Preparing Teachers for "Monday Morning" in the Urban School Classroom: Reflecting on Our Pedagogies and Practices as Effective Teacher Educators

From what I got out of this reading is that in order to succeed as an urban educator you have to go into the classroom with an open mind. It would be unjust to the students if you brought your assumptions of the economically deprived with you into the classroom. When you don’t bring those ideas with you into the classroom there is a much better chance of success and acceptance with the students. There is a good summation of my previously noted ideas that is stated in the reading as follows, “Our only recourse is to change ourselves: our preconceived (conscious and unconscious) derogatory perceptions about our students and, most important, our will to effectively educate our students.” You will be need to realize that you will be entering an unconformable territory especially for some who did not grow up into this particular environment but one can not let that affect your teaching. You will be doing a disservice to the kids if you are afraid to be your true self.

In conclusion I believe to truly be a good teacher in an urban city environment you would need to ultimately be fully committed to the kids and not allow any of your assumptions to get in the way of what is really at the center of what is important, which are the students. To teach in an inner city classroom would be challenging but it is much more rewarding because you help kids discover things about themselves that were previously hidden away by the depravation of the correct education.

Annotated Bibliography

Cordisco, Jane Hunt. “Community Based Learning in the Secondary School” Educational Leadership, Apr79, Vol. 36 Issue 7, p493, 4p, 2bw

It takes place in a community located in Pittsburg Pennsylvania. The article illustrates the whole process from the beginning to the intended outcome about the benefits and downfalls of Community Based Learning. However, it mainly focuses on the students aspects involved for CBL. It talks about where students should be placed within the community, what the students should be getting out of the program and the reasons why this type of learning would be so vital to the development of young adults. As the author refers to Transition to Adulthood, by James S. Coleman, “Coleman noted that the age segregation of youth in the schools deprives young people of an important dimension of the socialization process: learning through direct association with adults not only skills and information, but values, responsibility, and a sense of belonging in the adult world.” I think that this statement depicts exactly the reason why we need programs like this in our schools. Not only to bring the students into the real world so to speak but to have the experience life outside of school where there is no pressure on them to make money or pay bills why they are in these programs. So essentially all they are doing is just gaining real world experience which in my opinion can only lead to future success. As the article states, “The findings showed that the students(after participating in the program) felt and demonstrated increased value for education, greater desire and capacity to accept responsibility, and higher regard for the demands of adult life.” This again speaks to what we as educators I feel we are preparing our students for, which is to be a successful citizens in the harsh world that it is we live in. In conclusion I feel that this article is the most relevant source I have came across so far in describing a successful Community Based Learning program.

Giri, Bishnu; Shankar, P. Ravi. "Community-Based Learning in a time of Conflict" PLoS Medicine, Feb2006, Vol. 3 Issue 2, p0272-0273

It describes the trials and tribulations of the urban kids learning in the field at Nepal. This source gives a detailed description of the actual process of CBL in the field of medical education. That is the interesting part about this actual source it is a practical application of what exactly Community Based Learning is all about.

Hogan, Kathleen. “Pitfalls of Community-Based Learning: How Power Dynamics Limit Adolescents’ Trajectories of Growth and Participation” Teachers College Record, Apr2002, Vol. 104 Issue 3, p586, 39p

This a fascinating article because it actually breaks down the roles of students, teachers, and activity coordinators for a project involving an environmental group, which is referred to as COE. It also highlights the interaction between the students and the instructors/teachers when they are both in and out of a classroom setting. It is quite different from what one might expect. However this CBL is located in a rural community so I am not sure how much relevance it will have for our project.

Tice, Terrence N. “Community-Based Learning” Education Digest, 0013127X, Sep90, Vol. 56, Issue 1 p28-28, 2/3p

This is an article describing the reasoning behind the start up of Community Based Learning. One interesting fact about this article it names a bunch of organizations that advocate and provide needed funding for such type programs. It would be a great reference for providing schools to go in order to find out how to acquire more information and funding. However it is a short article and I am not sure how creditable of a reference it is.

