My Question????


My question deals with the curriculum and instruction in urban schools. Because of No Child Left Behind, schools have become so focused on teaching the test that teachers are not able to focus on the other important content areas and life skills besides literacy and mathematics. This form of assessment is used to mandate that schools raise their school rankings and bring their AYP to nearly unreachable levels or funding will be cut. How can that be a viable solution? Most schools don't have the necessary means and resources it needs now, how can taking resources away help? Also, what is teaching "the test" really going to teach a child...if you learn how to memorize information to regurgitate it to take a test well you can do/be anything?! NO. My problem is, these students aren't learning the necessary valuable skills that are going to help them succeed not only in future educational endeavors, but in life. What they are learning or should be learning in school would give children a well-rounded educational experience - Isn't that what we should be preparing students for - LIFE? I feel that students in urban areas are not receiving life skills. I don't feel that all of the failure should be put onto the educator's shoulders as it most often does. I feel that due to NCLB, teachers are inhibited in their teaching style because of having to place so much emphasis on the test and are not rewarded for all of their other successes and progresses made with their students.

An example of our urban schools not teaching the necessary life skills is little Ivan's mother from the Camden (video clip from class). She could only read at a 4th grade level and couldn't provide her family with the essentials, such as food or a home, because she didn't have the skills to get or maintain a job. These kids like Ivan are the future. We need to prepare them to make decisions that are going to impact themselves and the world, especially at a young age when they are moldable and want to go to school and learn. 

I feel that SCANS, the Secretary's Commission of Necessary Skills should be incorporated into the curriculum to provide students the skills needed to survive in this world. As you can see, I feel negatively towards NCLB. I think that it places unnecessary stress and pressure on the educator and inhibits teaching styles that may excite and engage the students more. I also feel that time is being taken away from other important content areas and life skills. 

So, in short I guess my question is, why aren't we preparing kids with the skills they need for life, (school and the workplace) especially in urban areas where most graduates do not pursue further education? This stereotype of most urban students not pursuing further education does not suggest a lowering of standards because if the students have the life skills needed intermixed with the understanding and application of the content areas, students will be able to make just decisions regarding their futures and may decide on their own to pursue further education. 

Content areas can be taught through the SCANS skills. For example, the basic SCANS skill arithmetic, can be taught by learning to budget, save and invest money; balance a checkbook; measure for building and/or cooking, estimate time; etc. These are skills can and will used for the long term, with success, if real life application and understanding is taught and learned.

 

****Link for SCANS. You have to download to pdf. The foundations and competencies are on page 6.  http://wdr.doleta.gov/SCANS/teaching/

 

To be continued....

 

 

 

 

 

Influences: Urban Schools

 

The major influence that helps shape urban schools in America is the history of the United Sates: more specifically, its population, industrialization/globalization, and education. History provides the opportunity to look back at a point in time objectively to learn and grow from either the strengths or downfalls of the time frame or events being scrutinized. Fruchter commences with an important Supreme Court case in 1954 and makes observations on how some important events, since then, have shaped our urban educational system’s progress or lack there of, whereas Anderson and Summerfield compare and contrast urban, rural, and suburban schools while sharing and exposing the myths and the history going back to the roots of educational philosophies, rural schooling.

The Frutcher piece opens with these three influences, population, industrialization/globalization, and education, introducing the Brown vs. the Board of Education case from 1954. He states, “the nation’s schools are more segregated [now] than they were when the case was decided” (p. 7).  In the 1950’s, the population of the United States was growing rapidly racially and culturally facing major issues such as the struggles of (de)segregation and the emigration of minorities looking for the land of the free and opportunity. Unfortunately, “the United States as a nation is but 228 years old and existed as a slave nation longer than it has existed as a free one” (p. 7).

The population, fearing integration, opposed, many times violently, keeping the schools segregated by making alternate schools for the whites to go, thus creating achievement gaps between the white alternate schools and the “minority” schools. Segregation was also due to industrialization/globalization and expansion of roads, driving the white-middleclass out into the suburbs leaving urban areas all ‘black’ (p. 9). The threat of integrated schooling also created additional issues, gaps, in the economic classes, “low-cost mortgages, subsided by the federal government [was] made available almost entirely to white families only (p. 13). Although the Brown vs. Board of Education case was passed to alleviate segregation, Fruchter feels that the Supreme Court tricked the nation into believing that something was being done towards equality, but feels that nothing has really been carried out successfully or purposefully and this is evident in the issues facing our urban schools today.

