JARS

Julia Albertson

April 9, 2017

Professor Cohen

EDUC 266

Strategies for Change

Accessibility in Education

            Throughout the semester questions about accessibility in the classroom have been central to our class discussions. From the extent to which a student may access the resources necessary for social or professional gain, to the level at which a teacher may access the cultures of his or her students, accessibility in the broad sense fundamentally informs the success of both students and teachers in schools. I would like to explore strategies for breaking down the barriers to access in classrooms, looking specifically at what has been done previously that has either succeeded or failed.

My placement is at  a STEM bases high school in West Philadelphia. I am in two Math classes, Algebra 2 and Calculus. Although the same teacher teaches both classes, the difference in the atmosphere is striking. The Algebra 2 class is the first class of the day. My first day was a half day so it was hard to tell if some things happened because the day was shorter or if it was apart of a regular daily routine. The first thing I noticed when I was in the class was that a student was writing the period time blocks from the teacher's laptop onto the board. I thought it was interesting because at my high school, everyone knew the schedules inside and out especially the schedules for half days.

Overall, my experience at Heather High School* was almost exactly as I expected. I do not typically get nervous in new situations, as almost everything in the last year of my life has been a new situation to some degree. I have now worked in both affluent and low-income neighborhoods, for student’s ages 5-18, and in urban and rural settings alike. The biggest adjustment for me at Heather*, as well as other schools I’ve been involved with on the east coast, is the effect of the physical space in which the school is located. I understand there are plenty of practical and safety reasons behind constructing an entirely indoor school building.