During Institute: What You Missed...

Post Introduction

It has been a loooong time since I have updated my blog and I am sorry. You will notice that I have changed the name. I felt that my experiences really encompass more than just my TFA experience, but really life after college. I am now what I have always pretended to be, a young professional. This is a title that I wanted for quite some time and now the day has come. It is pretty exciting!

During Institute

There is far to much to write about in terms of my experience at institute this summer for Teach For America. I witnessed a lot of things and learned a lot of things. The experience had its ups and downs, but in the end it was all for my kids and the impact I will have on them. I will, however, highlight a few things that really struck a nerve.

Diversity

For an organization who strives to close the achievement gap and embraces diversity within its organization, it does not do a good job at preparing people for working and living in a diverse environment. I do love TFA's definition of diversity, because it is one that includes all facets of diversity. However, when I walk around and hear my white peers ask why do we care about race or why is everyone making such a big deal about it, then the diversity workshops are not being successful. Before we can teach people how to handle situations concerning diversity, they need to understand the fundamental definitions and history. I will stop there, because I could on and on.

Teaching Urban Children

One thing I tried making very clear to my white peers or even African-American people who do not understand what it means to grow up in an urban environment is that they will be teaching a different type of student. While I believe that they are highly capable of achieving at any level and making it to college; I also believe that in order to get to urban children we need to use different tactics.

Urban children, from my experience, are use to aggressive tactics in terms of behavior. Now I am not saying beat them because their parents do, but when a child from an urban environment acts up giving him or her a strike, writing their name on the board, giving them their first warning does not work on them. My best and most successful teachers, when I was younger, were the ones who talk to me with urgency and dominance. My teachers did not give out strikes or warnings, they said sit down or I will sit you down. They made a connection between my bad behavior and consequences that I would not want. They gave positive reinforcement even when I misbehaved. Overall, they were aggressive. They showed me that they were in charge and establish respect. However, they established respect not through intimidation, but through realness.

Urban Teachers

You have your good teachers who gain respect from their students by being real, but being aggressive. Those teachers respect their students and know their boundaries when it comes to using more aggressive tactics. Then you have teachers who use their power over students to demoralize them. They gain their respect through intimidation. They use violence to gain respect and play my horse is bigger than your horse with their students. I witness this so many times this summer and it made me sick!

Students act up and teachers scream and yell at the top of their lungs to the point that teachers in other classrooms cannot concentrate on teaching. They grip students by their necks and shirts to show their control. What is that really doing? Nothing but teaching students that when someone does not listen to you that you can use force and violence to show them who is boss. It shows them that when home is not a safe space, that school isn't either. I heard many of the students this summer say, " I am not coming back."

I helped raise three kids. I use to scream and yell when they misbehaved and never gave them a chance to speak on their own behalf. Where did I learn this from? My parents of course! That is what they did, so that's how I dealt with my own situations. However, I took a class on conflict mediation in college. It taught me that the best thing to do in a conflict is listen and validate. You do not have to agree, but people want to be heard.

So I used this tactic on my siblings. I started listening to them and asking them why they did this or said that. I noticed that it made them think and then we could have a conversation about why they were asked to do something or why they should not have done what they did. It became a learning opportunity instead of a fight for who can be the loudest. Now when my siblings do something bad, my parents call me to deal with it. My siblings call me when they have trouble, because they know I will listen. This same thing can be done in the classroom, in my opinion.

There are so many other things, but these were the topics that I talked about the most this summer. These are the things that really boiled my blood. Please feel free to comment and disagree with me. I would love to hear other thoughts.