What purports to be an analysis of the inevitable failure American public education turns out to be an analysis of the failure of urban public education, in other words, that one third of all our school systems serving poor African American and Latino students. An analysis that cloaks itself in universal rhetoric is actually locating far more specific failure in our nations urban schools and blaming the ethnic and racial diversity of our nation’s urban population for this failure. (p.18)

Dropout rates and achievement gaps in urban areas are more so than in suburban and rural schools. This is due to the variety of cultures living in these centers whose parents may not speak English, creating a communication barrier between home and school. Also, many of these families are poor, so the parents, who may be working more than one job to provide for their families, may not be at home to keep their kids on task with their studies or homework and may also have no control of what their children are doing after school hours. Parents play an important role in students’ success academically providing stability, encouragement, and support, which many of these families may not have. Bourdieu, a French sociologist has “defined and elaborated a concept he called ‘habitus’ by which he meant the values, beliefs, assumptions, expectations, symbols, and rituals of the society’s dominant classes” (p. 28).  This theory suggests that students, people take in the dominant culture around them and this shapes their interactions, knowledge, and language. In John Edgar Wideman’s Brother’s and Keepers, Robby describes the culture of the 1960’s urban area he grew up in, “‘normal’ was poverty, drugs, street crime, Vietnam, or prison” (p. 33). This perspective of life is not uncommon in urban areas can influence the behavior and success of the inhabitants there.

Not all urban schools and students fail. “Schools serving the children of our military personnel stationed both in this country and abroad, are run by the department of Defense Education Activity agency, or DoDEA” (p. 19) and have a high achievement within their black students. There is question to whether there is validity in the comparison because military bases differ from urban schooling in discipline and expectations of education and also in they way economically that they are comprised; There are no class extremes, wealthy or poor. Nonetheless, the achievement gap between the students of color and whites has nearly closed in these schools. “DoDEA’s successes indicate that school cultures can be organized to produce high levels of academic achievement by their students of color” (p. 23). Frutcher emphasizes that the DoDEA schools are not the answer for “the reform of low-performing urban schools. But it is an important example of how school cultures can be organized, at scale, to produce academic successes for students of color…using the organizational structure that combines accountability and autonomy” (p. 23).

The work of Chubb and Moe suggests that “democratic control of public education inevitably produces bureaucracy, and bureaucracy inevitably produces ineffective schooling” (p. 15). The theory of bureaucracy isn’t upheld in DoDEA schools and is evidenced by the high achievement of all of their students, although they are run through congress offering the same standards and curricula through all of its schools. But it offers the right balance of autocracy and homogeneity in each individual school it needs for success. Chubb and Moe state:

Social homogeneity (a political category that involves substantial agreement about education issues) seems to characterize broad political agreement about the goals, policies, and practices of public education. Chubb and Moe then argue that such homogeneity is far more characteristic of suburban and rural settings than of urban areas, and that urban areas are far more heterogeneous, diverse, contentious, and problem-ridden. (p. 17)

            Anderson and Summerfield would agree that suburban and rural schools share more characteristics of homogeneity than urban schools but they would argue that suburban and urban schools are more alike statistically than one much imagine. Further, what one conceptualizes as being rural may even find is more urban that previously perceived.

According to the National Center for Educational Statistics NCES, “Nevada schools (11.5 rural) were more urbanized than New York State’s schools (16.7 rural)” (p. 30). The NCES conducted a crime study from urban and suburban schools in 1999 and found “the long held beliefs about urban school violence and the suburban school environment [being safer] would appear to be challenged by national crime fighters” (p.31). Chubb and Moe’s idea of heterogeneity in urban schools is accurate, but the “problem-ridden” stereotype labeled to urban schools is not always necessarily true. Here, crime wise, suburban areas are statistically worse-off than urban areas.

The myths implying the student-teacher ratio as being much less in urban areas and students being lost in the educational system due to large class sizes, is not true according to the NCES. In fact, “the ratio for all schools is approximately the same” (p. 31). In addition, the NCES found that suburban schools pay out the most expenses to things other than instruction, whereas rural schools pay more towards instruction, but get more state funding making them “less expensive to the locals and more expensive to the state. [This is] a surprising find to someone who believes that urban schools are overburdened with administrative costs” (p. 32) and that smaller schools, rural schools are less expensive and better. Thomas Jefferson saw small schools, rural schools as the foundation for the future.

