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Let Children Be Children… At Home, Not At School.

Education is the most important thing in a child’s life and children are the most important aspects of our life because they will one day be running our countries. I am a seventeen year old female that is in the process of graduating high school and preparing to attend Penn State college Beaver campus in August of 2008. I have two little sisters that I am physically leaving behind but I never want to leave them even a step behind. So why would the school district be doing that exact thing that I fear? I wish I knew but I do have a plan.
As all plans I’m sure probably start off, mine started with a problem that I noticed. The two sisters that I have for mentioned, are the ages of fourteen and twelve. The process of education that I went through was attending Brookline Elementary School for Kindergarten through Fifth grade. Then I went on to Junior High or Middle School at South Hills Middle School which is connected to the high school that I would be attended in three years which is where I am at right now John A. Brashear High School. This process of education was very important to my development of wants and needs. I enjoyed most of it and I learned from all of it I take pride in knowing that I have be able to accept and move on from any problems that I have had to dealt with.
Now I’m going to personalize this problem by introducing my sisters; Catherine is fourteen in the eight grade and Victoria is twelve in the seventh. Both attended pre-school unlike myself and then moved on to Kindergarten through Fifth grade at Brookline Elementary School as I and my brother before me did. When Catherine was promoted to sixth grade, she traveled to the bus stop on the first day of school and took a ride to South Hills Middle School, intimidated and excited as all children were and should be in my opinion. She did outstanding in that grade and her name as well as other students who did exceptionally well received an award in the form of their name displayed on a billboard on a busy street. My mom took pictures, Catherine was so proud and so was I.
Unfortunately, South Hills Middle School was going to be getting a ‘shipment’ of new kids from new neighborhoods to attend their school and they had to cut back on their Class Count. So as it seems, Catherine was upset to learn that she had to take that bus home one last time and start back up at Brookline Elementary School which over the summer took a course in how to be a Kindergarten through Eighth Grade school. So not only did Catherine have to go back but Victoria never got to leave.
The problem is not that these children are stuck in the same school for the first almost fifteen years of their lives meeting no new people even though that is a potential issue. The problem is thus, these pre-teenagers are reading books that are way below their grade level. They are being tested on information that is so sub-par, it cannot be just. These children who should be learning to spread their wings are having to stand in alphabetical order in a single file line to walk with their classmates and teachers to class like they are children who need absolute guidance. My twelve year old sister has not had the opportunity to develop her own writing style because of the provided space that their homework packets have and she seems to have the same handwriting as she did when she started school at Brookline.
I personally think this is a complete waste of time and money for the city and the children. When Catherine and her classmates attend Brashear for the first time there is no telling what will happen. Will these students go buck-wild and disappoint everyone including themselves? Will they spend no time with friends because they are so overwhelmed with the work load that they are getting having to do actual problems and they do not develop the necessary social skills or, will they be so shy that they get labeled stupid and have a horrible time in high school? There are so many things that can go wrong in a child’s life for no reason at all. I think it’s time to do something so that their problems are not rooted back to the fact that they were held back and treated stupid for fifteen years. I know it may be too late for my two sisters but, it is not too late for everybody else. So I say, let these children be “babied” at home and let them walk to class by themselves if they are late, teach them the consequences of doing so. Everybody has to learn sometime. Why wait? You learn easier when you’re younger anyways.

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     We are making calendars to raise money to build a house in Haiti. The family that would live in the house is very poor and have had many misfortunes in their lives. The eldest son was born handicapped and his mother is often very ill. The mother's other son is in highschool. Not only is he an amazing English student, but he is the best student in the entire high school. The family is severely impoverished and our help would be a drastic improvement for their lives. Since the fall we have been working on this fundraising effort. We will need to raise $2000 to build a single house. So far we have held a party for the cause and a dance marathon. From just these first two events, we have raised about $1,000. We feel that making and selling calendars to our school community is just the right "kick" to get us the money we need!       We have a special class in school dedicated to constructing the calendar. We have decided that the calendar will be the 2008-2009 school year featuring unusual international and national holidays. For example, in August we have "Sea Serpent Day".      

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Today's society has taken a downward plunge towards unhealthiness. Being thin or skinny does not necessarily mean that it's healthy. True health comes from healthy eating habits and daily excersise. Health is necessary and ideal for a successful and happy future.

