Challenges to Urban Students

Upon reading the first three chapters of Brian Schultz's Spectacular Things Happen Along the Way, I am consistently reminded of Annette Lareau's Unequal Childhoods and of how the two books present a dialogue between each other. When thinking about the challenges that the students of room 405 face, I believe that there are many concrete as well as invisible challenges that the students are expected to not only deal with, but to rise above in order to reach expectations and standards set by the state.

The most obvious of these challenges are the deplorable conditions which the students are expected to learn in; from the unsanitory, malfunctioning bathrooms and bulletholes in the windows, to the assemblies held in the hallway (which at times doubles as a cafeteria). NCLB applies the same high standards to schools in this type of horrible condition to suburban and elite schools. This insensitive, inappropriate blanketing of expectations becomes even more vacuous as the grim reality of the place where these students come to grow into responsible individuals comes into clearer focus.

That aside, I think Schultz would fundamentally agree with Lareau about the deep-rooted presence of socio-economic stratification and inequality in the American educational system. Certain types of knowledge and "ways of being" are priviledged in this system, and more often than not according to Schultz, the school faired to recognize or validate the reasoning and life skills that these urban students had mastered outside of the classroom. Schultz believes, as do I, that: "The Curriculum itself and the way it is taught are often driving forces responsible for gross inequities that advance the unjust socioeconomic stratification of this country" (Schultz, p. 13).

Inequality is inherently a fundamental part of how schools are run, in what they teach and how they teach it, as well as in what they expect from their students. These inequalities affect urban students in harmful ways that leave them with inadequate education and a poor chance at success in the future.

Schultz's approach checks these fundamental inequalities at the door of his classroom. This is extremely hopeful to a future urban teacher. It shows that as teachers who are integrally part of a injust system, we still can go beyond these limitations in meaningful ways that allow students to gain real control of their education. We can function within an unfair system to create justice and equity for the sake of our students' education. By giving these urban students back some of the power that had been stripped of them due to the very nature of the schooling system and its curricula, Schultz shows how education can be relevant, socially conscious, and inspiring while also teaching the fundamentals that students are required to know by the government.

I found a great news clip from Channel 7 discussing the students situation as well as the Project Citizen project which the students worked on. It allows for a visualization of some of the described conditions of the school as well as the kids of Room 405. Check this out: http://www.veoh.com/videos/v6500574DENMMFeE

Annotated Bibliography, extended article

Bailey, T. et al. For-Profit Higher Education and Community Colleges, National Center for Postsecondary Improvement, National Center for Postsecondary Improvement, Stanford University, School of Education, Stanford, CA.

http://www.stanford.edu/group/ncpi/documents/pdfs/forprofitandcc.pdf

This article makes a distinction between Public, Community, and for-profit educational institutions in order to weigh the pluses and minuses of each type of institution. I feel it is relevant to my project because within the University Heights section of Newark itself, there exists all three types of institutions; thus I think this article will be interesting to compare my data to at the close of my project. Although I do not plan on making distinctions in my project between the three types of institutions, some of the information found in this article I can definitely reflect upon in fitting my discussion into a specific historic, political, and socio-economic context.

The article is well researched, providing case-study evidence to support its claims. Despite this, I am critical of the entire premise of the article, which claims that for-profit universities are inherently more “evil” than other types of higher education because they put more competitive pressure on public and community institutions, and shift the focus of education from real learning to making students educational consumers. Although, in this sense, for-profit may be worse than other higher institution types, ALL universities and colleges are crunched economically right now due to cuts in funding, and believe it or not, all institutions of higher learning have making money on their agendas, whether public or private (in my opinion).

The authors also argue that community colleges “educate” while for-profits “train”, another claim I disagree with. The neoliberal policies in place at this historic moment of “McDonaldization” (as Mancrine points out) make even elementary and secondary education based solely upon drilling, training and testing rather than really educating (NCLB!). This mentality pervades not just for-profit institutions, but also public and private institutions. While I think this article is relevant in some respects, I also disagree with some of its fundamental arguments and think that rather than apply their ideas strictly to for-profit institutions, they should apply they to all three types of institutions broadly.

