Monthly Archives: May 2016

Diversity Observations, Day Five

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Today was the final day of observations. I walked into the inner city school just before it began raining and greeted the secretaries as I signed in. I tailed my cooperating teacher up to his classroom and found my spot in the back of the room.
 
During first period, the students were given one final day to finish their projects. As the class settled down, yelling erupted in the hallway. At first indiscernible, the hollers turned into syllables and the syllables formed two words: Lockdown drill. A student dodged into our classroom, asking to stay until the drill was over. As the teacher closed and locked the door, students forgot their seat work in favor of the noises that began in the halls.
 
The first dog bark was muffled and came from around the corner in the hallway or possibly on the floor below. Before the drill was over, five more barks could be heard from our room, varying in proximity. Students exchanged jokes about drugs, and even the teacher jokingly told them that he stashes his behind the closet. Lighthearted humor turned into chatter, not one person working on their assignment.
 
The drill came to a close by the end of the period. I couldn’t help but wonder at the efficiency of the canine unit in canvasing the school. If it was anything like my high school, the identified locker and both adjacent lockers would be searched. Personal possessions rummaged through on a quest to score some reason to suspend a teenager.
 
I am conflicted about school drug searches. A part of me thinks they might lower the amount of drugs in schools. Another part of me knows that the results of these searches can destroy a teens educational career.
 
My thoughts mulled over the dilemma for the rest of the day as classes whirled by. Drug searches in this school are normal events. The suburban school I grew up in saw one drug search my entire four years. This school, according to the teacher, holds a search once or twice a year.
 
Drugs. Police in schools. Suspensions.
 
These are complicated. But what isn’t complicated are the negative effects on the entire school’s ability to foster a community of learning. I close out the week wondering what can be done to form a school community that subverts the very premises of the idea that fear is an ideal motivator.
 
And, yes. I think it is absolutely possible.

Diversity Observations, Day Four

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On a warm and sunny morning, I strolled into the now-familiar urban school to complete my fourth day of observations. I greeted the ladies at the front desk as I signed myself in, and headed to the faculty room to stash my lunch in the fridge.
 
Today was rather boring, to tell you the truth.
 
The classes I observed had mostly free periods or independent work to do. The only interruption was the assembly for seniors by a company representative hoping to find some recruits. A short man in a slightly large white shirt and blue tie introduced the speaker. Given the droning, drawn out speech about ending the year in happiness, I assume he was the principle. The presenter then kicked off the assembly with a video, which immediately lost the attention of both the students and the teachers in the room.
 
The rest of the assembly outlined a post-graduate internship opportunity that most of these students do not meet the qualifications for, given their lack of quality education. But the nice white lady at the front of the auditorium, bargaining for attention, did not know this.
 
As the afternoon passed, I began thinking about an interview I had with a teacher on Monday. I had asked about what she did on the first day of class to set the tone for the year. She told me about giving the class a list of rules, then told me all about her strategy of learning the students names on the first day. I became interested as she told me about how she put a map on the board and told students to write down as many of the states as they can. During this time, she attempted to learn every one of the first names of the students. I was hooked, until she told me why this was so important.
 
Fear. She said she did it because nothing makes students more afraid than when the teacher knows their names on the first day of school.
 
I should have stared at this nice white lady who lives in the suburbs in awe. But it didn’t hit me until this afternoon that her goal is to scare the students into obedience. Which most likely means that she is afraid of these inner city students on the first day of school every year. No wonder she sends her own kids to a different school district.
 
It reminds me of the classroom management video that I’ve been forced to watch in two different education classes (at two different colleges). The teacher explains how he doesn’t even let the students into the classroom until they know and follow the rules that mandate silence, preparedness, and attentiveness. Apparently compliance is the only way learning takes place. I am scared of that teacher, and he isn’t even in the room.
 
By the way, research says that fear inhibits memory.
 
I wonder what these classrooms would be like if teachers didn’t rely on fear to set the tone for learning. What if the concepts of love or hope were used to excite the students for the school year? Would the students walk all over the teacher? Possibly. That’s a risk I’m willing to take. Or a problem that needs a solution found.
 
Granted, it’s definitely easier to scare high schoolers into behaving than it is to come up with solutions. If students are allowed to have a voice, then we may have to deal with their actual, personal issues that no one else wants to hear about. We may be forced to use empathy instead of detention slips. And that makes test scores go down.
 
Right?
 
