Persuasive Essay

Jennifer C

Period 2

English 10

Persuasive Essay

        Looking towards my future, I think of what I will have to do as an adult. I think of driving, getting a job, buying groceries, finding a place to live, and things like that. Being in the foster system at a facility, San Pasqual Academy, I wonder how I will be able to learn all these skills to make it in life. Than the thought comes to me that they should make life-skills an elective that everyone would have to take to graduate.
        Everybody needs to know life-skills to make their life easier, so I think that a life-skill elective should be added to the requirements to graduate at San Pasqual Academy. Students need to know these skills, because living at San Pasqual Academy students really learn the life-skills. They go out into the world somewhat clueless; they don’t even know how to count their bills and spending money. Tia, the campus director, might say that students here have the option to learn the life-skills here. Yes, there are ways to learn those skills here, but students sometimes don’t have time to learn them, some students don’t even about them. Nothing here is required, and they should be because without the life-skills students will leave and have to learn it all on their own, and only have a certain amount of time before their life crashes before their eyes.
        Students that have graduated from San Pasqual Academy leave here not knowing what to do. They leave not knowing really how to spend their money, what the need to buy to survive, and when they have the money to spend on what they want. Some students leave thinking that they will always have a back support, that they can just come back and have another home. They need to learn how to depend on themselves, and to know what to do with what they have. Knowing what to buy against what they want, will certainly help students reach farther than what people think of the graduated foster youth. Someone might say that we need to learn it on our own, to figure out life like the regular teens do. They are wrong; we have been growing up around bad environments so to use what we have learned on our own will just make our situation somewhat worse. Classes that teach us the better ways will not only benefit us, but benefit everyone else too. Life-skill classes need to be making a requirement so that when we graduate we can prove everyone else wrong. So that Tia Moore, our teachers, our staff, and our family can see us prosper.
        From my point of view as a foster youth, people see my life as it’s already made and supported. That’s where their wrong, I have the hardest life ahead of me, every foster youth goes out and doesn’t really know anything. Having classes to teach us skills, we would be more prepared for everything ahead of us because than the knowledge people learn from watching our parents would be taught to us. Some people say that our whole life was handed to us; that we didn’t have to ever worry about our parents having to pay bills, about buying clothes, food, or hygiene items. When we graduate we lose all the support and bam! We don’t know anything anymore, we don’t know where to buy the products we need for less, but still have good quality. We could end up on the streets, poor, homeless, starving, maybe even addicted to drugs, that’s what our statistic show, with classes to teach us we will rise above that statistics.
        Life is harder, but being in the foster youth makes life even harder. Living at San Pasqual Academy helps us a lot, but having life-skill electives as a requirement to graduate will set us up for almost everything. To learn how to shop for food, clothes, living space, and learning how to drive a car, get a job, and pay bills and taxes. Those are the simple life skills we all need to know. Teenagers learn those skills by their parents; we don’t have that in the foster youth. We need to understand what it’s going to be like, living out in the world as an adult with no support. With classes that teach us the skills we can rise even higher above what is expected from us, we can go against the statistics. Adding a new require to graduate, will help us for the rest of our lives.