Assignment #1: Read pages 1 - 61 in the text! Write a response to the 1st 61 pages with this prompt: What is Crenshaw High School like in comparision to Mililani High School? You may write in terms of the community, the layout/enviornment of the school, and the students/faculty/teachers? This needs to be at least 300 words. You may use quotes from the text to support you.
“During the years of beatings by her mother, years of being whipped with an extension cord, smacked in the mouth with a telephone, pounded against a wall, punched in the lip, dragged by the hair through the hallway, tossed in the shower, and scalded with hot water, school was Olivia’s salvation. The only kind words she heard, the only love she felt, the only compliments she received, were from her teachers. At home, no matter how she was tormented, no matter how long she cried, when the beatings were over, she always read her assignments, and prepared for her tests.” (pg. 9)
Wow. That was the first word to fall from my lips as I read the book’s opening words from the point of view of Olivia, one of the gifted, inner-city students whose story is told in the book And Still We Rise by Miles Corwin. This passage surprised me so much, I had to go back and read it a second time to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating or anything. (And I know many other people probably did, too) This is just a taste of the hardships the gifted students at Crenshaw High School in South Central must face every day of their lives, many having to make it on their own at such a young age.
Let’s be honest here: Many of the students at Mililani High School, gifted or not, dread having to wake up at early hours in morning, five days a week, and drag themselves to what they consider to be their own “personal prison”. They whine at having to sit for a little over an hour in, at the most, six periods a day, only being able to use the restroom with a signed planner and being chased by security guards in golf carts for wandering the halls during class time. They sink into thick pools of anxiety and stress just looking at the massive loads of homework they receive from teachers that they know will take hours to finish at home, staying up until the early hours of the next morning. Many of Mililani High School’s students think they have it bad. But, once anyone starts reading this book, they’ll know that we have nothing on these Crenshaw students.
In the first sixty one pages, you will meet three of the school’s gifted students: Olivia, Sadikifu, and Toya. Olivia, a bright, promising girl is haunted by a past filled with constant beatings from her mother at a young age and the traumatic experiences of moving to various foster and group homes in South-Central Los Angeles, taken care of by selfish guardians and having to put up with the craziest of girls. Sadikifu is an outspoken, intellectual young man raised by a single mother, trying to leave behind his violent past of getting involved in South Central’s gang scene. Toya, who had to face the tragedy of losing her mother to a drunk, abusive father, is trying to hold onto the bright future that is slowly slipping from her grasp due to her teenage pregnancy.
These are hardships that very few of us living in Mililani will ever even come close to facing in our lives. Abuse, gang violence, sexual molestation, teenage pregnancy, abandonment, losing one (or a few, or even several) loved ones, having to live on your own trying to make a dollar out of ten cents…the list of problems for Crenshaw students goes on and on. And many deal with not only one, but many of the issues on this list. When I read these stories, they were tales that I’ve only seen on the silver screen at the movies or on my weekly television soap operas. It was hard for me to face the fact that this stuff is real, that it goes on in many schools in communities like South-Central across the nation.
Just thinking about the tragedy these kids, who are the same age as me, face on a daily basis makes me look at the community I reside in and think “I’m so blessed to live in a place like Mililani.” From a personal standpoint, I know what it’s like to live in place where, for many (but fortunately, not for me) face hardships due to dysfunctional families or poverty. Before I moved to Mililani in the 7th grade, I had grown up in Kalihi, where, again, in all honesty, isn’t exactly the easiest place to live. Until I was twelve, I lived with my parents and grandmother in a tiny, cramped, one bedroom apartment, not even as long as one of the usual classrooms you’ll find at Mililani High School, our bathroom barely bigger than the closet in the room I have now. My playground was the hard, asphalt parking lot downstairs where cars drove to and fro. Our family’s transportation (until we were fortunate enough to buy a car) was always The Bus; on it, a fifteen minute drive to Ala Moana turned into a trek that took three times as long. In elementary school, I couldn’t even imagine what it was like to live in a three-bed room house with a front and back yard; so few of my friends, which were mostly either Filipino or Chinese, could, either.
Fortunately, though, my childhood was wonderful thanks to my hard working, selfless parents and grandmother; I never got to see first-hand the drug abuse and violence that I know goes on in a neighborhood like Kalihi. But when I read this book, even a place like Kalihi can barely compare to the streets of South-Central LA, where death and despair is around every corner for many; where wealth and success, a stable family and a modest house, is a far-off, infinitely distant dream.
As far as the teachers and staff go, there were those at Crenshaw that reminded me of some of teachers at our own high school. While admittedly, some teachers (probably many at Crenshaw) are only interested in the pay (considering the community they live in), there are other teachers, like Ms. Little and Mr. Braxton, who take genuine interest in the work and lives of their students; they actually care. Their dedication to ensuring that their students become successful and set out on the path to a bright future is surprising at times; the fact that Ms. Little would be willing to pick up Olivia to make sure she made it on time to school shows that. I know that they are teachers at Mililani High School with the same dedication to not only their students’ educations but futures as well. It is a comforting thought to know that I have adults to talk to about my problems, and, most importantly, who I know will listen.
All the time, I hear students at Mililani High School complaining about how dirty or worn they think the campus is, how fights go on so often, how much they dislike the school. But, when reading about Crenshaw High School, about how it’s filled with rival gangs that never miss the opportunity to start a fight and shoot someone, how many students and their families live off of welfare, how metal detectors, which you usually see at the airport, want to be put into place to find dangerous weapons on the students, you realize that our school isn’t that bad. You start to open your eyes and see that there are thousands of students in ghetto communities like South-Central that go to schools that are way worse than ours. And, like I most definitely have, you start to appreciate everything that, at one time, you hated and took for granted with every ounce of your being.
