After thinking about all those influences, I have come to one clear conclusion about urban schools I am confused of what my opinions are about them. I have acquired various assumptions over the years my first thoughts were from my first hand personal interactions. From these interactions I assume all urban schools are highly crowded, little diversity among the students and very poorly funded, I believe this because of my few experiences in them they were in shambles and literally falling apart. There is another major influence on my views of urban schools which are my relationships I have with people that are actually in or were in an urban setting for some time. These people I feel are the major contributors to my assumptions and beliefs about urban schools. Due to their ideas of what the schools are about I feel that urban schools are not that much different from the suburban schools I have grown up in all my life. I feel that the students at urban schools want to learn as much as possible and they are motivated in and out of the classroom. From what I understand it is up to the teacher to foster these feelings the students have and to build upon them with the aim of getting the most out of the students. This brings me to my next concept of urban schools, the teachers, most of my relationships with people involved in urban schools were at one point or are still teachers, so my views may be a little bias. I assume that all teachers in urban schools want to get the most out of the students and try very hard to do so, but the administration makes it very hard with little or no support neither in funding or discipline. As supported below from our reading, The Promise of Urban Schools by Senior Fellows.
“Effective classroom teaching practices are directly influenced by the degree to which the adults in schools are encouraged and supported to develop professional resource and learning communities. This is an issue of educators’ agency and of equitable allocation of resources to urban schools to support sustained, high-quality professional development and professional working conditions.”(pg 8)
I now turn my attention to the any media sources that may have played a factor in some more assumptions of urban schools I may have. Some things that I feel are probably very prevalent in urban schools because of what I hear on the news and see in movies are gangs, weapons and a lot of drugs. I know that this sounds crazy but every time you see anything about an urban school on the news they are talking about a student stabbing someone else or a gun is found in a student’s locker. Things like this are hard for someone like myself who has never really had any sufficient amount of time in an urban school setting to turn away from and not think that stuff like this happens in every urban school district.
I know that close friends and family have also played a role in my assumptions of urban schools but I see it as a small role I feel, because not one of my friends and family come from or have had any real experience in an urban school. These types of assumptions are more about the people that are in the schools like the students and teachers, for example we see that many of the urban schools, we assume, are populated with majority of African Americans and Latinos. This is what we mainly talk about among each other how these students are all deprived and poorly educated not because they choose to be but because of the school systems they are in.
One of the major things I can see my interactions being in an urban school is how I deal with administration. I think because of what I feel and assume about them I would probably be more proactive in trying to get support for the teachers. I would definitely not take no for answer when proposing things such as better discipline policies and training programs for teachers. Another thing that I think would be a major role I see myself taking on would be as a teacher leader, hopefully motivating and providing other teachers strategies and techniques for improving their student’s performance in and out of the classroom. Lastly, and most importantly I hope to leave all my assumptions aside when I deal with the students in an urban setting. I definitely feel that there is no way students will want to learn if they already know that you have all these preconceived notions about them. They will not be able to trust you and therefore and believe that you have their best interests in mind. “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.” (Preparing Teachers for "Monday Morning" in the Urban School Classroom: Reflecting on Our Pedagogies and Practices as Effective Teacher Educators pg 251)
I will take all these ideas into consideration when I am conducting my classroom. I will have my students become more aware of what is available to them, in regards to educational resources; how they can attain them and hopefully show them that they will become more prepared for life in doing so. “The teacher’s role is to identify and direct students to resources, to provide shared opportunities to build background knowledge and skills, and to assist children to learn from one another and to remain focused on the questions they generate individually and as a group.”( The Promise of Urban Schools by Senior Fellows pg 7) I will not let my attitudes and beliefs towards urban schools in any way hinder the educational progress of my students. I feel that my classrooms will foster intellectual growth that will eventually coincide with student success. I hope to do this by creating a relaxed and informal atmosphere, which I assume is not like the one they live in outside of the school setting. My intention in establishing this environment is to allow the students to let their guard down and accept and contribute to the topics of discussion.
“The few urban schools that serve as models of student learning have teachers who maintain control by establishing trust and involving their students in meaningful activities rather than by imposing some neat system of classroom discipline. For genuinely effective urban teachers, discipline and control are primarily a consequence of their teaching and not a prerequisite condition of learning.”( The Pedagogy of Poverty Versus Good Teaching by Martin Haberman pg 5)
In conclusion I feel that it is ultimately up to the teacher to obtain the most from their students. I feel that this is done by not depending on what you think the students might do or how they might act, but by realizing that just because they are in an urban school setting does not mean they are not willing and capable of performing same or even better than any other students in the country. Is it possible to leave all your assumptions at the door when you walk into an urban, or for that matter any school setting to teach? I have yet to truly tell myself yes, however I know that I will have to do so in order to become a good educator anywhere.
2 comments:
It is funny how you meantioned that you assume the condition of urban school buildings to be "falling apart", and I figured they were probably less than stellar as well, although when I went I discovered that they have air-conditioning in the schools, and that some of the physical conditions of the schools are better than where I attended high school (in an upper-middle class suburb). The second thing that struck me from your paper is that you assumed that urban schools have little diversity, while I assumed the opposite. I never really thought about it but both assumtions could make sense. I assumed that the schools had greater diversity than suburban schools because cities in general tend to have a greater mixing of people than do the suburbs. I guess I dont quite understand what you mean by that. Do you mean that most/all the students are black/hispanic?
mikek,
That is what my original assumption was, yes that the school was mostly black students. After attending this class and participating in the class discussions I now understand that there are many different cultures. So to answer your question yes that is what I am talking about in my paper. However, I know that these is probably a bad assumption to make from here on out.
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