Tomorrow is the last day of this experience. By third period of today, I had fully completed the observation packet my college gave me. A few more signatures and a short essay stand between me and the end of my requirements. Tomorrow I will have time to glean whatever else I can from this experience without the burden of paperwork.

Diversity Observations, Day Three

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Today marked the midway point of my 40 hour observation experience in an inner city school. Except today, I did not step into the school building. You see, learning can and will happen outside the walled off sections of society where we send children.
 
I pulled into the parking lot of the shared high school football stadium. Surrounding the turf field was a red track and two tall sets of stadium-style bleachers. The stadium’s polished demeanor stood in stark contrast with the high school building I am visiting this week. The expensive turf field shone bright green in the morning sunlight.
 
Several people milled around on the field wearing different colors of the same t-shirt design, which read:
“Special Olympics
Pennsylvania”
on the front. As more people poured out of buses and into the stadium, I found my cooperating teacher to check in. The teachers, who were mostly the track and field coaches, directed the high school students to divide up into the different stations. Instructions were minimal and autonomy reigned. The students came and went from their stations. Before the participating students arrived, a group of ten could be seen playing a game of Duck, Duck, Goose! at the far end of the field.
 
Two buses full of the students with disabilities rolled into the parking lot, bringing students from the high schools and intermediate schools around the city. A third arrived with elementary school students.By 9am, hundreds of adults, students, and participants filled the area. Music began playing over the speaker system set up at the 50-yard line, resulting in several spontaneous dance movements around the field.
 
During the events of the day, groups of participants moved on a schedule between each of the ten or so events. Ten to fifteen students ran each event, the rest being assigned to different groups of participants. The teachers grouped together and talked about the meets held last night. The role of the teachers was to act as supervisors and resources for their students.
 
The result of the day was hours of play. Students mixed together, making it difficult to tell which was a student and which was a participant. A community was born for a brief moment in time on the plastic grass; a community that could never be replicated within the cold brick walls of the high school down the street. Laughter, dancing, and smiles were evident in every field of vision.
 
Today, in the last month of the school year, these children were free. Free to learn. Free to build relationships. Free to cross social barriers. Free to move and talk and sing.
 
I caught a glimpse of the vision Nikhil Goyal, author of Schools on Trial, has for the future of public schools. Teachers were facilitators, partners, and resources. Students directed their own learning experiences. Age groups mixed together to collaborate without barriers. Problems were discovered and solved by students.
 
Imagine children learning without pencils and bubble sheets. Imagine students learning vital skills that impact their futures and prepare them for adulthood out in the fresh air. Imagine people overcoming social barriers through play.
 
As I saw this vision materialize before my very eyes, I realized that it was only temporary. Tomorrow, I and the rest of those students will return to the brick walls and segregated monotony of traditional public education – the kind that researchers indicate does a disservice to the children.
 
Tomorrow there will be no music, no dancing. Tomorrow there will be straight faces and textbooks. Tomorrow there will be no student-directed, autonomous learning.
 
From the perspective of a future educator, this day was precious, and tomorrow things will get back to dull normalcy. But as I finished reading Goyal’s book this afternoon, I am inspired by the fact that there are many other people out there that will advocate for the children in the decades to come.

Diversity Observations, Day Two

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Today I completed the second day of my 40 hour school observations. As the new-ness of the school wears off, I slowly become acclimated to the way things are done in the day-to-day operations of this small city school. I knew where to park, who to talk to, and where to put my lunch. I had a set of expectations for how my day would progress.
 
But not everything goes as planned. I walked up to the first classroom with my assigned teacher from the day before and proceeded to the back of the room where I previously sat. The teacher let me know that he would be out the following day for the Special Olympics and gave me the option to join him. As my packet of worksheets was nearly complete, I welcomed the intrusion of variety. After the next two periods passed uneventfully by, I made some final notes and prepared for my other obligations this week. The third period class had their AP exam, so my teacher sent me around the school to complete the final interviews at the different offices and resources located around the school before lunch.
 
I walked freely through the school, noting the students and adults walking hurriedly to their different rooms. Banners adorned each identical hallway of dented gray lockers. I stopped in to see the nurse, a man in the guidance office, and the librarian. Each had different and valuable perspectives on the school. Most of them attributed the problems the children face to the low economic status of the students they serve. The librarian, cold and suspicious at first, warmed up when I got her on the subject of graphic novels, manga, and Walter Dean Myers. The librarian confessed that she didn’t think the students are ready for college because they do not know how to research.
 
