Youth Action Changes Things (Y-ACT) is a group for young Mexican-Americans and recent immigrants. The volunteers are helping parents and students find ways to advocate for themselves and their kids. They are helping students get good advice and stay in school, often their school guidance counselors are untrained and giving bad advice. DP
by Eleanor Bader
When Kara Gagnon was a high school senior in Dalton, Massachusetts, she didn’t give much thought to the fact that there were four guidance counselors for the 140 students in her graduating class. But moving from suburban Dalton to Brooklyn made her realize how privileged she and her peers were.
Gagnon is an AmeriCorp/VISTA volunteer at Youth Action Changes Things, an 18-month-old Sunset Park group for young Mexican-Americans and recent immigrants. She says that she is astounded and appalled by the misinformation and racism she sees students facing in Brooklyn schools.
“There’s just general ignorance,” the 23-year-old notes. “For example, the counselors don’t always know much about immigration laws: they can’t answer the students’ questions. Some of the girls think that if they have a baby they’ll become legal so they get pregnant only to find out that this doesn’t help their status.”
Gagnon says that the role of guidance counselors is key to not only help students resolve personal problems, but in keeping them on track to complete high school as well as formulate post-secondary plans. Some of Brooklyn’s 58 high schools have an array of support services from social workers and guidance counselors to college advisors and tutors, but some are seriously understaffed.
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1 comment:
As a product of the NYC school system, a later a member of the system's staff I saw terrible "educational" injustices and every attempt to change the system was just another smack in my head - the proverbial "nail that sticks up gets hammered down".
The teachers union was once an important defender of injustices against teachers & other staff, but now it perpetrates injustices against the students that they are meant to serve (I served as a union leader and tried to make changes there - it was even harder than changing the educational system).
why is this? because the purpose of the system is not to serve the student, it is meant to serve the teachers & other staff.
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