And Still We Rise. Assignment 1 Prompt Response

Everyday I hear people around me (including me!) complain- too much homework, fights with friends, a long practice after school. After reading And Still We Rise- about what the students at Crenshaw have to overcome and the obstacles they obliterate, I realized how petty our complaints here at MHS can sometimes be. Life for students at MHS and life at Crenshaw differ immensely.

First, the community of Mililani is relatively nice- not "ghetto," but in fact fostering a good environment for families and a good education. On the other hand, Crenshaw offers no security, even to the best of students, as is illustrated by the young "John Doe Number 27" found shot in South-Central L.A. (pg. 3). At Crenshaw, the community is gang-ridden and ghetto, and the students at Crenshaw are constantly exposed to the pressures of these gangs, who dominate the streets and keep innocent people living in fear. Even students like Sadi, who although had been extrememly "gifted" since he was a child, fell victim to the pressures of the bad influences that permeate South Central as well as to the struggles innate to life in this area. Sadi "was suspended from junior high school numerous times, for shooting dice, for throwing gang signs, for fighting with rival gang members." (pg. 33) Eventually, though, Sadi came around and began to take his education more seriously and found success easy. The foundations of Sadi's story are much like those of other Crenshaw students, like Olivia, who is brilliant, but is hindered since she is in foster care and has constant struggles with her tendencies to go AWOL. The students at Crenshaw encounter major obstacles that to us at Mililani are mind blowing, but to them, it's just life. They have to take up jobs to support themselves and their families and a lot of time this infringes on their education, which has to be sacrificed.

Contrarily, for us here at MHS, those students who want to take AP classes and want to succed are provided and environment that will help foster their success and is very supportive. And generally, although there are surely exceptions, the students at MHS are surrounded by much better circumstances. That is, we have the option to succeed if we want to, whereas the students at Crenshaw have to struggle for success.

That isn't to say, though, that there are no similarities between Crenshaw and MHS because I do believe that there are some. Just like Mililani, I think there are some teachers who pour their heart and soul into teaching and want to do everything in their power for students to succeed. In the book these teachers only seem to be teachers of the gifted program. Although at MHS many of the teachers and not just AP teachers are dedicated to teaching, MHS and Crenshaw are similar in that the AP sections at MHS are much different than the regular classes, just like the gifted program at Crenshaw differs immensely from that of the regular curriculum. Despite the student's dire circumstances, Miss Little and Mama Moultrie prove to amazing teachers to engage their students in heated, progressive discussions that I have not even been exposed to here at MHS. Although it is clearly hard for students to get into the gifted program at Crenshaw, once they are, it seemed like they were exposed to a very strenuous education environment that could definitely rival MHS'.

The students at Crenshaw clearly have to contend with some major obstacles that most students at Mililani couldn't even imagine. Despite all these hardships, though, the students at Crenshaw generally deal with these problems so well that it proves to be very inspirational. They show that no matter what we go through here at MHS- no matter how much homework we have or no matter how much drama is in our lives right now- it is always possible to perservere and succeed.