Open Mic

This blog is just an open blog. I've decided to talk about who makes the laws for education. After reading the article called "Listening to Teachers: Classroom Realities and No Child Left Behind" I started to think about how teachers are always labeled the problem and not included in any input on the solution. It is interesting to see how a law that affects our nation's education system was created by people in government who are not involved in education. The people involved in education know education best. Micheal Jordan is a good example. He is one of the best player in basketball, but when he tried out for baseball, we clearly saw that his abilities were capable of playing at a high level.

It does not make sense that a politician can determine what goes on in public schools. I am not saying our political leaders are not capable of doing their job, but some of these politicians may have never stepped inside a public school in their entire childhood! How can we expect education to improve if the ones in have no experience in the matter?

I agree there must be change in the uphill battle for education. However, change must be made at the top. The ones making the law should be the ones entrenched in our school systems. Laws should be made not for political agenda's, but for education only.

Updated Frames of Reference!

When I first heard I had to take a class in urban studies, I felt a part of me think, “UGH, I don’t want to do this!” I was raised in a suburban town for most of my life and only recently lived in cities like New Brunswick, New Jersey and Stamford, Connecticut. I have to admit that I do not have a lot of experience in any urban setting and I did not plan on working in urban areas. The only times I have actually been in an urban area was for charity work for organizations like Habitat for Humanity and Hana Missions, and more recently my trip to Hawaii to visit friends. My perspectives changed from my trip to Hawaii. Perhaps it was because I did not really go around the island doing many touristy things. Instead, I had the opportunity to go around the neighborhood meeting people and getting to know. At first, I had reservation about Hawaii and knowing that the state is not well off, but learning about the culture of the community as well as individuals from it has changed my opinion of it. Now I am strongly considering moving there to be a teacher, so I want to be fully aware of urban areas along with the current and potential situations that might come about.

To begin the process of learning and understanding, it is important to perform a self-evaluation to understand where I am in terms of beliefs and opinions. During my time living in the suburbs, I have formed opinions and beliefs of urban schools. However, they were not based on substantial factors such as experience but rather have been formed have been based on watching the TV, reading magazine articles, talking to friends who work in urban schools, and searching through the Internet. Even the music today contains lyrics that talk about urban areas. I know the stereotypes about urban communities and schools exist in my life and influence the way I think of urban schools because I am not fully aware of the situation and am very uneducated in the matter. Through this course, I hope that this is a great opportunity to air them out and hopefully gain more awareness and further understanding on the issue.

I try not to allow stereotypes and stigmas to affect my beliefs, but it is difficult when you are inexperienced and not much information. The fact is my beliefs will always affect the way I act and perceive things. The most important thing in my opinion is to remain flexible and teachable so that beliefs, which were skewed from false information, might be wrong changed.

A lot of my thoughts and ideas are similar to our first class with what I believed to be true with urban schools. When I think of an urban school, a few things come to mind. I think of schools that are very underfunded, have educational curriculums centered on standardized testing, and burned out inexperienced teachers. I feel as though urban schools do not and cannot provide students proper opportunities to flourish due to the lack of resources, and rather settle for students to make the minimum standards, resulting in big achievement gaps. From past research in a previous class, students lose interest in school because school focused on getting good standardized test scores rather than give a student a proper education. What is worse is, when they see something on the test that was not covered in class, they feel very discouraged. I have also read that there is also a high dropout rate in urban schools, where blame goes towards the schools for suggesting to students to drop out or transfer to another school in order to raise overall test scores.

When I think about teachers, I see them having an extremely tough job. Teachers often seem to get burned out more frequently. They have a low budget to work with. From what my friends tell me, they even spend their own money to buy supplies for their classrooms. In the classroom, teachers are fighting against the outside influences that distract the children from pursuing an education. Teachers in the schools are not necessarily the best or the most qualified to teach to the students. Many times, there are programs that provide some sort of incentive to recruit teachers to urban schools.

The students in urban schools face a huge uphill battle. Students are complacent to education because they do not see a bright future for them at all. Many students come from low income and broken families, so accountability from parents seems difficult to come by because they are working hard to pay bills. Students also see temptation to make quick bucks, for example from selling drugs, as a way to improve their life and their future. Students face a lot of pressure to join gangs, which tends to lead to violence and many times death, where the student does not have a choice in the matter. They must fight to defend their fellow members.

It would be a lie to say that my beliefs would not alter my interactions, but it may not necessarily be negative. I think my relationship with my fellow peers would be better. In fact, I would hope that my beliefs would bring us closer as a united front, where we would be able to work together. I would also want to learn from their experience. I think that working with students would be a little different. I would make more of an effort to get to know the students and see what is going on in their lives. I believe that there would be more intent when getting to know them, to understand them and know where they are. At the same time, I would not have any understanding of their culture and make me a bit hesitant and uncertain. It would take time for me personally to break my beliefs and be open-minded.

