Urban Student Teachers: A Collective Case Study

In his essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal: America’s Educational Apartheid,” Jonathan Kozol brings our attention to the apparent growing trend of racial segregation within America’s urban and inner-city schools (309-310). Kozol provides several supporting factors to his claim stemming from his research and observations of different school environments, its teachers and students, and personal conversations with those teachers and students.

Schools systematically subjugate minority and black students when a school’s enrollment contains a huge racial majority. If students have no exposure to persons of different ethnicities, cultures, races, and religions, then these students will experience culture shock when they confront “other” people. Even in our class, we talk about black and minority students as another group, one that differs from “us.” We think about the inequalities in school systems as problems we need to fix, not as problems that have influenced our thinking and affect us as prospective teachers. For example, a white graduate student with

Every teacher’s worst nightmare – that is the setting to which Madame (whatever you do don’t call her Mrs.) Esme Raji Codell stepped into as her first job fresh out of college. In this sink or swim world Esme, unknowingly, became a lifeguard to thirty youngsters, as she seemed the only one who could protect the children from the rough waters that are inner city Chicago. Through studying her very candid and personal diary, I am awe stricken by her extraordinary display of pedagogy as she exemplifies what it truly means to be a teacher. Esme’s proficiency in her dealings with situations surrounding equity, creating a safe, relaxed and positive classroom environment, expectations as a teacher, gender, diversity learning, multicultural

Everyone should be treated fairly and respected with race or gender having nothing to do with how you approach a human being. Yet, in urban areas across the country there are many teachers who cannot relate with the struggles their students face. Cannot relate with the living environment students from all racial backgrounds are coming from. For example, when I was in the Fourth Grade there was a white teacher, she was genuinely nice and tried her very best with the classroom or generally all minority background. The problem was that she couldn’t relate to us in most aspects of our living outside the school. She gave us a list of things we needed for the classroom in which the parents couldn’t afford. None of the students seemed to connect with her because the

Lisa Delpit’s book, Multiplication is for White People, she outlines different reform strategies that will change African American education in the 21st century. The first reform strategy Delpit outlines is to recognize and build on children’s strengths. When teaching in an urban school, teachers should begin by understanding the children and their home lives. Using the knowledge that the children already have, and building on that will help students succeed. Believing that African American students are not worth being taught, plays a major role in the way students react to their educator. I believe that once an educator begins at a specific school, they should survey the student's knowledge to use that to go forward. Then using that to build on everyone’s strengths throughout the year will help in class participation and build a sense of community in the class. Recognizing a student's strengths, will make the student believe that he or she has someone on their side who cares. Once they feel that someone cares, they will want to do

Upon the premise of further exploration, Mari Ann Roberts found a definition of what is meant to care for underachieving African American male students. Roberts surveyed eight African American teachers to attain their point of view of what it meant to care for their students which included informing them about how to survive in the racism of the United States of America that they will and are exposed to (Roberts 456). The discussion of political clarity was addressed by several teachers to help students understand “the importance of education and emphasized that they believed, for Black people, academic achievement would eventually equal equality” (Roberts 458).

My mother sees past the perceived barriers of poverty and crime, through to the real Detroit. When my mother started tutoring in Detroit, I was concerned. “Is the school you’re teaching at safe? What do you do when your students are disrespectful?” My mother was quick to respond. “When they are disrespectful? Maria, do you realize most of my students are just like you? They love to learn, listen to music, play games…” My mother started telling me stories about her students, showing me their feelings, beliefs, and dreams. Now, Detroit is more than just a city to me – it is a collection of stories, of children just like myself.

Urban school districts have the odds stacked against them. Often times the families attending urban schools live in poverty. Poverty creates many social-emotional, mental, physical, economic and educational issues. People regularly blame the students or their families as a reason why students in urban settings are receiving unequal education when compared to their suburban counterparts. What is not considered is “educational outcomes for students of color are much more a function of their unequal access to key educational resources, including skilled teachers and quality curriculum, than they are a function of race” (Darling-Hammond, 2007, p. 320). This shows that although poverty is an important issue to tackle, focusing on better preparing teachers and staff to deal with the special circumstances in urban situations is a higher priority when thinking about

Since my first day of grade school I have dreamt of becoming a teacher. It was not until my junior year of high school that my dream grew into a passion for wanting to teaching in an urban environment. During a field tip to a Chicago Public School, I observed that the students where clearly in an underfunded and disadvantaged environment compared to my own experience in school. The moment that I saw that teacher earning respect and influencing her students, it was obvious to me that these teachers were the most influential factor in the classroom. The teacher’s attitude and ability to influence was more important than any other resource.

Teachers working in inner city high schools in the United States face enormous challenges. Their students, most of whom come from economically disadvantaged minority families and often do not speak English as a first language, present a daunting array of educational needs for teachers and schools. Resources and school structures are seldom sufficient for the task. Despite such conditions, some urban high school teachers persist for many years in the classroom and experience success and satisfaction in their work. Through a survey and extended interviews, this study identifies three broad factors that motivated a group of these teachers to remain in inner city classrooms for more than 12 years: (1) the students, (2) professional and personal

Talking about education can bring up many problems. People often make assumptions based on people because of what they look like or what they hear about them. In a classroom there is no place for assumptions, to make a classroom safe. Tamrat talked about how there are three different types of teachers; agents vs. enslavements, taskmaster and technocrats, and agents of emancipation and detoxification. He talked about how every teacher should be an agent of emancipation and detoxification because they have holistic emancipatory and are willing to ask questions and face reality. Teachers shouldn’t discriminate against people in their class; everyone is there for an education and should get

Stanfield recognizes both the approach and orientation of the interactions she exercises to engage the teachers’ practice of a black teacher is different from what she would use with a white teacher. In fact, the context of the dialogue Stanfield uses with a black teacher was their common positionalities based on race and motherhood.

The revolving door of urban teachers can be reduced if only the focus was on quality rather than qualified teachers. The definition of a “quality urban teacher” will be analyzed throughout the following literary review, as well as a data analysis from data collected from a questioner of two urban assistant principals and two successful urban teachers.

The population of the United States is ever evolving. According to the United States Census Bureau, the United States will become a “majority-minority” population by the year 2060 (Colby & Ortman, 2015, p. 9). In this ever changing society, we are still seeing a small margin of minorities choosing to become teachers. In fact, the teacher-student diversity gap is growing every year. On top of a lack of minority educators in the field, there is also a lack of proper preparation for white teachers who are working in diverse classrooms. In our transforming society, we need highly informed and diverse teachers who will embrace and encourage cultural diversity.

The purpose of this paper is to give a personal reflection of the podcast featuring University of Maryland professors Daniel Chazan and Lawrence Clark. Chazan and Clark participated in a 2013 podcast interview hosted by Samuel Otten, Assistant Professor of Mathematics Education at the University of Missouri (http://mathed.podomatic.com/entry/2013-06-10T19_14_44-07_00). Chazan and Clark, both professors in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership, joined Otten to discuss the Special Issue in Teachers College Record (Vol. 115, No. 2) which focuses on the impact of African American mathematics teachers in urban schools.