Metaphors for knowledge/random thoughts

I have always referred to students as mine or my "kids" and somehow had convinced myself that this meant I cared about them, which I genuinely do. However, it never occurred to me, and apparently not to them either, that there are connotations of ownership and power contained in those possessive pronons.

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In response to Belle's comments about how we so easily reduce things to economic relationships, I think the same can be said of the educational community. More and more we hear about how there are achievement gaps for underserved students, yet the very measures aimed at helping those students are targeted at the students most likely to be successfull and not those that are neediest. We are about to offer scholarships to students who can commit to a full-time education and are triple-exempt from any type of remedial work. While this is admirable, it ignores a large population of students who have tuition covered by PELL grants, but cannot come full-time because  most work to supplement the family's meager public assistance allowances. These students are often those who are in the lowest-level remedial classes, who may have GEDs because they dropped out of day school to work to support the household and who are now being excluded from an opportunity to get ahead. If we only wish to help those who don't need remedial work and don't need to work to help their families, aren't we making an economic choice to help only those who will provide the biggest pay-off to the college? Can we and should we be doing more?

Margot

Comments

[Arancha]

Margot:

Thanks for bringing up this subject. I think it's crucial that we start speaking precisely about this.
In our choices, in the choice of offering more help only to those students who can acommodate to a traditional idea of a committed student, we are in fact undermining the purpose of a community college. Sometimes I feel that we are not proud of being in a community college and aspire to become something else by creating an elite of students: those we can show to the world.

I have had countless cases of students who are taking 6 classes and holding one or two jobs. Most of them are having real difficulty keeping up with class work and many of them are not doing any college work outside the classroom. When I have spoken to them, I have recommended that they do not take so many classes when they need to work so many hours. The answer is alway "financial aid". If they drop classes, they lose financial aid.
Many of our students will not finish their studies in two years, but that should not be considered a failure. Let's give them the opportunity to study at a path that they can handle. Let´s not take opportunities away from them.

Arancha

[Monica Trujillo]

I agree both with Arancha and Margot about the need of not forgetting those students that can not be full time but I do think we need to propose something to the ones that can do it!
I think we should instrument different kind of help for our students and i know it is difficult but those students that need remedial courses need tons of extra help INCLUDING scholarships!. somehow i feel that just looking at their academic performance to "classify" them we are set up for failure. in a very different field, health, there is an interesting study done by an MD/antrophologist/infectious diseases working in haiti: he compared the outcome of two groups of TB patients; both groups were given the same medicine but the experimental group was offered the help of a social worker that met with them and their families, visited them, gave them money to allow them to eat better and supported the families; the control group got just the medicines. it was a great surprise for some (!) that the experimental group got cured faster and there was less relapses.
i think at the community colleges we need to address the complex social and economical problems that our students face to be able to suceed.
i do think we need to offer opportunities for those that can move ahead fast and also to the ones that need more support.

[Pete Gray]

Monica, Arancha,

Let's take your ideas a step toward the concrete, to extend the call for support to examine what kind of actual material support is being offered by, for example, our institution, as well as the kind of support we might begin to imagine and plan.

One concrete manifestation of support, though largely indirect, is this seminar, and others like it where faculty members are supported to take time and reflect on their teaching in important ways with the effect being to better serve our students

[warning, an aside: (there's another interesting metaphor: to "serve"...I can't not think of that partially in terms of coming out of a catholic religious background and linked to a version of liberatory pedagogy espoused by Friere...a very different notion than "service" learning, yes?)]

Other ways that the college offers material support for many of our students to succeed? I think they are largely invisible to faculty members and this is probably the result of not enough fora for administrators and faculty to interact in meaningful ways. And in visible ways. Part of what Monica is pointing to above is the kind of linkage between the medical establishment and the social services support. Is it too far of a leap to think that our situation of faculty/administrators of supportive programs is analogous?

Pete