So, since I was absent from the blogosphere for so long, I might as well recap some memorable moments from a few weeks ago.
One of my favorite weeks was when my family (Dad, Terri, Ben, and best friend Cassie) came to visit and spent some time at my school. My little brother is 13, pretty close in age to my 12-to-14-year-old students, so I thought it'd be a great experience for all of them to mingle! I organized a lunch basketball session for them to get to know each other, and it went pretty well! Ben probably met around 20 of my students total and they were all (slightly-suprisingly) really polite and welcoming to him and my family. All of my guys shook hands with my dad and Terri, which made me glow a little bit with pride. Once they were shooting around on the basketball court, one of my students even said to the others, "Hey, let Ben shoot some!" Four of my students wrote Ben a pen pal letter the next week, and I'm setting them up so they can continue to be pen pals after I leave San Antonio! Bonus tidbit: all of my female students thought Ben was quite the looker, and I oft got asked the question, "Miss, where's your cute brother?" after my family had gone. But don't tell him; it'll go to his head. :)
It was also really cool for my dad to meet Blossom, whom he had corresponded with about engineering earlier in the year. I was dumbfounded as he was incredibly, cringe-inducingly shy around my dad and pretty much avoided looking at anything but the ground for the whole lunch, after bugging me about their visit for the previous EVER. It was sweet that he was so shy, but I was glad that my dad walked over to him to strike up conversation. These kids are full of surprises.
Back to current times. I've been working with a consistent group in one of my classes, and we have talked a lot about the achievement gap and where it comes from and how we can help fix it. I was a little tentative to introduce such a big topic with 6th graders, but as always, they have taken it like champs and been really engaged in the discussion. FYI, the achievement gap refers to the huge differences in test scores between people of different groups (i.e. race, income, region, etc). Predictably and outrageously, minority and impoverished groups consistently perform lower than their white and middle class counterparts across all subjects. With this group, we've discussed the gap between middle class families and impoverished families. We've talked about lack of school funding as well as family resources. I've been especially adamant about summer learning, as it accounts for 75% of the achievement gap. Think about fun things you did over the summer; I myself went to several sports camps, library trips, educational family vacations, participated in reading programs, swimming lessons, etc. Families who have the money to send their children to these programs do so en mass. Children from more impoverished families miss out on these resources for any number of reasons and instead spend most of their summers literally doing nothing but watching television. On an exciting side note, a charitable educational center 2 blocks from our school, The Good Samaritan Center, is offering a free all-day educational summer camp for just our neighborhood and OVER 300 CHILDREN ARE SIGNED UP, proving that cost is the main barrier between these children and summer learning.
So, I laid it all out for my students. It might have been uncomfortable and risky for me to broach the subject, but I felt like they could handle it and that I wasn't doing them any favors by keeping my greater mission a secret. After we'd discussed it twice, I asked the students why they thought I was telling them about it. I asked if they thought I could close the achievement gap. They said, astutely, "No, because you're from that top line [the middle class data on the graph]." I told them that I was, that I had been given a lot of opportunities when I was growing up and that they didn't have anything to do with me being smarter or better than anyone else; that I was just lucky. I asked again why they thought I was telling them about it, and one of my students responded, "You want us to fix it. We can close it if we study hard." YES.
Another student in that group told me when we started talking about going to college that he has wanted to be a barber. He said that he doesn't want to go to college because there is a barber college in his neighborhood and that he thinks he would like that job. I told him that barbers are important and that it would be neat for him to stay so close to home, but that he shouldn't feel like that is all he could do. I often talk about Purdue and all the activities and intramural sports and marching band and football games and friends I made and taking classes I am interested in with my students, you know, because duh Purdue is awesome. When we were talking about the achievement gap and the differences in income that you can make based on the amount of education you get, he said, "Miss, I think if I can get into college, I'll go. I could play football and learn about things I want to learn." YES.
Even more currently, I decided to expand my leaders' lunches to include guests because we are working on raising money for AIDS orphans with Hoops for Hope and the kids are actually really into it. By the by, so far I can only promise them 10 cents per basket because that's what I have pledged from viewers like you. If you would be willing to pitch in a dime, nickel, or quarter per free throw, PLEASE let me know. So far, my group has collectively made 70-odd free throws and I'm worried I'll have to tell them that we have to be done because I don't have enough donors. Help!
Anyways, I've told them that they can invite a few friends to help us reach our goals, and boy did they take me at my word. My teammate JoAnn and I took a group of 20 sixth graders outside to a basketball court with two basketballs and only ourselves for supervision. If that doesn't sound extreme to you, remember that the original group of 7 that we started with are the students that were referred to our leaders' lunches based on the number of administrative referrals they had gotten over the year. AND I let them invite their friends. AND it was fantastic. I had a quick heart-to-heart with every new addition about listening to me and JoAnn or the whole deal would be off. I deputized Blossom and another student to be in charge of the basketballs and inform the other students of our mission. One of my teammate Alex's students, whom teachers were actually trying to get put in in-school suspension for the rest of the year due to his behavior, told one of the girls to put her phone away because 'Miss C. had said that phones weren't allowed'. My heart was soaring and even though we were teetering on the precipice of mayhem at every minute, I wouldn't have uninvited any one of those beautiful students.
Last anecdote from today: I was telling Blossom of my plans for lunch time during first period, and he asked if another student in the class could join. This student is rather new and my only experiences with him have been negative, with him ignoring what I say or blatantly doing the opposite. So I told Blossom that the other student hasn't really shown me that he respects me and that I can trust him to listen when we're outside. Blossom turned to him and said something unintelligible, at which point the other student looked at me and said, "Sorry, Miss." I asked what he was sorry for, and he shrugged. Blossom said, "He's sorry for not listening. Can he go now? You forgive everyone when they apologize sincerely." That ploy may not have been enough to get his friend on the "in" list for our lunch, but it made me feel like I had been doing this job right.
No comments:
Post a Comment