Name: 【TED】Pearl Arredondo: My story, from gangland daughter to star teacher (Pearl Arredondo: My story, from gangland daughter to star teacher)
Uploaded: 2013-10-22T16:37:03.000Z
Duration: 8 min 5 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Past simple

My dad was a high-ranking gang member who ran the streets.

so I thought I was a pretty big deal, and I was protected,

and even though my dad spent most of my life

I had an amazing mom who was just fiercely independent.

so she got to see all the kids that got thrown out of class,

for whatever reason, who were waiting to be disciplined.

So, see, kids like us, we have a lot of things to deal with

and sometimes we're just not ready to focus.

Really, do you think that doing my homework that night

a group of people who were going to help me

I needed teachers, in the classroom, every day,

who were going to say, "You can move beyond that."

It was gang-infested, huge teacher turnover rate.

an hour and a half away from where we live every day."

So for the next two years, that's what I did.

I took a school bus to the fancy side of town.

There were some people who were really gang-affiliated,

Well, trying to stay out of trouble was a little unavoidable.

So there were a lot of teachers who were like,

Some teachers completely wrote me off as a lost cause.

and I came back to the same school that I attended

And then I told them, "I want to be a teacher."

at the exact same middle school that I attended,

and I really wanted to try to save more kids

And so every year, I share my background with my kids,

because they need to know that everyone has a story,

And I am going to be their help along the way.

So as a rookie teacher, I created opportunity.

I was like, "You need to go to a hospital,

I need to be in class because I need to graduate."

So he knew that I was not going to let him be a victim

but we were going to push forward and keep moving on.

And this idea of creating a safe haven for our kids

and getting to know exactly what they're going through,

getting to know their families -- I wanted that,

but I couldn't do it in a school with 1,600 kids,

and teachers turning over year after year after year.

How do you get to build those relationships?

the San Fernando Institute for Applied Media.

And we made sure that we were still attached

to our school district for funding, for support.

But with that, we were going to gain freedom:

so that we're not doing lesson 1.2 on page five, no;

not how a district or a state says you have to do it.