Is Jonas Dead?

It feels weird to be writing this, my final blog entry.  It means a semester is coming to an end.  My formal education is about to enter a new phase as well as I begin student teaching next semester.  So how has this blog impacted my semester and/or my future?

 The extended look into inner-city classrooms with a focus on English definitely helped secure my desire to teach in the inner-city.  I cannot believe the inequalities these students face on a day to day basis.  I almost feel obligated to try and help these students get the chances to succeed that other students take for granted.  The Bright Ideas Conference was the best thing I experienced with this class this semester; I found motivation and practical advice.  My extensive post on the subject reflects this.

 I have mixed feelings on blogging personally.  For some reason,  I have always struggled finding the motivation to do discussion board posts, or this blog which seems similar to me.  I am not sure why, but I have a hard time shaking the ‘it’s just homework’ feel.  On the positive side though, I loved reading what my classmates wrote and responding to this.  I think it is incredible some of the ideas, arguments, and research that my fellow classmates were able to accomplish and discuss this semester.  I want to incorporate this into my future classroom; I want my future students to realize the potential each of the other students in the class has.    

 This has been a very busy semester for me.  But it has been a rewarding semester.  I feel motivated to venture out into teaching while also feeling like I have a better grasp of strategies to use in my future classroom.  This class has tremendously helped me in this aspect.

http://kstudz.wordpress.com/2007/02/01/uniform-is-not-a-issue-about-clothes-anymore/

http://dana071287.wordpress.com/2007/02/01/becoming-more-marketable/

http://stephcj.wordpress.com/2007/02/01/snow-falling-on-cedars-pulled-from-shelves/

http://corbmobile.wordpress.com/2007/02/28/the-white-anti-racist-is-an-oxymoron/#comment-36

http://canknight.wordpress.com/2007/04/12/a-different-kind-of-censorship/

http://matt4386.wordpress.com/2007/04/10/does-fear-equal-motivation-for-exceptional-work/#comment-32

http://wdok.wordpress.com/2007/04/07/mr-gingrich-might-want-to-read-wilhelm/#comment-9

http://kcoffey.wordpress.com/2007/04/15/and-three-makes-tango/#comment-20

http://waldrup49.wordpress.com/2007/04/13/the-attack-on-whole-language/#comment-99

http://hannah8.wordpress.com/2007/04/12/dividing-communities/#comment-34

Last Saturday, April 14^th I attended the Bright Ideas Conference at the Michigan State Union in East Lansing.  The keynote speaker was Jacqueline Woodson.  I attended two breakout sessions. The first was about surviving the orthodoxies of English education with CMU professor John Dinan.  The second session I attended was about literacy and learning in the inner-city with Mrs. Speed, a sixth grade teacher at Riverside Middle School in Grand Rapids.

 To be honest, I was not overly thrilled with attending this conference.  I could list about 35 different things I’d rather do at 6:30AM on a Saturday (well, actually only one and that’s sleep).  So grudgingly I set off for East Lansing.  But I am lying a little.  I am a morning person so I was in a good mood as I drove from Grand Rapids to E.L.  As I was driving home after the conference my opinion had completely changed.

 The keynote speaker, Jacqueline Woodson, was simply incredible.  She was a captivating, articulate speaker.  As I sit here looking over my notes I notice how many amazing quotes I wrote down.  I will give a few of them and reflect a little.

 “Everyone has a story.  Everyone has a right to tell that story.”  This quote seems simple but in reality is amazing (and I foresee difficult to make sure happens in my future classroom).  If my students feel their writing will not be respected.  If they feel any fear at all they will not share.  The atmosphere in the classroom will be toxic to learning.  I need to do everything I can to make sure that all my students, every one of them, feel comfortable.

