It's your blog

Friends. For Wednesday's class, finish Nieto and Bode's text and provide some of your thoughts on at least one take-away from the text--that is, what is something they have challenged you to try in the upcoming school year (could be curricular, could be methodological, could be philosophical, etc.) Give as much detail as possible, connecting the text to your plans.

Student Achievement

After reading Chapters 8 & 9 of Nieto/Bode, discuss one of the explanations of student failure (deficit theory, social reproduction, cultural incompatibility, cultural ecological theory, etc.) that stood out to you as a best argument for explaining students lack of success in school (and a 1000 point bonus if you can figure out which one I think explains it best :). Next, and more hopeful, describe one of the avenues that Nieto and Bode mention in either Chapter 8 or 9 that you think might best be traversed toward improving student achievement.

Structural factors in schools: Keeping "track"

As we move from race to class, we continue to examine how a structure of injustice forms. One of the ways to secure the structure is through particular practices in schools and in the educational process. For the most part, we (myself included) remain unconscious to the role we play within this structure. In our own process, then, of crafting new lenses and coming to a more critical consciousness, it will be important to explore some of the structural factors impinging on the lives of children in our schools in order to become the liberatory agents that Sleeter and others call for. One issue to take up is tracking.

In a previous edition to Affirming Diversity, Nieto outlined a rather famous study by John Goodlad and lamented, “Goodlad found that first- or second-grade children who are tracked by teacher’ judgments of reading and math ability or by testing are likely to remain in that track for the duration of their schooling. He also found that children of color and poor children in general are predominately at the lowest track levels and that they advance more slowly, develop problems of lower self-esteem, and have higher drop-out rates” (Nieto, 2ED., pg. 70). We might think also about Ray Rist's study in Chapter 4 regarding the kindergarten teacher who essentially had her children tracked by the 8th day of class.

My experience with tracking dates back to second grade. I transferred from a public school to a Catholic school and was placed in 2B (there was also a 2A and a 2C). I was placed in the middle track because they really weren't sure where to put me based on my public school experience. For whatever reason, my 2B teacher, Mrs. Berninger, saw fit that I should move to 3A the next year with two of my other 2B classmates. In the third grade, we could remain in 3A (and this went for all the students) if we could memorize our multiplication tables as quickly as our teacher, Mrs. Hood, thought necessary. Several kids did not make the cut and moved down to 3B. No one moved up from 3B, much less 3C. In fact, for the rest of my grade school experience, no one else ever moved up to the "A" track, solidified by how quickly one learned their multiplication tables (a very low-level of thinking ability, memorization, according to Bloom). This was an all-white, middle class school--students whose fate were sealed by perceived intelligence related to memorization. Now, enter Goodlad, Nieto, and Rist and factor in race and class. What we know is that some students are tracked by social factors, not silly little multiplication memorization--fates sealed at an early age based on the color of their skin or the neighborhood in which they grew up.

First, talk about your evolving understanding of the issue of tracking based on your reading of Chapter 5. While I advocated for the elimination of tracking at the school where I taught, based on a research study I completed which clearly demonstrated poorer students got tracked lower, my movement (not surprisingly) did not enjoy much support. Although I continue to work toward this from the outside looking in (at a structural level), I also believe there are more short term, individual, and pedagogical decisions that can be attended to given the inertia of this issue and the fact that it looks to be here to stay for a bit. In other words, since tracking is a current reality, and the revolution to eliminate it will be slow to come, what are some pedagogical decisions you can make as a teacher that may assuage some of the negative, long-term effects of tracking.

Racism, Discrimination, and Expectations of Students' Achievement

For Monday, we're reading Chapter 4 of Nieto and Bode and Renner's chapter on the use of Cincinnati's Freedom Center for a more emancipatory praxis.

By Sunday, 6-15 at noon, please post a blog response to one of these readings. Responses should be 1-2 paragraphs in length and should (1) outline/summarize the point/issue that stood out to you, (2) talk about whether you agree, disagree, or might nuance the point/issue based on your experience or other readings, and (3) provide some follow-up questions for us to consider as a class.

Topics/points/issues you might tackle (but don't need to if other issues stick out):

• how did you understand/experience Nieto and Bode's discussion of institutional vs. individual forms of racism and discrimination?
• how does your experience of racism and discrimination in schools connect with or differ from Nieto and Bode's?
• what kinds of service experiences have your students been involved with and how have they connected with or differed from my critical conceptualization of service learning?
  

Welcome summer 2008 class!

Please post below just to let me know that you were able to access the blog. See you Wednesday.