YEA Blog

Stop Counselor Overload

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 06:45:00 GMT

In certain cases, students do not get the support they need at all. Last year at Anacostia SHS we had a shortage of guidance counselors. We had one guidance counselor to support about 900 students. Half of the time he was too busy to help some of the students who really needed his assistance. This made people feel that their problems were not as important to him as others. Our counselor was responsible for everything in our school.

In addition to counseling, he did hall monitor duty and he sometimes did cafeteria duty. This was confusing when I had to have my schedule changed because I needed him to change it. This situation not only affected the students, it also affected some of the teachers. One of the teachers was asked to do administrative duty in addition to his regular duties. As you can imagine this was very stressful to us all, especially when we found out that a teacher would have to change our schedules.

At the Youth Education Alliance, we currently have a campaign to get more guidance counselors for our schools. Counselors can have a lasting impact on how our life turns out. We need them to succeed. To go through school without them is to rob us of our learning experience.

March for Immigrant Rights

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 09:18:00 GMT

I think the march was very necessary. It was about 200,000 people all together. We held up signs and flags to show exactly how we feel about immigrants getting their citizenship. I think our voice was heard and the march was very effective.

America is made of immigrants. Without immigrants, America would not be the same. The only true Americans in this country are Native Americans. I am an immigrant, you’re an immigrant, the President’s an immigrant and I believe that if 12 million immigrants have to go back to their country, then all immigrants should have to do the same.

Overall, I think that immigrants are completely necessary in this country. It’s not possible for this country to be run without immigrants. There are lots of jobs that immigrants do that other people don’t want to do. I will stand up for them until justice is served.

Immigrants came from Europe hundreds of years ago and had their way with this land and the Native Americans. Who are you to persecute immigrants that come to America today to work and feed their families?

DCPS students on Oprah show

Sun, 23 Apr 2006 07:30:00 GMT

I am a youth organizer for the Youth Education Alliance. We worked in partnership with Critical Exposure to take pictures of our school. Critical Exposure supplied a group of DCPS students with cameras and taught us about documentary photography. Then we took pictures of our schools and used them for display at the School Modernization Rally.

I’m proud to have been on the Oprah show. I feel as if I got my point across to the rest of the world; it makes my job worthwhile. A lot of people I know saw the show and, said “I saw you on Oprah,” so it was pretty exciting. I feel like a celebrity.

The fact that there are very poor schools is a serious issue. According to the American Youth Policy Forum, a high school dropout earns $10,000 less per year than a high school graduate. Over a lifetime, the graduate will earn a million dollars more than the dropout. Even students that stay in school are not being prepared enough. "Of kids who are going to college, more than 40 percent are doing remedial work," says Melinda Gates, who was on the Oprah show talking about education.

In the future, the media should do more for our schools by going in and talking to students and looking at the conditions of schools. I hope this is the start of a new beginning for under-funded schools across the nation.