How Gilyard, Boyce, hooks, Large and Aronson support their ideas.

In his article Gift of Grit, Curiosity Help Kids Succeed, Jerry Large explains the importance of parents nurturing certain character traits children need in order to succeed. These traits include: Grit, self control, zest, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism, and curiosity. He supports his ideas by using examples from a book by Paul Tough. Tough uses two different schools as illustrations of why these qualities are important. One School is KIPP Academy, a middle school in a poverty-stricken, ethnic community in the South Bronx. The other is the elite Riverdale Country School. The students at both schools lacked the same qualities which, in different ways, were causing them to fail. While the students at KIPP were overwhelmed with stress inducing conditions in their lives, students at riverside worked hard but were not fundamentally challenged. He ties the importance of character building into the issue by explaining that "a big part of building character is overcoming failure." He explains that too much adversity is bad. But on the other hand, having too little adversity will never allow children to build grit. He further supports his claims by using an example involving rats. He says "Rats whose moms lick and groom them when they are young and feeling stressed do much better in life than those who weren’t comforted in that way." He says the rat study was a step towards proving strong early attachment helps humans overcome a lot of bumps later on.

In A Real Education, Barry Boyce suggests that Mindfulness teaching can help people be aware of their own emotions, and regulate them. He explains that this method of teaching helps students and teachers gain the qualities that are needed to get by in the world. He starts off by asking parents to imagine that their child has successfully completed college and is now searching for a job. But when they go in for their big interview, “they’re flummoxed to find their education didn’t cover the essential skills for this job.” He offers that students could strongly benefit from being taught “mindful” skills such as: how to be in control of their emotions, as well as accurately perceiving other emotions, and by teaching student to be empathetic and listen attentively to others. Boyce supports his ideas by providing examples from Mark Greenberg, the director of the Prevention Research Center For the Promotion of Human Development. Greenberg and Boyce agree that 'kindness, caring, empathy, and being able to de-center from your own point of view and listen deeply to others- are values that should be taught in our classrooms.' He further supports his claims by talking about the many benefits of mindfulness teaching. Boyce explains that it has been known to increase the attention level in the classroom. And with classes being offered to parents, they too can learn how to be aware of their emotions and their child emotions, and also learn compassions skills.  

In her book Teaching Critical Thinking, bell hooks explains the importance of both students and teachers practicing critical thinking in the classroom. She explains that by students and teachers keeping an open mind in the classroom, they would be able to deeply explore questions and issues at all angels, not just one. She supports her suggestion by explain how children are natural born thinkers, but often lose their passion for thinking because educators today aim to teach for conformity and obedience. She explains the benefits of Engaged pedagogy, a teaching method which helps students restore their will to think, and their will to be fully self-actualized. This method fully enables students to be critical thinkers. Further emphasizing the advantages of Engaged pedagogy, hook explains that this method would include mutual participation between teachers and students. Teachers would no longer have all of the answers, but instead work together with the students to explore answers.  She explains that this would create a sense of community in the class room and would forge a meaningful relationship between everyone. She also backs up her reasoning by using passages from essays and books written by various authors who share similar opinions of critical thinking.

Keith Gilyard, author of Children, Arts, and Du Bois, expresses the importance and benefits of offering creative arts programs in public schools. He uses real life example to support his claim. While visiting an elementary school classroom, Gilyard observed the students immense eagerness to demonstrate their endeavors through poetry, lyrics, oral interpretation, song, drawing, story writing, and dance. When he learns the creative arts program is going to be shut down, he explains that without such a program, the student’s true perspectives will possibly be constricted. He also provides emphasis on the issue by quoting W.E.B. Du Bois. De Bois says “A step higher on Mount Parnassus is not only to be calculated in inches of ground covered but even more by the immeasurably broader and more beautiful horizon stretching beyond.”

In her article Arizona Bans Mexican American Studies Program, Deb Aronson discusses the controversial and unfair shut down of the MAS in the Tucson Unified School District. She also talks about the racial and educational issue that arose when the program was removed. She supports her writing by explaining the severity of the political issues at hand. She talks about Dolores Huerta’s speech which she exclaimed “Republicans hate Latinos.” When a rebuttal argument was made by the then superintendant of instruction the students were not allowed to ask questions, carry signs, hold back packs, or display posters. Protests of this issue have led to multiple arrests of students. She explains that many people have tried to meet with school board members, and superintendants to find out exactly why the program was shut down, but have never gotten a reasonable or even slight answer. Further addressing the severity of the shut down, She explains that it has affected the way the students are learning. By taking away the works of Chicano authors, MAS students have nothing to relate too, thus diminishing their passion for learning.