The Distance Between Us Artifact #2

The Graduates- The Girls

This is a documentary by Bernardo Ruiz is about three Latina girls who are struggling to graduate from high school. Darlene is a teenage mother. She has a two year old son named Alex, and dropped out of high school in order to raise him. Stephanie lives in a neighborhood with gang violence, and goes to a high minority school that doesn't do its best for its students. Chastity's family is homeless, and she uses school as her refuge from home problems.

These girls are in very similar situations (or what could've been) to what Reyna faced when she was a teenager. In fact, Reyna did face the threat of gangs and her sister Betty became a teenage mom. There were other problems that Reyna (and many girls like Reyna) faced that come with being a Latina teenager. Problems like discrimination, bullying, differences in language/culture, and many more.

However, these girls did what many people, despite race, couldn't do. They graduated high school, or are very close to doing so, and are on their way to college and better opportunities. They each overcame their problems and focused on their education. Even though the odds were not in their favor, they did it.

This was really eye opening for me, because I never really thought about the sort of things that would get in the way of getting a high school diploma. I guess living in PC will do that to a person. But there are lots of outside influences that affect education like being sick, living in a dangerous place, economic problems, and more. It would be really hard to focus on math if you're responsible for an entire baby! Reyna also had lots of problems that affected school (mostly college) due to her father's abuse and economic problems.

 When people talk about how minorities are always dropping out of high school, they should keep these sort of problems in mind, and find a way to work around them to get the most kids to graduate high school.