Another day, another whirlwind of activity here at HGSE.
After a morning meeting (in a very futuristic classroom!) about the logistics of finding an internship, we met up in the third floor of the Gutman Library to discuss diversity, equity and equality, part of a new initiative at HGSE to develop core-competencies in that area for all students in the program.
We broke off into groups and I got to talk with two of my classmates, one from a small Vermont town and the other from urban Pakistan, about our bios and all the various groups (religion, gender, nationality, etc.) that affect our perception of the world and the world’s perception of us. After all the day’s earlier talk of logistics and scheduling, it felt great to finally dig into some deeper discussions about more important stuff.
After that, the class had a larger discussion about the readings we had done over the summer, as well as a speech given by Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot at the Dean’s Welcome Reception the day before.
All I could say is, woah.
It was so amazing to hear from people from so many diverse backgrounds in one place. People from all over the world, all different stages of their lives, some teachers, others technologists, a few doctors, all talking about their experiences and challenges with diversity and schooling. Some spoke from the student’s perspective, many from a teacher’s perspective…. it was especially interesting to hear from the international students, I thought, about the lens through which they viewed these problems here in America. Obviously each international student had a different perspective too, based on their country of origin.
One student from Scandinavia spoke about how the state there was much more involved in the personal lives of students, and how that helped them and their families prepare them better to come to school and be ready to learn. Which sounded, frankly, pretty amazing.
Another, a teacher at a private school, talked about how her life totally changed as a teacher when her class size went from 24 to 15. She said she thought probably the general public had no idea how much of a difference that made in effective teaching, and she said she as a teacher didn’t even realize how great it was until the change happened. It was the single biggest change that helped her become an effective educator.
As someone who came from the world of media, I guess the biggest takeaway I had from the readings was how the media messages around these issues are always conveying a sense of futility.
We are constantly bombarded with a sense of how futile efforts are to reform schools, and study after study reflects how desperate the situation is. Sarah Lawrence Lightfoot echoed this in her speech, saying that this was the reason she originally began doing academic research, to try to subvert the wave of negativity.
What if more people heard about the success stories and were able to emulate them in their particular districts? Is there a way to open the lines of communication between educators more so that they can share their successes, as well as their failures with all these issues?
I think, as I am beginning to look into classes and internships for this semester, I’m going to try to investigate how to use my media experience to address some of these questions.
daneder1 