Yahoo Finance published a story yesterday about entrepreneur Ryan Blair. On the Yahoo home page news scroll, the title is “From gang member to CEO.” The story does not mention much about his gang past, just that he was a member of a gang. There are some interesting ideas about using lessons learned while in juvenile detention in the business world. What caught my eye, other than the obvious title, is a quote from Mr. Blair regarding his thoughts on the education system.
“I can tell you from personal experience that some of our brightest minds are being misidentified because of a one-size-fits-all learning environment. Because I had ADD and dyslexia I never got past the 9th grade.”
What if the opposite happened? What if we took a segment of these students and placed them in gifted and talented programs? What if we made them proud of themselves, boosted their ego, and gave them something to look forward to when coming to school each day? What if we showed them how their “Thug Life” hero, Tupac Shakur, actually attended the Baltimore School for the Arts and studied jazz, ballet, poetry, and Shakespeare, and then opened some of the same doors for them?
A colleague of mine once said that we have to think beyond gangs and develop youth. Not only gangs, we have to think beyond labels. We have to look beyond the negatives and develop our children’s strengths. We have to empower them as young men or young women and teach them that they are valuable.
Not only are those minds being lost to the “one-size-fits-all” or cookie cutter programs that many schools adopt, students are also lost once they get labeled as needing special education. While there are some benefits to the additional services given to those who qualify, there are also several drawbacks. A student who enters middle school (or junior high) without meeting the standards on state testing will be placed in “intervention” programs to help him or her do better on the test. While this may help, it also hinders that student from experiencing everything the school has to offer. These intervention classes replace electives. Many of these students do not even qualify for special education services because the only issue they have is that they are bad test takers. When they are given the individual assessments to determine what “label” they should receive, they do very well. When this happens, these kids are placed in intervention or recovery classes and sometimes get labeled, but not officially, as lazy. However, the majority of these kids are not lazy; they are just wired a little different. They are thinkers and dreamers and often get distracted by those dreams when they are left alone (i.e. testing). While math, English, and science are needed, elective classes such as drama, music, and creative writing allow those minds to thrive. But instead, the school systems label kids, take away their avenues for individualism and expression, and lowers their self-esteem. And that’s when the truancy, bullying, drugs, and gangs take over.
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