The following originally aired on KCBS

By: Pendarvis Harshaw

The phrase "I don't give an F-Bomb" resonates throughout high school hallways every day, which begs the question: how do you get students to actually give a flying F-bomb?

Earlier this year I worked as an educator in the Oakland schools, in a pilot program designed to prevent young black men from dropping out. My students, all freshmen in high school, were in my class because of discipline issues, low attendance, or academic shortcomings.

Everyday there’d be a moment when one of my students would have a tiny breakthrough and I’d exclaim “hot damn.” It was a constant reminder that we were progressing. 

One day I asked my students to read aloud from Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. Student after student read with increasing excitement. They were into it, and pleaded with me to bring in additional chapters. It was as if Ellison was narrating their lives. “I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids — and I might even be said to possess a mind.”
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The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act—an act that will reform the federal student loan system to save taxpayers $87 billion and will direct $10 billion in savings back to the Treasury. Now the bill heads to the Senate.

Saving taxpayers tons of money sounds good, but how will this new bill make college more affordable to students? To answer this question Youth Radio talked to Mike Larsen, Communications Director for Congresswoman Jackie Speier.

More after the jump.