What Is On You Classroom Wall Summary

I thought it was really interesting to read ‘What is on you Classroom Wall’ when thinking about how the structure of a school can impact the school climate. This poster was supposed to be a motivational poster to a specific culture and therefore, specific students, yet it was a totally flawed and almost rude representation of this culture. There is so much more diversity than to just the Hollywood image of American Indians; this counselor had put 500 different American Indian nations into literally one simple poster that’s showing all Indians are the same. There were many things that were implied with having this poster up and it was affecting students. When you put up a poster of non-white groups, you really need to examine on whether this …show more content…
It’s interesting to read that tracking is a complex structure that is simply just reinforcing cultural assumptions and actually influence the student’s identity. The type of instruction that a group of ‘at-risk’ students may get is going to be different than those placed in a higher level. It’s talks about how teachers in low-track classes are often unprepared to teach the subject and usually new teachers. They assert that curriculum is inherently political also when it comes to tracking because social class interests sustain it. It is simply sorting students and tracking them, which is therefore preparing them for a place in society. Retention is also intertwined with other policies and practices in schools that worsen inequality. The decision to hold someone back is often based on high-stake tests scores. When reading about the high-stakes test, I really started to see how curriculum is inherently political. When looking at schools with low-test scores, they often make teachers change their teaching to begin to teach to the test. There is this vicious cycle of failure that really needs to be stopped but can only be stopped at a higher level then just the school. It is a political …show more content…
It was interesting because during my junior year, I had this rebellion and had a really hard time with ‘the system’. My friends were learning totally different things in their ‘regular’ classes than I was in my honors and they were getting away with doing really quite mediocre work. Their teachers taught out of textbooks and their assignments were out of the books. I started thinking how pointless it was that I was doing all this work only to be getting a better GPA but ending up at the same schools as people because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to afford to go to a better