The Tunica River Park affords a host of opportunities for people who are seeking to understand the historical importance of the Mississippi River's usage from its beginnings with the Native Americans and conquistadors up through it's present-day significance as a major channel for transporting goods and individuals through the American midwest. In an ideal world my students would be able to visit the park and take advantage of the plethora of exhibits and time periods featured at the museum. However, structuring this time to maximize my students' learning must be undertaken carefully so that my students get the full effect of the academic experience of the Tunica River Park and do not simply view the excursion as pointless field trip.
Some of the before school activities that I could have my students complete are:
1) Completing a KWL chart to document students' knowledge prior to visiting the Tunic River Park
2) Researching the history of the Mississippi River and how it has been used in the past by disparate groups
3) Visiting a local river (i.e. the Yazoo River) and having students read about its historic regional significance
Some of the activities I could have my students complete while they are at the Tunic River Park are:
1) Creating a timeline to document the settling of the area around the Mississippi River
2) Describing the work of major figures who settles or worked along the Mississippi River
3) Formulating a schedule for other groups of students to complete a walking tour of the park on their own visit
Some of the activities I could have my students complete after their visit to the Tunica River Park include:
1) Finishing their KWL chart by filling in five things they learned from their visit to the Tunica River Park
2) Developing a community service project to spread the word throughout the Delta about the river's import
3) Writing a persuasive letter to a member of Congress urging them to allot money for sharing the river's history
When teaching in the districts that MTC places us in, tangible success is often hard to come by. Failure seems to be what is constantly in our face as we think of all the things that our students are doing besides learning, all the places that our students will likely end up besides college, and all the classroom management issues we face that make us want to roll over and call out sick. Every. Single. Day. Still, it's in the little things that teachers anywhere but especially in "critical needs" districts must focus on to maintain drive and focus and continue doing what too many others have deemed highly improbable or flatly impossible for centuries: educating poor Blacks.
In many of these districts MTC teachers teach in standardized tests are seen as foreboding signs of eminent doom and embarrassment. In these places, teaching "to the test" is often resorted to as the means through which educational salvation is reached. Teaching to the test is one thing but when you're in a school environment where, from day one, what's communicated to teachers is that teaching to the test is the ONLY thing, well then you're at KIPP. On some level this is understandable as testing determines so much at charter schools like KIPP from our enrollment to our ability to woo private funders to the very renewal of our charter with the state of Arkansas. However, I cannot help but shake my philosophical belief that I have more important life skills to teach my students than finding equivalent fractions and answering multiple choice items using process of elimination.
In any event, our big state test in Arkansas is called the ACTAAP or the Benchmark Exam. KIPP Delta in Helena has some of the highest test scores in the state at the middle school and high school levels. Last year, 94% of our 7th graders at KIPP Delta scored proficient or advanced on the mathematics Benchmark Exam compared to 66% of 7th graders statewide and only 33% of students in Helena-West Helena's regular public school system. What makes this even more remarkable to many is that our school is 99% Black, 99% free/reduced lunch, and in the heart of dilapidated downtown Helena close by local housing projects, gang territory, drugs, and prostitution. Last year's 7th grade math teacher who got these results was so successful that she has been given the green light to found her own school which will be opening in Blytheville, Arkansas in the fall of 2010 as a new KIPP middle school. She's only a year older than me. The venerable 7th grade math slot was thus available when I applied to KIPP this past spring and who teaches this course with the districtwide spotlight on it now?: me. The Black, hood guy from Harvard with two years of (social studies) teaching experience who's a few credits away from a master's degree in education.
Anyway, to my success story. In preparation for the end-of-the-year Benchmark Exam we take practice Benchmark Exams every month. We chart the progress of our students and use the practice Benchmark Exams to target particular students and skills for remediation and re-teaching. Results are scrutinized for hours on end at the individual, school, and district levels. It is highly nerve-wrecking to see where your students are at month-by-month and to know that the results will be known almost immediately by your peers and superiors and reflect your quality as a teacher. Lovely. In any event, the first practice Benchmark Exam we took was in late September. We took a second one two weeks ago in late October and although the success or failure of my students on the September exam could largely be attributed to what my students came into 7th grade knowing, my school director was clear in communicating that the October exam's results would be all my own.
Much to my surprise and the surprise of many a colleague, I'm sure, not only did my students' scores increase from the first to the second practice Benchmark Exam but these were the only scores that increased in any grade level, in any subject area at the entire school. Fifth, sixth, and eighth grade math scores went down. Fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade literacy scores went down. Fifth, sixth, seventh, and eight grade reading scores went down. Fifth and seventh grade science scores went down (we don't do sixth and eighth grade science testing). ONLY 7TH GRADE MATH SCORES WENT UP!!! I was elated when I saw the numbers displayed on the dry erase board at our faculty meeting the night we stayed at school until 10 p.m. grading exams and inputting results on our district network for more scrutiny. When looking at the individual students and their performances from the first to the second practice Benchmark Exam, I also noticed that most of the students whose scores increased were taught by me and not by the more experienced and better respected 8th grade math teacher who takes 15 of my 7th graders into his algebra class each day.
That's wassup. Right?
To be honest, after a second perusal of Ruby Payne's A Framework for Understanding Poverty I'm not sure how I feel about it. Two years ago when I first blogged about the book I had this to say. Oh, the days when I was a fiery leftist blogger.... I still feel Payne overly generalizes a very large, exploited population whose absent voice in a book such as this speaks volumes. I still feel it is inherently absurd to think you can understand poverty, the lifestyles of many people in poverty, or other such deeply complex and malleable concepts by reading a book. I still feel that the myriad holes in Payne's argument makes it as useful as a two-dollar bill in the vending machines on the first floor of Guyton. However, I do hear more of what Payne was trying to get across after having taught for two years in one of the poorest places in the nation.
