Where have we gone wrong?

All of my professional experience has been in secondary settings, so for the remainder of my volunteer experience I wanted to spend some time in an elementary school. I have this one nagging group of questions that has been circling my brain since I started this course: Where does the disparity start? Do underprivileged kindergartners get just as excited about the first day of school as suburban kids with their pigtails and backpacks waiting for the school bus at the white picket fence? Do those kids in line for the subsidized lunches look forward to telling their mommy about what happened in the cafeteria as much as the kid with the neatly packed turkey sandwich and 100% apple juice box with an “I *heart* you” note attached?

In other words, all other things being equal (the inequality, that is), is the excitement and novelty associated with school and learning intrinsic and inherent in all kids, regardless of their background?

Without doing any research or scientifically valid study, I went to an elementary school that is the most urban I can find in my area to see if I could find the anecdotal answer to my questions. 80% of the kids in this school are on free or reduced lunch. Most, according to the teacher I spent my day with, are from single parent families. Open house nights and parent conferences are poorly attended and SAC and PTA are almost nonexistent, which, she qualified, is not because parents don’t care, but because they lack the time and resources to attend. Many of these single parents have multiple children and multiple jobs, so evenings off to attend school functions are luxuries to which they can’t afford.

In spite of all those adversities (that were not new or surprising information to me, and likely not to any of the readers of this blog), the kindergarten teacher with whom I spent my day described her students as “thirsty for knowledge” and “eager to learn” and said that they are “a pleasure to teach.” She went on at length about individual students and their personal circumstances and obstacles that they’ve overcome, as well as how she’s been humbled by the fact that they come to school on a daily basis ready and enthusiastic about learning.

I left the school feeling encouraged and overwhelmed at the same time. This basically confirmed what I thought I knew, but also put the ball back in our court as teachers and forces us to look at where we are dropping this proverbial ball and turning off this love of learning. What are we, as a collective group of educators doing, sometime after kindergarten and before they are supposed to graduate high school that changes things so dramatically so that one out of every three kids ends up not finishing school?

That’s a humbling question for self reflection.

Frost Illustrated: Racism is a pre-existing condition

On Facebook I'm a fan of The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. They posted this article editorial earlier today; it couldn't have better summed up my thoughts on major current events of the past two weeks, so I decided to pass it along.

Frost Illustrated: Racism is a pre-existing condition

Back in the classroom: teachers whine more than teens

My first volunteer experience for this class was really interesting. I’ve been out of the classroom for this entire school year, having accepted the position with Florida Virtual School in July of 2009. It was nice to get back into the traditional classroom, but mostly it was a refreshing reminder of how much I appreciate my job.
I consider myself to be an exceedingly positive person. From the moment I stepped foot into the building I felt dragged down with negativity. Teachers were yelling – literally yelling at students, intercoms interrupted instructional time several times each class period, between bells the teacher I was spending my afternoon with took her four minutes of “passing time” to vent to me about her frustrations with her students, and I won’t even begin to describe the goings on in the faculty lounge.
I’m doing my CAP project on the absence of alternative high school programs, particularly things like vocational and technical training, so I spoke with the teacher I was working with as well as a few of her colleagues about the idea. They all agreed that the idea of “rigor and relevance” has been pushed heavily since the SSNP initiative took off a few years ago, but the prevailing attitude (again, an attitude of general negativity) was that the feeling won’t likely change until something new comes and replaces this ill-conceived idea with another one.
I’m looking forward to getting back to my virtual classroom and getting on the phone with my students where I know I make a positive difference in their lives.

Labels, welcome calls, and a dose of humility

Part of my job as a teacher for FLVS involves completing Welcome Calls to new students and their parents when they are assigned to my class. I really enjoy this part of my job because it gives me an opportunity to establish positive rapport with kids right away, and to learn a little bit about them. One of the first questions I ask is, “Tell me a little bit about why you are taking English 3 with Florida Virtual School.”

A few days ago I asked a new student that question, and his answer brought tears to my eyes. He told me that he failed the first semester in his traditional school (which is a reason that many students come to FLVS), but went on to clarify for me that he failed, “not because I’m dumb, but because the teacher didn’t want to teach me.” I stayed quiet to give him a chance to vent, as I’ve found sometimes kids just need to do. He proceeded to tell me, “She put me and the two other Black kids in the back like we just didn’t need to learn this stuff…never answered our questions and didn’t take us seriously…”

Now, I wasn’t there in the classroom so I’m not going to demonize this teacher that I don’t know and brand her a racist, but I certainly think we need to consider seriously the feelings of the student who feels that he was set up for failure. Toward the end of the welcome call this student begged me to let him take both semesters online instead of just the first semester that he failed. He said that for him to stay in the class with this teacher was a waste of his time because no matter how hard he tried he was going to fail anyway. How heartbreaking a thought: that a student feels that no matter how hard he tries his teacher will not give him the benefit of the doubt and the “clean slate” he needs in order to be successful in her class. Again, whether this is true or not is pretty much inconsequential, what matters is that this is how the student feels, and we all know that perception is reality.

I was very humbled by this conversation and forced to reflect on the times that I have labeled kids, even if in my own head, for one reason or another. When we see a name on a roster and think to ourselves, “Oh dear, that’s so-and-so’s brother…” or, “I wish I didn’t have this student because I really don’t want to deal with that parent again…” or whatever the case may be, we need to admit that we are not giving our students a fair, equal opportunity. The labeling, stereotyping and segregating that my student and those at Baldwin High faced is certainly more overt and obvious by arguably both are detrimental to student success.

Tim Wise, urban schools, big problems: Where do we start?

A dinnertime conversation with my husband last night prompted me to spend some time reading up on Tim Wise. I ending up spending several hours sifting through his blog (http://www.timwise.org/) and putting his newest book “Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama” in my amazon.com cart. (Disclaimer: It should, perhaps, be noted that my husband and I are both what most people would characterize as “bleeding heart liberals.”) The very interesting article that my husband was telling me about brought me to the archives of at least one hundred others, along with videos, and a whole host of thought provoking material that had me really thinking about the idea of White privilege. While I would never argue the existence of White privilege, all these hours of mulling over these articles, videos, and the texts for class made me question how we can begin to address the problems of urban schools until this much larger issue of institutionalized racism is first tackled.

I find Tim Wise to be very engaging. If you have hours to spend (tee hee) surfing You Tube, take a look at some of his speaking engagements; if not, this clip is really good:

My first blog!

I generally consider myself a pretty tech-savvy person. I work for Florida's online public school, so I interact with technology for the better part of my day. I have a FaceBook, I instant message and text message, I built a WYSIWYG website using Netscape Composer a few years ago and have a Weebly website for my students now. Generally speaking, I keep up with the technology trends - but I am a blogging novice. I guess that's because I never thought anyone would care too much about my ramblings and musings, but alas, they will begin...