Higher Education in Newark

Brainstorming for my Community Inquiry Project topic has led me to the point where I have realized that I am interested in learning about the historical events that led to the construction of the city of Newark, including what specific forces played a role in that constuction. I am interested in how Newark looks structurally and how the city is laid out spacially, in order to evaluate the effects that structure may have on urban youth.

If the topic seems vague, (which after reading that paragraph I too am a bit confused) I can elaborate. I started off by thinking about the higher institutions that exist in Newark, including Essex County College, Rutgers University, The Seton Hall University School of Law, The New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), and the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ). I found a great article by CHEN, the Council for Higher Education in Newark, which provides extensive information as to the economic impact of these institutions on the city. I am interested in uncovering the issues that CHEN does not discuss (mainly because these issues would not serve the agenda of CHEN as an institution itself); how the surrounding areas and even the city of Newark itself may suffer as a result of these higher institutions. I will have to do research in to the history of the area, and I also plan on doing a walking tour of the University Heights area as well as the surrounding area outside of University Heights to assess the situation myself via a photo analysis. Here is a map of the area.

Some important questions that I would like to address:

-How has the growth of university on-campus housing (particularly NJIT and Rutgers) and renovation of surrounding apartments changed the demographics as well as the local businesses, restaurants, etc. in the surrounding areas?

-Do these changes mean that the area is necessarily safer or a "better" place for urban youth to inhabit, if, in fact, they even live in these parts of the city?

-How do urban youth and the local communities personally feel about these institutions, and do they consider these institutions and the students that go to them to be a part of their community?

-How has the introduction of these institutions into the community changed local life, modes of transportation, housing prices, etc. in the University Heights areas? Has there been a movement of people out of the area in order to make room for and accomodate to the incoming students?

I think this is a good start, although there are many questions that I have and I am not sure if I will be able to find the answers to them...thus the process of doing research.

Put Me in Coach...I'm Ready to Teach!

So I recently started a new job at a toxicology lab, and my overarching desire for a career that involves helping real people in real social contexts is reiterated in my head several times a day. I studied biology in college and for a long time believed that I wanted to be a scientist. Now that my job involves biology in it's rawest sense, including the euthanasia and necropsy of test animals; I have gotten a better glimpse of how I understand my content area as well as how I will pass that understanding on to my future students.

Don't get me wrong, I am still a science nerd, and wearing a lab coat and PPE (personal protective equipment) makes me feel quite important. My scientific knowledge and course work from college has been very relevant to what goes on daily at my job, but each day I leave feeling both satisfied and completely unsatisfied. (Not to mention, I am an animal lover and the things I've seen are, well, not too pretty...believe me, you don't want to know.) I love science, but I love it in a way that makes me want to make others love it too. That is not to say that I do not respect it in its own right, I just feel that this job has shown me that I cannot sit at a lab bench all day dissecting rats. To me, human interaction must be the essential part of my future profession rather than a mere consequence of my job.

Teaching is the best of both worlds in this sense. Not only do I get to continue learning and discuss scientific topics daily, but I also get to show others the beauty I see in science. Along the way, I can educate and influence my students in meaningful ways that go far beyond the topic of biology. I know that seems corny and "pie in the sky", but after coming home from a long day of seeing the insides of animals, it sounds damn good to me. In fact, I am smiling right now.

I am elated at the fact that soon I will be out of the lab and into the classroom. I think that is where my real career path will begin. Unfortunately, as for now I am in desperate need of both a salary as well as medical benefits, so as for now it looks like I will be returning to work tomorrow.

Collaging my Culture

As I have already stated in previous blogs, I choose to look at the term "culture" in less static, bounded terms and rather see it as signifying a sense of fluidity; a constantly shifting entity that is difficult to define due to its very nature. I think it is very important to remember that every person has their own, unique, culture that is forever a part of their past and present, even if they cannot quite describe what that culture is. We are social beings, we learn behaviors, social expectations, and even our biases and prejudices through our cultural systems; a process that is perpetual.

In class, we made culture collages, and what I found most interesting, besides getting an inside look at people who I knew previously from mainly what was on their outside, was the choices people made with their collages. To me, seeing what people chose to include and also what to leave out, and even where and how they arranged their items, was very telling. Every item found on our collages was strategically placed; motivated by some choice or decision, whether conscious or not. This is really interesting data for a teacher because it shows the many ways that people interpret, plan, and overall, act as their own agents. Even though we were all given the same task, we are individual actors, and we made our collages not only for ourselves, but also with the knowledge that we would be making them for others to view.

