African American School Culture

I teach first grade at Lowe Elementary School; my class is made up of twenty-four very diverse seven year-olds; they come from all over the city of Louisville, from a variety of socio-economic situations. Each student brings a unique personality to our classroom community, and they all work hard to become “smarter and smarter” and to “go to college”. Thirteen students are boys and eleven are girls. Of these twenty-four students, three of them are English Language Learners. Additionally, eight students receive tier two interventions and two receive tier three interventions in reading. In math, five students are tier two and four are tier three. I also teach one student who receives ECE services for a developmental delay. Within my class there is a wide achievement gap.

Challenges Faced by Hispanic Students in American Schools and How Schools Can Address Identified Needs

Another challenge educator’s encounter is the cultural gap that is between students and teachers. It is important for educators to understand that some culturally diverse children may need things explained to them in a different way for them to gain an understanding.

In this paper I discuss the African-American culture in regards to values, norms and beliefs.

Music is a creative art form that allows the artist to construct something that expresses a purpose. It evolves over time and changes as the world changes, taking on many different motivations behind the melody and lyrics. In today’s society, anger, oppression, racism, and negative opinions rule the media and popular culture. I believe that African Americans need to show their self worth and not let white people hold them back. With the music in white culture often mocking African American culture and portraying negative stereotypes, African Americans have to find ways to gain respect. In acknowledgement of the negative portrayal of their culture, African Americans respond by creating songs and videos that express their pride in their culture and heritage, react to white oppression, and communicate their independence.

Africans have, since the early settlement of America, has had a great influence in the nation’s growth. These contributions to the United States from enslaved Africans have been greatly portrayed in American culture. Varying from cuisine, to song and dance are not only portrayed today but it has a deep-rooted impact throughout the United States. During the middle passage, enslaved Africans were forced to abandon their everyday lives, their families and their homes and forced to adapt to a new lifestyle they knew nothing of. However, upon arrival into the New World, due to their prior knowledge and wisdom from back home, they were able to quickly adapt and custom themselves to this new lifestyle in order to survive with the hope of potentially one day returning back to Africa. Unfortunately, African contributions to the culture of the United States has received little to no recognition and it has been taken credit for by Europeans and Whites since the early establishment of the United States.

According to the 22nd annual report to congress (2003), African-American students are overrepresented in 9 or 13 disability categories: specific learning disabilities, speech and language impairments, mental retardation, emotional disturbance, multiple disabilities, hearing impairments, autism, traumatic brain injury, and developmental delay. Meanwhile, Hispanic students exceed population estimates in 3 categories: specific learning disabilities, hearing impairments, and orthopedic impairments.

Mrs. Alice McLoughlin-Doro is a Special Education teacher at Downers Grove South High School in Downers Grove, Illinois. The community is known for its excellent school districts. According to the 2010 census there were 47, 833 people living in Downers Grove with approximately 19,000 households and 13,000 families. The racial makeup of the school was reported to be 88% White, 3% African American, 5% Hispanic, 0.2% American Indian or Alaskan Native, 5% Asian, and 1.6% from two or more races. About 1.7% of families were below the poverty line. The school district report card reports the following racial/ethnic background for the school: 68.1% White, 10.3 African American, 11% Hispanic, 7.3% Asian, 0.2% American Indian, and 3.2% two or more races. The elementary schools, middle schools, and high school all perform very well academically receiving above state average scores on standardized tests. She has been working there for 10 years and is currently a Case Manager of 17 students, all with an IEP, all with different needs and goals in the LD department. She co-teaches two general education classes in English intervention, all freshman. Although she is a Special Education teacher, she works with all the students. She also teaches a READ 180, Tier 3 reading and english intervention. This is where we will be focusing on for this

Introduction: My kindergarten learners are very diverse. It is comprised of twenty-one 5 and 6 year old students. There are 11 boys and 10 girls. In my class, there are children with ADHD, severe learning disabilities, multiple ESL learners, Cerebral Palsy, Severe Behavior, and other assortment of needs.

That adds to about $35,000 each year to fund an average-sized and average-quality year-round program. The Massachusetts study estimates a possible cost difference of 13 percent when increasing center quality (Marshall et al., 2004). This brings us to almost $40,000 per year. To scale up the number of children served, more teachers would need to be hired to keep class sizes small and quality maintained. If we want services to be equally available to the 2,800 children under the age of five in North Lawndale from low-income families, we should prepare to cover the costs of as many of these children as possible. The Massachusetts study noted a total enrollment over 40 to be large enough to impact quality if not enough teachers are hired; there are 70 times as many children in North Lawndale as this 40-children standard center size, which brings our $40,000 estimate to $2.8 million. This still leaves plenty of room for adjustment within our $5 million per year budget to increase the building’s capacity or purchase additional buildings, along with funding an outreach campaign to inform the North Lawndale community of the free services offered through our partnership with GELA. However, even these building expansion costs may be mitigated by reaching out to local elementary, middle, and high schools to outsource free classrooms for our ECE program. When public schools have vacant classrooms, they can be donated to our program for use. This public

Intensifying pre-kinder is a major concerns after the 2011 Texas Legislation eliminated all grants for full-day programs. It is said that success made in pre-K lasts a lifetime, and children with a high quality pre-K program begin school with more advanced skills in comprehension and problem solving. If programs to elongate school days do not pass the next option would be to increase the number of days students attend school. With smaller amount of schools along with estimated population growth Texas educators have put a lot of thought into this option.

Currently, I am student teaching at Alfred E. Zampella PS #27 School in the district of Jersey City. The school is located in a busy city, next to John F. Kennedy St. which is especially busy in the morning and during rush hour. This results in several late students on a day to day basis. On the other hand, this school is also highly accessible and as a little over a thousand students. The school has grade levels from kindergarten to 8th grade, and has a mix of general, special, and inclusion education classrooms. Typically, families that enroll their students into this school are of lower-middle socio-economic class, and tend to be majority Hispanic, Indian, and African American, with few Caucasians and Asians. This school provides a variety of special programs for their ESL students and special need students. Students may be offered speech language pathology, occupational therapy, physical therapy, ESL programs, reading recovery, and counseling.

Collaboration between teachers is a key component to professional development that will lead to higher student achievement. There is a need for schools to set up time for teachers to be able to collaborate together. This allows for teachers to help each other, matchup content, teach each other new and best practices, troubleshoot student issues just to name a few of the areas that collaboration time can help foster within a school. The key is to build time for teachers to be able to collaborate during the school day or week. This collaboration time needs to be between grade levels, departments, and cross curricular when needed. For many schools this is an afterthought to the school schedule or a fleeting thought after the master schedule is completed. A principal needs to keep an open mind to any strategy that will enable the teachers to be able to collaborate for the good of the students and the school.

I have traveled all over the world but I have never been down South. Being from New York has also given me a very narrow perspective of African American culture. The purpose of this research project is to gain some understanding of Black culture specifically in the South. College has exposed me to a lot of people who were born and raised in the South and some of my closest friends are southerners. By researching the history, culture, and demographic information of the South, I plan on becoming a more well-informed American.

Not only did these findings lead to an increase in the number of schools but also now there are over eight million enrolled between the ages of three and five (Boyer 47).