Waiting For Superman Essay

A child’s first day of school is often viewed as a rite of passage; the first step on the road to a happy and successful life. This is true for most children from families who live in the best school districts or can afford expensive private schools. On the other hand, what if a child’s first day of school is nothing more than the first step on the road to poverty and possibly even illiteracy? People are continuously saying how children are the future and we must nurture them in order to ensure a bright future for our country. The current education system in the United States is extremely under achieving. The documentary “Waiting for Superman” addresses many issues in a failing school system and the innocent children that system leaves behind.

Although the documentary spends little time suggesting parents roles in their children’s education, it clearly shows that we must make changes to help children from low-income families and improve the teachers union. Based off research it has been determined that students living in urban districts have psychological and social disorders. They tend to be unstructured, defensive, non responsive, and short tempered. This is due to their living environment most are raised in a single parent home, have lack of proper nutrition, and are living in highly rated crime areas where their main focus is about survival and less about education. One of the many problems that is in the U.S. educational system today is poverty that causes students to not care and know the importance of achieving a good education.
Most people think that the only thing that someone needs to do would be to try hard and pay attention and their academic performance would fall into place.

That is a blind assumption; children in urban districts have to first have a positive outlook on education before even pursuing. The solution to this problem is for the teachers and parents to emphasize the value and importance of attaining an education. Students need caring and stable relationships with adult faculty and staff members as well as their parents to overcome academic hurdles. Also getting the community involved in school fundraisers and raising money for the schools and supplies would greatly impact children and show them that people within their community care about their education and future. By creating positive teacher-student relationships it draws students into the process of learning and promotes their desire to learn. Monitoring the needs and progress of each student will be a duty shared by all staff members, including teachers, administrators, counselors and

parents.
This solution should be implemented at the kindergarten grade level and continue on until the student graduate high school. The students will have to show up to school, have a desire to learn and participate. The parents will have to help their children with their homework and provide their signature when needed as well as show up to parent teacher conferences to build a relationship with the teacher and understand what is trying to be done to help further the education of their child. The teachers must come into the classroom with a positive attitude because the teachers are the conductors of the classroom if the teachers do not care and have a bad attitude so will the students. The teachers will also have to plan, prepare, and present lessons with imaginative presentation within their class range as well as motivating their students to always do better. The administrations job will be working with various committees which include academic boards, organizing and facilitating a variety of educational and governing bodies, task groups and social activities.
What is currently being done for students who lack proper nourishment in urban districts is a program called The National School Lunch Program. According to the United States Department of Agriculture The National School Lunch Program is a federally assisted meal program operating in over 100,000 public and non‐profit private schools and residential child care institutions. It provided nutritionally balanced, low‐cost or free lunches to more than 31 million children each school day in 2011 and is increasing. Another solution that is currently being done to help promote hope in education is allowing famous celebrities speaking at schools will also alter the decision of students, showing that by achieving a good education they too can become someone of importance. According to Web Celeb Daily famous rapper Big Sean partnered with Office Depot and donated 3,500 backpacks loaded with school supplies this year to Detroit Public Schools and local nonprofit organizations. The achievement gap is commonly defined as the difference between the academic performance of poor students and wealthier students and between minority students and their non-minority peers. The achievement gap is a topic in U.S. educational policy and research. The gap has gone through a variety of policies intended to close it, but Americans show no signs of ceasing the effort to do so.
There are many obstacles facing this solution, one of those obstacles being that urban districts are not staffing their schools with enough quality teachers.

This is mostly due to a term often called teacher “shortage.” A teacher shortage means that the number of effective teachers the district wants to employ is greater than the number of teachers who are willing and able to work at a given salary which leads schools to hire teachers with limited experience, using long-term substitutes, or by increasing class sizes due to the lack of funding. Hiring a teacher with limited experience does not allow them to understand the student social needs. To solve this obstacle urban schools must attract and invest in quality teachers. A way to attract and retain teachers is to change the structure of the teaching career. Much has been done in allowing teachers to pursue professional development and take on responsibilities outside the classroom, such as teaching other teachers or developing curriculum. Another obstacle in urban districts is the increasing class size that leads to overpopulation. In order to be an effective educator, a teacher first must understand where his students are coming from individually but due to overpopulation this tends to affect the teachers activities, as well as their instructional planning. The way to overcome this obstacle is to have a teacher aid per classroom to evenly split the students and get to know the importance of the curriculum as well as where

each student is at academically in the class.
One of the greatest problems in American society today is a variation in the quality of education, dependent upon the wealth, or lack thereof, in particular areas. Students in urban districts need to realize that education helps them understand the world they live in. They will get to know more about their surroundings as well as the whole world through subjects like history, geography, science etc. Poverty sets students at a disadvantage for higher education but, with these solutions poverty will not have as big as an effect on the U.S. educational system.