In Sara Rimer’s article ‘For Girls, It’s Be Yourself, and Be Perfect, Too’, she stated “girls by the dozen who are high achieving, ambitions, and confident,” Esther Mobley comes from a high working class neighborhood, where teachers and parents encourage students to bring home an A's; however my high school I went to is a rebellious high school called John F. Kennedy where teachers simply assists students who are interested in learning the material and students only cared on receiving a passing grade.
The Newton North high school advises their students by providing them vast programs and Advance Placement courses to achieve an A’s in order to step into a top-notch named school, whereas in “rebel high” there were two types of classes; the AP class and the regular class. I was in the regular class, where girls only concerned with their appearance and maintaining their reputation, whereas the AP students maintaining keeping straight A's. Instead of them doing their class assignment, they asked for assisting in giving them the answers to the questions, which my smart-aleck response to them was “look in the book of knowledge.”
John F. Kennedy is in a middle class
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I would ask for my brother and sister for their assistant when it comes to math, they both would tell me to ask our father, when I did ask my father, he would say “ask me again when there’s a commercial” or occasionally tells me “I just gotten home leave me alone for at least an hour or two.” When I received assists from him it’s always late at night he would evoke with me for waiting for last minutes to work on homework, hits on my head for not understanding math and calls me
Often the change and transition to middle is a difficult one for students, so it is no surprise that a student of Juanita’s caliber would be having trouble as well. Her regular middle school teachers were not going above and beyond to make sure Juanita succeed, if anything it seemed as if Juanita was a burden to them. If it was not for the Ms. Issabelle’s effort, Juanita would have failed the 6th grade, and possibly fell through the cracks of the education system.
The article "Let`s Really Reform Our Schools" by Anita Garland discuss the trouble faced by American High Schools. According to her, students are more concerned about their looks than learning, and this results in poor academic performance. She states that there is a need for American High Schools to be completely restructured. The worst students must be kicked out of the schools because they are troublemakers, and they distract others, which includes their fellow students, teachers, and administrators. Troublemakers lack fear of suspension from school, and suspension from school doesn’t improve their behavior. Troublemakers do not care about punishments at all. After all, they don’t want to be in the school, and they are not learning anything
...lms these students get away with murder and still go on to college. This simply does not happen in real life; therefore, looking to Hollywood films for the true colors of schools is not in the best of interests. We have to realize that directors produce these films in their vision of American culture. We as Americans always look to the American Dream of sometime “making it.” The films neglect to see the loser’s point of view, meaning Hollywood films only look to a positive ending because it is in our nature to believe in the American Dream. This book allows our society to actually look past the films fantasies and observe the true inequalities in school. Although Hollywood films do correctly show how urban, suburban, and private students behave in schools, they do not show the true outcomes of real life.
Morton recognizes that the achievement gap goes much deeper than the education realm and she believes However, the students that are on the lower end of the achievement gap are caught between being members of a disadvantaged community and aspiring to be a part of the middle class. This causes them to have to adapt to the communities that they are a part of. This act of adapting to the difference in normative expectations is what Morton refers to as “straddling the gap” or “code switching”. These students not only have to navigate differences in language and dress codes but they have to switch dispositions to ones that are unfamiliar to them, which can come into conflict with those at home (Morton 276).
The high schools are made up of cliques and the artificial intensity of a world defined by insiders and outsiders. (Botstein pg.20) The insiders hold control. over the outsiders because of good looks, popularity, and sports power; the teacher. and staff do nothing to stop them, the elite.
Adolescent girls growing up in today’s society endure many more hardships than in previous years. Adolescence is no longer a time of endless sunny days spent on the back porch with a glass of country time lemonade and a smile extending ear to ear. Adolescence for girls is now generalized as a dark and depressing period of life that often seems hopeless and never ending. Mary Pipher PH.D tries to illustrate just how drastically life has changed over the years for teenage girls through her best selling book “Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls”. Although Mary Pipher was once a clinical psychologist, she articulates very well for everyone to clearly understand her ideas and perspectives. One way she is able to transfer her ideas to her readers without losing any of the emotion and feeling is by using actual quotes by her adolescent girl clients. I feel this is a very effective way to keep the readers attention and to convey the reality of the problems many teenagers are trapped in. I agree with Pipher that our society has changed for the worse even though we are persuaded to think that we are moving in the right direction. Yes, equal right movements have been placed in the law, but the respect that people once had for women has been eliminated. Comparing girls’ true selves to the Bermuda Triangle, Mary Pipher goes to great depth to explain what a mysterious trend this has become. No one can reason why these girls can no longer appreciate anything in life when just a few years before a spittle bug could have kept them mesmerized for an hour. Pipher recalls early in the book the image of Shakespeare’s Ophelia drowning herself due to failed attempts to please both her father and hamlet. She states that adolescent girls are similarly drowning in confusion as they try to sort out details in their life, and decide whom they really want to please. I really liked how Pipher points out that during the most stressful time during girls lives, our society stresses the importance of cutting the emotional ties with moms and dads although this is the time when parental guidance and support would most likely be needed, but maybe not appreciated at the time. However, some parents can actually impact the girl’s choices negatively by insisting that they grow up too fast or to confine to the norm.
