Journal 7: Josh

Rafe Esquith takes teaching to a whole other level. It made me think of how everyone's perspective about inner city schools are negative. It seems like most kids that grow up in inner city or project neighborhoods drop out, don't get to reach their full potential, and get mixed up into the wrong crowd. It makes me feel a bit discouraged because I feel are government is not doing enough for these kids. We know this is an issue that floats around from time to time and it seems like we aren't doing anything about it. We need to be encouraging them and teach them that hard work can pay off in the long run.

Rafe doesn't just teaches the bare minimum. He teaches them how to be an American by playing baseball and having a big Halloween celebration. He also has the students perform in a Shakespeare play at the end of the year. They read all sorts of Shakespeare to help with vocabulary and reading. Another thing that amazed me was all of the trips they had all over. He knows that most of his students are at a disadvantage living in the inner city with so many negative distractions so he knows it is very important to make a positive impact on them.

The money system reminded me of my fourth grade class where we also had a money system. In our class we had checks and we would get a certain amount of money every month. If we misbehaved, we had to write the teacher a check. At the end of the month we the teacher would lay out a variety of candy, toys, and such. Whatever money we had left we could spend it on those things. We also had to write down all are transactions. I thought it was really neat and effective. It taught us how to write checks and behave in class.

A personal goal for myself is to apply for the Athletic Training Program at main campus in the fall and continue my degree. A sacrifice I’ll have to make is blocking out any distractions I might come across that could interfere with my goal.