Assignment 1

Assignment 1:
Read pages 1 - 61 in the text! Write a response to the 1st 61 pages with this prompt: What is Crenshaw High School like in comparision to Mililani High School? You may write in terms of the community, the layout/enviornment of the school, and the students/faculty/teachers? This needs to be at least 300 words. You may use quotes from the text to support you. I want you to go and look at at least 4 responses from your classmates and to comment on them as well! Have fun!!

Crenshaw High School is totally different yet similar in some ways to Mililani. The biggest difference is the environment. At Crenshaw, gang fights and shootings are all normal things for the community on a daily basis. They have daily stabbings right outside the school. Almost all the students have done something illegal at least once in their lives. There is so much brutality and suffering in the community of these kids that it makes our school look like heaven. Mililani is a safe learning environment. This year, I haven’t seen one fight. I have heard of a few but they are nothing compared to Crenshaw’s reputation. The community in Mililani is a lot closer than Crenshaw’s as well. We have a more “aloha” kind of feeling. We help each other when in need and we’re a very hospitable community. There are no territories like how the gangs at Crenshaw have their own streets and you get shot if you walk on the wrong street. We are just one big community. Not separated by gangs like the Rolling 60s, Eastside 97th Street Crips, or the Ness Gangster Bloods. Crenshaw needs constant police attention while if there were police on campus at MHS, people would be wondering what the heck happened.

Even though Crenshaw is one of the scariest places on earth in my opinion, it still has those driven students that want to do well and go on to do bigger things with their lives. In a way, I see them with more drive than our students. I think it’s because of their environment that they are driven so much more than Mililani kids. In Mililani, you’re taught to do well in school and go college to get a job. Mililani kids are settling for going with the flow and see where it takes them. There are so much students going to community colleges instead of UH or mainland schools. But at Crenshaw, all the students in the gifted program are striving to get scholarships and rise above their situation in life. They teach us that we can reach the highest dream by working hard to over come any obstacles and challenges that come our way.