Final Esssay

If I was to set a glass that is half way filled with water in front of you, would you say that it was half full or half empty? This example of the way you look at things was given by Jeff Duncan-Andrade who spoke about this question in one of his speeches. “Half full or half empty?”, Andrade’s mother asked him after throwing one of his terrible rants. He felt as if it was a trick question, he didn’t know how to answer to her. She proceeded to say,” Son, how you choose to answer that question, is how you will live your life”. Life, as we all know, will sometimes feel like the glass is half empty. It can feel as if something may be missing or we don’t have enough. The thing is, we all have a choice to change that perspective around. When looking at a glass that is at a half way, we can look at it as half way full and if it is halfway full, we can feel pleased for what we have and the brighter side of it is that there is still a lot of room for more. Allow your cup to fill up, allow it to overflow and like Andrade said,”…and share that with others.”

“Life is one big adventure”, said Ray in the beginning of the Passion Project video. This video spoke of finding a unique love for one thing and going after it, in other words finding your passion. Life is so full, there is so much that goes into it. It is full of emotions, experiences, strengths and weaknesses. It is full of things we’ve never dreamed of and every little part of it is a learning experience. When we first arrive in this world we know absolutely nothing. We don’t understand sadness or stress and we are amazed by the simplest things. We become amazed by the things the world already knows. The look that overwhelms a child when they first find their hands and feet, or as we get older and we are amazed by colors and shiny things. The world as a child is so beautiful, full of amazement and dreams but then we grow older. Where does the amazement and excitement go? Why is it that now that we are older, all of our hopes, dreams, discoveries and our excitements become silent or as the narrator in the Passion Project video said,” Is it that we are silent or is it that someone is just not listening?”. When we are young we look for attention in our accomplishments. Now that we are older, we still do the same but the world says that it isn’t so great, because it has been achieved in a better way by someone else or because we can still do more. Education is a huge part of that world, of showing you what your weaknesses and strengths are based on statistics.

Education, the journey onto the little paper that defines us and explains the things that we can do. It may seem like that is all education is but that is not all education should be. Education should help us help our community, motivate us for the future and open our minds for things we can do and most importantly they should know who we all are and help us find that out too. The education system is a corrupt game. It is another part of society’s way to shape us and tell us what we should do and how we should do it. It’s all a process, go to school every day, over and over sitting in a classroom with lectures and notes. Then from there we go to work, sitting in an office answering phones and filing papers. We are doing all of this for one thing, money. “Because we are kind of brain washed to like want this because we think it leads to freedom ‘cause eventually when we have money we have freedom”, said Ray from the passion project. All we look for in the country of freedom is just that, freedom and the main thing that can help us to gain the freedom we are looking for is money. Money gets you your house, your car, your food, everything you would ever want. It allows you to do whatever you want and you are noticed for it and there, is the attention we all looked for as children. Money becomes our motivation, because that is what society has been using to motivate us.

 One thing that should change in the education system is the motivation. Motivation in the classroom to follow your dreams or find your passion is not really there. The education system is set up for teachers to teach and get paid and that is all they need to do. Teaching isn’t enough, repeating equations and sentences isn’t enough, having our memory full of notes from textbooks isn’t enough. That is why you see so many run away from education. What kind of drive is given to people to actually care about what they are learning? We are told daily what we should turn our lives into. Expectations from family or from other people can drown us and puts us in a place where we don’t even know what we want for ourselves. “It’s hard for me sometimes because there’s something where they expect you to become what they want you to become”, said Romeo from Passion Project. I know at times sometimes I want to prove myself to everyone, push hard and show everyone what I can do. My mom wants me to get a bachelor’s degree and go into business of some sort. That’s the path that she took, but I’ve been working hard to get into the radiology program at Foothill. I know I have a long way to go but in a way, that’s what I want. For myself I have to follow what I want, whether I make mistakes or not, life is a learning process.