For some the assignment was fun and interesting, while for others it was painful. Even this is interesting for a future teacher to realize. You never know what information or assignments may tap in to your students' own personal feelings and may trigger emotions and feelings that the students would rather not deal with. For me, the assignment was important and necessary none the less. It allowed me to personally see what I "carry" daily with me, and also forced me to realize that others also "carry" their own very different collages.

I feel a heightened sense of awareness of the presence of both my unique outlook and cultural experiences as well as those of every other human being around me. This level of sensitivity not only needs to be upheld and honored as a future teacher, but it can also be a very valuable tool. It can help in generating new models for teaching, especially for those who may not share anything in common with the images and texts that appeared on my own collage. By making my own collage as well as examining and understanding others, I got to experience a shifting of perspective that I hope to continually reference and refer back to both in my teaching as well as in my everyday understandings of the world and the individuals that inhabit it.

Awakening Class Consciousness in Teachers

While reading Annette Lareau's "Unequal Childhoods" I constantly find myself asking the same questions. Lareau makes clear that class differences have a concrete effect on parent's child rearing practices, which in turn effects how students learn to interact with and in turn what they expect from the institution (the school). Why do these inequalities remain subverted? How can we change the current situation which places poor and working class children at a disadvantage and leaves them ill prepared in an institutional setting?

Lareau gives solid evidence of the different child rearing practices, contrasting middle class strategies as opposed to poor and working class strategies; the latter can be grouped together as they are very similar in their attitude towards children and their role in the household. While in poor and working class homes, children's lives are seen as distinct and seperate from adult's lives, in middle class homes, children see themselves as equal to adults and acquire a sense of importance. They feel that their parents are obliged to cater to their every want and need, even if that means adjusting and/or making sacrifices in their own lives.

Lareau assesses the costs and benefits of each strategy, and her bottom line is that middle class children gain a sense of entitlement, as if something is owed to them, due to the ways in which their parents speak to them as well as cater to their needs, a practice which Lareau coins as "concerted cultivation". They learn how to negotiate and verbally interact with adults, while poor and working class children do not gain the same social "capital". However, Lareau is careful to point out that their are many benefits to the poor and working class strategies as well, including the fact that children are more respectful of adults and more appreciative and connected to their families, as well as that children have a chance to be creative and make meaningful decisions about their own lives.

In a perfect world, all ways of interacting and speaking would be appreciated, respected, and seen as equal. All kids would be on an equal playing field due to the very fact that they are humans and have culture, thus are taught how to behave and act by the larger society. Unfortunately, institutions place a value on a specific way of interacting and speaking. The institution ascribes to a set of norms and standards that it expects people to conform to. Therefore, students (middle class) that are taught and get practice behaving in a manner that aligns itself with the hierarchical value system of the institution are at an advantage to those that are not taught these behaviors (poor/working class). Lareau makes this point beautifully when she says that "it is the specific ways that institutions function that ends up conveying advantages to middle class children" (p. 160). Lareau is saying that in reality, both child rearing methods have their costs and benefits, but in the eyes of the institution, the middle class practice is the practice is the one that aligns itself with the institution, thus gives middle class children an advantage over poor and working class children.

How do we enact a change in this inequality? To me their are several options. Changing the institution and its expectations may seem to be the most obvious, but institutions are powerful and serve the interests of those in power, thus can be difficult to change. As teachers, we do have the ability to change the way things function within the institution itself. I believe that by educating teachers as to first,the existence of class (a notion that many Americans do not like to admit to) , and second, the distinctions in child raising that Lareau points out between classes, teachers can begin to change the current disparity.

By being aware of class and its manifestations in the classroom, teachers can become sensitive to those students who have not grown up in a setting that prepares them for success in the classroom, and beyond, teachers can educate those students on what it takes to be successful in the face of the institution. This education will not only help poor and working class children be successful in school, but will also give them the necessary skills for continued success in the future, as interaction with institutions will always be a critical part of their lives. It determines their future jobs, where they live, and what resources they and their families will have access to.

