The "prickly subject of race" and "gifted children" should not be missed from our List.
Thanks to the Crookston Times for reprinting this excerpt from a Minnesota Public Radio broadcast!
The
St. Mary's program is part of an effort among some teachers to make
their classes more culturally relevant to their students.
All the bleak statistics about Minnesota's achievement
gap became personal to fifth-grade teacher Jen Engel, when she realized
that gap was playing out in her own classroom.
"It stares you right in the face. It's real."
Engel
teaches at Echo Park Elementary School in Burnsville, where about half
of the students are racial minorities, many of them struggling
academically. The 43-year-old, who is white, has heard about the factors
that can contribute to the racial achievement gap, including poverty,
unstable living conditions and troubled families.
But she says those are no excuses for educators.
So
Engel is one of several teachers who are learning how to be what
educators describe as "culturally responsive" to her students as part of
a Twin Cities program offered by St. Mary's University of Minnesota,
whose main campuses are in Winona and Minneapolis.
"The outside
factors are not within my control," Engel told Minnesota Public Radio
(http://bit.ly/ZTibUQ). "When these kids come to school, I see where
their strengths are and where the gaps are. It's my job at the end of
the day to fill those gaps."
Minnesota has some of the worst
academic achievement gaps in the nation between white kids and students
of color. For example, Minnesota has the nation's worst on-time
graduation rates among Latinos and American Indians and is among the
worst for black and Asian students.
The St. Mary's program is
part of an effort among some teachers to make their classes more
culturally relevant to their students. It requires the teachers -- most
of whom are white women -- to find new ways to connect to struggling
kids.
St. Mary's instructor Marceline DuBose encourages her
students to shake up their traditional teaching styles. She said music
and movement can help capture students who learn differently.
The
education system is already working best for white, middle-class kids,
particularly female students, so it's no surprise that many teachers
share those traits, DuBose said. The state Department of Education
estimates that less than 4 percent of Minnesota teachers are people of
color. Yet more than a quarter of Minnesota's students are nonwhite.
Sometimes,
that disconnect can result in a not-so-subtle bias. DuBose, a former
social studies teacher, said she had former colleagues who gave up on
poor or nonwhite students. She recalls hearing them bemoan that
classrooms aren't what they used to be.
"They were white teachers
and had been teaching for a number of years, and they would attach
directly 'the way it used to be' with the idea that they had to alter
their rigor and expectations, because they just weren't going to get
from the students what they used to get," DuBose said.
Those lowered expectations can play out even for students of color whose families are well-off.
Luz
Maria Frias is a Latina mother of two, married to an African-American
man. Both are attorneys. Frias remembers confronting her daughter's
elementary school teacher after learning he had not selected her for a
gifted program. She came to school armed with standardized test scores
showing her daughter scored in the nation's top percentiles, she said.
"He
admitted he was very familiar with her academic achievements, and that
she was a gifted child. And when I asked why he had excluded her from
the gifted program, he said he had forgotten."
Frias then asked
him how many kids in the gifted program were girls or kids of color. The
teacher acknowledged that there were none.
"It was a tough
conversation," Frias said. "His first reaction was, 'Are you calling me a
sexist?' And I said to him, 'You'd be really lucky if I stopped
there.'" Frias, now a vice president with the Minneapolis Foundation,
was able to persuade the teacher to include her daughter in the program.
But she says not every parent is savvy enough to push for these kinds
of opportunities for their kids.
Supporters of culturally
relevant teaching say it's not just about believing in your students.
It's about developing deeper relationships with them and not shying away
from the prickly subject of race.
Tracine Asberry, an
African-American school board member and a former teacher in
Minneapolis, says it's natural to teach who you are. But if you come
from a privileged background and don't believe in the struggles faced by
many people of color, your opinions can alienate a lot of kids.
"As
teachers, teaching students who have different realities, we have to be
aware of those things. We can't just be aware of them. We have to be
comfortable so that we can have the conversation, and then encourage our
students to feel comfortable to have those conversations in our
classroom."
Asberry believes one way to close the achievement gap
is to close the teacher gap. For some students of color, she says, the
key might be as simple as making sure the person leading the classroom
looks like them.