Historically, rural schools, the one room schoolhouse, taught lessons that started with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. This was Thomas Jefferson’s vision: that everyone would be morally educated from the bible and America would be a “ nation of yeoman farmers” (p. 34). It was in the 1920’s that there was a real distinction between an urban school and a rural school.  Urban schools started out as comprehensive high schools teaching vocations to the working class, due to industrialization and Jefferson’s rural ideal was lost. The creation of the urban school was “ideal living in the industrialized world. The men could work in the city while the children were raised and schooled in the country” (p. 36). After the Second World War, reform in the educational system was deemed necessary because the world had changed and moved too far away from the Jefferson ideals to go back. “To [try and] capture the ideals of rural America” (p. 36), the idea of small schools created a reform, a movement, Sizer calls the “Essential School” (p. 37) that goes back to the idea of the academies; “the original academy was a garden or grove near Athens’ that numbered Plato among its members. This was the original rural school” (p. 38).

What is most interesting about the essential school movement is its historical antecedent: the New England academy of the nineteenth century, which Sizer documented. The academies, like essential or core curriculum schools, did not have vocational education. Essential schools tend toward the size and organization of the academy model; they tend to be community based, i. e. homogenous. The administration is minimal, the bureaucracy limited, and one finds the teacher facing his multiaged homogenous community and teaching the essential knowledge of the world to the future small farmers that Jefferson so revered (p. 38).

            Fruchter and Chubb & Moe would agree this concept of the Essential School to be a successful one based on the homogeneity, small class sizes, minimal bureaucracy, and teachings of knowledge important for success in the world. The history of the United States, its population, industrialization/globalization, and education have contributed greatly in shaping urban schools. What we take from this, that is, what we have learned make for interesting reforms and trial and error pedagogy in our schools. As for the unresolved issue of segregation, I don’t know if that will ever truly be resolved. It is however in human nature for humans to find a level of conformability in sticking with other members of their culture or race. In a way, we segregate ourselves purposefully. Perhaps we should study our behaviors more as to how cultures and individuals naturally react within society and use this information along with the psychology behind how students effectively learn and apply it to the real life competences and successful pedagogies. We ultimately need to stop trying to change how we innately act as humans and adapt our lives and learning to the natural processes we inherently possess. The need for greater understanding of ourselves as a human race and knowledge will give us the tools we need to prosper in any situation including our educational system, especially in urban schools.

Movies, Music, TV, & News O MY (revised)

 

Movies:

Urban

Lean On Me

Based on a true story of an urban community in Patterson NJ, it shows how Joe Clark (the principal) made a difference in one school bringing education back to the students by removing the troublemakers, drug dealers and gang members. He restored hope and unity to the students of Eastside High. This story shows that it only takes one person who really believes in change and consistency to make a positive difference.

 

Sub-Urban

Pretty in Pink

This movie is about a girl who is from a low income split family from the wrong side of the tracks who is subjected to peer pressures when asked to the prom by the popular wealthy boy. She is ashamed of where she comes from and his friends are disgusted that he can be dating a girl who is lower on their scale according to popularity and money. They try to break through the biases and date anyway but in the end the pressure gets to be too much. It shows that a school can be very diverse no only culturally, but economically as well, which can also make a gap in the sociability.

 

Rural

Napoleon Dynamite

This movie is about a boy who is socially out-casted in school because of his “goofy and strange” persona. The school population is primarily white until Pedro moves there from Mexico. Napoleon tries to welcome the newcomer by taking him under his wing helping him run for class president. Pedro’s character shows how different cultures can uphold conflicting views of what is acceptable in school because he doesn’t understand why he got into trouble for beating a piñata of Summer, another candidate, when that is tradition in Mexico. It depicts that people in these rural areas are “behind” from the entertainment industries and culturally mixed fast-paced city life.

 

Music:

Urban

Linkin Park: Hands Held High

“When the rich wage war it’s the poor who die” This song doesn’t have to do with education directly, but more of the poor urban communities. The government is corrupt making wars to get our country out of greedy debt to make the rich, richer and the poor, poorer. The gap between the economic levels is growing rapidly. It is the people from these communities that are going to war because some of them rationalize that they are going to die on the streets anyway, they may as well get a good education, go to war and have a chance at life. Sometimes, this is the only outlet for those who are too poor to get an education, or didn’t receive a good education at the urban school they attended and therefore do not have the grades to go to college, so the military is the only way.

 

Sub-Urban

Pink Floyd: Another Brick in The Wall

“We don’t need no education; we don’t need no thought control.” This song is about the educational oppression from the government’s mandated form of education, which tries to mold school children into mindless drones of society. Specifically, Roger Waters means, “we don’t need [THIS] type of education.”  It is high school aged students saying who needs school; why can’t we think for ourselves? At the end of the song he says, “if you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding”, implying that there are consequences…I may be pushing it, but if you don’t do your work and studying you can’t get good grades.