“During the years of beatings by her mother, years of being whipped with an extension cord, smacked in the mouth with a telephone, pounded against a wall, punched in the lip, dragged by the hair through the hallway, tossed in the shower, and scalded with hot water, school was Olivia’s salvation. The only kind words she heard, the only love she felt, the only compliments she received, were from her teachers. At home, no matter how she was tormented, no matter how long she cried, when the beatings were over, she always read her assignments, and prepared for her tests.” (pg. 9)
Wow. That was the first word to fall from my lips as I read the book’s opening words from the point of view of Olivia, one of the gifted, inner-city students whose story is told in the book And Still We Rise by Miles Corwin. This passage surprised me so much, I had to go back and read it a second time to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating or anything. (And I know many other people probably did, too) This is just a taste of the hardships the gifted students at Crenshaw High School in South Central must face every day of their lives, many having to make it on their own at such a young age.
Let’s be honest here: Many of the students at Mililani High School, gifted or not, dread having to wake up at early hours in morning, five days a week, and drag themselves to what they consider to be their own “personal prison”. They whine at having to sit for a little over an hour in, at the most, six periods a day, only being able to use the restroom with a signed planner and being chased by security guards in golf carts for wandering the halls during class time. They sink into thick pools of anxiety and stress just looking at the massive loads of homework they receive from teachers that they know will take hours to finish at home, staying up until the early hours of the next morning. Many of Mililani High School’s students think they have it bad. But, once anyone starts reading this book, they’ll know that we have nothing on these Crenshaw students.
In the first sixty one pages, you will meet three of the school’s gifted students: Olivia, Sadikifu, and Toya. Olivia, a bright, promising girl is haunted by a past filled with constant beatings from her mother at a young age and the traumatic experiences of moving to various foster and group homes in South-Central Los Angeles, taken care of by selfish guardians and having to put up with the craziest of girls. Sadikifu is an outspoken, intellectual young man raised by a single mother, trying to leave behind his violent past of getting involved in South Central’s gang scene. Toya, who had to face the tragedy of losing her mother to a drunk, abusive father, is trying to hold onto the bright future that is slowly slipping from her grasp due to her teenage pregnancy.
These are hardships that very few of us living in Mililani will ever even come close to facing in our lives. Abuse, gang violence, sexual molestation, teenage pregnancy, abandonment, losing one (or a few, or even several) loved ones, having to live on your own trying to make a dollar out of ten cents…the list of problems for Crenshaw students goes on and on. And many deal with not only one, but many of the issues on this list. When I read these stories, they were tales that I’ve only seen on the silver screen at the movies or on my weekly television soap operas. It was hard for me to face the fact that this stuff is real, that it goes on in many schools in communities like South-Central across the nation.
Just thinking about the tragedy these kids, who are the same age as me, face on a daily basis makes me look at the community I reside in and think “I’m so blessed to live in a place like Mililani.” From a personal standpoint, I know what it’s like to live in place where, for many (but fortunately, not for me) face hardships due to dysfunctional families or poverty. Before I moved to Mililani in the 7th grade, I had grown up in Kalihi, where, again, in all honesty, isn’t exactly the easiest place to live. Until I was twelve, I lived with my parents and grandmother in a tiny, cramped, one bedroom apartment, not even as long as one of the usual classrooms you’ll find at Mililani High School, our bathroom barely bigger than the closet in the room I have now. My playground was the hard, asphalt parking lot downstairs where cars drove to and fro. Our family’s transportation (until we were fortunate enough to buy a car) was always The Bus; on it, a fifteen minute drive to Ala Moana turned into a trek that took three times as long. In elementary school, I couldn’t even imagine what it was like to live in a three-bed room house with a front and back yard; so few of my friends, which were mostly either Filipino or Chinese, could, either.
Fortunately, though, my childhood was wonderful thanks to my hard working, selfless parents and grandmother; I never got to see first-hand the drug abuse and violence that I know goes on in a neighborhood like Kalihi. But when I read this book, even a place like Kalihi can barely compare to the streets of South-Central LA, where death and despair is around every corner for many; where wealth and success, a stable family and a modest house, is a far-off, infinitely distant dream.
As far as the teachers and staff go, there were those at Crenshaw that reminded me of some of teachers at our own high school. While admittedly, some teachers (probably many at Crenshaw) are only interested in the pay (considering the community they live in), there are other teachers, like Ms. Little and Mr. Braxton, who take genuine interest in the work and lives of their students; they actually care. Their dedication to ensuring that their students become successful and set out on the path to a bright future is surprising at times; the fact that Ms. Little would be willing to pick up Olivia to make sure she made it on time to school shows that. I know that they are teachers at Mililani High School with the same dedication to not only their students’ educations but futures as well. It is a comforting thought to know that I have adults to talk to about my problems, and, most importantly, who I know will listen.
All the time, I hear students at Mililani High School complaining about how dirty or worn they think the campus is, how fights go on so often, how much they dislike the school. But, when reading about Crenshaw High School, about how it’s filled with rival gangs that never miss the opportunity to start a fight and shoot someone, how many students and their families live off of welfare, how metal detectors, which you usually see at the airport, want to be put into place to find dangerous weapons on the students, you realize that our school isn’t that bad. You start to open your eyes and see that there are thousands of students in ghetto communities like South-Central that go to schools that are way worse than ours. And, like I most definitely have, you start to appreciate everything that, at one time, you hated and took for granted with every ounce of your being.
Holy God!!! This was huge!!! I really loved reading every word!!! You went beyond deep with this Sam! I'm proud of you! I printed this out!
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