Engaging In a Larger Conversation

How am I going to continuously engage in larger conversations about the shape of education and reform and what will guide my thinking?

In the near future I would like to become more active in holding conversation and enabling reform by participating more in professional learning communities where I can talk with other professionals in my field about the challenges and possible solutions to educational problems. I would also like to take on more leadership roles in school (union rep?) that can give me political leverage for helping bring about change that my students need. What will guide me is looking at the needs of my students and using them as a foundation for what change I would like to bring about or open up for discussion. This way I will be advocating for the people that I am impacting, who's education I am responsible for and providing them with a different form of educational service.

I would also like to attend more lectures, speaker hearings and seminars to stay connected to the world of ideas and thought. I am signing up for notification about speaker visits through NLU and other Chicago based teacher sites to give me updates on what experts in the field to see and when to see them. 

But where should I act? The union? The school? The occupy? Where can I start the discussion? I think that Kumashiro offers an interesting insight to this question: 

"Reframing the debate does not happen by simply creating a catchy tagline. Not only is what we sat important, bus also how we say it. . . A preliminary step in strategizing any movement building is an assessment or inventory of partners and assets; that is, a mapping of who can do what, including who has access to which audience by what media ... " (88)

I realized that branching out your argument and your advocacy doesn't need to begin on a grand scale, by protesting or running for public office. I can adequately advocate for my students, their parents rights and for the change that I want to see in education by networking with others. This means, as funny as it seems, using social media and tools like Twitter (click to visit my page), Facebook, LinkedIn. These media outlets can provide a form of networking and a social platform that's conducive to having authentic discussions. After all, if the Jasmine revolutionaries in Egypt were able to stage an entire democratic movement using internet and FB, what prevents us from doing it here?

Facebook and Twitter as mediums for conversation

What steps will I take to enable the stakeholders (i.e. parents, community members, students, et cetera) to become critically engaged in the policy process. 

To go off the previous quote from Kumashiro, I think that media tools like blogging, Twitter, and LinkedIn, can provide authentic opportunities for enabling parents, and students to learn about their rights and partake more in the policy process. I think that continuing a blog like this, creating a class website with important updates about latest developments in the education world and inviting families to participate in it and can open up possibilities not only to keep parents engaged but also build a stronger sense of community and develop trust. I like the idea of having a class website where I post information related to not only classroom and learning but also to community events, education issues, and other information that parents can access at their own convenience can enhance engagement. I also think that the class website can also provide a great outlet for collecting feedback, another way for me to get communal input to help me refine my practice.

Edmodo would be a great website for making it all happen.

Social learning site with unknown potentials

Advocating for Policy

This funny cartoon that shows Bill Clinton, a democrat, giving money to the federal bureaucracy and the conservative party mascot, the elephant, doing the same to the parents, comically highlights the disagreement in how different perspectives approach education and reform. I have always enjoyed learning about politics and philosophy (it being my first major in college), but it wasn't until recently that I moved from liking politics to actually feeling the impact of certain legislation's on my profession. Be it, spending the entire month of February, frantically preparing my students for ISAT testing, or dealing with the politics of Unions and CPS, taking a stance and advocating for the reforms that will benefit my students is another part of my job. 

I consider myself what Payne calls a progressive educator or a "position is that you get change by changing people, by developing them ... people must have ownership over change and that means that change must be largely a bottoms-up process, a voluntary process." (193) This means that I favor the policies that focus on in-school reform and stem from inclusion of multitude of voices in the making of decisions. I see it as a truly democratic way, but it can also be a very messy process. Sometimes we find it difficult to find a consensus between a group of people, so imagine trying to incorporate hundreds, or thousands of voices? This process can become unbearable. It also assumes that people genuinely want change and are willing to actively volunteer for making it happen. While the system of progressive education is not perfect, I do believe in its mission to battle the hegemonic structures inherent in our country and build a more collective approach to decision making. I will take an active stance in promoting the progressive model of education in my classroom, by incorporating a range of voices and cultural perspectives into my curriculum, being culturally responsive and what Gary R. Howard calls "opening up the circle of power to those who have historically been marginalized by it." (80) That means having an open forum to talk about serious issues like race and power in a safe environment. These are some ways that I can integrate my advocacy in my classroom. 

