Constructing Kasun, Educator

I put the “C” from ICUSP into practice.  Institute for Community, University, and School Partnerships–C for community… I met with parents who the parent coordinator at the middle school selected for me to meet with.  They are three former PTA members from last year.  

We met at 5 pm in the parent coordinator’s classroom.  They are African American, and I am white.  In my introduction to them, I explained that I’m tired of the inequities that too many children in this country face in education, and the ones with the inequities tend not to look like me–white.  I also explained my reasons for wanting to do a PhD–to combat those inequities, to make school a place where kids don’t have to put on a mask when they walk in the door.  I don’t plan to explain this everywhere I go, but I felt like being as honest about my intentions as I can from the start.

These women all have children at the middle school.  The women were smart, thoughtful, interested.  It was humbling in a deep way to see the eyes of the parents–they are the ones who care the most, probably, about the program I’m trying to make work at the school.  And you know it matters the most to them–the parents, custodians of the futures for their kids.  You pray they believe your honesty and that you don’t screw it up.  The last thing I want advisory to be is some sort of mission work on the fly which serves my pursuit of, what–an advanced degree?

In general, they said they liked what they saw (I shared the page and a half of parameters of how advisory will work, the three main content components, the mission statement).  I also showed them the list of topics of curricular areas the planning committee had come up with.  However, they had important concerns.  What will we do to address the communication style some children have where they have side conversations?  Their side conversations aren’t supposed to be rude–it’s a discourse method.  The advisors (namely teachers) will have to understand that this style isn’t bad in and of itself–but rather that norms will have to be agreed upon within the group–not permitting that side conversation, but not dismissing the children’s experiences of it.  Luckily, the parent coordinator said staff have already received training to understand these (as the parent put it) “cultural differences.”  I also explained that advisory should also be a space where teachers learn a lot more about the children they teach.  It’s a cycle that should build upon itself.

More feedback–many children already have the skills we plan to teach.  Amen to that–and we want the experiences not to be redundant but to be cumulative–where kids can practice skills they have in ways that extend them.  And another interesting piece–the loud kid, the boisterous one, often is the one who is chastised.  But so often, she or he is the one who has really important observations to make.  Amen to that, too… I had to hold back tears as I thought of my students from last year in alternative education.  So often their experiences were the most important–and yet stifled by formal education.  Hopefully advisory will provide the safe space so that their experiences will be valued and voiced, as well as the experiences of the quieter students, too.

They had good questions about just how things would run… who the advisors would be, how they’d be chosen.  They had specific concerns about how to tailor the lessons as well–concerns that I will build into the way we write the curriculum as well.

We exchanged phone numbers, and I thanked them for their time.  I hope my intentions, training, and willingness to understand their perspectives, creating a space for those perspectives, will be enough to make this work.

I’ll be at the the middle school’s Back to School night on Sept. 2 and hope to meet more parents and get more feedback.  It’s about the C in ICUSP–and if we don’t put that letter in there, we’re just four letters without the critical link.

My Course Update–GREAT NEWS

I have a spare 30 minutes after my previous class letting out early.  Yes, I will drop the human inquiry course I described in my previous post.  The professor of the “Immigrant Experiences in the US” course is letting me in.  ”I could kiss your feet,” I told her.  While this is exaggerated, if she had said, “Do it,” I really would have.  The sense of relief was too immense–particularly after hearing her go through the syllabus and the incredible readings we will cover as well as her own expertise as an anthropologist in the field.  I am overcome with relief but have to put the stamina together for my next class in a few minutes.

Today was my kick-in-the-chest first day of school at UT, sort of.

I sat through the supposed-to-be three hour class related to human inquiry (turned into less than two so we could get to the bookstore to buy a necessary book before it closed at 6).  And felt shocked.  The professor laughed her way through how hard she is, how she has the power in the classroom.  And then had us write individual definitions to words like, “reality, knowledge, theory, science, objectivity,” had us sit in groups to come to consensus on a working definition, and then went around the room for each group definition.  To tell us how wrong we all were at each turn (making sometimes admissions when someone was a little bit right).  Then she gave us the “right” definition and has us take notes.

I looked around the room and saw the women’s and men’s faces fall.  Some looked down.  Some twitched.  I thought about the educational research that shows when emotions are running too high, the student can’t learn very well.  I wondered if I was there emotionally, feeling beaten down and like I knew very little.  We discovered that one paradigm of thinkers, the social constructivists, had been misusing the term for reality and confusing it with knowledge.  Reality is, after all, what exists.  Independent of everything else.  According to her.

This was my sort-of first day because it’s the class my advisor said I should take if I can’t get into the others I want (I’ll find out after sitting through a class in about one and half hours if I get in).  

To the professor’s credit, a graduate student here I admire who works with her as her advisor, says that the above professor is one of the best and perhaps most honest here.  ”Education is violent,” the student says the professor has told her–and she agrees with that sentiment. Maybe she’s right–maybe education uproots that which is false within us.  Maybe multicultural education is too soft, a repackaging and normalizing of things that already don’t work?  That doesn’t sit well in my gut, but I’m here to learn–and judging from that professor’s syllabus and student testimony, I could, despite my feelings, learn a lot.

More on the meeting I had about meeting with parents at the middle school about advisory–a meeting in which I learned a lot–in a subsequent post.