My hope is to have a classroom that has a “buzz” for education. I want to have a classroom that encourages and supports the students’ interest so that they would be engaged and desire to learn during their time in the classroom. I also would like to have a way to get to know each student to see how he or she is doing. It is important to have a relationship with the student to help the student know the teacher cares about them. With No Child Left Behind in place, there will be a lot of focus on standardized testing. Test scores are over emphasized in schools. I would hope to be more creative in ways to teach them the content on the test. The further they succeed on standardized tests, the better chance to continue to move up on in their education.

It is my hope that my fellow teachers will have some input on how I could construct and conduct a class in an urban school. Their knowledge and experience would provide an invaluable resource to me. I know I will make mistakes here and there, but with their accountability and advice, I will be able to acknowledge my mistakes and learn from it. My beliefs will also change as I learn more from my peers and hopefully for the better.

Assumptions and beliefs play a large role in how one will act as a professional. No matter how much we may deny it, what we believe in will always show in our actions. The negative beliefs and assumptions will clearly have a bad influence in anyone’s style of teaching. It will not allow me to be even who I am, and it might distance me further from the students. I have stigmas and stereotypes in my mind that I wish to break. The one thing I have working for me is that I want to remain flexible in these beliefs and continue to recognize that what I perceived from media and other factors was wrong. I want to change and be able to teach all types of students. My goal is to be a caring, and encouraging teacher anywhere I teach. The only thing that will not change is the standards that I set for myself and for my class.

There is a lot of speculation and uncertainty as I slowly step closer to becoming a teacher. I still have many questions about urban education and schools. I hope to gain knowledge, awareness, and understanding of urban education to form new beliefs. In doing so, this might help me make a decision to move to Hawaii, or consider any other location.

Community culture influences

Community culture is an important influence on the urban centers. That message was made clear by the creation of suburban communities. People thought that homogenous demographics allowed for a better education system. Many people moved out to suburbs with that notion.

Urban communities are strong in culture. People live in small dense areas that they will know each other well. Their relationship with one another is extremely strong. For example of Gilyard, the student had to balance his life as a student in the white community with his relationship with the black community. One part in particular showed the strength of his friendship, when Gilyard made up a story to protect his friend.

I believe that the culture of the community is the biggest influence of schools. The way the educational system is put together does not fit well with the urban community. It’s like fitting a round peg in a square hole. It just won’t happen. There needs to be flexibility in the system to help develop students and their talents. For example educators such as Lisa Delpit and Gloria Ladson-Billing showed positive results by incorporating the community language “black English” into their program. The school needs to adapt better to the students to make them feel that school is relevant in their lives. I hope that understanding the urban community will allow the school systems and their students to thrive.

Media Influence

UPDATED: I misunderstood the assignment, but I have updated it.
TV:
Suburban: 90210 (TV) – The school is in a rich neighborhood. The show demonstrated well funded schools that could host extravagant events. Students came from rich families that were able to provide vacations to the beach, and brand new cars.

Urban: Fresh Prince of Bel Air (TV) – The show took a kid from the urban setting to the suburbs. He showed that grades were not important. Relationships between friends are very strong such as his friendship with Jazzy Jeff. He was removed from his home down of Philadelphia to Bel Air because he was constantly getting into trouble with the law and with violence with gangs.

Rural: Friday Nights Lights (TV) – The show is based in Texas. The show emphasizes how the community expresses importance on sports, particularly high school football. The community mostly is not very affluent. The school’s funding is misdirected and given to the football team. The rest of the school fights for scraps.

Movie:
Suburban: Clueless (Movie) – The movie is set in California in a suburban area. The students are all affluent and a bit stuck up. The students had cars and designer clothing. There was a lot of social class separation. The students seemed to care less about grades because of the wealth their parents had. The relationships between students seemed artificial and the ones with the teachers was superficial.

Urban: Coach Carter (Movie) – The movie is set in Richmond, VA in an urban high school. The school is underfunded. The students on the basketball team come from broken homes, and have no ambition towards furthering their education. Some of the parents put their child’s future all on basketball.

Rural: Varsity Blues (Movie) - This movie shows the lack of seriousness in education. The community doesn’t seem to have high ambitions, as football was clearly the focus of the town. The football players are treated like celebrities in their community. For these players the future did extend beyond the season and winning a championship trophy.

Music:
Suburban: Vitamin C – Graduation – This song came out when I graduated. As I look back on this song and some of the lyrics, it reminds me of how in suburban communities going to college is almost taken for granted. The students have high ambitions of leaving their homes and getting a big money job.

Urban: Kanye West – It is interesting to see how these two artists have strong ties to religion. Kanye West has a song called “Jesus Walks” and his need for Jesus. The song seems to show a glimpse of what he’s experienced. He sings about hustlers, killers, murderers, drug dealers, and strippers. He also jokes and says that he was told if his rap songs weren’t about guns, sex, lies, or video tapes, that his song about Jesus wouldn’t be played on the radio. This shows the stereotypes of what types of stigmas rap songs have.

