I was very drawn to the Ch. 31 article. The initial description of the school, how small it was, how diverse the children were, etc. really intrigued me to read what would happen. One thing I questioned about the school was the four-pronged effort to achieve a fair and equitable school. The author suggests that they “recruited” Black and Latino students who were “academically proficient” to challenge the stereotype of white students being at the top of the class. For some reason I thought this was an odd first point for them to use. I think that they should have brought in minority students who were doing poorly and proved to those kids and society that they could succeed instead of brining in students who were already doing well.
Something I did like about the article was her use of the kids’ questions. I haven’t seen a lot of ‘scholarly work’ done that actually uses real world situations instead of theory. When the author explained a situation that probably happens in a dozen schools around the nation every day, I got a sense of legitimacy in her writing. It seems that her journaling what when on each day helped her reflect on what she and other staff members could have done differently. I think that journaling or keeping notes as a first year teacher in any school would be a really helpful and productive tool since, if I’m not mistaken, in our PDPs we will all have to reflect and explain what we want to achieve in the next years.
In true "conversational comment" form, I'll go positive and then ask a question. I definitely agree on the power behind using firsthand accounts written by students of the school. Faculty views can only give the reader (or the researcher) an opinion formed from within the seat of power in a classroom, and it's usually more interesting to know what the people on the other side think of the education they're getting. Slight question though: I too was wondering about the "academically proficient" standards were for admission to Pathways...and I think it means not so much that these students were rocket scientists (since she mentions reading scores from the 8th to 99th percentile), but that they didn't have students with extreme learning disabilities (likely because they didn't have a staff member to fill that role). So maybe it was more about leveling the playing field and less about teaching kids who probably could teach themselves?
ReplyDeleteI agree with both Jinnesa and Andy about using actual accounts of instances that occurred in their classroom. I feel it helps us understand how to better handle an issue if we have something to reference it to. Both make a controversial point about the admittance to the school. They do admit students nearly on an equal level, as long as they have tested well, and as Andy puts it, without a disability. Another point that i read about was the near excellent attendance at the school. Of course attendance is going to be high, the students were admitted into the school, probably one of the requirements to the school that was understood by the high faculty was to accept students who had a history of great attendance.
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