Carter, Marion; Rivero, Estela; Cadge, Wendy; Curran, Sara. "Designing Your Community-Based Learning Project: Five Questions to Ask About Your Pedagogical and Participatory Goals" Teaching Sociology, Vol. 30, No. 2 Apr., 2002, pp. 158-173

This article was based upon what are the major questions about how to setup a proper Community-Based Learning program. It talks about what is involved in doing so. They ask questions and then address them on various topics. Some that I thought were interesting and maybe useful for our project are about which students should be included what type of community lends itself to become a good basis for CBLs. I think that this is a great source to keep in mind when starting our project on Community Based Learning.

My Culture Project

As I think about culture I tend to think the most influential thing that shapes one’s culture are their religious beliefs. If we look at Christianity for example, only because I am most familiar with it, there are all these traditions and values built in already. For one, going to church weekly, at least that is what I was taught as a youngster, is a major life style dependence. The second most important is to live your life by the Ten Commandments which also tell you how to live your life and what you can’t do and what you are allowed to do. These two facts alone about Christianity provide someone a pretty good base as a culture. It provides one with an attitude about their life, a meaning in their life and also a way in which to congregate as peers and not strangers. The tradition of religion in my life was the basis for holidays where my entire family would gather together on Christmas and Easter, just to name the big ones.

I was brought up in and open and loving culture where I was taught that you should treat others how you would like to be treated. This type of belief system brought me up particularly open minded to every race, class, gender, sexuality, language, and religion. So this tends to make me believe if your culture is narrow minded as a whole then one with in that culture maybe narrow minded as well.

Because of the way I was brought up, in the culture that I am a part of, I feel that some of the things I learned in my life experiences that I will definitely be bringing it to the forefront in my professional teaching career. An example of this is that I had many family and friends to lean on when times were rough or when I needed to talk with someone whomever I asked to listen they would give their undivided attention to me. We always had an open door policy if anything was bothering me I would be able to speak my mind and not worry about getting punished or screamed at or even laughed at by the other person listening. The way that I may bring this idea into my classroom setting as a teacher would probably have be to by setting up the classroom more or less as an open forum where kids would be able to make comments and ask questions without having to worry about whether or not someone else may say something derogatory.

Another thing that I have experienced in my life that I intend to bring with me in the classroom is the notion of trust and being fair to everyone. To be known as trust worthy, you need to be a person who is fair and honest with people, this is done by not being a person who cuts corners and tells lies. This brings me back to my upbringing where my mother would tell me not to do something unless you did it correctly. This idea of doing something until it was done correctly really drove me to be the best at whatever I was doing, whether it be playing sports or doing my homework. This attitude would be a great thing to instill in my students to hopefully create the same work ethic for whatever they may undertake not only in school but in their everyday lives.

One main difference I can see between the ways I might bring my culture into the classroom from someone else is if they come from a conservative background they might not implement my open forum classroom policy where anyone can talk at anytime. This would be true I can assume from the students point of view as well. So if the culture of the school and community was not to express themselves outwardly in public they would not be comfortable in a classroom which I intend to put this forum idea into practice.

In conclusion I feel that culture is the most dynamic and influential part of education. I feel that the most we can ever learn is from each other. I feel that if we are able to establish an open line of communication between one’s cultures to another, then we will be able to learn much more about ourselves aside from the other person or persons. There is a great quote in the, The Promise of Urban Schools, “The rich mix of races and ethnicities, languages and cultures, makes cities also centers of intellectual and artistic energy and creativity as well as catalysts of social change.” This quote pretty much sums up how I feel about cultures and diversity in schools. It touches upon the need for diversity in schools and it also brings forward the notion with diversity there is more opportunity for change and growth.

College Reflection

I think that this project was great. I learned so much about my peers who in turn actually made me reflect about myself and realize that I could learn about myself through others opinions and experiences. The main thing that I learned about during this activity was that everyone in my entire group came from completely different backgrounds, but somehow we were able to find way more things in common than not. When others were telling there life story and their beliefs I was amazed not only because of how different their story was than mine but how I was catching myself nodding in agreement about how they viewed certain topics. It was fascinating.

I would like to switch gears for a bit and talk about how I would love to implement something like this into my classroom as a Mathematics teacher. One idea that I had aside from have the kids map out their life story and beliefs, was to incorporate aspects of mathematics into the project. I thought of many different strategies but the one that I kept coming back to was this idea of having the students find something in their life that they have a passion for and relate it someway to mathematics. An example of this would be, for someone who likes painting, right of the bat you can not necessarily see any connection but for someone who knows about painting there are many ways in which proportions play a role in sketching out the picture on the sheet of paper. Making sure the head to someone is in the right relation to their body and it isn’t too big. So this is one example of what I would like for the students to do as a content driven alternative. If there are any other suggestions out there I would be glad to here them?

