In my diversity + equity class on Mondays, we have fishbowl discussions. This is where half the class sits in a circle and has a discussion, over a topic the professor chooses, and the rest of the class watches them and takes notes and discusses their observations after the discussion is over.
Our discussion topic this past Monday was to make a brainstorming list of everything that we felt contributed to a gap in the achievement of low income or minority students in American schools (because there is a huge gap from kindergarten to high school, you know). Our list consisted of:
- Teachers' low expectations
- Almost all teachers are white females
- Parents working 2+ jobs, with not enough time to help with homework
- Language barrier (parents don't speak English, can't help with child's homework, child is learning English and can't understand many things, etc)
- Poor child readiness (child comes to kindergarten/1st grade never having been read a book, not knowing how to count or what their colors are, the family doesn't own any books, etc)
- Loud/hectic household, child unable to focus on homework
- Because of low income, child may not eat at home or have enough food and go hungry
- Anxiety/stress because of low income
- Poor health
- Parents may be unable to attend conferences or meet with the teacher
- Child may need to take on more responsibility at home, such as child care for younger siblings, household chores, or parents think family time is more important than homework
As we've been learning in all our classes, these are all things that contribute to the academic achievement gap that occurs in minority or low-income students and their families. As prompted by the professor, we needed to choose our top 3 that contributed the most to the gap. We chose language, teacher bias/low expectations, and families not spending time with their child getting them ready for school or setting them up for success inside a classroom (such as reading to them, teaching the alphabet song, etc.).
When I say that these parents failed to set up their child for success, I'm not bashing the parent. It may not be their fault at all. As a low income parent, their primary responsibility is to work and earn money so that the family will not be homeless, have food to eat, and hopefully clean clothes to wear. And when a single parent or both parents need to work multiple jobs to make that happen, it becomes impossible for the parent to make sure the child is ready for school; their biggest concern is making sure their child is safe and healthy. How can a parent who is just trying to keep their families' heads above water in a system that is settling THEM up for failure, be able to make sure their children are at the same level in kindergarten as rich white kids?
The next thing my professor told us to do was to role play as women on a school board and we had unlimited funds to make changes in our schools and provide resources to families to fix these top 3 things. What would we do?
- Provide classes so parents and families could learn English together.
- Provide clubs or daycare/preschool programs designed to help families get books, food if they don't have enough, and help children be ready for school and feel successful.
These are the two I remember the most, although there were many more that we discussed. And of course, there were issues with these too; a classmate of mine, whose parents don't speak English said they had the opportunity to learn when she was in school but it was really, really hard and inconvenient for them to learn. They didn't want to. They may have felt forced and there's no way that someone who does not want to learn a language will learn it easily and be any help to their student.
Our professor ended the discussion by saying that we will have the same groups next week, and the discussers (myself included), needed to do the suggested reading and come up with ideas to fix these issues we saw in the current system. It was really easy to come up with ideas when we had unlimited funds and resources. But now, in the current system, how can things change?
Maybe next week after my Monday class I'll share what we talked about and how our ideas could be implemented in today's system, to fix the system.