I left the building today with a broader perspective of the school than the day before. Without the constraints of observation worksheets, I gained the opportunity to glean information from students and teachers alike. Tomorrow will afford the opportunity to work with individuals with exceptionalities in a community focused environment. Seeing general education teachers in the position to build rapport with these students and their parents should serve as a vital learning experience.

Diversity Observations, Day One

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Today I began my 40 hour school observation required for admittance into Bloomsburg University’s College of Education. I walked into my small city, racially diverse, mostly free and reduced lunch high school placement this morning with a name of a teacher and a packet of observation worksheets that I need to complete by the end of the week.
 
I had driven past the school several times in the last few years. It is a daunting building that mirrors the standard, though less colorful, picture of a school building you might see in a children’s book. The school’s outdoor facilities are fenced in and mostly concrete. The inside of the building is old, but neatly kept. The lockers and walls would probably be at the top of my list to upgrade in the school.
 
The first classroom I walked into surprised me. The mismatched desks were lined up in rows across most of the room. However, a third of the room was dedicated to the teacher’s desks, lectern, and storage. The disproportionality between the teacher and student dedicated areas neatly summarized the amount of attention given to the students during the class period. The class had several nonwhite students, and the students spread out across the classroom, most of them isolated. The two students in front of me spent the entire class period working together on homework for another class. The teacher spent the first few minutes of class giving directions for an independent seat work assignment. He moved once from the behind his desk to circulate the room.
 
The bell rang, and a new group of students entered the room. The class was almost entirely white this time, and had the same teacher for the same class doing the same assignment as the first period class. When they walked into the room, they clustered together in their seating. They immediately got to work, and remained working after the teacher left the school for the day. The community dynamics were astonishing. The students wore mostly athletic gear and high-end shoes, clothing, and purses scattered the classroom. From a classroom management standpoint, the only difference between the two classes was the teacher’s inability or lack of effort in building a community with his diverse first class period. I wrote a list of the way I would change the physical environment to foster an effective learning environment.
 
The next classroom I observed exemplified each of my suggested changes. The teacher was focused and responsive to students in each of the periods I observed over the next several hours. I completed most of my observation worksheets, and I had the opportunity to interview the teacher at the end of her classes for the day.
 
My critiques of the second teacher lie not with her teaching style or classroom management, but with fundamental assumptions of American traditional schooling. For example, she was teaching her student about the Cold War. A topic she defined for the students was Communism. She described Communism as a system in which people are told by the government what they will learn, what they will do for a career based on tests, and have no say in the process. She said that this system would bore her because it traps people and forces them to do things they do not want to do. I looked around the classroom and immediately thought of the fact that her description fits American students pretty well. As a white teacher living on the outskirts of the city, she has no idea how much her privilege is leaking into the lecture. She doesn’t make the connection that the school’s handbook lists three tracts the students can follow for graduation. I wonder if the students made the connection.
 
A class or two later, she began instruction on the Holocaust, a subject the students seemed especially intrigued by. She produced a poster of the Nuremberg Laws that systematically criminalized Jewishness on the basis of Aryan heritage. In the spirit of American Exceptionalism and flying in the face of the supposed purpose of social studies, she never once asked the class if America would ever impose similar laws. An opportunity to impact the students with a discussion on Japanese interment camps on the American West coast would have invited critical thinking upon the realization that the democratic United States treated the Japanese in an eerily similar manner as Nazi Germany treated the Jews. The opportunities for in depth conversation were missed and another class of students remain unaware of the applications of social studies curriculum to life in America.
 
I left the school and changed into more comfortable clothes before finding the nearest coffee shop to sit and read another chunk of Nikhil Goyal’s book Schools on Trial. The book is a refreshing debrief from the experiences I had in the public school. As an aspiring advocate for school reform on the systematic level, Goyal’s research and observations, especially with an eye to the minorities of society, reflect and improve my vision of what school could become. As I read, I searched the names of reformers and free/democratic schools he mentioned. Much like the schools mentioned in the book, I want to spend my summer directing my own learning in pursuit of my life aspirations.
 
Now, as I sit and reflect on the events of this Monday, I am refreshed with a hope that I can play a part in reforming (or completely redesigning) public education as we know it. For now, I have to play the games of the education system that produces compliant servants of capitalism in order to gain the experience necessary to authoritatively subvert the system. I sincerely hope that I will remain focused on this goal and not become seduced by the comfort of being a fixture of the education machine. Until then, I am focused on preparing for my time in the system. I will write lessons for my future classes that center students as much as possible within the narrow framework of learning outcomes. I will learn from the mistakes and successes of the teachers I observe.