Student Teacher 36 | - ✏ Freelance Writer
Aug 05, 2014 | #1
Teaching and Schooling - Research Paper Instructions
:Write a Critical Summary that demonstrates an understanding of the selected chapter by stating the main point, argument, or thesis of the chapter, and then presenting a brief discussion, analysis, or evaluation of its contents.
Also answer the following based on your own opinion:
Employ your understanding of the chapter and its major points, arguments, or concepts to critically reflect on your own educational experience and your future thinking or practice as a teacher in an urban context. Your reflection must specifically address the following two questions:1. What does one of the reading's major points, arguments, or concepts make you think or help you to understand/explain about your own experience in school?;
2. What does one of the reading's major points, arguments, or concepts make you think or help you to understand about your future practice as a teacher in the socially and culturally diverse context of urban schooling?
"The Importance of Presence: Immigrant Parents' School Engagement Experiences" by Carreon, Drake, and Barton conveys some of the finding from four years of research they have conducted on the relationships that immigrant parents in high-poverty urban areas desire and develop with their children's formal education. This includes their relationships with the physical space, educators and administrators, and their children's experiences of education.
They noted that parents, teachers, administrators, and policymakers did not share "a common understanding" of what parental involvement should be and that disparity was echoed in the literature. However, parental involvement has been consistently correlated with higher academic performance, test scores, positive attitudes, homework completion, behavior, and retention. However, the authors note that previous research reveals that parents who disagree with the schools are considered troublesome and that parents do not experience school-planned activities as invitations to participation. The study also cites the statistic that about one in six children in the U.S. live with an immigrant parent or guardian.
Parents are aware that activities to improve the quality of education are not level or equitable, but are defined by administrators, legislators, and educators. One parent noted that though 60% of her son's school is Latino, there was not one person who spoke Spanish in the administration. The article includes three case studies of parents and describes a variety of types of educational involvement. The authors' conclusions include that parental involvement does not have to occur on school grounds, but can include dedicated efforts at home or in other private spaces that effectively support their children's educations. However, they also highlight the necessity of a parent having at least one trust ally within the school's system of educators and administrators.
I appreciated the researcher's realization that school-based activities are hierarchical, especially for poor, working class, immigrant, and/ or minority people. The school's authority in those circumstances can be cultural, linguistic, and professional, all at the same time. Parents know that even in ideal circumstances, failure to comply with the school and its administrators can alienate them and their children from educators and the educational framework. There can also be complicating factors involving whether people are documented and their fear of repercussions, whether they are documented or not, regarding immigration status. For my own parents, I did sometimes see them intimated by school officials. At times I witnessed school officials intentionally use their positions to intimidate my mother out of expressing concerns, usually by being condescending and patronizing.
How much my mother was involved in school related events depended on whether she was comfortable with the teachers that I had. Certain teachers were more hostile and condescending to parents in general and it worked for them because few parents would involve themselves in classes and students became silent and withdrawn. Friendlier, kinder teachers always had enough parent help for outings or in-class events and the other teachers usually avoided any such activities. Upon reflection, it is easy to see creating positive relationships with parents enables teachers to do more with their classes and to do those additional activities more easily because of the support they had in and out of the classroom.
That a school with a 60% Latino student body has no bilingual staff is more than an administrative hurdle for parents. Though it is of course as significant practical problem, it also suggests to students and parents that they are not welcome, that the school is not theirs in the same way it belongs to other students and parents. For a school in predominantly Latino community to have no Spanish speaking staff is not possible by mere coincidence. This is a reminder to advocate for representative staff who can meet the needs of students, which means a staff that can effectively communicate with students. Our jobs are not to teach or serve a single imaginary student, but to teach the many real students who are in our classrooms.
That is, many people imagine that there is a normal student, probably white, probably of average intelligence, with parents who can always afford supplies, and who shows above average compliance in the classroom. Students who do not fit that bill become special problems, and teaching them is framed as additional or exceptional work. I would suggest a framing where we imagine our jobs is to teach the children in front of us, rather than to approach our classrooms as a series of varied deviations and exceptions.
Respecting difference means welcoming it and in order to do that it is necessary that the children you teach are normal, whoever they are. I believe that, whenever possible, it is important to live where one teaches. It is also important to remember that urban and minority schools are not always diverse. I have sometimes heard neighborhoods that were 90% or more Black or African American referred to as diverse, because the person's perspective is still white. Using diversity as a euphemism for ethnic communities ends up portraying their lives as unusual. As a teacher of young people, I think an important to resist that by ensuring that my classroom and my style is not aimed toward an imaginary middle, but actually teaches and welcomes my students, their lives, and their families.