ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Victor Rios - Educator, author
Victor Rios seeks to uncover how to best support the lives of young people who experience poverty, stigma and social exclusion.

Why you should listen

Based on over a decade of research, Dr. Victor Rios created Project GRIT (Generating Resilience to Inspire Transformation) a human development program that works with educators to refine leadership, civic engagement and personal and academic empowerment in young people placed at-risk.

Rios is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his Ph.D. in comparative ethnic studies from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005. His book Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys discusses the many ways in which young urban males of color encounter the youth control complex: a ubiquitous system of punitive social control embedded in what has come to be known as the school-to-prison pipeline.

More profile about the speaker
Victor Rios | Speaker | TED.com
TED Talks Live

Victor Rios: Help for kids the education system ignores

Filmed:
1,472,337 views

Define students by what they contribute, not what they lack -- especially those with difficult upbringings, says educator Victor Rios. Interweaved with his personal tale of perseverance as an inner-city youth, Rios identifies three straightforward strategies to shift attitudes in education and calls for fellow educators to see "at-risk" students as "at-promise" individuals brimming with resilience, character and grit.
- Educator, author
Victor Rios seeks to uncover how to best support the lives of young people who experience poverty, stigma and social exclusion. Full bio

Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.

00:12
For over a decade,
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I have studied young people
that have been pushed out of school,
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so called "dropouts."
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As they end up failed
by the education system,
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they're on the streets
where they're vulnerable to violence,
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police harassment,
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police brutality
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and incarceration.
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I follow these young people
for years at a time,
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across institutional settings,
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to try to understand what some of us call
the "school-to-prison pipeline."
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When you look at a picture like this,
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of young people who are in my study ...
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you might see trouble.
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I mean one of the boys
has a bottle of liquor in his hand,
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he's 14 years old
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and it's a school day.
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Other people, when they see this picture,
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might see gangs,
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thugs, delinquents --
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criminals.
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But I see it different.
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I see these young people
through a perspective
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that looks at the assets
that they bring to the education system.
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So will you join me in changing
the way we label young people
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from "at-risk" to "at-promise?"
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(Applause)
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How do I know that these young people
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have the potential
and the promise to change?
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I know this because I am one of them.
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01:50
You see, I grew up
in dire poverty in the inner city,
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without a father --
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he abandoned me before I was even born.
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We were on welfare,
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sometimes homeless,
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many times hungry.
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By the time I was 15 years old,
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I had been incarcerated in juvy
three times for three felonies.
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My best friend had already been killed.
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And soon after,
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while I'm standing next to my uncle,
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he gets shot.
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And as I'm waiting
for the ambulance to arrive
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for over an hour ...
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he bleeds to death on the street.
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I had lost faith and hope in the world,
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and I had given up on the system
because the system had failed me.
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I had nothing to offer
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and no one had anything to offer me.
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I was fatalistic.
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I didn't even think
I could make it to my 18th birthday.
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The reason I'm here today
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is because a teacher
that cared reached out
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and managed to tap into my soul.
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This teacher,
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Ms. Russ ...
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she was the kind of teacher
that was always in your business.
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(Laughter)
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She was the kind of teacher that was like,
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"Victor, I'm here for you
whenever you're ready."
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(Laughter)
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I wasn't ready.
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But she understood one basic principle
about young people like me.
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We're like oysters.
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We're only going to open up
when we're ready,
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and if you're not there when we're ready,
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we're going to clam back up.
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Ms. Russ was there for me.
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She was culturally relevant,
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she respected my community,
my people, my family.
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I told her a story about my Uncle Ruben.
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He would take me to work with him
because I was broke,
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and he knew I needed some money.
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He collected glass bottles for a living.
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Four in the morning on a school day,
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we'd throw the glass bottles
in the back of his van,
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and the bottles would break.
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And my hands and arms would start to bleed
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and my tennis shoes and pants
would get all bloody.
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And I was terrified and in pain,
and I would stop working.
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And my uncle, he would look me in the eyes
and he would say to me,
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"Mijo,
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estamos buscando vida."
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"We're searching for a better life,
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we're trying to make
something out of nothing."
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Ms. Russ listened to my story,
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welcomed it into the classroom and said,
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"Victor, this is your power.
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This is your potential.
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Your family, your culture, your community
have taught you a hard-work ethic
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and you will use it to empower
yourself in the academic world
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so you can come back
and empower your community."
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With Ms. Russ's help,
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I ended up returning to school.
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I even finished my credits on time
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and graduated with my class.
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(Applause)
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But Ms. Russ said to me
right before graduation,
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"Victor, I'm so proud of you.
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I knew you could do it.
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Now it's time to go to college."
