Stephen, V. P. Varble, M.E. (1993). Instructional strategies for minority students Clearing House, v67 n2p116-20

This subject of teaching urban youth is near and dear to my heart, I know that suburban school districts are probably less problematic and that students are seemingly more apt to succeed because that are not labeled, “disadvantaged.” My time is well spent as a teacher in an urban school district that is why I chose this topic. I want to read all I can read, and learn all I can learn to be able to service all students by whatever means possible. That saying, “Nobody promised you a rose garden,” is true, because is teaching, it is a mixed bag. Each semester, each day, you never know what will happen. People are different; children are different, so it just makes sense to be knowledgeable about who they are, and what it will take to reach them. If a teacher is not willing to what being a teacher has to offer, this is not the profession for you. The authors of this article examine general problems that plague urban minority youth and educators that continue researching in search of an answer. They attempt to give some insight as to why we are losing so many urban minority youths? What are some of the problems they encounter? What are their school experiences and most importantly, what can teachers do to keep their learning spirit alive.

In this article, through findings supported by renowned educational researchers, Stephen and Varble uncover evidence that support teachers and administrators belief that urban students are disadvantaged, unreachable, and uninterested, however all is not said without explanation and remedy. Yes, our students are of low socioeconomically backgrounds, which serve partially for why they have low self esteem and limited educational experiences. According to the research of Riley, 1991 these behaviors are due to the lack of family structure, homelessness and poverty. Many male adolescents fall victim to gangs and crime whose lives are destine to end in prison or death.

The noted “at risk” students have been categorized as maintaining over 50% of the dropout rate and statistics show standardized testing scores are not even close to their white peers. Bloomfield, (1989) has determined that the illiteracy rate among African American and Hispanics could be as high as 40%. Due to these astonishing findings, the students of these cultural backgrounds have identifiable deficiencies that prevent them from being eager and enthusiastic as they continue in school. It is said that they enter school with an excitement to succeed, but because of the lack of confidence either by themselves or teachers, they soon become disillusioned and discontent, so much until they come to believe that are dumb, and are engrossed by a “cycle of failure and despair.”(Knapp and Shields (1990).

This journal continues to assess the effect of how teachers view urban minority youth. Means and Knapp (1991) concludes that having knowledge of the backgrounds of minority youth will lead some teachers to segregate students from others by placing them in low ability groups. Because of this action, academics and disciplinary problems are more prevalent among them. Teachers have low expectations for students and consequently teach with less rigor and creativity. Handouts and repetitious handwritten

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rote assignments that have little or no meaning is the bulk of their teaching style while they fail to connect the lessons to the students real life situations. Varble and Stephens believe that in order to reach minority urban students, teachers must use instructional strategies that directly relate to their neighborhoods, streets, and issues, instead of traditional literature and textbooks. Eggen and Kanchak suggest that teachers focus on teaching from a constructivist style with the bulk of the instruction being student centered and group work.

Group work is a valuable tool because it provides students a sense of responsibility and ownership. Students feel less threatened and are not thrust into a competitive situation while trying to learn. It evens the playing field and encourages participation. Student involvements can be initiated on many levels that would help mend the “deficiency” that has been recurring in urban minority students.

Stephens and Varble end by listing several assessments and tools that students can use to grow and improve in their academics and have less time to think about dropping out. They are suggesting the use of portfolios, student-teacher conferences, student-peers evaluations, self evaluations, exhibitions, video presentations and interdisciplinary teaching team’s evaluations. According to Parkey and Smith (1983) teachers can work together to provide flexible guidelines and instructional methods to meet the students need and empower students enough to help them survive in the classroom and succeed.

