Returners Ponder The School To Prison Pipeline

Welcome back, readers! Kelly, of the facilitation group, was kind enough to write the post tonight. So today at AGE UP, we had BURRITOS FOR DINNER! 😀 There were also special drinks made, called horchatas, which tasted AWESOME. After we ate, we checked in with our names, preferred gender pronouns, and what we wanted to be when we grow up that is not an occupation.

We also had two special guests, Jennette and Marisa, along with Jude facilitating about the School to Prison Pipeline. As a group, we learned about a system that teens go through when entering middle school and before graduating from high school. We split into small groups, and discussed prison-related statements that Marisa read, holding up either a “true” or “false” sign to signify our answer. One of the statements was:

“The rise in incarceration is due to an increase in crime.”
Answer: False. U.S. incarceration rates have steadily risen for four decades.

After that activity, we watched a short video to get to know more about the School to Prison Pipeline, and how it works.

We were able to get a glimpse of what the teens felt about their schools that had cops and metal detectors, and how that affected them. Continuing from that, we got together in different groups to come up with ideas to prevent teens from dropping out, getting expelled, doing drugs, and brainstormed ideas to help teens get to high school and graduate.

Throughout this session, I was really surprised and disappointed by how the system works. It made me realize many things, like the resources I have, and the good people I have in my community. There are many opportunities out there, and many obstacles can get in the way that could be life changing.

It was awesome writing a review for today, thanks for reading!