Ann, Thanks for the informative post. I taught school back in the seventies, the first year at a school on the south side of Chicago. Two stories came out of that experience that indirectly support the John Hopkins study you referenced.
The first is from my first open house. When I asked other teachers what I should prepare they laughed. There were over 3,000 kids in our high school. That evening the teachers all gathered in the lunchroom. When a parent showed up, the teachers of that student were called down to the principals office and met with the principal, the parent, and all teachers at the same time in a conference room. I believe that 6 parents showed up that night. These students had no support or interest coming from their homes. There were no expectations of success, from parents or fellow students. The ones that achieved were truly amazing students. Which raises the question, were the teachers any good? The school had been one of the top academic schools in the Chicago system only a few years previous. After the riots the population had undergone a rapid, over the summer, shift. It changed from an established home owning heavily eastern European immigrant population with a strong Jewish community and growing middle class Black segment to a poorer, rental property mix of Blacks, Chicano and Puerto Rican with the poorest of the recent Polish immigrants remaining. From the school being a center of community life, it became some sort of institution imposed by a system outside most of these peoples lives. Those teachers could teach. The staff was the same that had been there when the school was one of Chicago's best. They still had their successes but they came in spite of the environment the students were raised in, not a reflection of that environment. The second story concerned a student I was working with after he returned to school from being in a drug treatment program. He was a bright kid, a fairly good reader, and was making significant and steady improvement in both his attitude and schoolwork. He suddenly disappeared, turned up back in treatment and after a few weeks was back in the classroom. I asked him what happened and he said "My dad took the light." Not sure what he was talking about I asked what he meant. He explained that his dad worked in a car wash and wanted the son to work with him after school. That meant he had to do his homework in the evening. I asked what that had to do with his dad and the light. Apparently the dad was bothered by his sons renewed excitement with school and so he started taking the light away from him at night. If you're still not following, thats okay, neither did I. The point was they only had one light. The dad wouldn't let the son use it for homework. How does a teacher overcome that? Bob Gustafson MMM __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Make a great connection at Yahoo! Personals. http://personals.yahoo.com _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