Another change that would be great to see is education going into the community rather than the community coming to them. Teachers, artists, counselors and others should try digging deep into the community, bringing people back into the education world and guiding others to be the best they could be. Sure teachers can go to school to school and get paid for what they are doing, but that is just doing the bare minimum. Teachers and education leaders need to learn to go up and beyond for their student, being the support they need. Students have so much going on in their private lives then they are told to sit in a class and pay attention, not caring whether their friend was murdered yesterday or whether they are going through family issues. A piece in Andrade’s speech that left me lost for words was when he said, “And what are we giving them in school? What’s the conversation about? Test scores, attendance, quantifiables, things we can measure, very little attention to the material conditions of their lives. Very little attention to their humanity and yet at the same time we tell them schools care about them”. The reason why what he said took me back is because it was the absolute truth. The education system sits students in chairs and tells them to learn but they do this without knowing who this person is, without caring about what this person might be going through. The system needs to understand that no student is a lost cause. If teachers worked hard enough to make personal relationships with their students maybe the students would actually think about or want to attend school. As a human, we go where we feel cared for and most of the time, which is not school.

Lastly, the school system needs to find ways to help students look into their own lives. They should be there to help students become all that they can be and more. Often times students don’t like being at school because they have so much other stuff going on in their minds and lives. We go through so much trouble trying to understand the world that we, ourselves, seem to get lost in it. Now when we are lost in the world, tell me, who is there to help find us? In his speech Andrade spoke about the backgrounds of his students, where they came from and how they were raised. He spoke about the difficulties that were put upon them, dealing with the outside world and not having any time in the world to think about school. The difference here is that Andrade reached his arm out to them, showing them that somebody actually cared, somebody wasn’t going to give up on the. Andrade compared these kids to a lyric in a Tupac song and called them “roses that grew from the concrete”. Andrade said, “When you see a rose growing from the concrete you don’t question its damaged pedals”. You don’t question the damaged pedals because a rose that has fought its way to the light through layers of concrete will obviously have some damaged pedals. That is what Andrade compared his urban youth to. Andrade then spoke about the youth explaining what they see and what they go through and telling people that there is hope for them. They can change. He then ended his speech saying,” When roses come back to the concrete they create more gardens”.  This means that when you get the urban youth that leaves where he once stood to lead a better life, often times you will find them come back to the concrete they once lived in, helping others do the same. Just like none other than, the man many still look up to today, Tupac Shakur.

Society sometimes tries different ways to define us. I think that’s why so many of today’s youth is so unsure and so confused. When it comes to T.V., magazines, radio, and every social network, we find ourselves caught up in it all. The world is so modernized and yet we live or we were raised by parents and families who have totally different views on things. Things were so different in the times where older generations lived. So we often find ourselves being pulled in all sorts of directions. Our parents tell us what we should think and what we should believe in, our morals and values. Society tells us to make money, look a specific way, and be a specific way. Then comes in our own thoughts, the things we want to be or believe in or even all the undecided thoughts that we feel pressured to decide. The thing is, when you are undecided and you don’t know what you want, it can be something great. “But the best advice I felt like I could have been given is to know that my mind is undecided. To know that just knowing that I’m so undecided that um I’m going to change every single day”, said Samira from Passion Project. Things being undecided is looked at by so many as being a bad thing, but honestly, it just gives you a lot more room to explore and see things you haven’t before. Then after you explore and experience, I think that is when you start to understand yourself little by little.

Lastly, one of the main ways that society can define us is by our so called “social status”. Social status says many things about us such as our race and class. We live in “The land of the free and the home of the brave” but yet we have people all over this country afraid to be who they are and live life freely. People of privilege, which are people that often feel like they have the higher hand because they live life right, are mostly the first to judge. They speak upon others that live life differently or that are different in a way that a human would speak about an animal. Privilege and passion often collide with one another because people are always going to be different. They will have different views, the things they like may be different and not everyone has the same passion. I think many people are passionate about something, it’s just that they don’t feel comfortable sharing it. They most likely wonder what someone else might think of it and how they will be looked at. Honestly many people don’t even care about other people’s passions; they don’t dig for it in people. “There is a lack of raw passion and there is a lack to explore a child’s mind”, said Samira from Passion Project. Maybe if people showed they cared and their weren’t so many judgments from the upper hand, then maybe we would have an amazing generation. This generation is so scared of life it is amazing. We are so scared to face reality that so many of us blur away the fears by drinking or doing drugs. So many wonder why this generation is messed up but yet no one is speaking to us and asking us what is on our mind. Maybe if the so called privileged would understand the struggle of being different, they could shed some light on us too. Until then, we are the generation of fear.

