Rationale
With all the revitalization that has taken place in Church Hill, the housing projects still exist and have continued to become run-down shelters for residents in the neighborhood. During the winter of 2017, fifty residents in the Creighton Court Housing Projects were without heat from December to February. The housing authority seemed to have been “dragging their feet” to repair the heating system. Some residents were provided one single space heater per apartment. Other residents were placed in hotels until the situation was rectified. It would not be until March 2018 that residents would see permanent repairs to the heating systems (Gretchen Ross, 8 Investigates, 4/11/2018).
Neighborhood students see the changes in Church Hill - white residents walking their dogs, fancy restaurants, boutiques, and new apartment buildings springing up. Eastend Middle School re-opened and become Franklin Military School where attendance is by application and invitation only. Yet, this change has not filtered down to their neighborhoods. Students see their neighborhood is still old, dirty, and crime infested. In 1970, while the murder rate declined in Richmond, the Church Hill area murder rate doubled. In their neighborhood, they see Arabic convenient stores with bars on the windows, where EBT cards are used to purchase everything from cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs. They witness Asian hair shops charging resident’s ridiculous prices for their products. The shop owners know the residents have no choice but to pay their prices - they know many lack the transportation to travel to more affordable hair stores. They have taken notice of the new grocery store. They talk about the new grocery store being clean while the small grocery stores in their neighborhood are so smelly that the stench of rotten produce, meats, and fish hits you as soon as you walk through the door.
Despite all of the changes in the area, the mentality of the most residents has not changed. Survival mode prevails: kill or be killed, sell and use drugs, commit welfare fraud, steal from each other, drop out of middle or high school. Many students’ parents in the area did not complete high school or attend college. The same can be said about their grandparents. Street hustling, drug dealing, prostitution, receiving checks from Social Services for supposedly disabled children has proven profitable. Therefore, many residents see nothing wrong with not having a high school diploma. For many, education is a low priority. This ideology has been passed on to their children. The prison pipeline seems to be inevitable.
What seems to perpetuate this concept is a newspaper in Richmond called the Gotcha Paper (Richmond Times Dispatch, 2018). The Richmond Times Dispatch has the largest circulation in Richmond, Virginia (circulation weekly 89,401 and Sunday 120,280) and second highest in circulation in Virginia. This paper displays all the residents of Richmond and surrounding counties who been arrested or convicted of all types of crimes from minor infractions to first degree murder. So many students are interested in reading the Gotcha Paper than reading a good book. Many of the offenders in the paper are former students, my students’ parents, relatives, or friends of the family.
There are too many academically smart, talented, and gifted black students in Church Hill to take a spectator’s seat and let this ideology continue. I cannot let what has happened to my students’ parents and grandparents be the indicator of their futures. If Church Hill has moved from a place of greatness, fallen, and revived, then so should the educational process and mentality of the students in this area. I want my students to know that they can break this “generational curse”, plug up this pipeline, move to a better position in life, and most importantly, turn around and help another student hoping to get out of the “crab basket”.
Needless to say, my students are traumatized. They function in what is described by Paul Tough’s book, “How Children Succeed”, as the “firehouse effect”. Our bodies regulate stress by using a system called HPA axis. HPA stands for “hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal”. The HPA sends chemicals through the brain and the body in reaction to intense situations much like the impulse reaction fireman have when a call is dispatched to the station. My students (and students like them all over the country) are thrust into this firehouse effect every day of their young lives. They don’t know if dad will abuse mom tonight, if they will be physically or sexually abused, if the gun shots they hear will hit them or someone they know, or if they will have electricity and food. If the body’s stress-management systems are overworked, it eventually breaks down under the strain. This break down will lead to serious health problems or death. Therefore, my curriculum unit will be centered around how I can show my students options that will help them avoid a life of crime and not become a statistic headed to the prison pipeline. It is my hope my curriculum unit will be a catalyst for change.
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