First Blog Post

When I first started reading Warriors Don’t Cry I thought that it was going to be more about the historical significance of integration taken from an academic perspective. I quickly realized how deep and involved this memoir would be, as I have never really understood full extent of the racial hatred towards the African American population in the south during this time period. It’s very hard to understand how institutionalized the hatred in this society is and how little concern for others many southerners had. It is truly a miracle that none of the Little Rock Nine were murdered as a result of the

                I can’t imagine how much strength it would have taken to take the leap to be one of the teens going to Central High School, especially when there was a choice that would have resulted in a safer high school experience. It’s amazing to see how far we have come since then. It was just over fifty three years ago when Little Rock Central High School was integrated. Fifty three years seems like a long time but measured against the age of the United States it has been a very short period of time. We have made great strides in some areas but we still do not have equality of education or equality of opportunity everywhere.   At this point I believe we have a two tiered educational system, where schools that have money are able to better educate their students and schools that don’t will continue to see failing test scores. Schools should have equality of funds and equality of opportunity.

Extra Credit

Reflection for Pre-Service Learning Reflection

                Through this program I was able to learn more about the opinions that I have before going into my service learning tomorrow. I learned more about where I stood going into this service learning where I will be working with first time offenders in a program designed to prevent future instances of crime. I found that I am primarily nervous about the busses and the area that I will be going to. I am not sure what types of teens are in this program, so I am unsure of what I will experience. We also discussed the challenges that we will face as many people will have stereotypes about us. I hope that this will not be the case because it will make it more difficult to make an impact on someone else’s life. I know that I will also have to deal with third parties that will have negative opinions (safety concerns) on what I am doing, particularly from some of my relatives that are in the Milwaukee. I want to make a real connection to these teens and hopefully get them to some place better than where they were before. I think that I will have problems connecting to the teens that I will be working with because I am from a little bit wealthier background and from California. I hope that I will be able to understand their stories and really realize their hardships so that I can help them move past those. I plan to reflect on my blog as my work in this program progresses over the semester. This reflection will allow me to look at the way that I am providing services and how I can improve on what I am doing.