 “You can’t write if you don’t read.”  This is interesting to me.  I read Stephen Kings semi-autobiographical On Writing and he expressed similar feelings about the writing process.  This conflicts with what Dr. Dinan would later say at this conference (I will describe this later).  I’m not sure how I feel on this.  It sounds right to me.  It feels right, but how can one say that reading magically makes one a better writer?  I’m not sure I should say this in my future classroom.  If I have future students who love reading but not writing, or the reverse, this sentiment could crush the positive feelings they have for reading.  This is an interesting quote though.

 Finally, Woodson discussed how kids love stickers.  Specifically, how sticking the Caldecott or Newberry sticker on books alone seems to make students interested.  This was a hilarious moment in the speech, but the logic seems flawless.  If the outside of the novel is decorated, others must agree it is a great book.  If the book is great, it might be worth the students’ time.

 Dr. Dinan was an interesting character.  He seemed to be a somewhat cynical / skeptical but kindly hearted older man.  He challenged a bunch of what he termed to be the “Progressive Mandates” in English pedagogy.  While agreeing in principle with these new thoughts on English education, he was nervous about simply discarding old methods as obsolete and completely useless.

 For example, he discussed the five paragraph essay.  While universally acknowledged to be evil, he wondered if our future students were struggling with creating argumentative essays, couldn’t this paper at least be a starting point?  His lecture was interesting.

 Again, I had mixed feelings about this lecture.  It was good to here a person playing devil’s advocate with everything I had been taught, but it was still a nerve-racking experience.

 He stated a teacher didn’t necessarily have to be reader to teach reading, or a writer to teach writing.  Again, this was different than what I have heard in the past, but was a little comforting.  I won’t feel so guilty about unwinding in front of a television anymore.

 Mrs. Speed is the head of the English Department at Riverside Middle School in Grand Rapids and she presented about her life, first attending G.R.P.S, and now teaching there.  There was also research presented about inner-city school districts. 

 Code-switching was discussed.  This is greatly interesting to me as I feel I want to at least attempt teaching in an inner-city school district someday.  I feel like I want to do this, perhaps for my life.  But I also realize many teachers say this, and then once they begin to experience it, flee.  The advice given in this seminar was practical.  Find a mentor teacher who you feel comfortable with and who will stick up for you.  Get a strong ally.  I don’t know if I’m entering teaching or politics; I’ve heard both. 

 This conference was a great experience for me.  I feel both encouraged and also a little more confident in both how to proceed as an aspiring teacher and maybe how to be a little more realistic with what to expect. 

In my utopian America every child has equal educational opportunities. This goes beyond simply making sure capital resources are equally distributed. Impoverished neighborhoods, which need the most help, would actually receive the most money. Well-to-do districts would not receive as much funding instead of consistently receiving more. Children everywhere would truly have an equal playing field. But this is a Utopia and not Northport, New York.

This blog entry will be my first and only blog in response to a letter-to-the-editor style editorial. I generally tried to avoid these, but this letter was too tempting. Barrie Bischoff, a stay at home mom from Northport, New York is not too happy with Governor Eliot Spitzer’s consolidated foundation aid formula. In a column titled “No Way, Robin Hood” Bischoff wrote for Newsday.com, she unloads on perceived future slights against her children and home school district. I do not know much personally about New York’s policy, but Bischoff’s reaction is interesting. While she admits she is from “an affluent school district” she is still worried about her school’s monetary future.

So, if I have this right, our state taxes will be pooled and redistributed to various communities such as New York City, where they pay little in property taxes, to upstate areas that have a lower cost of living, and to lower-income neighborhoods right here on Long Island that have larger second-language programs…[while]…We will have a revote and go on an austerity budget and will have to subject our children, who live in lovely, well-equipped homes, to cutbacks in programs, delays in school grounds improvements and overcrowded buses.

It is interesting to me that Bischoff can admit her situation is better than most, yet still complain about how people living in poverty in New York City still pay less property taxes. I know it is easy for me to, in Michigan, say how a New Yorker’s taxes should be allocated. But doesn’t it make sense to give more tax support to families who have less money? If she can admit her school district’s children live in “lovely, well-equipped homes” why would she have a problem supporting children who do not have this luxury?