In high school, many girls are prone to being insecure. At Willowdean’s school in “Dumplin’” a change is sparked with Will’s involvement in the beauty pageant. Insecure girls at her school believe Will is an inspiration. They follow her lead and also sign up to strut their stuff. outside of the book, girls can read and
Throughout The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth, Alexandra Robbins makes a variety of assertions. Her main claim is that there are many students who feel as if they must fit into certain groups in school to be accepted. To support this claim, Robbins has gathered evidence by interviewing common high schoolers from several different areas. Throughout her interviews, the students tell her about their experience. She observes a common pattern in all of the students, as a result, she has strong proof to support the claims she makes throughout the book. Within this essay, I will explain the specific claim, the evidence, and the form the evidence
“I see you Mr. Adza, I see right through you. You think you can charm your way out of any situation with your big smile and smooth way with words, but you can’t just coast through life with this sort of arrogant, nonchalant attitude. One day its really gonna bite you in the ass,” said Mr. Jansen, as he towered over my desk. Most of the class had scurried out at the sound of the school bell. I was simply trying to explain to the man that my random outbursts in class actually did him a favor because it loosened my classmates up, freeing their mind for the learning process. In fact, Mr. Jansen and I were actually a team. We were the dream team! I was the comic relief and he was the scholar. We went hand in hand.
This book is trying to show the struggle that many young girls experience and the reasons to why the adolescence years to prove to be such a period of, underachievement, anger, and pain in the lives of girls who can be bright and talented girls. A few of Mary Piphers points that she stresses throughout the book are, girls today are much more distressed, anxious, and uncomfortable than before. The society in which they are coming of age is more dangerous, sexualized, and media saturated, the culture is indeed a girl poisoning one.
An explanation in its purest form of “What it’s like to be a Black Girl (for those of you who aren’t)” by Patricia Smith, is just that, an explanation. From the first three syllables “First of all,” the author gives a sense of a story being told. She uses jagged sentence structure and strong forceful language to also show the reader the seriousness of her topic. Smiths poem gives the audience an insider’s view into a young black girl’s transition into black woman-hood at a time where both being a black girl and a black woman was not as welcomed.
One of the main reasons as to why the honor code at Bartlett High School, as well as other schools, is lacking is due to the teachers not properly addressing it. In a five-year study conducted by Sally Sledge and Pam Pringle, it is reported that 65% of the students present in the university said that the honor code was
“What’s Wrong with American High Schools.” latimes.com. 1 March 2005. Los Angeles Times. 8 April 2014.
Olsen, Ginny. Teenage Girls and Exploring Issues Adolescent Girls Face and Strategies to Help Them. Zondevan. 2006. Print.
Are the new standards and expectations the world has for teenagers really creating monsters? The amount of stress that is put on students these days between trying to balance school, homework, extra curricular activities, social lives, sleep and a healthy lifestyle is being considered as a health epidemic (Palmer, 2005). Students are obsessing over getting the grades that are expected of them to please those that push them, and in return, lose sleep and give up other aspects of their lives that are important to them such as time with friends and family as well as activities that they enjoy. The stress that they endure from the pressures of parents, teachers, colleges, and peers have many physical as well as mental effects on every student, some more harmful than others. The extreme pressure on students to get perfect grades so that they will be accepted into a college has diminished the concept of actually learning and has left the art of “finagling the system” in order to succeed in its place (Palmer, 2005). There are many ways that should be implemented in order to reduce the stress on students so that they can thrive because, withoutthem, the school systems will only be creating generations of stressed out, materialistic, and miseducated students (Palmer, 2005).