In terms of advocating for my profession, I would like to draw a lot from Linda Darling-Hammond and her book The Flat World and Education in which she examines the systematic requirements of an education system that allows all teachers and students to learn. Some of the components of functioning schools, as seen in other educational systems from around the world, include: 

These are some of the tenets of public school systems that I agree, and I will endorse political candidates that share these beliefs with me. I would like to expand on the first point of the slide, and talk about the importance of fair, and efficient funding for school reform success. First, I would like to come out and say that I do not endorse an equitable funding policy that allocates equal amount of resources to every school. This system does not take into consideration that every school will have different financial needs because of different social, economic and societal factors. With that said, I support fair funding, where funds are dispersed based on estimated need of each particular school. Providing fair funds to low-income schools can mean a higher financial incentive for hiring more qualified teachers in areas where they are most needed. This is where I think Federal Government should come in. I would support any candidate that would expand federal funding of school and stray away from basing school funds on local property taxes because as Hammond puts it "to invalidate the state education finance system because its reliance on local property taxes generated greatly unequal spending" (135) with richer districts providing more money than their poorer contemporaries. With fair federal funding, it is possible to close off the inequitable distribution of wealth based on privilege and local. 

Conversely, I will not endorse any candidate or group of thought that tries to privatize the public education system. I am not a great supporter of charter schools, and while I see some merit in suspending bureaucratic red tape to study innovation, I do not condone the violation of public education policy by kicking out students who are deemed hard to control, unfair treatment of teachers and merit based pay, which pins teachers agains teachers in a highly competitive model of work. I do not uphold these values, and can never see myself supporting the privatization approach to public education. 

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Community and Me

Photo courtesy of nmsua.edu

Next year, as I begin my new chapter of teaching in my own classroom, one of my immediate goals will be to attempt establishing trust and building strong relationships with the community, students and the school in the neighborhood that I will teach in.

I think the first step to building relationships and establishing trust would be to identify what are the "funds of knowledge" that are available in the community. Moll defines these as representing"... a positive (and realistic) view of households as containing ample cultural and cognitive resources with great, potential utility for cultural instruction." (Moll 134) What that means, is that each neighborhood, and each household are a great source of cultural capital that I can tap into to make my instruction and communication more relevant and representative of the culture that I'm teaching. This year, I think I made great strides in overcoming looking at the neighborhood that I taught in from a deficit-type model through active participation in community events and from open communication with parents. I want to research more about the neighborhood that I will be teaching in next year and identify what are the sources of cultural and social capital that already exist within that I can draw from. 

In his book Organizing Schools for Improvement Anthony S. Bryk distinguishes between two types of social capital, bonding and bridging. Bonding capital refers to "density of supportive social ties within a neighborhood or community." (169) and bridging capital as "the opportunities to engage with external individuals and organizations." (169). I foresee myself first establishing trust and drawing on the bonding capital. I will need to earn my trust with the community. Because if I don't, I will be potentially seen as an external or the "other"member of the community. That can cripple my ability to connect and earn the respect of my students. Learning what opportunities and resources are available in the area, and utilizing them in your instruction and making them a part of my culture, can further solidify my bonds with the place I am teaching in. This may look like creating a culturally responsive curriculum in my class, emphasizing individually, learning about the experiences of my students and giving students a chance to witness themselves being fairly represented within the larger scheme of the class and school community. I think that ultimately, if I am able to link community, school and classroom and integrate it into my curriculum, I can really create a sense of unity and interconnectedness between what my students experience outside of the classroom and what we will use as foundation in our classroom.


While these are lofty goals, I know, achieving them is more difficult than it seems. Especially in the light of the recent school closings, the reception of a new AUSL school is often met with a mixed bag of reactions. An article in a CTU post, highlighted the rallying of parents to prevent AUSL control of their school. So what can I do if I will meet resistance from the community? This is something that's very common in a fresh turnaround environment. Talking to parents may become difficult because of the ways and different perceptions that culminate from the situation. Some parents may see me as a threat. As though I am a part of a system that has caused them the inconvenience and disservice by firing their teachers and school staff, with whom they have potentially built trust. I feel like I would like to communicate and make the parents understand that my commitment is to the students and their education. Realistically, all I can do is consistently show that I am committed to the education of their students and am looking out after their interests and that many of the systematic decisions made in the network that I am a part of are out of my control. I think that also showing genuine interest in building relationships by calls, home visits and meetings, as well as partaking in community and school events, can help me rebuild and mitigate the lack of trust that may plague the community/school environment.

