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1 Elizabeth L Wood Cindy Burchett Human Relations Independent Study 5 February 2013 Diversity and Equity Interviews As I am a second year teacher, I wanted to better understand my own schools opinions on diversity and equity. It is worth mentioning that I was at another school for my first year and my internship was in yet another location. Out of all the locations I have worked at, this school system and community seems to be the one that values a good education the least. So I thought this was the perfect assignment to do in order to see if I was the only educator in my school system that felt this way. I collected my data in a variety of ways. I held personal conversations with the Principal, who is a native and attended school here as a child, and he is going on his eighth year as a principal in Colfax-Mingo high school. I interviewed the teacher who has taught here the longest an upper level English and Spanish teacher. I also interviewed the English teacher who is a newbie to the school district like myself. I also then sent out an electronic survey to the school and received anonymous responses. I was not surprised by my responses during the personal interviews, but the results from my survey didnt seem to match the input I received in the personal settings. The Principal of Colfax-Mingo HS, Mr. Jones, has a progressive perspective about our students. Mr. Jones spends most of his time dealing with IEP and 504 meetings, or dealing behavior problems. This is drastically different from my last principal. While my last principal still dealt with these same issues, she still had time to do walk-throughs, socialize with staff, check attendance, help work on the class schedule, and was overall very active in the entire school process. Mr. Jones is so busy dealing with the aforementioned things that he often delegates a lot of work to his teachers. My peers are the ones who double check attendance, the entire teaching staff was told to create our new class schedule for next year, and while he does his mandatory evaluations, the staff is now being asked to do peer-evaluations for professional development. Mr. Jones states the we need to do a better job of teaching using

 Wood 2 differentiation with our students. This will allow us to spend more time understanding our students. Recently, Ive been asked by Mr. Jones to record one of my class periods and document health problems for a particular student. This was his suggested differentiation method for this student and he made it very clear that it was not up for debate. It is also very clear that Mr. Jones acknowledges that our school is very diverse. The teacher who has been in the school system the longest, Mr. Pace, also notes that there is diversity in our school system. Mr. Pace teaches the advanced level courses for Spanish and English, which include DMACC certified courses. Almost every night I watch as previous students go in to chat with this very intelligent man, and afterwards he tells me about how brilliant that individual was as a student. The line of former students seems endless. However, it is fair to say that Mr. Pace only has the best and brightest in his room. His class sizes are much smaller than that of the other English teachers, and while my Spanish classes have anywhere from nine to fifteen students, his have either four or less. Mr. Pace recognizes that this diversity is not racial, ethnic, or even religious, but instead its a socioeconomic one and he attributes this reason to his low class enrollment. This wise man says his best years (in terms of bright students) coincided with the well-off times when Maytag still had their company in the area, and a majority of families still held jobs. Now, since the company left, according to Mr. Pace, The community just doesnt value education anymore. It didnt use to be like this, Elizabeth, it just wasnt. Mr. Pace partially blames this problem on the principal for his pro-special education mentality. Mr. Pace said that when Mr. Jones came in as the principal, the schools focus changed from how to educate every child to be all about those with special needs. Mrs. Cooper, the English teacher, is similar to me because while she is not a new teacher this is her first year in Colfax-Mingo. Mrs. Coopers thoughts and comments are very similar to mine. Mrs. Cooper states that the community as a whole does not value education. For example, after a misbehaving student received a detention, the mother complained and the principal put a camera in Mrs. Coopers room to record the behavior. Mrs. Cooper was told she needed the camera to record the behavior, because they needed proof that this was happening. The police are often routinely called, simply as a measure of documentation. This

 Wood 3 leaves Mrs. Cooper feeling like her opinion as an educator is invalid and shes frustrated because the response is to document instead of treat the behavior. Mrs. Cooper has spent countless hours on the phone, communicating home to parents of students. She also sends personal, handwritten letters to parents, and at the end of the last semester she offered special, individualized tasks to students who were failing to allow them to pass with a D- grade. Mrs. Cooper did this last part because we had all been yelled at in the beginning of the year for simply failing too many students. According to Mrs. Cooper, one student was failing with a 20%. All she had to do was write a two-page paper about herself to get a D- and not fail. Mrs. Cooper recognizes that this was what she called the easy way out but she had students not even complete these minor tasks to bring up their own grade at the last minute. She also told me that she had a few students not take her up on this very gracious offer. Colfax-Mingo is a mainly white district, with one African American child and three Asian foreign exchange students currently. So it is fair to say that our issue in Colfax-Mingo is socioeconomic disparity. I came to this conclusion on my own, but this is mostly because I have worked in other school systems before. I worked in an affluent school that was racially and ethnically diverse for my internship, but the community still valued education. All kinds of students were enrolled in advanced courses from white to black and rich to poor. Every once in a while, a teacher would make a comment about why a student was the way s/he was, but it seems like every child at Colfax-Mingo has one of these stories. Student A acts up and doesnt turn in work because his dad killed himself, Student B is quiet and withdrawn because her mom cheated on her dad, Student C doesnt participate in class and is tardy all the time because mom couldnt afford to keep them in her last school district, and so on and so on. Young deaths, financial hardship, etc. are all characteristics of poverty. I understand that every child/person has a story, but it seems that theres always some home story to justify why the bad behavior is occurring in this district instead of how to improve it. After talking with Jones, Pace, and Cooper who all seemed to validate my thoughts about our school system, I was kind of shocked when I got the results back from my anonymous survey about diversity in our school system. The educators who responded have been in education for as little as two years and as much as thirty-nine years. The educator with the