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I started a flag football program for in my community for girls my age to try to eliminate behavior problems such as fighting and bullying at school. I had been noticing a general feeling of being unhappy in some of my friends at school. I was also noticing a lot of arguing, name calling, bullying and sometimes even fighting among some of the girls. In our very rural area, we did not have a lot of outside activities to keep us occupied in or out of school. We had the school's sponsored programs such as basketball and cheerleading. However that only included a limited few, not all of us. I had really noticed how some of the girls that did not make the varsity teams had become very mean spirited to the point of being bullies to those who did make the team. There were also incidents of vandalism on some of the facilities used by the school. All of this unrest was going to make for a very difficult and long school year. As a member of various athletic teams over the past few years, I have heard my coaches and leaders talk about team building and how it teaches life lessons even more than sports. I tried to think of various 'team' efforts we could try. Our school was not able to sponsor any more extra curricular activities as their budget for this year was already set. This problem led me to contact some people I know who help lead a local recreation football league who already had a boys full tackle football league up and running. As I asked their leaders about programs for girls ages 11-14, they also said that they were limited in what they provided for that age group. They had actually attempted to cut back on this age group of girls due to the behavioral problems they had encountered. However, they advised me to check into various team sports and they agreed to help me if needed. Since I had football on my mind, I started researching football and discovered flag football. We had played flag football during our gym time at school, and we had a really good time, but that was only a couple of days a year. So I began to ask my friends about playing to see if anyone was interested. Some were slow to respond at first thinking they would have to pad up in shoulder pads and helmets and tackle each other! As I gathered a few girls to agree to play, we went together to talk to others until we had about 20 girls who agreed to play. We approached one of our moms and talked her into volunteering to coach us. She and her friend agreed to help us out, even though they did not know about football either. At that point, I went back to the local recreation football league to see if we would be allowed to use their field. They really got on board with our project and helped me find resources to get started. We raised about $450.00 to get us started. We researched and found that the NFL sponsors flag football at the community level and with our money raised we were able to get flags and T-shirts. The local rec league allowed us to use their referees and facilities free of charge. The best thing about it is that we all played, we were all equals on the football field. Every game day, we picked teams all over again, so that no one team was stacked against the other. We really did have to put forth team building and organizational skills every game day. We even recruited our moms to play a scrimmage game against us! Hopefully, as football season is about to start again, our program can continue and will be open to all girls in my community.

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2005 BRICK Award winner Geneva Johnson wanted to do something about the drugs and crime rampant in her Bronx community. She created Bring It On! in order to galvanize local youth and provide alternatives to illegal activities. Bring It On! gets hundreds of kids to put energy into community service projects such as environmental cleanup at the Bronx River, and ventures to create support networks for at-risk teenage girls.

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2000 BRICK Award winner Heather Barr worked as a Staff Attorney at the Urban Justice Center in New York City. A formerly homeless teen, Heather wrote a definitive report on the incarceration of people with mental illness, filed a successful lawsuit to compel New York City to provide discharge planning for 30,000 inmates with mental illness each year. She also co-founded the Nathaniel Project, the nation’s first alternative to incarceration program for felony offenders with serious mental illness.

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Andrew Ramirez Robertson served as the Deputy Director of Border Water Works in McAllen, TX and Albuquerque, NM. Andrew empowered more than 3,000 low-income residents of border communities called Colonias to create their own sewage and drainage systems through self-help construction projects.  Through legislative advocacy, he helped make $18 million available for community-led environmental projects and expanded access to water, sewer and electricity services for border residents. Andrew won a BRICK Award in 2000.

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1999 BRICK winner Oona Chatterjee co-founded Make the Road by Walking, an organization based in Brooklyn, NY. Emphasizing education and collective action, Oona has helped her community secure expanded welfare and legal services, create a food pantry capable of feeding 500 people, and mobilized community residents behind youth empowerment and a cleaner environment.

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In 1999, Brad Lander won a BRICK Award for his work as Executive Director of Fifth Avenue Committee in Brooklyn, NY. Brad organized and empowered families in his south Brooklyn neighborhood to secure more than 200 units for affordable housing, start an environmentally-friendly Laundromat and a temp staffing agency to expand economic opportunity while promoting diversity, equality and social change.

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Mark Levine co-Founded and served as the Executive Director of Credit where Credit is Due, a nonprofit organization that promotes economic empowerment for low income families in Washington Heights, a neighborhood in upper Manhattan.  Mark created the neighborhood's first ever community owned federal credit union.  He worked with federal regulators for over 14 months to complete the complex process of supporting the credit union and earn the trust of local residents.  The credit union now has over 1,300 members, most of whom have never had a formal savings account. Mark won a BRICK Award in 1998.