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Competitive Schools
This week was my second visit to my placement, and being slightly more used to the environment, I was able to concentrate more on details than only the bigger picture. This week I had more one on one conversations with the students, and was conscious of keeping up with my observations from last week. I was still not thrilled with the teacher, and continued to struggle with understanding the class environment. At one point, one of the boys called me over to his desk and asked me if I wanted to be a teacher. When I responded yes, he told me to work at a magnet school. This comment caught me off guard, and made me think more about my observations last week concerning the teacher and the way the students responded to her. Before my first day, I looked up information about this school, and noticed that it was a high ranked public school with a good reputation. I was completely caught off guard that this eighth grade boy would warn me against teaching in a school like his. How is a kid supposed to be excited to learn, when he has such an established idea that his school is not suitable?
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Comments
marginalizing students by "othering" their schools?
What a rich exchange. I agree that it is troubling that a youngster is advising you not to teach at a school like his. It is painful. It is also to the kid's credit that he has a critique of where he is -- I wonder if you could learn more from him about this. I think in many social circumstances, schooling included, people affirm their strength by outsourcing or projecting their fears of weakness onto other places or people. I learned this from a great book chapter by Linda Powell called "The Achievement Knot" in a book called "Off White" -- about whiteness and privilege. How can young people own their strengths if the elders in the institutions that are sopposed to serve them don't believe in where they are?
marginalizing students by "othering" their schools?
What a rich exchange. I agree that it is troubling that a youngster is advising you not to teach at a school like his. It is painful. It is also to the kid's credit that he has a critique of where he is -- I wonder if you could learn more from him about this. I think in many social circumstances, schooling included, people affirm their strength by outsourcing or projecting their fears of weakness onto other places or people. I learned this from a great book chapter by Linda Powell called "The Achievement Knot" in a book called "Off White" -- about whiteness and privilege. How can young people own their strengths if the elders in the institutions that are sopposed to serve them don't believe in where they are?
marginalizing students by "othering" their schools?
What a rich exchange. I agree that it is troubling that a youngster is advising you not to teach at a school like his. It is painful. It is also to the kid's credit that he has a critique of where he is -- I wonder if you could learn more from him about this. I think in many social circumstances, schooling included, people affirm their strength by outsourcing or projecting their fears of weakness onto other places or people. I learned this from a great book chapter by Linda Powell called "The Achievement Knot" in a book called "Off White" -- about whiteness and privilege. How can young people own their strengths if the elders in the institutions that are sopposed to serve them don't believe in where they are?
I am curious about what type
I am curious about what type of classroom you are in (honors, regular, inclusive) and whether this has some baring on the way that the student feels about his school. Maybe he has assumptions that magnet schools are just like honors classes which may differ strongly from the regular classrooms (I know this was the case in my high school).
I think how we marginalize
I think how we marginalize kids must have a potent effect on how they view their learning and education. At my high school in Colorado, an independent private school, students even if they didn't notice it continuously put down public education, and specifically the area’s public school. In contrast the public school looked at my school, for the most part as a school for the rich or special. While there may be some truth in this, it is not 100%. For the most part students at my school were more motivated to learn. I wonder if this motivation stems a little from the perception of the education that the school provides. If one thinks they are in a bad school and feels marginalized, how does this effect their motivation? I to am curious as to how our understanding of the school and classrooms we are in influence our motivations.