ProfJackie

At 16:33, a caller from Connecticut alludes to the reason for educational failure is for “a lot of reasons you’re not allowed to discuss”. Brian Lehrer, the host of the call-in show attempts to clarify and makes transparent the underlying issues of race generalizations that the caller was not comfortable saying directly. Brian states, “you are trying to make a racial case that some ethnic groups are not interested in education.” The caller insists that “you know teachers in the NYC school system and you know what they have to confront in the classroom.” Brian responds by saying, “I don’t think that they confront the fact that any group by virtue of their race or ethnicity is not interested in the successful education of their children, no.”

(Debbie Sonu, 2014)

http://eakp.weebly.com/about-eakp.html 

As we think about student voice, consider this teenagers hopes and fears for education.

A friend’s kid worked with her class to make this video and start a petition to support curriculum about LGBT rights. Please take a look and consider signing the petition. This is also an interesting case study of student action, which we have discussed in class. 

An important finding for us all, not just for our students.

This school integrates student solutions to everyday community problems into the curriculum. 

Meier is a well respected educator with decades of experience creating thriving school communities. She was a founding member of the Coalition for Essential Schools, which I posted about earlier this semester. Here she reminds us that democracy is not something that we learn about, it is something that we do. So schools should be places where “democracy can enter” as Ruitenberg might say, not where we have already set views of what democratic citizens already are. 

This article is from several weeks ago but is related to readings tonight. Segregated or homogenous communities fare better when schools are integrated, but intentional policies are needed to create such spaces.

I am intrigued by this school model, so we are going to do a bit of analysis today to figure out what type of critical questions we should ask to ensure that needs of all students are being met. Please check out moodle for a few documents and link to the website of The Primary School is here: http://www.theprimaryschool.org/approach/

This is the link to the video shown in class tonight about the SEEDS school in Washington DC. These are clearly loving educators who care deeply for their students. However, as I mentioned in class, there are many definitions of care and they are often context dependent. One of my concerns is how this program reconciles the high expectations for student achievement with their seemingly low regard for student identities and origins, evidenced by the presumption that they need new values. There is danger when some students’ cultures become aligned with values that are not welcome by mainstream society, which lead to the creation of school cultures that pathologize their home cultures. This can be reflected in deficit based views about parenting choices, language and dialect, family structure, and community life. It is possible to create school cultures that simultaneously position students (even those with troubled home lives or from disadvantaged communities) as having assets that can help them benefit from learning, as opposed to deficits that need to be corrected. But we must make choices about teaching, learning, curriculum and assessment that ensure positive perspectives of students’ cultures. What is your reaction?