Juvies was a very serious film and for me it was hard to take that all in. I mean I know some people personally who are in jail but knowing that these kids are getting 30 years or life is completely overwhelming to me. I think as teachers we need to make sure that we are there for our students and that they know this themselves because it might be possible for us to help them.
The movie also made me think about one of my friends who I worked with who is currently in jail. He was a great guy who had got out of the whole gang scene when I had met him. When he told me stories about things that had happened and about his friends who were still in the gang, he always seemed to go back and forth between the things that he liked about being in the gang to the things that he was glad he wasn't a part of anymore. And this may sound totally corny but when we talked I felt like I was one of his ways out. Like I was one of those people who he could trust and connect with who actually cared about listening to his problems and trying to help him out or direct him in the opposite way of the gang. We kept in touch, but when I came back here to school I found out that he had rejoined the gang he had been apart of before. And he got into a really bad fight with guns and what not and went to jail.
The point of my little story is that I know as teachers we may not be able to be as close with the students as we are with our friends like I was with mine. But we do need to let them know that we are there for them, another outlet to help them. I guess I just felt when this happened to my friend, that I didn't fail him really because I tried to helping him and what not but it seemed more that everyone else around him had failed him. And then when I was gone there was only his other friends who were still part of this gang to be friends with and thats why he went back because there wasn't anyone else willing to help. So as teachers, with certain limitations we can be a big help and set kids in a successful direction.
I guess I just feel that we need to be supportive so our future students make good choices. In some ways maybe even trying to make other teachers who might already have bad perceptions on certain kids, see that these kids can change for the better but they also can't always do it by themselves. They need the confidence to change without being constantly reminded on how they are always being labeled by everyone else, especially if it isn't a good label. They need to know that there are people who care about them and their future, otherwise they could resort to other options that are in reach that may not be the best choice for them.
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I completely agree with this...its so hard to be the encouragement that some of our students need or just that person that they can talk to when they have so many people in their lives who are failing them. Or they don't have enough people in their lives that are doing something positive. I think the hardest thing for me when I become a teacher is trying to help every child that needs help, or seeing them get on the right path just to slip off and be kicked out of school or just stop coming all together. But that doesn't mean that I'm still not going to try because I'm just so determined to make a difference. But yes the film bothered me because of the time these pre-teens and teens received.
A lot of them received life sentences at the age of 15 and 16, when they haven't even lived life yet. I don't understand how they were getting tried as adults when your not considered an adult until the age of 18. Also, a lot of people end right back up in jail because they get paroled the first time around but they have to stay in that same area that got them in trouble in the first place.
When so many people consider these kids a lost cause, they do so without knowing their situation, they think that their is no chance for change. But one of the doctors in the film, Dr. Kipia, was jailed when he was a youth...and now he is a doctor. Simply stated, these kids need better options, influences, teachers and friends. But as we all know, we cant chose what families we are born into or what neighborhoods we grow up in.
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