I know from growing up in a small farming town that the prevailing stereotype about taxes being used in the inner-city is that the money would be wasted. That it is the urban citizen’s fault for living there and their fault for their own lack of money. If they would only pull themselves up by their bootstraps, like the suburban folks have, this would not be an issue. While Bischoff is worrying about “cutbacks in programs” she is not considering districts that do not have the programs to begin with.

So, if I have this right, this new redistribution of wealth is going to improve the quality of education for all children in our state. There will be more money available for inner-city children to play sports and learn to speak English, schools upstate to teach their children with shiny new computers and freshly painted walls, while we who have so much to pay in property taxes will struggle to keep our music program alive and never get a pool for our high school.

If the needier school districts do not have essential education, by all means let’s get it to them.

I am slightly appalled at the assumption that money in the inner-city should go to children to “play sports and learn to speak English” rather than “shiny new computers”. This seems minimally assumptive about the (lack of) abilities of certain children compared to others and possibly racist considering the ethnic make-up of the inner-city. While Bischoff complains about how her school may never have a pool she subjugates other children to simply learn how to speak English (probably in what she considers to be proper, standard English).

No Way, Robin Hood

Barrie Bischoff

March 25, 2007

Complete Article 

I have previously blogged about Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities before I read it. I have now read the first half of the book and have a better feel where Kozol was coming from. His exploration of the condition of inner-city schools seems just as relevant today as it did almost 30 years ago.

Kozol is all about money. He theorizes that if inner-city youth were to receive the same amount (if not more) of money that suburban schools receive, then they might have a chance to be successful. Thirty years ago he lambasted the education system. It does not appear much has changed.

In her article, “Jonathan Kozol, still angry after all these years”, Margie Peterson from The Morning Call, a newspaper in Allentown, Pennsylvania, reports on a speech Kozol recently gave at Messiah College. Her reporting sounds verbatim what I read in Savage Inequalties.

So let’s review. In communities with large numbers of children in poverty — many of whom speak English as a second language and move frequently — government spends less to teach these kids.

In wealthier areas, where children grow up speaking English and have many more opportunities — for educational experiences, travel, and even breakfast, for crying out loud — government spends more to educate these kids.

-Government spending less on inner-city youth? Check.

-Government spending more in the suburbs? Check.

-Inner-city schools statistically doing worse than suburban? Check.

-Suburban schools testing better than urban? Check.

After 30 years it does not seem like the math has significantly changed. Kozol’s thesis on the power of money still rings true. To be fair, though, money is not the only issue keeping inner-city children from testing as well as their suburban counterparts. I would argue racism, both blatant and institutionalized plays just as major of a role. The current state of inner-city schools and their children almost seem like a perfect storm of undesirable circumstances. The storm is completed, Kozol argues, but President Bush’s ‘No Child Left Behind’ act.

Inner city schools spend as much as a quarter of the year preparing students for the NCLB-mandated standardized tests, deadening true education and extinguishing curiosity and creativity. ”There’s not a minute to be wasted on a skill that won’t be tested,” Kozol said. ”A child that asks a question that’s really off track becomes a positive threat to the teacher’s tenure at the school.”

Well, this is alarming on two levels. First, I might have to spend a quarter of the year working on test taking strategies? This is not how I envisioned my future self in a classroom. Second, learning in a manner that does not explicitly match the test could be a threat to tenure? Threats and worries about issues such as these make me nervous about being a future teacher. I still want to do it. I want to try and help students learn to the best of my abilities. But I can foresee myself pulling my hair out with frustration if I feel the best of my (and my students) abilities are being wasted taking practice tests. I know teachers experience an incredible burnout rate; with so much riding on a multiple choice piece of paper this is not surprising.

Jonathan Kozol; Still angry after all these years

Margie Peterson

April 5, 2007

Complete Article