Teachers are powerful. That power vested in the right place with sensitivity and creativity can drastically change the lives and futures of children. In order to change the current situation of inequality in the classroom that to me equates to inequality in life, teachers need to be aware of class and its manifestations. They need act as agents of change for their children who lack the social capital required for success in today's world. This means giving them an education that is academic as well as once that prepares them to negotiate and act as their own agents in the face of the institution.

The Perks of Breaking Your Leg

After a few days of moping around and feeling sorry for myself as I hopped along on my crutches, I realized that breaking your leg is not all bad. My pity party ends here. In fact, I can think of many things that I've actually enjoyed about the whole ordeal, however masochistic that may sound.
I recently fractured my tibia playing in what will probably go down as my last soccer game ever (I've already had two other major knee surgeries as a result of the game). I think I am finally going to take the hint that my body has been rather nonchalantly dropping on me over the years and hang my jersey up on the wall; at least end my career as a player and look for other opportunities through which I can still be involved in the game. Anyway, here are some of the great and some not so great situations that breaking a vital appendage such as your leg can bring about....

Pluses:

1. Copious amounts of time to read, as well as search the internet and watch youtube videos. I have found some really terrible stuff, as well as some stuff that I find rather amusing. For those of you who like political satire, watch this: I'm Voting Republican
2. Sitting down in the shower...this adds a whole other level of unwinding and relaxation to the experience
3. Coming up with new ways for to carry stuff. I have found some very creative ways to transport the necessities to my life, and by that, I mean mainly my multiple cups of coffee in the morning
4. Getting an insider's look at what it is my dogs really do all day....survey says, sleep, bark, and then sleep some more as barking can be quite tiring
   

5. Getting some much needed cuddle time with my cat. He has a 6th sense that can tell when you don't feel well, and he makes sure to stand guard at your side

Minuses:

1. Having someone follow you to the bathroom in your own home and shut the door behind you. Quite an awkward moment, no matter how many times it happens.
2. Listening to your neighbor from 8 AM to about 12, leaf blow, weed wack, mow, plant, reap, sow, and do god knows what else to his front lawn. Its actually kind of sad, and I'm starting to feel kind of creepy spying on him doing yard work. Hey, it beats daytime television.
3. Not being able to get food or drink without it being an at least twenty minute affair, and at often times, extremely messy
4. Frustration. Although having others take care of you may seem appealing, it gets very frustrating. There is something rewarding about doing things for yourself, even if it if only a glass of water, and I feel as though I have lost some control over my own life
   

On a much more serious note, being immobilized for the time being has given me valuable incite as a future teacher. I had to give a presentation this past Saturday in class, and it was then that I realized how much physical movement is involved with teaching; movement that up until now I have largely taken for granted. I am not saying that being able to walk is absolutely necessary to teaching and someone who, for example, is in a wheelchair, cannot be a successful teacher. Rather, being unable to move around freely as I normally would has raised the actual physical aspect of teaching to my attention. I am being to realize the depth of teaching; how the process comes down to the level of our very own bodies.

Secondly, this injury has given me a glimpse into what life may be like for some of the students I may have who are disabled, whether it be physically and/or mentally. I consider myself a sympathetic person, but actually living as a disabled person has made me realize that the people I encounter who are disabled never get a break from their disability. What I mean to say is that I have considered difficulties people may have when I am in their presence, but the realization that when they go home, when they are out of sight and mind, they are still dealing with their disabilities every minute of everyday has really hit home to me now. This is not to say that I feel nothing but pity and sorrow for people with disabilities, rather I am both humbled and awed by them. The fact that they live normal lives and come up with new and creative ways to allow them to be "just like anyone else" (pardon my cliche) lends itself to the amazing capabilities, tenacity, and creativity of human beings. It shows how powerful and determined the human mind really is, and how no task is ever impossible, it just needs to be examined in a new light.

And so, although this injury may suck, I would like to take a moment now, to thank my cracked tibia, as it has allowed me to look at some aspects of my life and my future with a new light as well.

If you are interested in more material on dealing with disabilities in the classroom, there are a number of rich, useful websites and sources. I found the National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities website very helpful, containing endless amounts of information ranging from legislation on No Child Left Behind and its relation to disabled children to valuable research and practices teachers can use in the classroom.