Why Change At-Risk to At-Promise?
"By the time I was 15 years old, I had been incarcerated three times…A teacher that cared reached out and managed to tap into my soul," says Dr. Victor Rios in his Ted Talk.
As a society, we tend to view youth from underserved communities unfairly. We use terms like "at risk" and "marginalized" to describe them, assuming that their personal and professional lives will inevitably lead to failure due to their circumstances.
However, labeling youth as "at-risk" presumes that these children will have poor outcomes without giving them a chance to prove themselves. Furthermore, these terms perpetuate destructive stereotypes of young people in our country, failing to define who they truly are and what they can contribute to our world.
|