 

Rural

Alice Cooper: School’s Out for the Summer

“School’s out for the summer…school’s been blown to pieces.” My reasoning here is pretty disturbing. First, that Marilyn Manson was from a rural community and he grew up listening to ACDC and Alice Cooper – the music of the devil, according to some. He eventually took Alice Cooper’s image and music steps further into a modern-heavy metal. (I had independent reading in high school and we had to choose an autobiography and I chose him).  In this type of music, image, generally speaking, has a lot to do with the type of music listened to. The connection - Columbine happened in a rural area with high school students dressed in the “all black” and trench coats, the image of Alice Cooper’s/Marilyn Manson’s music.

 

TV

Urban

Everybody Hates Chris

About a young African American kid who grows up in a very stereotypical black household. He goes to school in an urban community and gets blamed for everything whether innocent or guilty. His struggles come from his perception as a school aged student in an urban area.

 

Sub-Urban

The Simpsons

This TV show depicts a middle class family with two middle school aged kids, one being the “brainy and smart” (Lisa) and the other (Bart) who gets into trouble frequently and rebels against the teachers, principal, and school. 

 

Rural

South Park

The cartoon is based in a rural community and the characters make fun of every culture equally. It is a very controversial show. “Chef” and “Token” are the only black characters in the show and they play racist and stereotypical parts. There are other cultures that are demoralized depending on the episode. I feel in most cases in rural schools, there is not a melting pot of cultures and the tendency to become racist, naïve, or stereotypical comes into play because there is only this generalization/assumption of the culture on the television.

 

News:

Urban

U.N. Predicts Urban Population Explosion – NY Times 2009

“By next year, more than half the world’s population, 3.3 billion people, will for the first time live in towns and cities, and the number is expected to swell to almost five billion by 2030, according to a United Nations Population Fund report released yesterday.” This means that communities are going to become more diverse and crowded, which will lead to a rise to the already over crowded schools, making a good education even harder to attain.

 

Sub-Urban

Photo Id cards – Ridgefield, N.J. 2002

In an attempt at securing the safety at Ridgefield Memorial High School, one year after I graduated, students were asked to wear photo identification around their necks. Also, police officers roam the hallways to monitor the traffic in and out of the school. I believe that this action was based as a reaction to September 11, since the school is only a few miles from NYC.

 

Rural

Columbine Massacre, Denver, CO 1999

Two bullied high school students went into their high school in Denver and started shooting everyone from classmates to faculty. There were 12 fatalities. They had been plotting their attack for over a year acquiring arsenal over the internet. This shows that our perception of quiet rural towns can be very distorted and that in this digitally enhanced world, technologies such as the internet can yield some terrible information when in the hands of the wrong people. 

 

Frames of Reference: Urban Schools Paper

When asked to define or name characteristics of urban schools, culture, low-income families, struggle, stress, overcrowded and under-funded, drugs and crime, safety, and defiance to learn, come to mind. Some of these associations may be naïve and even stereotypical, but they are the associations that come to my mind. There are certain stereotypes that coincide with nearly every facet of life. Lets take Irish culture for example. A notorious stereotype is that all people of Irish decent are a bunch of drunks. While this may be true in some cases, it is extremely naïve to think that the statement, all Irish are drunks to be fact. While I do not believe that all urban students do drugs, commit crimes, and have no interest in learning, I do believe that these students are subjected to it more often and do struggle to make the right decisions, whether it be a struggle towards social acceptance or following what they know is to be true to themselves. This is difficult at any age.

            For me, the visual I conjure of urban schools and the educational setting looks like this: An old school building that looks similar to an old factory, which has signs of neglect of care on the outside, plopped in the middle of a busy street block with commercial stores across the street and next to it. There are no trees or grassy fields to play football or baseball, just cement fields and structures. On the inside of the school, the main corridor looks like any other school with display cases and lockers except for the metal detectors and security guards who determine whether or not you gain entrance into school today. Although these measures are an attempt at securing safety, the idea of needing that level of security is frightening and stressful in itself. The hallways, main office, and classrooms look the same as they had in 1900; nothing about the structure or persona of ‘school’ has changed. The hallways are dark, not very inviting or well kept. Some of the teachers come into their classrooms with the same drab, exhausted expression as the day before, wondering how they are going to reach the children who do not want to be bothered and when the day will end, while other teachers bring a level of enthusiasm to reach their students and get burnt out by the early afternoon. Most of the students enter their classrooms loudly and in no disposition to learn while others roam the hallways, find ways to cut school, or the few who really want an education, sit in the shadows of the disrupted classroom environment.

