Cristian Diaz
English100
October 17, 2014
Changes for Bright Futures In the essay, “Time to Reverse the School-to-Prison Pipeline”, Joseph B. Tulman, explains how he represents a delinquent disabled child who is staying out of trouble and making a change to his future.
It’s the support and attention that is needed to motivate anyone to put effort in making themselves become something big than themselves. Tulman argues that the system needs to change in order to keep youth in the educational system. To keep youth out of jail, schools must address the educational struggles of children, while governance needs to change regarding how once the children are in the system there hope for a better future grows dimmer and dimmer due to the effort that is not put in to help these children. In order to prevent the creation of “juvenile delinquents” the failing educational system must start to diagnose and support with learning disabilities more effectively. As Tulman states, “Predictably, we find that these children gained little traction in the elementary school and started to slip into tardiness, truancy, and disciplinary exclusions in the middle schools.”(pg233) At this point students by the age of 15 or 16 are fully engaged with the delinquency system and have left school behind. Tulman says, “On one occasion, I asked a room full of juvenile probation officers how many of them were supervising any children. Who were reading at grade level? No hands went up.” (pg233) This is an example of what needs to change. People that care or that can help their future and this will prevent students from failure. The reason for these students dropping out of school is because they do not receive specialized instruction and individualized services that lead to success.
Another way that teachers can support students is through interacting with encouraging students about their future. A beneficial education can help steer youth away from mischief. For
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example, getting an education can help with finding out what kind of passion of a career choice they’d like to do. Picking out what the students would like to do could be inspired by the teacher and how much interaction they give to each student. This is a start to their future. As Tulman stated about a teachers influence on Ronald, his first client, “The teacher helped convince the judge that Ronald was on the right path, getting individualized special education services, including counseling and other related services…” (pg233) Depending on what class it is, they could be going over choices one can make in which could be the difference between wrong and right in the course. Education can be a good way to obtain ideas, knowledge, and creative which