Servant Leadership and Inequalities in Education

Hey! This is my forth blog entry. I mostly focused on the article and video that we watched in our meeting.

When I read this article, I was completely stunned. I had never heard of the “school to prison” Pipeline until now! I just seems crazy to me that there are actually hundreds of schools around the nation participating in this. How can a school actually encourage a student to dropout? It seems to goes against every principle the education system is based on, no matter how messed up it is. What surprised me the most was the zero tolerance policy. The article said that kids were being EXPELLED for doing things such as bringing nail clippers to class. That just boggles my mind.

The “Black Males, Black Dreams” was very moving to me. It was a real account of what Carlos Wallace went through and I thought there was a great lesson learned from his story. I think that it showed that we should be persistent in trying to achieve our dreams to always have hope. It really shed to light a lot about the inner city schools that I had never known about. I think that one of the main necessities that African-American kids in impoverished areas need, is African-American role models. I think that they need hope that they can succeed in education and can achieve higher goals. Wallace was a perfect example. 

I think that everyone in the city has at least some right to help these kids. They live in the same city as we do and deserve a better learning environment and people to help lead them. When we host students from Tilden High School next week, I think that the best way I can practice servant leadership with them is to be an available resource. By providing support to them, I am showing them a good example of servant leadership. I can be an available role model and pretty much help them with anything that they need, from things like giving advice to just showing support. It will be a great opportunity for me to develop my servant leadership skills by giving me a chance to have actual personal contact with kids in need and listening to their experiences. I wouldn’t just be in a classroom learning about servant leadership, I would actually be applying everything that I've learned. I’m personally very excited to meet the students next week. I hope that I can be of great help to them and I’m going to try to have as positive of an impact on them as I can.