This article for me was truly worth reading and I advise anyone that plan on working in an urban school district to read it. It offers teaching strategies as well as insight into the many unanswered questions one might have. As teachers we think we know our students and the one that don’t fit the mold, we feel that they are in less need of our service and we tend not to reach past our understanding of “student learning.” Because our students are under resourced in many areas of life, we tend to under serve them and think nothing of it. We must learn to infuse the curriculum with their familiarity and interject learning with what interest them so that they can feel education is going to benefit them. This research of the problem just scratches the surface of the real underlying challenge of educating our children. This article is really caused for us to reflect on who we are as teachers. I like the challenge of working with students that people believe have no cause. It is very rewarding to me when I see how students improve on their and attendance and actually like coming to school. I need to see them succeed in order for me to feel my worth. I use many of the strategies mentioned in the article, and I would like to do more, to build self esteem and insure them that what they are learning will benefit them. The authors of this article gave great examples in integrating the curriculum and infusing life connections, as well as supplying enough information for teachers to share among themselves. Stephen and Varble have explored so many alternatives to help educator s under the needs of urban students, along with lessons and strategies that teachers already use, but can improve on to make learning more conducive to the student. I am convinced that knowing better will enable teachers to do better.

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Scott, J.L., Teale, W.H. (2007) Effective literacy instruction urban children: voices from the classroom. The Reading Teacher, 63(4), 338-341

In this article the discussion of the needs of urban learners is placed first and foremost. Authors Teale and Scott (2009) clearly examine the views of experienced literary educators. Their teaching practices have undergone action research and implementation in their own classrooms and many across the nation. One of the teacher researchers, Diana Cory’s writing and word knowledge practices have become popular in classrooms throughout the country. The discovery that minority students were not just Hispanics and African Americans was the result of the by Mona. She found that Asians, low-income Caucasians,’ Africans, and students of the Middle East are becoming a part of inner-city school districts. Rather than focus on the socioeconomic as to why these students are so dispirited, they collectively saw a need for more teacher involvement. First it was believed that teachers are not familiar with who their students are. Mona felt that this was one of the gravest unmet needs. She says that teachers do not take into consideration what the actual needs of the students are, but find it easy to just label the students unmotivated. The teachers were asked to address five issues that would provide insight into what are effective literary practices. Among the answers were needs of urban learners, principles/theoretical framework for literary teaching, literary practices evaluating outcomes and change. Scott and Teale then noted the commonalities and differences found among teachers.

Neshelda’s research included problems being the lack of support, lack of student exposure, and change in attitudes. Her findings was that emotionally, urban students are not being met with compassionate support and that teachers are not looking at the students’ individually and cannot communicate a genuine concern,, and therefore can’t help the student move past emotional issues that they must deal with at home. Secondly,She felt that they weren’t being exposed enough to positive environments. She says that exposure is a key ingredient in changing a child’s misconceptions of school into a more positive attitude. Mona took the attitude that all teachers should take and that is to believe that all children have ideas, words and voice that can be developed effectively through writing. The drawback to this is that if the writing doesn’t meet the teacher’s approval, they may be negatively judged.

The three educators agreed that the framework for literary teaching should: Accelerate student achievement to the greatest extent possible. Appreciate the critical role of a diverse literary-rich environment in the

motivation and attitude of children Employ a range of language and literary teaching and learning strategies that are

explicit and systematic to ensure both confidence and competence. Deliver instruction that is hands on, differentiated, fun and creative, a most all

relevant. Employ constructivist principles that see students and teachers as partners,

allowing students to play a role in identifying what they can do with the information.

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For each part of the framework, the author’s have provided strategies that would answer some of the many questions that have been continuously asked, “What changes are needed to move us toward pedagogy of success for urban learners?” Clearly all three of the teacher researchers felt that teachers need professional development to help enhance the knowledge of teaching urban students. They are stressing that administrator’s dialogue with teachers, instead of forces mandates and pushing papers that merely make suggestions. Unfortunately, this happens without their knowledge because many of them surprisingly know little of what goes on in the classroom. As I continue reading and learning more about the needs of urban students I will do my best to enlighten my colleagues in hope that we will eventually began to practice what we are learning.