 Wood 4 most experience inside Colfax-Mingo CSD had 36 years. Their answers to the survey were very interesting. The educators who responded appeared split on most questions. For example, when asked about the school engaging in practices that address diverse learning styles, half the responders stated that they agreed that the school did this while the other half disagreed. Quite a few other questions had similar responses. For example, when asked if our school emphasizes respect for all students cultural beliefs and practices and if whether the school fosters an environment of appreciation and respect for student diversity 57% of responders agreed while 43% disagreed on both questions. One teacher stated that s/he often hears racial slurs targeted at African American and Hispanic groups. This teacher has even heard students calling our lone African-American student the n word, but stated that when the comment was addressed that the students said the African American child simply laughed about it. Similar results were found when asked about if our school textbooks contain multiple or diverse perspectives. On the questions that received a majority vote, I often found that I personally disagreed. Out of the educators polled, 71% believe that the school sets high standards for academic performance when it comes to all students. One reason I disagree is because some teachers simply assign a homework packet that needs to be turned in by test time, but does not go over it with the students. He simply grades it and hands it back. Recently, two students were caught cheating on the assignment. While the students did in fact cheat, I believe its the teachers fault because (1) he assigns meaningless paperwork, (2) he handed back graded packets from student whod already turned it in before they were even due, allowing an easy cheating system. This type of homework is meaningless because the students are simply completing paperwork theres no learning or instruction involved. On another question 71% of polled educators agreed that the school encourages students to enroll in rigorous courses such as honors and dual enrollment regardless of race, ethnicity, or nationality. Perhaps it is my fault in the wording, because if the race, ethnicity, and nationality parts were a required portion when answering the question I would have to agree with them; however, as a whole our students do not have the same rigorous course work that Ive seen in other schools. Yes,

 Wood 5 we offer DMACC certified classes but we only have 3 students in the Spanish course and maybe 10 in the English one. A lot of advanced courses are offered online, and while I understand learning is moving towards this style, it is not our own educators instructing the courses. I also believe our courses arent rigorous because we have two students who spend half of their school day at another school in order to receive instruction for core classes, like math, English, and science. In their words, the classes here just arent challenging enough and the kids here misbehave too much. The parts of the poll I agreed with deal with our leadership expectations of students as well as the multitude of opportunities that students have to help the community or other people. Around 85% stated that they did not think we obtained diverse student perspectives through regular leadership opportunities while when asked a very question, This school considers perspectives obtained from diverse student populations in decision-making, 43% of staff disagreed and another 14% thought this question was not applicable to our school. I must agree with the findings. I believe when it comes to student leadership, we are lacking. At my previous school, I witnessed the power of effective student leadership. While there was a core group of seniors who led by example, they were always asking for everyones input or encouraging all kinds youngster students to participate. The students acted like everyone was a brother or sister. It was really a positive and powerful thing to witness as a teacher. Now at Colfax-Mingo, I watch the same group of kids getting to make a decision when students are asked for opinions. I often feel, and I believe the students get this feeling as well, that theyre only asked for their opinion to say theyve been asked for it, but that their opinions are never actually taken into account. According to the student counsel representative, the kids are often afraid when the principal wants to meet with them and they often try to avoid it. Even though we may not do this well in our school, it is clearly obvious that our school values community service because 100% of individuals polled said that the school offers many opportunities for students to make a difference. Spanish club is usually where the most opportunities are offered, but I will put a stipulation on this and say that it tends to be the same group of individuals (just like in student council) that head up these endeavors as well. Opportunities include Make a Difference Day, Race for the Cure, and the Senior Citizens Prom.

 Wood 6 Most of the questions I asked related to the student experience, however I thought it was appropriate to add some about the teachers experiences in regards to diversity and equity. Every teacher polled agreed that we monitor student progress at this school. This can be attributed to the fact that were on the Watch List because of low-test scores, and administrators never let us forget that. However, the effect of this monitoring does not necessarily translate into positive thoughts about the way administrators are handling it. With so much emphasis on helping our students read more effectively, 28% of teachers still do not believe we are developing policies and programs as a result of that data. This surprises me personally because it seems like Im always being told one extra thing that I need to be doing. In regards to being given the right materials, resources and training needed to effectively work with diverse students 71% said that they thought we as educators did not have these tools. While all learning does not need to come from a book, I know I am not the only one who has to go without one. Ive also had personal conversations about not knowing how to reach the students who simply wont connect. The data Ive discussed in this section tells me that we need to do more than emphasize the fact that our students dont take tests well, but that we need help ourselves in getting them to where they need to be. Our students are so diverse that were unsure how to reach all of them. This assignment has been very insightful for me. It has put the issues presented in the text into context, and its also made this issue real. It has helped me define my perspective of the school I currently teach at, as well as possibly understand the why behind it all. Im going to encourage a similar survey to my superintendent and principal so that they can get some honest feedback from the staff. Its important for administrators to know that we need more resources. Instead, were all scared to say what we really feel and resultantly arent getting what we need in order to be better teachers. Once the educators start getting what they need to be better, our students will become better as well.

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