“Me Write Good One Day”

What?: Agency is defined by Farmer as the “capabilities of each person.” I believe my agency has forced me into pushing myself especially hard. I’ve always done this though. I was the only one of my siblings to spend time with both parents, my parents were basically separated for my two younger brothers and my older brothers had different moms, this is important because my mom never went passed high school and had no interest in learning or reading or anything of that nature. My dad was extremely interested in those things, so as a baby I was read to a lot and I was taught to read by age 3. Even though my parents ended up separating young, that drive that was instilled in me while my dad was around did make an impact and I’ve always striven for more. My mom is Filipino, so her education story is not an uncommon one. I lived in a richer city named Kirkland, a suburb outside of Seattle, my town was predominately White, for example my brother and I were the only Filipinos at our high school, and since we only had our mom we were not particularly well off. Growing up, I thought we lived a perfectly normal life and I was happy. I legitimately had no idea that my family was considered poor until late elementary and even still it wasn’t something I really thought about until high school. In high school, I was the only “low income” student who was also taking AP classes. As result, me and my teachers put a lot of work into making sure I did well. I’ve continued to push myself as much as I can.

So What?: I’ll answer this part later, I did not understand even after the class discussion.

Now What?: Many social structures are in place that keep inequality a problem in not just America but world wide. Many of the students are English Language Learners, and because of this they practice writing frequently. They have extra English homework so that they can work on their skills. Often times, these students won’t be able to do these assignments at home because their families don’t speak English well enough. This results in them doing the assignments during other classes, which in turn forces them to cheat on the assignments from other classes because they’ve missed out on the lessons by working on their English. Because they don’t want to get behind in their other classes and they cheat, they never actually learn the information, so they test lower in sciences and math, and they’re already testing low in English because it’s not their first language.