Hanushek, E.A., Rivkin, S.G. (2008) Do disadvantaged urban schools lose their best teachers. Calder National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research. Brief 7 1-6

Assuming that I believe that urban school districts also have low functioning teachers, I have decided to read this article because it actually answers how low ranked teachers end up in low achieving schools. Authors Hanushek and Rivin began this research in a Texas school system on the strength that parents, administrators, and policy makers (authors of NCLB) believe that the key to a good education is teacher quality. Is teacher quality based on salary, education, experience or student outcomes? What makes a teacher effective? It was also found that policies that determined the effectiveness of teacher performance were not that accurate. Teachers have been known to select their school of choice. According to Dolten and van der Kaauw (1995-1998) school choices are not based on teacher effectiveness, but some teachers tend to prefer schools with higher achieving, higher income students in addition to higher salaries. On the other hand, the 2006 study by Scafidi, Sjoquist, and Stienbrickner, showed that teachers that left the public schools did not transition to higher paying jobs outside of teaching, but preferred taking a lower paying position at a private school because they felt it offered job satisfaction and teacher retention. Teacher retention is very important for the climate of a school, however, no matter the salary, some teachers are not interested in dealing with massive behavior problems, low or no parent involvement, and students that are “disadvantaged.” They would rather not work hard to retain students or have no evidence of students making gains in reading and math. In many instances, teachers would rather not come to work to “work hard,” but to hardly work. Ideally, every student would be on task, make gains, behave like angels, and love to be at school. Unfortunately, that is not the case, and many school districts will never be the case. Many teachers will seek to teach in districts that are exempt from enrolling students that have been overlooked and have inadequate resources, and for that reason, authors Hanushek and Rivin conducted research to report on the validity of teacher quality and how it is distributed among school districts. They began by estimating the variation of teacher value. The main objective was to get a model of what teacher distribution looks like by using alternative estimation approaches. It was found that estimation of quality within school has less obstacles, but cannot provide information or between school differences, but provided evidence from the point of view of district-wide and within schools. The findings lead

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them to depicting sort vs. non-sort. Sort is to divide schools into a sample that sorts students into a classroom in a selective way. In sorting is was found that teacher distribution showed a student achievement 0.2% higher escalating the student 8 percentile points in achievement distribution. In the non-sorted sample, there was a reduction of 15% where classroom achievement was rejected in each school within the school estimator showing a slightly higher standard deviation, but the change from the full sample and from the other as explained by the authors.

In closing, research proved that teachers that left the Texas public schools are less effective in comparison to their colleagues in the same grade regardless of school average achievement or proportion black. To answer the question, the leavers are the negative teachers that didn’t have much to offer in the first place.

I hate to say, but many teachers are not willing to work hard to engage students in learning if it involves thinking or working outside of their comfort zone. Disadvantaged urban schools do not lose their best teachers, because according to the research, it overall support the fact that teachers are willing to take a cut in pay, just to have the classroom where the socioeconomic structure of a family is not first and foremost the reason for failing students. Good teachers want to work at what is arguably noted as good schools. I feel that teachers that are dedicated to the profession of teaching don’t mind accepting the challenge of making sure students are making gains no matter the cost. Many times teachers accept jobs in urban areas because the pay is heightened and good teaching is not always what gets the person hired. They will commute long distances to get to bad neighborhoods, and even visit the students’ home and not care a lick if the student can spell or add. Many Caucasian teachers accept jobs in urban areas because they want to be the one that helps the “poor little black children.”

The article was an eye opener, and I hope that the teaching profession once again attracts teachers that really care whether or not their students succeed in life. After all, the student’s season for learning what the need to know to help them get to the next level is up to a teacher.

Chapper, M., Downey, A.C., Hanger, S., Riggin, M. (2010) Democratic education: in through the out door. Perspective on Urban Education. p. 125-127

This is one of the most profound articles I have read throughout my interest in teaching youth in urban schools. The four writers’ of this piece are educators from the West Philadelphia school district that have earned doctrine degrees in education as well as what they call “ a significant amount of time” studying schools and describe to readers the meaning of “democratic education.” I don’t know if this is a new buzz term, but it is a new term for me. They define democratic education as,” the idea that all members of a school community play meaningful roles in determining what is learned and how.” As a result of trying to make meaning of this struggling school system, the researchers made the decision to explore the relationship between the where and how of teacher education. They believed that

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