March 21, 2012 Achievement Gap Lecture

Hello. My name is Nikki Bonsall. I'm from Nederland, TX. I graduated from Nederland High School as the #29 student out of 365 students in my graduating class. I received awards for all A's since 5th grade. I was a member of both the National Junior Honor Society and National Honor Society. I was also Vice President of the Spanish Honor Society. I was a member of HOSA for two years and also received many awards for that. Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah!

Ok, so my introduction above was only to prove a point. I know most of you probably don't care about anything that was said. If you did, you would have asked me or someone else about it. Most likely, you came to my blog with the expectation of me writing all my thoughts, opinions, and questions about the lecture we sat through this morning. I know for sure you didn't come to my blog to read a long, drawn out introduction about myself and my accomplishments. That's not the point of my post. So why did the lecture today turn out to be such a thing?

I walked into the Utopia theater thinking that I was about to sit down and learn about the Overachievement Gap. Honestly, I had no clue what that was because i've actually never heard of it. (At least not with that title, anyway) I have always known that there have been differences between whites and non whites in the education system, as well as in jobs. I was hoping that Dr. Jonah was going to fully explain what the Achievement Gap is, explain the differences, and make known what can be done to fix the issue. Instead, we all got to sit thru half of the lecture listening to awards and acheivements of the panel. Don't get me wrong. Everything that they have done in their careers should be rewarded and acknowledged, but seriously, I felt like this lecture was turned into and award show.

The whole time I was sitting there with my notebook and pencil ready to take down notes and be engaged with the speakers. I kept waiting to hear about cultural or race differences and issues that are affecting the children in our society, but halfway through Dr. Jonah's speech I thought to myself, "Ok? So when are you going to talk about the Achievement Gap and it's issues?" Sadly, I don't think he ever really did. It was as if the whole lecture may have been a plug for the Stand for Children organization, which by the way I didn't learn much about either.

I was very disappointed at how there was only time for two whole questions. Which by the way, weren't even correctly answered. I felt really sorry for the woman who seemed so concerned about bullying. She asked a good question and only got vague answers that didn't help at all. Especially when the other woman took the microphone to "answer" the question and basically stated that bullying could be stopped by having children in a "good environment." Are you serious? If it was so easy then why are there so many problems? Does she really think that it's that easy to provide a "good environment?" If that was the case then everyone would be living in a world full of rainbows and unicorns. World peace would be attained too. As if! That answer really got on my nerves. I mean, yes she is right that placing children in good, healthy environments will promote appropriate behaviors. But that wasn't the woman's question. She wanted to know how to deal with bullying that is already going on. You can't simply move all the children around to make them function in a good environment.

I was also disappointed when they mentioned someone who worked at Kealing middle school, but failed to discuss it more. I'm very familiar with Kealing because I am taking a class called, "Leadership in the Community," with Dr. Lauderdale. Kealing is in the East side of Austin and is a block away from an open air drug market. My class meets every Monday (It's made up of all UT star athletes and a fellow SW student and I) and we all go to Kealing and meet with the kids to motivate them to do well in school and stay away from gangs and drugs. Kealing is mostly made up of black and hispanic students who do poorly in school, do drugs, are in gangs, have sex, etc. These children are high at-risk. I felt like Kealing would have been a great example for the lecture to discuss the Acheivement Gap. It would have been nice to hear some discussion on that topic since I have ties with that school.

I'm not totally bashing the presentation, but I felt like I left there unsatisfied. I had certain expectations that weren't met by the speakers. It wasn't anything like I expected it to be. It would have been better if the introductions were cut way shorter and there was more time for questions. I also think the speakers should have discussed the achievement gap and explained what it was. It would have also been nice to have better suggestions for what we can do to help, instead of giving broad statements like "Take a Stand." Or answering a question with a question. If all they could tell me is "Take a Stand," then I feel a little hopeless. Obviously, as SW students we all want to "Take a Stand," on something, otherwise we wouldn't be going into this profession. We know that already.

It would be helpful to everyone in the School of Sw if they could email everyone who attended an evaluation survey. That way we could all express what we thought and what could improve future lectures.



But anyways,


Saw this and thought it was cute: