The Pipeline

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4^th grade reading scores determine the amount of prisons built in a given community creating the The School to Prison Pipeline. It is a sad but true fact. So what can we do about it? Isn’t it too late by the time they move beyond the 4^th grade? Nothing is set in stone and we are major factors in making this reality a thing of the past. Minorities make up the majority of the prison population. Research has shown that a concerted effort to reach these students in the classroom could make all the difference. As I mentioned in my last post, we need to be creative with our lessons to reach out and capture the attention of students who are often ignored in the classroom. This means focusing on a mixture of inspirational heroes all year long, rather than one month out of the year. For example, did you know that an African American man created one of the very first arcade games and that Timbuktu, Africa once contained some of the greatest mathematical minds in the world? What about Rahmaniya the Afghanistan girl who put her body in harm’s way to defend the education of girls in her country? It is true that the majority of traditional educational materials relate to white males but we can change that with a little effort. I will be adding information such as this to the resource section of my blog and I hope you will find it useful. Feel free to email with any questions, comments, or suggestions you may have.