In class we read a book titled Into The Wild. It speaks of a young man who decides to leave everything he has to live alone in the wild. He was a man that came from higher class. He came had it all. He was wealthy; he had a degree, and had a great job. The thing is he was not happy. Living the life in a society ran by money and judgments weren’t the way he wanted to live. So he gave away all his money and belongings. He ripped up his social security and birth certificate and went on to live as a free man. Many people didn’t agree to what he did. Many found him to be crazy, not understanding how he could give up all the riches and luxuries and live in such a way. Over time though, people started to understand his reason for leaving. He just wanted to live a lifelong dream, to truly be free. “It is the experiences, the memories, the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent in which real meaning is found. God its great be alive! Thank you. Thank you.”(38 eBook). I can only imagine what it would be like to escape4 al of the pressures of the world. Thinking of all the worries and stressors leaves your body and you finding one place where you feel you belong, where you feel is just right for you. Given the fact that every day of our lives, we live it slaving for money and over working ourselves, to actually find peace with yourself and feeling one with the ground you stand on must be one of the greatest feelings a man could feel. I bet he felt that. “The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon…”(58ebook). He then ended up passing away after a few days in the wild because of a deadly plant he had eaten. Although he passed away, in my opinion he passed away happy because he got to live out his dream of actually being free.

Education, society, family and friends, the world; they all have impacts on us. It causes us to sometimes lose who we are or make it hard to find who we are. The education systems hand in this can be a great one. School is nearly our home for thirteen plus years. Teachers need to start stepping up to the plate and allowing us, not only to explore education, but explore ourselves and life along with it. “I’ve been in many classrooms where the teacher doesn’t interact with the students much”, said Emily from the Passion Project. That needs to change; teachers and education can be the change of it all. Everyone wants to be listened to and cared for so why is it that students can’t get that kind of attention in a place where they are told is the best place they could be. Just this little change in the education system can bring out so many new things in students, but we just need someone to hear us out. We need teachers to understand us as human beings, as amazing brains that can succeed. We already have too many people that are around us that can simply give up on us, but we will always notice the person that sticks around and fights with us. The amazing light that shines from a student is hidden by society’s thoughts and people’s expectations and judgments. If someone would take the effort of digging, then maybe you can find that light

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Should a student in a class that is helping them with their future be asked to look at themselves?

I think that is the best idea yet.  How can you have them look into the future, the community, and education without asking them how they feel about themselves?  As students WE ARE the future, WE ARE education, WE ARE the community, so now we need to know exactly who WE ARE. People don’t walk around everyday know their every move or being positive that they are ready to do something new. Stepping into college is a whole new territory. Now we sit here and we think of our past, the things that have made us into what we are and we have the future forced upon us, the thing that will make us “whole”.  Sometimes future and past is being put out into the world to much, the thing we are always less focused on is the present.

Should a student in a class that is helping them think about their future should be asked to critique education?

I think having a class where students go to critique education is a great idea. Think about it, in my English 1a class alone, almost the whole class has had experiences at school that they didn’t like or agree with and mostly all of them chose not to speak up. Having a class that asks students opinions on their education gives them a voice. Makes them feel like they are actually apart of this whole education thing rather than the normality of just walking in to class and listening to a teacher. The more students voices that are heard, the better it will be for education boards, schools, teachers and others to know how we are feeling and how it affects us. It can change dropout rates drastically because finally we have the chance and are being asked to talk about the education we are receiving.

Another reason I feel this is a good idea is that It just may help the students figure out what they truly want from this whole schooling experience. What do we want our education to provide for us? What are the changes we want to see in class? It puts us more in thought of where we want to be. Where do we as students stand?  Most of us pay thousands of dollars on school each year and half of us don’t know what we are paying for. Talking about this and the experiences they had can help others understand how we as students feel sitting in class on a daily basis and sometimes not even wanting to be there.

Lastly, the possible changes that can arise from students being heard can be AMAZING. Everyone wants to be heard, everyone wants a voice, and doing so can help others to do so too. This can change classrooms and change students’ lives on how they feel about school. Chabot's drop out rates are high and everyone wonders why but yet they don’t ask the student themselves why. No one cares to hear what we have to say. SO maybe just a little listening can change the school for the better and teachers can understand how students feel in the classroom. An idea will form of what students would want to see in the classroom and acting on it will make changes not only for the school but for the future and lives of the most important part of the school, the students. Without students there would be no school, without teachers there would be no school so why not work together and understand each other. Imagine the magic of that.