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(Laughter)
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College, me?
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Man, what is this teacher smoking
thinking I'm going to college?
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I applied with the mentors
and support she provided,
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got a letter of acceptance,
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and one of the paragraphs read,
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"You've been admitted
under probationary status."
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I said, "Probation?
I'm already on probation,
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that don't matter?"
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(Laughter)
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It was academic probation,
not criminal probation.
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But what do teachers like Ms. Russ
do to succeed with young people
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like the ones I study?
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I propose three strategies.
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The first:
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let's get rid of our
deficit perspective in education.
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06:12
"These people
come from a culture of violence,
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a culture of poverty.
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These people are at-risk;
these people are truant.
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These people are empty containers
for us to fill with knowledge.
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They have the problems,
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we have the solutions."
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Number two.
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Let's value the stories that young people
bring to the schoolhouse.
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Their stories of overcoming
insurmountable odds are so powerful.
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And I know you know some of these stories.
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These very same stories and experiences
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already have grit, character
and resilience in them.
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So let's help young people
refine those stories.
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Let's help them be proud of who they are,
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because our education system
welcomes their families, their cultures,
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their communities
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and the skill set
they've learned to survive.
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And of course the third strategy
being the most important:
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resources.
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We have to provide
adequate resources to young people.
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Grit alone isn't going to cut it.
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You can sit there
and tell me all you want,
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"Hey man, pick yourself up
by the bootstraps."
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But if I was born
without any straps on my boots --
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(Laughter)
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How am I supposed to pick myself up?
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(Applause)
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Job training,
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mentoring,
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counseling ...
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Teaching young people
to learn from their mistakes
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instead of criminalizing them,
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and dragging them out
of their classrooms like animals.
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How about this?
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I propose that we implement restorative
justice in every high school in America.
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(Applause)
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So we went out to test these ideas
in the community of Watts in LA
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with 40 young people
that had been pushed out of school.
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William was one of them.
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William was the kind of kid
that had been given every label.
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He had dropped out, he was a gang member,
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a criminal.
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And when we met him he was very resistant.
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But I remember what Ms. Russ used to say.
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"Hey, I'm here for you
whenever you're ready."
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(Laughter)
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So over time --
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over time he began to open up.
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And I remember the day
that he made the switch.
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We were in a large group
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and a young lady in our program was crying
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because she told us her powerful story
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of her dad being killed
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and then his body being shown
in the newspaper the next day.
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And as she's crying,
I don't know what to do,
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so I give her her space,
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and William had enough.
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He slammed his hands
on the desk and he said,
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"Hey, everybody! Group hug! Group hug!"
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(Applause)
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This young lady's tears and pain
turned into joy and laughter
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knowing that her community had her back,
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and William had now learned
that he did have a purpose in life:
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to help to heal the souls
of people in his own community.
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He told us his story.
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We refined his story
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to go from being the story of a victim
to being the story of a survivor
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that has overcome adversity.
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We placed high value on it.
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William went on to finish high school,
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get his security guard certificate
to become a security guard,
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and is now working
at a local school district.
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(Applause)
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Ms. Russ's mantra --
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her mantra was always,
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"when you teach to the heart,
the mind will follow."
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The great writer Khalil Gibran says,
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"Out of suffering
have emerged the greatest souls.
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The massive characters
are seared with scars."
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I believe that in this education
revolution that we're talking about
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we need to invite the souls
of the young people that we work with,
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and once they're able to refine --
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identify their grit,
resilience and character
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that they've already developed --
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their academic performance will improve.
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Let's believe in young people.
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Let's provide them
the right kinds of resources.
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I'll tell you what my teacher did for me.
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She believed in me so much
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that she tricked me
into believing in myself.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Victor Rios - Educator, author
Victor Rios seeks to uncover how to best support the lives of young people who experience poverty, stigma and social exclusion.

Why you should listen

Based on over a decade of research, Dr. Victor Rios created Project GRIT (Generating Resilience to Inspire Transformation) a human development program that works with educators to refine leadership, civic engagement and personal and academic empowerment in young people placed at-risk.

Rios is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He received his Ph.D. in comparative ethnic studies from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005. His book Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys discusses the many ways in which young urban males of color encounter the youth control complex: a ubiquitous system of punitive social control embedded in what has come to be known as the school-to-prison pipeline.

More profile about the speaker
Victor Rios | Speaker | TED.com