Glitter penguins

Karp's section on teacher seniority and how they are reluctant to adapt to new teaching methods struck me while I was reading particularly because of my high school experience. 

In my Catholic high school, there were many teachers that had been there for a rather long amount of time. First there was Mr. O, who retired my senior year, he had taught at my high school for 50 years; one would expect him to have a set teaching method considering the fact that he taught the same courses every year: geometry and Latin. Mr. O however managed to defy the odds. He was constantly listening to coworker criticism and actively adapting to his class evaluations so that he could successfully help his students understand the material. This was quite the opposite from what Karp described.

"Voters and taxpayers...do sense that things are changing, and many of them dislike what they see. 'why should we be paying for the education of their children?' they ask, sotto voce, and so they gow reluctant to underwrite public education with their tax dollars."

" Give them a decent education and they'll make it in this new land- that has been the immigrant story ever since the first European settlers came to this new world. But toss them on the education scrapheap, as opponents of the DREAM Act are doing, and they'll live futureless lives." 

English Language Learners 

Schools in urban American cities often have a large communication barrier between teachers and students due to their respective backgrounds. What often occurs is that students will come from low-income backgrounds with specific social behaviors that branch from their neighborhoods. On the opposite side of this spectrum is the teacher who often comes from a privileged background with a high education and sophisticated communication habits. When a teacher from a different background enters these schools it becomes difficult for the students to relate or to accept the teacher’s presence in the classroom. This results in a multitude of miscommunications because both the students and the teachers misinterpret each others’ language and behavior due to their upbringings.

I noticed that while I was reading this article it mentioned something I had already known however, for some reason I ended up looking at it through a different aspect I had never considered before. I know that we are focusing in Urban education however, I would still like to share what I noticed because I believe that if what is described below is an essential component toward educating students in urban education then why is different for students pursuing higher education? The quote that I am referring to is the following,

In Dance's "Tough Fronts" article, she writes, "Unlike adult-to-adult social relations, teacher-to-student relations are asymmetrical: teachers are in a better position than students to possess mainstream social (and cultural) capital resources that students need. Students have little to offer except future promise of educational success." I'd like to push back on this statement and some of the ideas it's laying out; while I agree that teacher-to-student relations can involve an asymmetrical power dynamic, I think the idea that teachers are in a better position to possess social/cultural capital and that students can only offer future educational success goes against the idea of the bi-directional relationship that Dance says makes a teacher a "good" one.

In Chapter 4 of "Tough Fronts," Janelle Dance emphasizes the importance of student teacher relationships and how they play role in student performance. There were a lot of great points that I resonanted with throughout the chapter, like when it reiterates the significance of functional community as it provides closure between the adult communities and the communities of youth in school. Rather than accentuating the disparities among the diferent communties, we should work towards making them connect and work together. 

"These students describe the majority of their relationships with teachers as devoid of trust, devoid of caring, devoid of viable information and therefore deficient in social capital resources that enable positive educational outcomes."