Prompt #4: Kozol

Being assigned to a school in the middle of an urban city made me a little nervous about what I would be walking into. I try not to think of it as a “bad” neighborhood, because I know that is not the case. However, there are several factors that go into that not uncommon “first glance” view. One major issue that leads to this is the media.

The media shows us things that do not seem to be ideal to many people. I may have seen negative things before I went into the school, about the area it was in and immediately jumped to conclusions about what the school would be like. In fact, I had just recently heard of a shooting right outside a high school near where I am visiting. This is something that is hard to forget about completely and go definitely alters any feeling of comfort and safety you make have previously had in the school.

The teachers in the classrooms I am volunteering in seem to not let the outside world influence their styles of teaching. I believe that they are aware of it, and want to push their students to become better than the stereotypical students in that area. In fact, in my most recent visit, the students had a homework assignment that the teacher asked me to collect. There were pictures of items and they had to write the beginning letter of each item. There was a picture that two-thirds of the classroom seemed to have trouble with. The picture was of a tambourine. One boy went over to the teacher in tears and said “I couldn’t do this one, (and pointed at the tambourine) because my mom didn’t know what it was.” A few other students sympathized and told her that their parents also didn’t know. After explaining what it was, and giving them quick tests on other common items around the classroom to prove that they knew how to do the exercise and just got confused on one of them, Mrs. Smith asked the other classroom volunteer and me if we knew what it was, and we told her that we did. This was a challenge because even though she knew she would have to work hard, Mrs. Smith knew she wanted to educate her kids to have the ambition to find out what something is before simply giving up. However, this can also be seen as an advantage because we can teach the students at the lowest level, and help want to build them up to be the best we could be.

This can be related to Jonathan Kozol. Kozol talks about the challenges associated with different classes in schools. He explains that resources are needed to even the playing field for all of education. The better the resources, the better ideas the students will have and the more chance they will grow to be the best student they can be.