Reflecting on article - "A How-to Plan for Widening the Gap" By Kim Marshall

"Academically needy students have expanded learning time during and after schools, go to summer school, and have the materials and incentives needed to maximize learning outside school." After reading this passage, I immediately pictured this...

A struggling first grader who wakes up in the morning crying to his or her parents, who did not graduate from high school, not to make him or her go to school. After the struggle of jumping on the bus to go to school, the student walks into the classroom sits down for morning meeting but half way through is told it's Tuesday and he or she needs to go to the speech teacher for 25 minutes. This now takes away the time works on daily work (math problems, figuring out the day/time/etc.). After the student returns, it is time for recess but the student had missed daily work, so the teacher said the student will have to stay in and finish. Now the student starts to panic and rushes through their work just to get out for recess. He or she does not care about the work being done or the learning presented. As the day continues, the student misses his or her favorite music class for time with the Title 1 teacher and later stays after school to receive help with a volunteer math tutor. When the student comes home he or she has to practice spelling words, eats, and heads to bed. Now although this may be extreme and drastic, no wonder some children who struggle academically hate coming to school.

Being reading and early childhood endorsements with a special interest in speech and language pathology, my career seems to be heading towards educating the students whose schooling is extended past the traditional 5-18 age range or who will be pulled out of classes for extra work on certain academic areas. Even though I fully believe in the effectiveness of intervention programs and extra help, especially in the early academic years, there may be an argument that needy students are pushed harder and harder to meet standards and benchmarks, which may end up actually hurting them.

Going back to Marshall's article, I do agree with most of the "15 effective practices" that could be implemented and it seems there is support to show growth, but is this as easy as it sounds? Are these ways always best for the students? And how can the parents, community members, etc. help resolve the issue?

Trading Schools....Is it the teachers, money, or expectations?

Watching this video about students from an inner city school and students from a suburb school switch schools for a day, a million questions run through one's mind. How can public schools be this different one half hour away? Are the teachers inadequate in inner city schools? Should we be pouring more money into inner schools and less into well established schools? Trying to answer these questions is near impossible but watching the video, all I could think about was the expectations of the society, the parents, community, teachers, administrators, and of the students. With a graduation rate of 40 percent at the inner city school and a ninety some percent rate at the suburb schools expectations are different. It would seem that society puts an expectation for the students in the suburbs that it isn't a questions whether they graduate. For students in the inner city it may be that students skip school and do not try because education isn't emphasized to be a top priority. Also the teachers may have different expectations for students. In inner cities, goals and expectations may be to get students to come to class or to not misbehave during a lesson. So how do we go about changing society's, parent's, and teaching expectations in our schools?