The Trials And Triumphs Of Twelve Gifted Inner City Students

And Still We Rise: The Trials and Triumphs of Twelve Gifted Inner-City Students Developmental Tasks Adolescents face many developmental tasks: physically, cognitively, socially and emotionally. For example, puberty happens, intellectual interests expand, moral thinking happens, sense of identity is initiated, independence is worked towards, there is conflict with adults, and peer influence becomes an issue—to say the least. This particular read focuses on twelve west coast inner city students and the developmental and environmental tasks that impact their education. Professionals often use the word resilience, or suggest that students become resilient, without putting much thought into the difficulties that students must recover from.†¦show more content†¦Inner city students need just as much positive input as they get negative input, because they are sometimes forced to indulge in negative activities to maintain internal stability. The gifted program in this novel depicts how a support system can assist less fortunate youth in overcoming adversi ty. Sadi Sadi was a phenomenal character in the novel. This young male struggled with his own identity, with his morals, with peer relations, along with a sick mother and other high expressed emotional levels related to his family. Sadi was once a gang member, watching as his friends were either arrested or murdered: he overcame that. Sadi did not know where he fit in after disengaging with his former gang members. Sadi stripped himself of the gifted program once, however was able to prove himself worthy of coming back to school, remain focus, and accomplish his goals. Sadi’s father interfered with a great academic opportunity, and returned to the streets as a result of his drug addiction. This student experienced many trials within himself, along with within his family. Macro Forces. Sadi lived in a community where poverty, drugs and gang violence were the norm. He could not walk out of his home without seeing his ally of gang members, and seemed like he couldn’t go a day with out running into rival gang members. It did not take a lot for him to be influenced by this