Over the last few weeks I have been creating my own professional development. I have been silently following various educator hashtags on twitter, reading blogs, following the "Waiting for Superman" commotion, and reading a book. I haven't had a real desire to comment on anything that I have read until I finished the book, America’s Unseen Kids: Teaching English Language Arts in Today’s Forgotten High Schools, by Dr. Hal Foster and Megan Nosol. This book talked about a university professor's journey with his pre-service teachers in a program where they collaborated with an "urban" high school to prepare the pre-service teachers for teaching, and the high school students getting the extra help that they need in school. Although the focus of this program was on English/Language Arts, it is important to note the experiences the students and pre-service teachers had apply to any educator regardless of subject.
As I read this book, I began to reflect own my on K-12 schooling. I grew up on the east coast, the Philadelphia School District from 1978 through 1990. I lived in the heart of the inner city or "ghetto" as it was referred to. The elementary school I started at was five minutes from home. I went to Head Start in a trailer in the elementary school's huge schoolyard. Since I completed Head Start there it has caught on fire at least five times. When I moved on to kindergarten I simply walked through the schoolyard and into the elementary school. However, this walk was with caution. I had to be careful of broken glass from beer and wine bottles as well as other trash. By the time I made it to fourth grade, my mother had my brother and I transferred to another school in the suburbs two hours away by public transportation from our home because the teacher told me that her son was smarter than I was, yet she did not teach the class much of anything. My brother and I caught a school bus to this music magnet school. After eighth grade, I then moved on to an magnet high school that specialized in college prep. Each school that I attended the environment got better and better. So it is very true, the better the neighborhood or opportunities a school has, the better for its students. The high school I attended was right behind a college campus in the middle of the city. The neighborhood wasn't great, I would travel thirty minutes on the subway from one ghetto to another. We had to walk in pairs or groups, and for our own safety we couldn't hang around after school. However, we had everything we needed to be successful in that building. Most of my teachers were a lot like Hal and Megan. This book reminded me that as an educator regardless of the environment, I have to ensure that the students I teach have opportunities and it is up top me to provide them in every way I can. If I don't, it is not only a detriment to me but to our communities and society.
At the beginning of the book they give a few themes to teachers that they titled:
At the beginning of the book they give a few themes to teachers that they titled:
Our Guiding Themes for Teachers of At-Risk Students (What We Learned from At-Risk Classrooms)
- Stop stereotyping.
- Respect diversity in culture and language.
- Create strong teacher-student relationships.
- Hold high expectations.
- Implement student-centered teaching.
- Give students hope in their ability to read and write.
- Connect students’ experiences to what they are learning.
- Allow students to select what they read and write.
- Apply different teaching techniques to appeal to all learning styles.
- Deliver an advanced curriculum.
- Provide students with ample opportunities to share their work.
- Learn to live with complexity.
- Celebrate student achievement.
- Take advantage of all possible resources.
- Reflect on your teaching constantly.
These are themes that as educators we should follow with all of our students, at-risk or not. When we remove the labels and just teach our students, we will produce great minds. Thus, individuals that can thrive and overcome in spite of adversities.