The research article that I read was "The 'Building Tasks' of Critical History: Structuring Social Studies for Social Justice" by Wayne Au. It was published in Social Studies Research and Practice in July of this year. In the article, Au looks at two case study lesson plans by social studies teachers who actively seek to raise the consciousness of their students around social justice issues. The author utilizes discourse analysis where people "use language to operationalize certain 'building tasks' in order to express meaning, ideology, values, and other aspects of our identities in a given situation." Au concluded that these lesson plans were quality classroom pedagogical devices due to their service as vehicles for students to critically question social relations historically and in the present-day context. In doing so, he dismissed the claims of some that lesson plans stifle the true learning process by assuming that the planning and executing instruction occurs in some sort of linear fashion to a "predetermined endpoint."
Social studies is the academic revelaing of people and their interactions near and far, throughout time and space, from minute households to expansive continents. It encompasses a wide range of disciplines including psychology, sociology, history, and geography to name but a few. Social studies is a primary means of cultural diffusion and is perhaps the most controversial of any major academic subject areas in the U.S. or abroad today. Its ability to profoundly influence not only individuals and their perceptions of self and other but groups' perceptions as well makes it invaluable to nations, academic institutions, corporations, and other large bodies in their constant pursuit of training and re-training citizens for their specific purposes.
Very often, social studies courses from the elementary to the secondary levels of education are thought of simply as history courses. This is understandable, to an extent, as the history of economics or political science or anthropology can reflect the interactions of people and groups of people both over time and at specific moments in time. However, this intransigent understanding of social studies can be highly misleading to individuals who would like to look at human interactions over time through the lens of the distribution of goods and services or the mental processes and permutations that influence human action every minute of each day. Thus, a broader definition of social studies allows us to pursue these other angles of studying people and their interactions how individuals best see fit for themselves.
I've been thinking about blogging a lot, but haven't gotten around to it until now. Only four weeks have gone by since the first day of school, and only three weeks have gone by with the kids, but some much has happened! Or maybe not that much has happened, but I have some many differing responses.
So here I sit in my kitchen in Belzoni on my last day of official residence in Mississippi.
Feelings, reflections, and stray thoughts abound. I'm excited about moving to my new town and school though nervous about the level of commitment that my new position entails. I am very sad to be leaving 99% of my students who I truly care for and worry about as well as many of my colleagues who are remaining here and continuing to work for those wonderful young people's betterment in a very raw and sometimes hopeless environment. I reflect on my beginnings in the state, my trials and tribulations with housing, and what I hope to accomplish with my new group of students. And to top all of this off random thoughts about my plans for after this upcoming school year, the importance (or lack thereof) of the work I'm doing, and more jump into my mind like little girls playing double dutch on a sidewalk.
So here I sit in my kitchen in Belzoni on my last day of official residence in Mississippi.
Feelings, reflections, and stray thoughts abound. I'm excited about moving to my new town and school though nervous about the level of commitment that my new position entails. I am very sad to be leaving 99% of my students who I truly care for and worry about as well as many of my colleagues who are remaining here and continuing to work for those wonderful young people's betterment in a very raw and sometimes hopeless environment. I reflect on my beginnings in the state, my trials and tribulations with housing, and what I hope to accomplish with my new group of students. And to top all of this off random thoughts about my plans for after this upcoming school year, the importance (or lack thereof) of the work I'm doing, and more jump into my mind like little girls playing double dutch on a sidewalk.
It's been three weeks since I left behind Mississippi, and my two years of teaching English in a rural Delta school district (and two partial summers of mentoring and coaching new teachers!). I've been meaning to sit down and give an "ending" to this blog, so to speak, and I think enough time now has passed that I feel like I can do that objectively.
Leaving Mississippi (or more specifically, education in Mississippi) was definitely bittersweet - certainly "relief" might be the first word that comes to mind. I am relieved to be back in an educated state, in a place I love, surrounded by family and old friends. I am relieved that I will never again have to face the pressure, stress, and heartbreak of teaching in the Delta.
But a part of me is distinctly frustrated at the thought of leaving the classroom, or the realm of education. I'd like to work a way back into the education sphere in some way - if not through a career, then peripherally as a volunteer, a board member, a community leader, or even as a participant in a sort of wider conversation about education reform. That was the root of much of my Mississippi woes - I would rather reform the way education happens (to avoid the huge gap in achievement for low-income students) than try to work within a broken system (as a teacher to those low-income students). That conclusion was reinforced as I crossed into Minnesota driving up 35N on my way home from Mississippi. Ironically enough, the first thing I hear over the radio in Minnesota was the last 30 minutes of the Minneapolis School Board Meeting (broadcast over public radio) -- I thought I was leaving education only to re-discover it in a whole new way as I arrived. Listening in on the meeting was fascinating. No board meeting in a Mississippi school district would sound like this. But they had their fair share of big problems, controversial issues and inside arguments, too. Made me want to hop on the bandwagon as soon as I can - and I still plan to.
And so ends this blog. I hope someday soon I will have the sort of incredible inspiration that teaching in the Mississippi Delta brought to me (with perhaps little more free time!), so that I might start a new blog, with new thoughts, on new experiences. I'll leave this blog up here -- partly because it serves as a easy way to remember my experiences, and partly because it might help future teachers cope with theirs. Feel free to read back, and back and back any time you wish!
For now, my time is devoted to writing for someone else's blog. And at the very least, I will still feel connected to the digital world on facebook, twitter and linkedin....
EDIT: An interesting conversation went on re: this last entry over on Ephblog, the Williams alumni blog-meeting space. Read it here.
