My Environment: Home, Neighborhood, and School Influences

As a child, the only people I was exposed to were my family and the people at my Catholic elementary and middle school. While I met some amazing people that way who still impact my life today, it was a limited way to look at the world. When I reached high school age, I was determined to find something new, and I found that in a public high school with over six thousand students.

The greatest thing about growing up is being able to form your own mind. You are able to frame your own worldviews and decide what values are the most important to you. Though some of these values and beliefs may have been pushed on you at first, for some people you are given a choice of accepting them. As someone who grew up in a very Christian family, most Sunday mornings were being dropped off at Sunday school and reading bible stories. Life was lived by what was put forth by the bible, and what was deemed acceptable thereof. For myself, by the time pre-teens hit, so did the rebellious side. There was no longer an interest in being told how to live and what was right and wrong base off of a religion. Later in life I would

Pipes and Lee, in Family to Family: Leaving a Lasting Legacy seeks to provide parents with a framework for passing a lasting Christian legacy to their children. Of course, they do so with a decidedly conservative underpinning one would expect from Southern Baptist ministers and they make no excuses for doing so. Pipes and Lee lay out a plan in six chapters where parents can pass on their faith to their children and reverse the trend of them leaving the church upon turning 18. Beginning with Healthy Families in Chapter One and concluding with sharing the message in Chapter Six, Pipes and Lee provide and outline filled with helpful tips and ideas on how families can grow closer

My parents sat me down and went over with me again the family values that they wanted to instill in my sibling and myself. They brought back our religious beliefs that we have also grown up with and we may not chose to live our life by all the ways of the Catholic faith but to live a humble and honest life is what my parents have wanted for us. I do feel that even though I may not go to church every Sunday, I do believe in the ways of the lord now. I have asked for forgiveness and try to make sure that I live the type of life that makes god and my family proud of me.

I went to Catholic school because my great-grandmother influenced my mother to do so, arguing that the values that I would learn there would not compare to anything else. As a single mother, she took as many advices as possible on how to raise me, especially coming from the most important person for her. However, my mother has never considered herself a devout catholic, or religious person whatsoever, and although she enrolled me in Catholic school she tried to give me as much religious freedom as possible so that I could find my own spirituality when the right time merited it. I was raised with a hybrid of religious and liberal values, and while I consider to have a strong pillar of moral values based on what I learned in Catholic school,

The church that we used to attend -Wooddale Baptist- was a mega church just outside of St. Paul, Minnesota. Every Sunday, I had the same schedule consisting of Sunday School, snack time, and then “Big Church,” which was with the adults. Due to the unthinkable amount of kids, I was never given the opportunity to make anything more than acquaintances. Every Sunday it felt like I met someone new, plus I only got to know their surface layer identity. Once we started at my new church, Aldersgate Church, my social and religious outlook improved. Starting on the first Sunday, my family and I had made plenty of good friends. We even had dinner plans with two strange families after church that night! Little did we know that these two families became the most supportive and trusted people we would ever meet. Also, the small community within the church and the pastor inspired me to grow in my faith than ever before. I began to enjoy Sunday school, and understand the lessons. Exchanging churches changed the way I worshipped God, and gave me the chance to meet new

While my parents were always caught up in the war my brothers and I were left to take care of ourselves. I had to teach them what was right and what was wrong based on the situation I was stuck in. To my brothers and me unhealthy relationships were normal to us. Abuse was just an everyday thing. By ourselves we had to learn to tell the difference between healthy from unhealthy and good from evil.

the other children in my survey who were African-descent like me. This gave me a sense of social community and stratification with them. Also, since I was the oldest out of my childhood friends this boosted the social identity aspect I adopted from my sibling. My neighbourhood compared to others was at a lower class, there was small crimes such as vandalism, use of illegal drugs, and conflicts. This made me socially desensitised to common crimes which shaped my social identity by being calmer when experienced with crimes outside of my neighbourhood. As I progressed to elementary school, I grew up mentally more mature then my peers which changed me into being more judgemental of others. I expected a lot from others which they found annoying. My time in elementary school was plagued by my lower wealth class which became more and more of an obstacle since school becomes more expensive as your grow older. This made me adopt a tendency to take care of my belongings and eventualy become very responsible. High school was the focal point of my young life. During grade 9 I acquired my first job which helped me with my money problems and help support my family extensively. Politically, people in my neighbourhood, including my family, would not pay attention conflicts and elections unless it was a problem in our home country. This caused me to become politically ignorant to situation happening in Canada and the world. In conclusion, my life mad me develop a social identity of