First post!

When I first heard I had to take a class in urban studies, I felt a part of me though, “UGH, I don’t want to do this!” I was raised in a suburban town for most of my life and more recently lived in cities like New Brunswick, New Jersey and Stamford, Connecticut. I have to admit that I do not have a lot of experience in any urban setting and I did not plan on working in urban areas. The only times I have been in an urban area was for charity work for organizations like Habitat for Humanity and Hana Missions, and more recently my trip to Hawaii to visit friends. My perspectives changed from my trip to Hawaii. I didn’t really go around the island doing a lot of touristy things because it was not my first time there, but I got to go around the neighborhood, and meet and get to know people around the area. Now I am strongly considering moving there, so I want to be fully aware of urban areas along with the current and potential situations that might come about.

I have formed opinions and beliefs of urban schools. They have been formed have been based on watching the news, reading magazine articles, talking to friends who work in urban schools and searching through the Internet. Even the music today contains lyrics that talk about urban areas. I know stereotypes about urban schools exist in my life and influence the way I think of urban schools mostly because I am not fully aware of the situation and am very uneducated in the matter. Through this course, I hope that this is a great opportunity to air them out and hopefully gain more awareness and further understanding on the issue.

I try not to allow stereotypes and stigmas to affect my beliefs, but it is difficult when you are inexperienced and there are a lot of unknowns you can’t answer. Your beliefs will always affect the way you act and perceive things. The most important thing in my opinion is to remain flexible and teachable so that beliefs, which were skewed from false information, might be wrong changed.

A lot of thoughts and ideas that were mentioned from our first class coincided with what I believed to be true with urban schools. When I think of an urban school a few things come to mind. I think of schools that are very under funded, have educational curriculums that focus a lot of their attention on standardized testing, and burned out teachers. I feel as though urban schools do not and cannot provide students the proper opportunities to flourish due to the lack or resources, and rather settle for students to make the minimum standards, which results in big achievement gaps. From past research, students lose interest in school because the school focused on getting good standardized test scores rather than give a student a proper education. What is worse is, when they see something on the test that was not covered in class, they feel very discouraged. I have also read that there is also a high drop out rate in urban schools, where blame goes towards the schools for suggesting to students to drop out or transfer to another school in order to raise overall test scores.

When I think about teachers, I see them having an extremely tough job. Teachers often seem to get burned out more frequently. They have a low budget to work with. From what my friends tell me, they even spend their own money to buy supplies for their classrooms. In the classroom, teachers are fighting against the outside influences that distract the children from pursuing an education. With all these variables being factored in, the teachers in the schools are not necessarily the best or the most qualified to teach to the students. A lot of times, there are programs that provide some sort of incentive to recruit teachers to urban schools.

The students in urban schools face a huge uphill battle. Students are complacent to education because they do not see a bright future for them at all. A lot of students come from low income and broken families, so accountability from parents seems difficult to come by because they are out working to pay bills. Students also see temptation to make quick bucks, for example from selling drugs, as a way to improve their life and their future. Students face a lot of pressure to join gangs, which tends to lead to violence and many times death, where the student does not have a choice in the matter. They must fight to defend their fellow members.

I do not think my beliefs should alter my interactions with my fellow teachers. In fact, I would hope that my beliefs would bring us closer as a united front, where we would be able to work together. I would also want to learn from their past experiences. I think that working with students would be a little different. I would make more of an effort to get to know the students and see what is going on in their lives. I believe that there would be more intent when getting to know them, to understand them and know where they are.

My hope is to have a classroom that has a “buzz” for education. I want to have a classroom that encourages and supports the students’ interest so that they would be engaged and desire to learn during their time in the classroom. I also would like to have a way to get to know each student to see how he or she is doing. It is important to have a relationship with the student to help the student know the teacher cares about them. I know with No Child Left Behind, there will be a lot of focus on standardized testing. Test scores are so emphasized in schools. I would hope to be more creative in ways to teach them the content on the test. The further they succeed on standardized tests, the better chance to continue to move up on in their education.

Also hope that my fellow peers will have input on how I could construct and conduct a class in an urban school. Their knowledge and experience would provide an invaluable resource to me. I know I will make mistakes here and there, but with their accountability and advice, I will be able to acknowledge my mistakes and learn from it. My beliefs will also change as I learn more from my peers and hopefully for the better.

Assumptions and beliefs play a large role in how one will act as a professional. No matter how much we may deny it, what we believe in will always show in our actions. The negative beliefs and assumptions will clearly have a bad influence in my style of teaching. It will not allow me to be even who I am, and it would probably distance myself further from the students. I have stigmas and stereotypes in my mind that I wish to break. The one thing I have working for me is that I want to remain flexible in these beliefs and continue to recognize that what I perceived from media and other factors was wrong. I want to change and be able to teach all types of students. My goal is to be a caring, and encouraging teacher anywhere I teach. The only thing that will not change is the standards that I set for myself and for my class.