Egg Drop...Budget Cut...SMASH!

How does one protect an egg from breaking after it has been dropped from a second floor window? Make a parachute with a plastic bag and make sure the cup the egg is sitting in is protected and light weight…sounds like a plan. But now what happens after there has been a budget cut and all the plastic bags you had are taken away? Now that is harder to work with. When my group received our box for the egg drop experiment, we instantly knew what we had to do to win.  We were completely prepared to watch our egg safely survive the drop. But after we were told the bags need to be confiscated…that changed everything in a matter of seconds. Our confidence level declined fast and now we were scrounging for anything to have our egg survive.  The time came for our egg to drop and like we thought, it didn’t survive but rather crashed and burned. While we were watching everyone else’s eggs drop, we saw items that were in their boxes (marshmallows, tape, boxes, etc.) that we didn’t have. They had a lot more access to items then my group did.

 I have realized after looking at this experiment; this is reality for most of our children today. Our children are living in poverty and going to lower class school systems with barely any resources to help them succeed. Ullucci (2014) talks about in her article how children are no less capable or intelligent in succeeding. She is absolutely right! To help these youth of tomorrow, we must help them receive access when we know they have the capability. The youth in poverty have to fight more and more to get to where they want to be in their adult lives while other students who are given access easily, don’t have to fight as hard to get where they want to be. As a child growing up in a school system with limited access, I can say yes I worked hard to get to where I want to be as an adult, but with working hard, I believe I gained more knowledge and more experience than the children who were given more access to succeed in school. And personally I am completely fine with that. But because I experienced this in my own life, as a youth worker, I want to change that for the future generations so that all our children can have equal access and capability to succeed in their education. It will just take one day at a time and a lot more people than just me to help out our communities.