From their experiences, I was taught that the outside world is filled with dangerous people, which is why I was never able to sleep over anyone's house, but family members were an exception. My father constantly tells me how the only reason he came to the United States was for his children to obtain a better life. My parents have always been overprotective and made my decisions

I have been fortunate to have strong, loving parents that have taught me, along with my Christian faith,

From my point of view I believe my neighborhood shapes who you are. If you live in poor area you would striving trying to move forward. Yet it is available to get involved into drugs in your neighborhood. If in your neighborhood there are roll into that type of stuff it is more accessible to you get into drugs. Like what David L. Kirp states that, “They fear that when poor people move next door crime, drugs, blight, bad public schools and higher taxes inevitable follow”. What he is saying is that usually people that are poor just get enclose full of drugs, people who are criminal, and have a bad school. You can end up either become addicted to drugs or become a criminal. In my neighborhood there is no drugs or criminals so I am not either a criminal or do drugs. I believe if a grew up someplace else I would end up being someone different. For example in Los Angeles there are a lot of gangs around the city. I would come to be into a gang in order to fitting in the area so that you won't get beat up or something. You become one with your surroundings and people you hang around with in your neighborhood. Also the houses are economical because it is has lost its value and there are a lot of trash or gang graffiti on the walls. You can also see a lot of homeless people on the streets. It can help you or either consume you just how it

Yes at times we did test our parents and started to break the rules, but we always knew right from wrong at the end of the day. I think going up in these rough neighborhoods made me understand how easy it is to fall in the wrong path. You never really know how easy it is to go down the wrong path until you lived in these neighborhoods. Growing up in these bad neighborhoods made me appreciate and be grateful for the life that I live now. People that grow up in nicer neighborhoods tend to take things for granted and don't understand how good they have it. Never having to struggle and not know where your next meal is going to come from, people take these little things for granite. Social disorganization theory is going somewhere and social impairment affects their behavioral choices that they make. This is very true because I've seen many people let the neighborhood that they grew up in affect their behavior towards others. I feel like it was harder for my brothers to not engage in criminal activity than it was for me and my sister. Many of their friends that they grew up with didn't always have the best intentions at heart and tend to get them into trouble. It wasn't anything serious but serious enough for my periods to take actions into their own hands. My parents quickly nip that in the bud so they don't become victims of the system. I have sympathy for

Growing up in a Catholic household there were many rules and beliefs I was taught to just accept. As I got older most I truly believed and tried to live my life by. Others I questioned. I started high school at Holy Family school my freshman year as a varsity cheerleader thinking I was “on top of the world.” it was the first time I had finally felt I had some sort of freedom.

I was lucky enough to grow up with so much support. Growing up like this taught me the importance of family and how to learn from them, which I believe led to an even deeper and rapid establishment of our family’s core values. My family as a whole has always taught me the importance of hard work, service, honesty, dependability, trustworthiness, and pure kindness. My Pappaw Buddy was like our superman; no matter what his physical condition was, he was always willing to help our neighbors. He never rested when he was supposed to because to him, there was work to be done. Another very important rule my family follows is to smile and speak to everyone you meet. Establishing meaningful connections has always been important to us, especially in our small-town setting. When my grandfather passed away, the entire town mourned; this showed me how many lives he really did touch, and how important it is to live for others.

To begin with, religion is one aspect of my life that I could not be happy without. My brothers and I have formed this conviction in the Lord from being taught the right way. My father is the minister at Sims Hill Christian Church and he has always taken us to every church service held as long as we were able. It has always been a priority in the Jones’ household to read the Bible and to present ourselves in the correct manner. Without God, the pursuit of happiness