I would like to talk about the discussion we had the other day about race and racism in our schools and country. I feel that the discussion we had the other day was quite enlightening for me. However, feel that I have a unique take on in from playing sports, both at the high school level and in college that I would like to share with you.

Race in Society

I would like to talk about the discussion we had the other day about race and racism in our schools and country. I feel that the discussion we had the other day was quite enlightening for me. However, feel that I have a unique take on in from playing sports, both at the high school level and in college that I would like to share with you.

At the high school level I played on a couple different sports teams but there was very little diversity in regards to race. I had a completely different experience with all the players one the teams in high school than I did in college where we had a very diverse group of players. In high school very surprising the n word was thrown around a lot, not to my liking, but most of the time it was really used in reciting lyrics to songs that the players listened to in the locker room before and after games. They would recite the words with no regard for anyone’s feelings whatsoever. I think because they saw that the people using the n word in the music they were listening to led them to believe it was okay for them to say it. On the contrary in college none of the Caucasian players on the team were singing the same songs I heard them singing in high school. On the other hand the African American players were singing the same songs and reciting the lyrics. I am not sure exactly why the extreme change in behavior because in high school there were a couple of African American kids on the team and maybe because they so close with the other players it was not that big of a deal to them for some reason or another. In college it seamed since not everyone was so close to each other the word was not thrown around as much.

My feelings on this are that is not the actual word that offends people it is the meaning behind the word. On the high school teams it seemed as though the few African American kids, because they were so close to the Caucasian kids, knew that when they said the n word they did not have that derogatory meaning behind it, I am assuming, and therefore it was okay for them to say. However, it was a different story in college because everyone was not familiar to one another and hence the n word was not accepted to be used by a Caucasian player, assuming, because the African American players did not really know the intentions of the meaning behind them saying it.

The Pedagogy of Poverty Versus Good Teaching

Why is it that all of urban kids need to have special labels and can not be taught in the same way as other kids from suburban and rural areas. Do they not think the same? Are these kids not as bright as children from different environments? I tend to think not. I think that children all no matter where they are from are just as capable to succeed in the classroom as the next.

As the article describes in most cases it is the way children are taught that determines how they learn and whether or not they are motivated to do so. From what I understand, in this reading the author describes the Poverty Pedagogy as being almost like an training camp with all this drill and skill involved, where the students are told what to do, how to do and when to do their work. Their class work is all done with the teacher walking around hovering over them making sure they are doing it all the correct and expected way.

Later on in this article it talks about how good teaching uses not one of these previously mentioned techniques. The author talks about how good teaching is related to teachers taking a step back and letting the children have some choice in the classroom. However, not a choice on what will be taught to them, but for example, how they will present what they have learned. Another one of the most important ways in which children learn is through experience and the author mentions something about this as well. Haberman says, "Firsthand experience is potentially more educational than vicarious activity, provided it is combined with reflection." The second part of this statement is probably more important then the experience itself because it actually gets the students think about why they had this experience and what are some of the reasons that it was important for them to observe it.

These are the types of practices that I feel we should be using for teaching not only in the urban school setting but everywhere where there is a student who is willing and able to learn.

Annenberg Promise Reaction

"Agency is the power to understand, act on,
and effect positive change in one’s personal and
social contexts. Agency also embodies a sense of
hope and possibility (grounded in an understanding
of social reality) that one can make a difference in
one’s own life, family, school, and local community
and in the broader national and global community."

I believe that Agency is the real reason for education. It gives children a sense of meaning in their life. If we can transfer this concept of Agency into the students it will hopefully transform the students to become more motivated and want to come to school to be educated on the next thing in their life that they can change for the positive.

There is a great example of this in the reading when the author talks about how an urban mathematics educator allows the students to view the city zoning patterns and then he proposes that they come up with some modifications to the plans in regards to where the liquor stores are located. This is a great example of how we can bring a sense of agency into the classroom especially in a mathematics class. This example really jumped out at me since I am going to be a mathematics teacher one day.

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