Urban Educators' Institute Part Deux

Today was part two of the Urban Educators' Institute, and I had the opportunity to visit a couple schools in Port City. Both schools provided some valuable information, however the second school made a stronger impact on me. During the end of the first school visit, the teacher volunteers took the time to answer some questions, however I disagreed with some of the responses they gave. I will save the questions I have (from the first session) for class on Thursday, and instead I will talk about some of the programs that exist in MK School. Mrs. G. was my groups' guide for the afternoon, and our first stop was to see a woman who worked with about five or six children in a program called "Project Talk." The woman, Mrs. R., works at Saint Barnabas Hospital and visits MK school about two times a week. The goal of Project Talk is to assist high-risk children. The program works with children between the ages of five and 14 who may have behavioral or academic problems. The children are taught how to identify their own feelings such as anger, frustration, distress, etc. While working with the facilitator and the other children, students also learn to improve their communication skills. They work through examples in the textbooks and keep journals about how they would react to certain situations. When we walked in, the group (the children were in grade three) discussed a scenario where a bully was being mean to a student's sister. Each child was asked to write down what they would say to the bully in order to prevent him from calling names and harming either the student or the student's sister. Each child then shared their responses with the group. Within Project Talk, students also learn to develop decision making-skills, anger management techniques, and socialization skills.

The program is free to students, the administration just needs to supply the program with an open classroom for the day. Many of the students are children of substance abuse. Their parents have had with problems from tobacco to heroine and everything in-between. Students are recommended to the program by parents, teachers, and by other students. It was stated that the teachers do most of the referring, however. In MK school, the instructor told us that it works better to separate the boys from the girls - they seem to have less distractions and get more accomplished that way. Although the program works with groups, there is also a significant amount of one-on-one mentoring and counseling. Again, the overall aim of the program is to teach these students valuable life skills.

One of the other programs which was unique to MK is the program, "Cops & Docs." This program brings in various law enforcement officers from Newark and doctors from University Hospital, who address concerns regarding gang violence. They try to educate students about the potential hazards and consequences associated with gangs. Our tour guide was not able to provide us with a great wealth of information on this program. The only information we were provided is that the officers discuss consequences including fines, tickets, jail time and prison, and the doctors discuss (in detail) the real life wounds and fatalities which have been caused by gang violence.

The school also participates in a Special Olympics program, which occurs every Tuesday. The special olympics are designed to help the students in special education grow socially, physically, and emotionally. A wide array of schools from the Port City area participate in the events. The students are split up based on their grade level and compete in competitions such as track and field as well as bowling. Again, we did not have receive a great amount of information on this program, however, our group is doing some research to find out more (which will be posted on our website in the future).

The last place we visited was Mrs. R's classroom (a different Mrs. R.). She is a pre-k teacher who has been with the school for forty years...yes that's right, forty years. She works with students that are about four to five years old and has a sincere love of teaching and working with these students. When asked about the various programs that she has dealt with over the years she said, "Programs come and go, you just have to work with it. Some [programs] are more advanced and the students can't adapt, so you have to take what you can and use it to your best advantage." She stated that the administration in the school is pretty flexible, allowing her to try out different practices and new lessons. Mrs. R. spoke about one memorable lesson which involved a local bank that supplied the students with piggy banks. The volunteers from the bank came in (several times over the course of a month) and gave presentations about accounting and saving money.

Overall the day was very fun. The programs that I mentioned were the highlight of the day. I am still wondering about what makes a good urban teacher different from a good suburban teacher. I understand that each teacher must assimilate to the surrounding community, but I think that a a good teacher is a good teacher. I did not notice any practices in the urban classrooms that were different from what other good teachers in the suburbs have done. I have some other questions about this, but I will bring those up in class on Thursday as well. Stay tuned for tomorrow's post which discusses the third installment of the Urban Educators' Institute!