As a group we worked with about 10 different organization all taking different parts in solving education inequality. Our fieldwork stretched from watching movies, making phone calls, lobbying and hands on tutoring kids. This stage taught us so much. We started not even knowing all the different types of school and what differentiate them. We then learned about the pros and cons of charter schools and public schools and ended up spending a lot of time with a organization lobbying for New York public schools to get the funding they need. In a fieldwork with the Go Project with worked 4th graders in tutoring them in ELA, and math. One moment in particular resinated the most with me. While working with a girl named Angeline in English class, she got upset because I wouldn’t give her the answer, she tried looking at someone else’s sheet. She told herself she was a bad reader and refused to try but when I encouraged her to try again she slowly read the sentences easily. Before even trying she just gave up. I think this says a lot about her confidence level and how she is encouraged on a daily basis. I believe that the school she regularly goes to is not giving her enough support. She needed a kind of support that her school wasn’t giving her. While on a call with a teacher at a Public School in Arlington, Virginia we learned about the process of schools getting money as well as the use of trailers in schools. We helped out at a holiday party at a school and were able to talk to the kids about their experience at their school. Some schools we visited were supposed to taught in English and Spanish while some of the teachers working there only spoke Spanish. This makes one question if these kids are really getting the education they deserve. While visiting a parochial school, we helped as children wrote down their dreams. Some kids wanted to be doctors or accountants while some kids wanted to be dress designers and artists. When people began speaking of college one kid said “I don’t even know if I’m gonna go to college. I only have $3,000 in my bank account.” This shows how kids are shutting themselves down at a young age. We learned about how this makes them doubt their every move because they are not taught the confidence they need to succeed. Working with these kids have taught us how lucky we are.