For more information on how I integrate community into my classroom and strive for building trust between families please visit my Masters Portfolio Community Section.

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What shapes me as a teacher?

There is a myriad of believes, ideas and values that define who I am as a teacher. To list all the nuances of who I am professionally, would be an arduous and likely banal task. Instead I have some core beliefs under which, all the sub-categories can be neatly catalogued. 

I think that the experience of being an immigrant and coming to this country from a completely different culture, and through primarily schooling, being inaugurated and transitioning into US culture was my first experience of understanding the impact of education on an individual. When I came to US, I barely spoken any English, and it was a great struggle for me to understand this new culture without being able to connect with it through language. I went to CPS and was enrolled into bilingual classes. I think it was during that time that I began to master the language, and ultimately master living in the new culture. As an educator, I always remind myself about the importance of literacy in the society. If I haven't been able to become literate in English, I would still struggle accessing the information that led me to self-efficacy and autonomy. In one way literacy for me equaled to independence. 

As an educator, I think that being a part of CPS and having a lot of experience living and working in urban settings have also shaped my educational choices. We are, after all, to a certain extent, a product of our environment. In the same vein of environment, I also come from a family that had a long line of working in the field of justice, education and politics. I think where I came from and the legacy of my family have also had an impact on me choosing to teach in an urban setting. I believe in the values of democracy, and adhere to Dewey's concept of democratic education. In college, I have followed works of such writers as Noam Chomsky, John Dewey, Freire and Kozol that have shaped my beliefs into what I thought should be the goals of public education. And while these are solely ideological and theoretical foundations, when they were coupled with experience of being a cultural minority, especially one with limited English proficiency, and going through an urban system, these ideals have only strengthened with time. 

As I've mentioned before as an educator, I believe in the goals of the public education, to provide high quality education to all students at no cost regardless of their race, economic status or class. I chose my program carefully because I believed that It matched my own goals, visions of public education and aspirations. 

Cultural Privilege and Education

"Your "race" shapes your experience in society and in schools, but no one fits a standard template as a racial group member. Some of us test the boundaries of racial categories all the time."(p33) I would like to use this quote from the book Every Day Anti-Racism to open up a larger discussion of race in public schools. How does my personal experience as an immigrant white male teacher translate and influence my teaching and my student's/community perception of me? Oftentimes where we come from impacts what types of social resources we have at our disposal, education being a part of it. I think that understanding that the culture that I came from, and the benefits and the privileges that I was exposed to while growing up sometimes to do not translate into experiences of other people. Learning about the history of public education this year, has given me the opportunity to reflect on my position as a white educator.

I think it was when I was reading Kumashiro's Bad Teacher, during the part when he was talking about the desegregation of black schools and the consequent trend of hiring white women to serve the role of indoctrinating the racial minority groups post-segregation, that I really started to think deeply about my work and position in the urban school system. "In the 19th-century the recruiting of young, unmarried white women into teaching echoed the ideology about white women teacher that pervaded imperial Britain, in which their role was to educate not only the White working class but also the Native people and people of color who were colonized by Britain or the United States." Of course I am not a woman, but being a white male in a segregated urban system carries it's own set of racial assumptions for the community and the students that I serve. I personally never fell into the mentality of the "savior on the white horse." As a product of CPS, this was a system that I was belonged to, that I was a product of since I arrived to this country. But this doesn't mean that I have not experienced the tension of being a white male teacher in a predominantly black school. I have often asked myself "how I might be perceived by my community, and what can I do to build trust with the same community." The trust, like other things had to be earned. I knew that I couldn't simply come into a new community, and culture and demand respect. That would come off as very inappropriate and I would probably fall flat on my face, since solely based on the color of my skin and my background, I was coming from a position of economic privilege.

Knowing that racial categories are social constructs and not biological realities, I think is the first step to start thinking about race and it's manifestation in a society. Knowing that certain cultures have been systematically denied access to high quality education is another step in understanding how privilege is distributed in our culture based on race and economic status. I realize that being white, not Russian, but simply white gives me certain invisible privileges, that are not available for people of color. As an white educator, and more as proponent of social justice, I believe in the concept of "educational debt," or as Gloria Ladson-Billings puts it  "The education debt is the foregone schooling resources that we could have (should have) been investing in primarily low income kids, which deficit leads to a variety of social problems (e.g. crime, low productivity, low wages) that require ongoing public investment." With the history of segregation, racism and oppression of minority voices in this country, it is challenging going into a low income school as a white male and establishing trust with a community, but due to the nature of my job (serving the students) it is not impossible.

