What is the purpose of schools?

What is the purpose of schools? 

I think that the purpose of schools isn't just to educate our youth but to make a second home for those students who need it. Taking from my own experiences, school was a home away from home when my house wasn't the safest place to be. When I had a lot of problems at home, it was hard to be there. So, I used the school as a way to not be home. I would make sure I was in the busiest after-school curriculum (band) and when it was the offseason, I was going to every teacher's tutoring I could until it was too late to be at school. I also know that I wasn't the only one who thought of school that way.  There are a lot of kids whose parents cannot afford to feed them. They cannot afford to put three meals a day on the table and cannot afford to give them more than a simple meal. So school was a place they had their next meal. School is the place they escaped the person or thing their scared most of. There were many kids where during the winter and during the summer, since their families couldn't afford it and were saving turning on the central heat or air conditioning for the hottest and coldest days of the year, that school is the only warm or cool place for them. Mostly too, school is a place of social interaction with those of the same age group. This is a way for kids to grow and interact with each other. It's the most social place for kids besides their home. Like I said, school's purpose is supposed to be a home away from home, a safe place, and most of all the place where kids can grow into the best adults they can be. 

Who are marginalized students in schools and what do they need from our school system?

There are many examples of marginalized students in schools. Especially of those who are underrepresented in more aspects than one. Though I think an important group of students to recognize is the ones who misbehave the most or are struggling the most. 

A lot of the time when students have bad interactions with adult figures or tend to have a bad moment with their teachers, there is this thought that "they are going to misbehave again". This means that the teacher or adult in change tends to have this judgment on this student for the rest of the time they are teaching them. I've had a couple of teachers like that in my life. There were a couple of times I had misbehaved in class and from then on, the teacher treated me like I had misbehaved every day. Either I had to sit right next to them in the front, or I was required to turn in what I had done that day to the teacher to prove that I was working. Of course, though, there were a lot of students who had it a lot worse than me. In middle school, I had a friend who was required by the 7th-grade math teacher to sit at a desk in the corner of the classroom because the teacher had their brother (who had behavioral problems) a few years before and automatically assumed that they were the same. In my experience, there were some students who were disrespectful to the teachers too, and ever since then, the teacher would send them outside every class period they had them and wouldn't let them participate in the lesson. They always got behind because of this too. It's hard to say but genuinely, once you misbehave at school, some teachers treat that as your one and only chance and make it obvious that they no longer like you or would not rather deal with you. 

I think that the biggest thing that needs to be recognized is that there needs to be a better way to make school serve all of its kids, whether they misbehave or not. There needs to be better training for teachers on how to handle kids who tend to act out. I don't believe just sending out the disruptive student into the hall ever gets anything done. Not only does it let the student go do whatever they want without any sort of supervision until the teacher is ready to come to talk to them, but the students also tend to not learn anything. I know that sometimes it is the only option but its always better to talk with them about it. What a lot of teachers who do this tend to not understand is that something is going on at home that causes students to act out and that sometimes all they are asking for is help or attention. I think that our school system can do better by providing better workshops that ALL teachers have to go to. Even those who have been there for years. To provide yearly training on behavior and update rules on what teachers can do so that even the disruptive student can participate in class. I think that it should be required that all teachers attend these workshops. Not just new ones or every 5 years. I also genuinely believe that there could be a better way of having a universal agreement on how to handle students who misbehave. That there should be a way for the school to require the student to respond and tell their side, and while the student does need to take responsibility for their actions and behavior, there is a way to make them do this respectfully on the teacher's part. The school system itself can provide this by making a universal way of handling it not just teachers. Because after all students are humans and sometimes they mess up like we do.