Inner City Studies Personal Statement

Trying to achieve your dreams and reach your full potential in a town that has little to no guidance for youth, especially African American men, is a daunting task. Too often, young men from my hometown are given limited options for their future. The education system made us feel as if we were only created to work in trade career fields, or sign our lives away for four to six years to the various branches of the United States Military. College was a luxury that many, including myself, thought would never be an option.

Most inner city schools are not challenging their students and not allowing them to be creative. Yet, challenging students is their normal practice in the better school. On the other hand, all inner city schools should give their students with the same amount of education as private schools in order to better their education. There are different methods of teaching between these schools, especially when it comes to economics and geography. “Scholars in political economy and the sociology of knowledge have recently argued that public schools in complex industrial societies like our own make available different types of educational experience and curriculum knowledge to students in different social classes” (Anyon, 1980). Even though years after Brown versus Board of Education, where the Supreme Court declared segregation to be unconstitutional, Caucasian, African and Hispanic Americans continue to learn in different worlds. As long as each race has low incomes, there will always be unequal education.

My primary goal for going to school is to be able to make my family proud and do something beneficial with my degree.

My personal goal for the upcoming year is to become more involved on campus and in the community. My freshman year I volunteered at the Royerton after school program and this made me realize how much I enjoy working with children and helping them in any way that I can.

My goal is that my education will prepare me to become a serviceable member of society by using my abilities in order to help lead the improvement of the community. This is my goal because I personally fill that as humans we should try to use our lives to make society a better place than when we arrived.

After graduation, I committed myself to learning new things and more importantly to try things that intimidated and frightened me. While doing so, I searched for and found a way to make a change in the lives of those who needed help the most. I became a career advisor for one of Washington D.C’s largest workforce development projects. I was tasked with the responsibility of teaching DC’s welfare population the essential skills needed to progress in life, and succeed in the workforce. Having overcame being a learning disabled student, and traumatic brain injury I was

There are academic tutoring services in many African American urban schools across the country, along with districts that tailor their curriculum to fit the students. (Chapman, 2010, pp.651-654) Charter schools also offer a curriculum formatted toward the students and have more freedom from the bureaucratic echelon. There are only a small handful that have the same ideology or format as the Chicago study. The Chicago study gave students the benefits of learning social and business skills through BAM (Becoming A Man), a Youth Guidance program. This program is based on the premise that many urban youths lack general skills because they have not had a positive role model to guide them. Hence, the BAM program offers role models that are

Black, White, Hispanic, and Asian; we all have our thoughts on them. What do I mean you ask? The thoughts that we have already preset for the different races. The assumptions we use to portray a single person or group; are stereotypes. The unreliable generalization about all members of a group that does not recognize individual differences within the group. We will not talk about stereotypes everywhere. Lets narrow the focus down to innercity stereotypes.

Over the last few years modern America has seen an increase in the strain and criminality of inner-city youth. There are many factors that lead to the delinquency of minority youth. However, when it comes to the social construct of segregation, criminologists can predict that today’s inner-city youth have few options when it comes to their future. Today’s socially constructed ghettos have developed stresses such as poverty, over policing and racial segregation, creating tension between inner-city youth and the social factors surrounding them. Many criminologists believe there to be a correlation between a cross-sectional view of factors that lead young Latino and African American youth to develop their delinquent habits. Within this argument the paper will discuss how the cross-sectional factors of age, class and race discourage impoverished inner-city youth and veer them towards delinquency. The discussion will be supported by ten separate sources, linked between five topics the paper will present how the three factors of difference (age, class and race) have an effect on the populations of inner-city youth.

Henry Ford, an inventor, entrepreneur and innovator, once said, “There isn’t a person anywhere who isn’t capable of doing more than he thinks he can.” This is the mind-set I have towards inner-city youths that I work with and the mind-set that I strive for all to believe in. Young adolescents are critical to our future, which is why I devoted my career to working with children and teenagers living in urban environments. I want to advance in my work with nonprofits and gain more knowledge to help others, which is why I am choosing to go back to school. I want to attend a graduate school that shares my same passion for helping others and that school is Wheelock College.

The professional long-term goal is to become a Director for student retention and academic success at a university which will allow me to accomplish and bring together all of my three goals in one position. Personally, obtaining a master’s will allow me to

America has had an extensive relationship with her inner cities. Inner cities were and are the backbone to America and her achievements. The cities assisted in the mass production of the automobile industry, the destruction of the tyranny known as the Nazi Empire, and are the center piece for businesses today. The inner cities had a reduction in employment during the 2008 financial crisis, leaving the cities and their inhabitants in shambles. This not only affected jobs and parents, but the children as well. This was unfortunate because the cities that built America were now spilt into two parts. One part became an area of bustling traffic and lively people, the other underprivileged individuals with no source of income due to financial collapse of their places of employment. Inner city children face an abundant number of obstacles in their lives being raised in these low-income areas. These areas have become poverty-stricken and are being ignored by the government. Without assistance, whether from the state or the federal level of government, certain factors of their lives are being neglected. Some of the factors that are detrimental to the children are the inadequate educational programs, lack of attendance at school, and parent involvement, lack of availability of nutritional produce and a higher rate of exposure to crime.

During my time with the masters of social work program here at Washington University I

I am interested in becoming a master-level social worker to gain the skills necessary to become a well-rounded advocate for change. Likewise, I am interested in having the opportunity to work with faculty who are conducting research and making an impact in the Charlotte community. As a social worker, I plan on working towards eliminating the school-to-prison pipeline, which directs youth into the juvenile and criminal justice system without taking into consideration how social problems, such a poverty, abuse, and drugs, directly affects their behavior. In addition, I would like to tackle the issues surrounding adolescent sexuality, including teenage pregnancy, STI transmission, and sex education in schools. My target population are vulnerable youth within urban cities. Since The University of North Carolina Charlotte is located in one of the largest and most diverse cities in the nation, I have decided to seek admission into the MSW program. Having the opportunity to utilize the skills I will be learning in the classroom while working hands on with my target population is of utmost importance to me. Upon graduating with my MSW, I plan on continuing my work in the Charlotte community and working as a full-time school social worker. UNC Charlotte’s MSW programs puts emphasis on serving vulnerable populations, which is congruent with the type of people I would like to work with.

I have many personal goals that I hope to accomplish during and after my college education experience. One of my main goals is to carry the community service projects I have been participating in to college. I would love to work with cancer patients, tutor children at a local school, teach a Sunday School class at a local church, work with Habitat for Humanity, and countless other activities. I know that I probably will not have time to accomplish all the goals that I have for college, but I know I can conquer some of them, and I will.