Being privileged and working in a sensitive turnaround environment can inspire distrust from the community and students, but I think that there are ways by which I can use my assets to build trust and establish rapport. One way would be to build trust with the families of my students by opening up channels of communication, and demonstrating commitment to the education of their children. Next year I would also like to participate in the community based events more often. Sometime that may simply mean, going to the sport events of your students and holding more parent-teacher nights or open houses. This can provide an opportunity as Every Day Anti-Racims points out to "observe how young people test and transcend the boundaries of race categories with one another." (33) Another great way about mitigating the limitations of knowing your students culture, is getting to know your students! That means building personal relationships with students through conversations, and a curriculum that enables students to see themselves fairly represented within it's larger structure. Like Gary R. Howard writes in his book We Can't Teach What We Don't Know "As white educators committed to equity and social justice, we can offer a significant healing response when we advocate for the inclusion of historical "others: in the circle of power." (80)

RadioLab has a great podcast on the topic of Race. Courtesy of NPR.

Being an urban educator

In this blog posting, I would like to reflect on being an urban educator in the light of working in a turnaround setting this year and getting my masters degree. I would like to frame this post with the following question. 

• How do the readings from this course coupled with your residency experiences reshape the way you view yourself as an urban educator and the goals you seek to enact in your teaching? (remember to connect personal experiences to the readings)

Throughout this year, I've learned a great deal, from personal experience, working under a strong mentor and from attending master’s courses about what it means to be an urban educator. My views on urban education have also been drastically altered this year, primarily due to the new experience and amount of research I've put into furthering my understanding of public school policies and feeling their impact first hand in the classroom. 

The first aspect that has changed this year is how I view the role of teachers, and staff in a school. In the past, I have thought of teaching as mostly a lone-wolf profession, where each teacher resides in their own classroom, and sets up their own set of routines, rules, and expectations. Consequently, every other teacher's classroom would adhere to the same principle. This, in my opinion, constituted an individualistic community of teachers, each with their own set of educational parameters, working in proximity with other professionals, but not necessary together. As I've learned, that is a very limited model for teaching in urban schools (maybe even any school), where cooperation, team work and unified mission is often needed to establish a safe and predictable environment for students. This year, I have grown as a team player by participating in PD's, multitude of meetings, negotiations and after school activities. I have both given input to the team of residents and have compromised where compromise was needed, and where my cooperation meant a better outcome for the students. I've learned that while you can run a unique classroom, having a unified set of expectations, cooperation with other professionals in the building creates a stronger sense of community and ultimately a better working environment for school staff and students. 

Building that trust with other teachers, by both praising and challenging different viewpoints was a difficult task. As professionals we take great pride in our ways of doing things, and it can be quite challenging to relinquish a level of control over your own ways. But building that trust within the school, has definitely built a stronger sense of collegiality, respect and trust between other members of the school and me. Charles M. Payne writes "The degree to which teachers in a given school trusted one another correlated well with whether the school was improving or stagnating." (p35) I have really come to care about my mentors, my co-residents, the principal, the students and other staff at my training site this year, and have gone out of my way to build those strong relationships through conversations, meetings, after school activities and helping other teachers off the clock. I've seen the return of my investment come back into my classroom with increased student participation, deeper relationships and a sense of mutual respect. I really believe that fostering trust between coworkers and administration can reap numerous positive benefits for the school climate and culture. Strong social webbing within a school can produce results in both the classroom and the neighborhood. This year, we had an increased rise in parent participation, even though we received a new principal. The sense of solidarity between the community and the school seems to be increasing, with more parents showing up to evening events and after-school activities. This week we held a math and science fair, and we've got a favorable feedback from the parents who showed up to participate in two hours of activities. 

With that said, staying on the path of building inter-professional relationships and trust can create a school environment conducive to reform and open to problem solving. The more teachers trust each other and the administrations and are not afraid to share ideas, the less demoralized a school becomes. Oftentimes that demoralization, as Payne calls it, comes as a product of "poor relational trust." So with that said, one of the goals for next year would be to begin establishing positive rapport with different team members of the school. This may look like helping out with activities, holding or creating leadership roles within a school, and having open conversations between staff about challenges of work.