Recently, I've been trying to find my place in this world of education, and the world of music education. I have shared that this past year I have been working with our ESL/ELL teacher Jessica St. John to integrate students that have issues with English into the choral music setting. This is a low stress way of helping, in our case, Spanish speaking students acquire language skills through music. This has been instrumental (pun intended) in my research goals and need to seek an equal educational opportunity for all students. But the story didn't just start there...
My district is very close to Grinnell College, where my husband graduated from. I had the fortune of meeting Dr. Cori Jakubiak, a professor of education, there and the connection was instant. Cori is an academic that began in the classroom. After some talking and some need for connections with K-12 schools, she began attending South Tama County Middle School with her field experience students/volunteers. Cori would hang out in my classroom, while her student volunteers help Ms. St. John with ESL instruction and we spoke rhetoric. She then pushed me to consider looking at Iowa State University's Education for Social Justice Certificate and the PhD program in Social Foundations in Education. While looking at the program, I wasn't totally convinced. In Iowa, the typical teacher education college is the University of Northern Iowa, but... ISU has a fantastic faculty, with a very diverse background!
I was given a book from Cori, written by one of the ISU faculty, Katy Swalwell, entitled Educating Activist Allies - Social Justice Pedagogy with the Suburban and Urban Elite. Whew! That is quite the title, but the reading has been riveting. I am a Caucasian male in my twenties and I struggle with the idea of privilege. I was born with privilege and what does that mean, or what does that require me to do on my own and with my students?
Chapter 1 Why the education of privileged children matters
This chapter discusses the following questions - "How should these students be educated? What happens when we try to educate them in those ways? Why are we asking this question now?"
Swalwell seems to have a great perspective - "privilege(d)" those who possess unearned advantages based upon socially constructed categories.
It seems that the first part of this chapter relates to properly defining privilege and what that means for students/schools. Privileged individuals are those that lack their understanding of their own privilege and the benefits that come with it. This is a packaged deal. Superiority is often a word used to describe those with privilege.
I feel there is a specific need to teaching privileged children, but we as educators need to recognize any privilege we have. Conversations have begun and within my district and I am seeing that students are compared typically to standardized tests of Caucasian students, grades in relation to students across the board, and other factors, but what I'm most concerned about is, are we being true to culture/needs. Yes I believe a student should receive high marks in their coursework, but perhaps the instructional and assessment/feedback giving needs to change.
Many of you know that I am an advocate for standards-based grading/assessment and this renders itself nicely to the model. Many of our students are mom, dad, brother, sister, grandparent and the list goes on... they are the primary care giver in a house, but the typical points-based system we use is used more for punishing a student's behavior than sharing academic progress. I cannot begin to wrap my head around this because many of my Hispanic and Native students live within close quarters to their families, the last thing that do is think about their homework, they instead think about which medications to give their siblings, what time they have to be to work, and so much more.
The reason for the slight rant/vent of moving to a SBG system and even mentioning race and ethnicity, is that in talented and gifted programs, students without privilege are unable to be recognized to receive services. They may not receive high marks on the national standardized test, or be able to receive high marks in a class because of factors they cannot control. Is this just an unfortunate system, or is it deep-rooted in something more?
The purpose of this is post was to begin putting my findings/thoughts on "paper". The next chapter of Swalwell's book relates to Social Justice Education. More to come and let's be real... this post may change before then... Thanks for reading!
Cora Jakubiak's Bio - https://www.grinnell.edu/users/jakubiak
Katy Swalwell's Bio - http://www.education.iastate.edu/people/faculty/faculty/katy-swalwell.html
Katy Swalwell's Book - http://www.amazon.com/Educating-Activist-Allies-Pedagogy-Suburban/dp/0415529468ie=UTF8&keywords=katy%20salwell&qid=1464626477&ref_=sr_1_sc_1&sr=8-1-spell
My district is very close to Grinnell College, where my husband graduated from. I had the fortune of meeting Dr. Cori Jakubiak, a professor of education, there and the connection was instant. Cori is an academic that began in the classroom. After some talking and some need for connections with K-12 schools, she began attending South Tama County Middle School with her field experience students/volunteers. Cori would hang out in my classroom, while her student volunteers help Ms. St. John with ESL instruction and we spoke rhetoric. She then pushed me to consider looking at Iowa State University's Education for Social Justice Certificate and the PhD program in Social Foundations in Education. While looking at the program, I wasn't totally convinced. In Iowa, the typical teacher education college is the University of Northern Iowa, but... ISU has a fantastic faculty, with a very diverse background!
I was given a book from Cori, written by one of the ISU faculty, Katy Swalwell, entitled Educating Activist Allies - Social Justice Pedagogy with the Suburban and Urban Elite. Whew! That is quite the title, but the reading has been riveting. I am a Caucasian male in my twenties and I struggle with the idea of privilege. I was born with privilege and what does that mean, or what does that require me to do on my own and with my students?
Chapter 1 Why the education of privileged children matters
This chapter discusses the following questions - "How should these students be educated? What happens when we try to educate them in those ways? Why are we asking this question now?"
Swalwell seems to have a great perspective - "privilege(d)" those who possess unearned advantages based upon socially constructed categories.
It seems that the first part of this chapter relates to properly defining privilege and what that means for students/schools. Privileged individuals are those that lack their understanding of their own privilege and the benefits that come with it. This is a packaged deal. Superiority is often a word used to describe those with privilege.
I feel there is a specific need to teaching privileged children, but we as educators need to recognize any privilege we have. Conversations have begun and within my district and I am seeing that students are compared typically to standardized tests of Caucasian students, grades in relation to students across the board, and other factors, but what I'm most concerned about is, are we being true to culture/needs. Yes I believe a student should receive high marks in their coursework, but perhaps the instructional and assessment/feedback giving needs to change.
Many of you know that I am an advocate for standards-based grading/assessment and this renders itself nicely to the model. Many of our students are mom, dad, brother, sister, grandparent and the list goes on... they are the primary care giver in a house, but the typical points-based system we use is used more for punishing a student's behavior than sharing academic progress. I cannot begin to wrap my head around this because many of my Hispanic and Native students live within close quarters to their families, the last thing that do is think about their homework, they instead think about which medications to give their siblings, what time they have to be to work, and so much more.
The reason for the slight rant/vent of moving to a SBG system and even mentioning race and ethnicity, is that in talented and gifted programs, students without privilege are unable to be recognized to receive services. They may not receive high marks on the national standardized test, or be able to receive high marks in a class because of factors they cannot control. Is this just an unfortunate system, or is it deep-rooted in something more?
The purpose of this is post was to begin putting my findings/thoughts on "paper". The next chapter of Swalwell's book relates to Social Justice Education. More to come and let's be real... this post may change before then... Thanks for reading!
Cora Jakubiak's Bio - https://www.grinnell.edu/users/jakubiak
Katy Swalwell's Bio - http://www.education.iastate.edu/people/faculty/faculty/katy-swalwell.html
Katy Swalwell's Book - http://www.amazon.com/Educating-Activist-Allies-Pedagogy-Suburban/dp/0415529468ie=UTF8&keywords=katy%20salwell&qid=1464626477&ref_=sr_1_sc_1&sr=8-1-spell
