school that I realized that the resources I had and found were not the same resources others had access too. I asked myself who has access? Access not only to simple resources that one should innately have as they enter a school, but also access to pursue greater things other than just graduating high school. As I was applying to universities the same people who I was in school when I was in ESL were signing up for classes in adult school because they needed to retake courses they failed or meet the minimum requirements to graduate. As I stood at my High School graduation, giving my valedictorian speech, I looked in the crowd and I