The Town, the School, and the Students

“The process of confronting and adjusting to change is a painful one.”(pg. 40)

While Jonathan Kozol’s “Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools” made me pause and think a little bit more than any of the other selections from last week’s reading, it was Guadalupe Valdes’ “The Town, the School, and the Students” that I could relate to the most. In it, I felt like she was writing about my hometown, my schools, and my students.

I grew up in Carrollton, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. I often describe it as the second phase of “White Flight.” It was a middle class community where professionals who didn’t want their kids going to Dallas ISD schools lived. Perhaps my parents actually chose Carrollton because my dad grew up there as well and the schools were good. I grew up with parents who both had college degrees, my father is an engineer and my mother is an accountant. Before they had kids, they both worked full time jobs, but once they had my sister, my dad continued to work and my mom stayed home.  I had a dream childhood. It wasn’t without its sacrifices, we never had the newest toys, or went on grand vacations, but my mother was at my school ALL THE TIME. My parents helped me do homework, went to any and all parent meetings, volunteered at school, on field trips, on weekends, and went to every activity I was ever in. And my parents knew where I was academically. My mom could recite my test scores, my IQ, and my grades. I always knew I was going to college. If wasn’t a matter of ‘if’ more a matter of ‘where.’ My friends knew they were going to college. Again, it was more a decision of ‘where’ not ‘if.’ And when the time came, I chose Texas Tech. I attended for 4 years, earned a degree in political science, attained my teacher certification and came back to Carrollton to teach. I was going to teach kids just like me. While teaching in the Carrollton-Farmers Branch public schools was not my first job out of college, it was pretty close. And I still had that ideal image of what awaited me in my home town.

And then reality hit.

And I soon realized the middle school I walked into as a somewhat idealistic 24 year old was NOT the middle school I walked out of as a naïve 14 year old. It was different. Valdes’ words are much more accurate at explaining what I walked back into.

“In the face of rapid population shift, the entire character of both the community ad the schools change. “New” children are unlike the “old” children. Expectations that teachers have about study habits, background knowledge, language and discipline are found to be inaccurate. Assumptions about children’s futures must be questioned. Views about curriculum and standards, as well as opportunities to learn, cannot be taken for granted. Some teachers feel angry. They feel cheated at not having the “good” students they once had. They join together to complain to the principal. The solution, they argue, is to hire more new teachers to handle students who are not up to their standards. Principals, however, do not have easy solutions. Sometime they, too, wish that the new children would simply go away.” (pg. 40)

So many questions ran through my mind. Was I prepared to teach these “new” students? Could I ignore all the negativity about them from the other teachers? What is the district doing to help me teach these students, and help them learn?

What I found out surprised me. While I was living a dream childhood, naïve to any shifting population surrounding me, the district was putting in place steps to help these “new” students. I go to know my students; their culture, stories, home life, and goals. I very rarely met their parents but I was able to meet their needs while they were in my class.

Valdes’ does a good job of describing where these students are coming from. But she is short on solutions. As a teacher, I want to fix things. I want solutions, and ethnographic studies provide little solutions. Stories are good, but I want to know about the next step. What can we do for these students that are sitting in my classroom right now.

My district is still changing. There are still people who feel the same way the teacher’s that Valdes’ described. There are still students that I will never reach or understand. But my district is trying; I am trying; Together we are trying to change and evolve in education. But like Valdes’ says “The process of confronting and adjusting to change is a painful one.”(pg. 40)

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Valdes, G. (1989). The Town, the School, and the Students, Learning and Not Learning English: Latino Students in American Schools. In J.  Noel (Ed.), Classic Edition Sources: Multicultural Education (pp. 34-38). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.