The school that I taught at in Philadelphia was different in regards to the socioeconomic status that I grew up in. First and foremost, every student qualified and received free and reduced breakfast and lunch. As each student arrived they would enter the cafeteria to eat their breakfast and line up in the schoolyard, which was all concrete. The area in which I grew up had a tremendous amount of space that included multiple playing fields, courts and playground equipment. About 15% of students in my home district received free and reduced lunch. To my ignorance, I did not even know the program even existed until I started teaching in Philadelphia. Growing up in an area that was extremely suburban there was very little diversity. At approximately
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Growing up with highly conservative parents insisted that being poor was a choice people choose to make. After working with students of low socioeconomic backgrounds, I realized this was the complete opposite. This is when I first realized how equity needed to be applied in the classroom. There was a large majority of the parents of my students that had full time jobs. Furthermore, they were similar to my family in that they wanted their children to have a good education. I had to move past my assumptions that families weren’t caring because of the behavior the children displayed in the classroom. The actions in the classroom had little to do with parents not being good parents, are more on my rigid and inflexible expectations. “Most of the participants who had negative experiences reported that they handled the teachers’ behavior by “acting out” or by withdrawing and becoming silent (2003, p. 15). Once I was able to see the reality and disregard my assumptions, true progress was able to obtained by the students. Initially, I felt as though I would never be able to connect with these students, and it ended up being the exact opposite. We were able to establish a strong relationship once the students knew I believed in …show more content…
Walking through the hallways, someone may think that that all the resources of an affluent district. A large library with Apple desktop computers, paired with Promethean boards in almost every classroom, would indicate no lack of resources. To a visitor, the perception of the school is a book with a great cover and missing majority of it’s pages that tell the true story which would emerge in repeated visits for a one week span. In that time, students would enter the classroom wearing the same clothes for five days straight. Many times, the students did not have personal hygiene products and would have a distinct odor. Resources for students were plentiful, but what the students went home to was the exact opposite. On the converse side, a visitor would notice that their teacher worked hard to embody a professional. Every day, I made personal decision to wear a shirt and tie. Friday was a day to dress down in a golf shirt and dress pants because I only assessed on Friday’s. According to a study by Ryan Hannah, “A teacher should be dressed professionally enough to establish authority, but relaxed enough that a student isn’t intimidated to ask them questions” (Hannah, 2013, p. 9). This was a calculated decision as I wanted to be approachable during an assessment, and the lack of tie helped me accomplish
Growing up with highly conservative parents insisted that being poor was a choice people choose to make. After working with students of low socioeconomic backgrounds, I realized this was the complete opposite. This is when I first realized how equity needed to be applied in the classroom. There was a large majority of the parents of my students that had full time jobs. Furthermore, they were similar to my family in that they wanted their children to have a good education. I had to move past my assumptions that families weren’t caring because of the behavior the children displayed in the classroom. The actions in the classroom had little to do with parents not being good parents, are more on my rigid and inflexible expectations. “Most of the participants who had negative experiences reported that they handled the teachers’ behavior by “acting out” or by withdrawing and becoming silent (2003, p. 15). Once I was able to see the reality and disregard my assumptions, true progress was able to obtained by the students. Initially, I felt as though I would never be able to connect with these students, and it ended up being the exact opposite. We were able to establish a strong relationship once the students knew I believed in …show more content…
Walking through the hallways, someone may think that that all the resources of an affluent district. A large library with Apple desktop computers, paired with Promethean boards in almost every classroom, would indicate no lack of resources. To a visitor, the perception of the school is a book with a great cover and missing majority of it’s pages that tell the true story which would emerge in repeated visits for a one week span. In that time, students would enter the classroom wearing the same clothes for five days straight. Many times, the students did not have personal hygiene products and would have a distinct odor. Resources for students were plentiful, but what the students went home to was the exact opposite. On the converse side, a visitor would notice that their teacher worked hard to embody a professional. Every day, I made personal decision to wear a shirt and tie. Friday was a day to dress down in a golf shirt and dress pants because I only assessed on Friday’s. According to a study by Ryan Hannah, “A teacher should be dressed professionally enough to establish authority, but relaxed enough that a student isn’t intimidated to ask them questions” (Hannah, 2013, p. 9). This was a calculated decision as I wanted to be approachable during an assessment, and the lack of tie helped me accomplish