            As you may have assumed, I have never visited a typical urban school and have concocted the worst-case scenario of it. I have attained the knowledge of what I think to know of urban schools from television, movies and simple stereotypical generalizations. I have however, visited an academy in Newark, Science Park High School that blew my mind as to the idea of what an urban school is. Science Park High School is different in nature however, taking academically high-end students on an application basis. The facility looks nothing like a traditional high school. Science Park High School’s structure inside and out is technologically state of the art, aesthetically pleasing, artful, and museum-like on the inside and uses solar technology on the outside. Its qualities are not that of a typical high school with narrow hallways and rows of lockers; instead, a huge, open and inviting space for the students to gather and disperse off to class. So, I know that my description of an urban high school is over the top and not true of all schools in urban communities. Having said that, I would like to learn more about the students’, teachers’, and facilities of urban districts and take this negative concept of an urban school and foster positive associations and change, like that of what I’ve seen at Science Park High School. 

            My hope is that I can instill change in each of the three important aspects of education: the students, teachers, and school. If I can reach out to one student and really make a difference in that child’s life, or bring a new perspective to a seasoned educator, or create a new program within the school to keep students interested, off the streets and engaged, then I have done my job. As an educator, you will never reach every student that you teach. A good educator will try. My idea of an urban school may subconsciously persuade me to think or act negatively towards the environment and its counterparts as a whole. This preconceived notion can seriously inhibit exemplary teaching habits. I believe that keeping an open mind, fostering a positive outlook, and remembering that very generally speaking, these students are all kids with the same basic needs bringing with them their personal experiences, identities, and talents, which make them all unique. As an educator, I feel getting to know my students, not just academically, will help me connect and employ the best learning strategies to keep them engaged. I also feel that if I show through my lessons how passionate and enthusiastic I am about the subject matter, that may spark an interest in my students within that content and may even help them to a realization of their passions or talents. Working together with other educators will help me learn about environment that I am entering from those who have already experienced it. Collaboration and consistency between educators is a must and expands the realm of learning, creativity, and opportunity into unimaginable levels. In retrospect, the educators are all their for the same reason, for the students.  

            My positive outlook and theories seem glamorous and easily stated. No matter how much schooling one has in the field of education, only hands on experience is going to truly give you the knowledge needed to succeed in the field. Schooling, will give future educators and me the tools and strategies needed as a starting point to soar from. Instruction is about trial and error; we learn best from failure. Each school is different, each class, each student, staff, administration, funding, educator, and the list goes on. The school administration has to support and work with the teachers towards a goal or success. I’m not talking just standardized test scores either. Education should truly be about the students; their future needs, strengths, ambitions, learning styles, successes and failures (failure as being positive) not the school’s ranking as compared to standardized test scores. I believe in creative thinking techniques, project-based learning, and choice-based methods that mesh the content areas together and give the students a greater involvement in their educational achievements. The teachers then become the mentors having an external role. I also believe that students should have an active role within the community. Teaching the ‘test’ is not going to give students the skills needed to succeed in life as the document SCANS (The Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills) suggests.

SCANS addresses the issues that an individual will need in not only the work place, but in life. The skills found in the five competencies of SCANS include: identifying, organizing, planning, and allocating resources; interpersonal skills; acquiring and using information; understanding complex inter-relationships; and being able to work with a variety of technologies. The prerequisites for these skills are found in a three-part foundation and they include: basic skills such as reading, writing, performing arithmetic and mathematical operations, listening and speaking; thinking skills such as thinking creatively, making decisions, solving problems, visualizing, reasoning and knowing how to learn; and personal qualities such as displaying responsibility, self-esteem, sociability, self-management, integrity, and honesty. These competencies and foundations are what students should be learning intertwined with the different content areas as applied to real life to solve the question the students will inevitably ask, “Why do I have to learn this stuff?” I feel that reluctance to learn stems from this question of why I need to know this and interest in the subject area. In urban schools, like any other schools, this is an overlooked detail.

As long as I have a good head on my shoulders, use rationalization, understanding, and learn from my experiences past, present, and future, I will be a competent and strong educator. My enthusiastic ways of thinking and teaching will project towards the future and give my students an understanding of themselves and the world around them by relating what they are learning to real life scenarios. I hope to overcome any of the negative associations I have towards urban schools and grow to make change in not only the students but also, the teachers, and school itself. The power is within us to give the future the hope, strength, and confidence it needs to take on the great responsibility life.