J9- Pernale Blake

Journal 9: Response to a ‘The Hobart Shakespearians” From Pernale Blake
After watching the video “The Hobart Shakespearian” I immediately
began to think about how much Esquith had to sacrifice in order for
those kids to have the opportunity to attend this elementary school.
In the video he states that he was juggling four jobs just so that all
the students can go on trips like Washington D.C. The school was
important to the kids, but it was also important for Rafe. It was
touching to see how much he cares about the kids, and how much he
truly wants them to succeed. It made me tear up a little. It made me
sad to see how much he actually affected his students, and to see how
successful his way of teacher was. Teachers believe it or not have and
will always have a huge impact on their students; they are always
teaching us new material, whether it is math or whether it is learning
to play baseball.
I loved my elementary school. It was awesome, and it ranked as one of
the top elementary schools in central Ohio. Mill Valley Elementary has
sculpted me into the young adult today, and I am very blessed to have
had the opportunity to attend there. My school never had a person get
shot and killed directly in front of it like the Hobart one. One thing
I found extremely interesting was Esquith’s reward system. He pays his
students money, not real money but fake money. The students earn money
through completing homework, showing up and participating in class,
following rules, and from other things. After the students earn enough
“money” they are then able to purchase goods, such as a guitar that a
student purchased for $25,000 fake dollars. This reminded me of a
point system we used in my elementary school. We would earn points
each day by showing up and answering questions correctly during class.
You could also lose points by getting in trouble or skipping class.
Eventually at the end of each nine weeks our teacher would set out a
whole bunch of stuff, and the people would use their points to collect
them. The people with the most amounts of points got to choose first,
and each person was given the opportunity to choose a good according
to their points.
You cannot achieve a goal that you do not set. This video taught me
how important it is to achieve your goal. My goal is to be the first
person in my family to complete college. I know I can do this because
I want to do it. The kids in the video were asks about their goals,
and you would be surprised with some of their goals. Some were school
related, like “Doing better reading”. But some were not school related
for example when the one boy said he would like to  “Not do drugs or
alcohol”.