Urban Culture and Underserved Populations, Community College Pedagogy in the 21st Century

Reading assignment from Estela Rojas

Here are links to the two articles that Estala Rojas suggested we read:

A Transition for Community Colleges: Teaching Institutions to Learning Institutions. by Jim Reynolds and Stuart Werner

Maturana's Biology and some Possible Implications for Education. by Joy Murray.

Background for Frances Lucerna's talk

Frances Lucerna did not assign any reading associated with her talk but she identified the following topics that would provide background for the work they are doing at El Puente and for her lecture. Arancha has located some websites associated with these topics, which you should look at in preparation for the next seminar.

Paolo Freire (and Popular Education, Education for Liberation):

http://www.edb.utexas.edu/faculty/scheurich/proj3/freire1.html

http://www.paulofreire.org/

http://mingo.infoscience.uiowa.edu/~stevens/critped/linksfreire.htm

CBO schools:

http://www.cydjournal.org/2001Summer/CBO.html

http://www.ccsso.org/content/pdfs/CBOHighSchools.pdf

Project Based Learning:

http://www.edutopia.org/php/article.php?id=Art_884&key=037

Small School Movement:

http://www.ccsdistrict.org/McKinley/smallschools.html

Summary of today's lecture and seminar

Pedro Noguera started his talk “Teaching the 1st Generation: The Role of Community Colleges in Creating Pathways to the Middle Class” by identifying personally with the students of a community college, calling attention to the fact that our upbringing should not define who we become. He pointed out the crucial role CC serve as “bridge- institutions”, and how their purpose is most of the time not achieved, to judge from graduation and senior college transfer rates. As a nation, he said, we should be doing more. Changes in our former industrial economy have widened the income gap between those with bachelor’s degrees and those without. As a result, we are moving towards becoming an apartheid nation, one in which the neediest cases are relegated to an inferior education.

What is the NY political and educational leadership doing about this situation? Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein´s plan of reducing school class sizes alone will not solve the problem. The NY educational system faces real difficulties retaining teachers due to extremely poor working conditions. Experienced teachers choose to work in the suburbs, which leaves a very complex student body under the care of insufficiently trained teachers.

This complexity has various causes. The NY public educational system receives a great number of learners whose first language is other than English. Research has repeatedly found that native language literacy plays a fundamental role in second language acquisition, but schools do not act consequently, which results in students that are semi-literate in both languages.

Literacy, in fact, is the underlying most important problem that schools face today. Under the current standardized testing fad, students are becoming better test takers, but not better readers.

Other problems affecting the education of students are motivational, related to the students’ life-difficulties or produced by immaturity. Some students are not ready, at 18, to enter college, but no educational alternatives have been created for them.

The obstacles, therefore, are many and big. As educators, we must recognize them, but not let ourselves be dragged by them. We should, among other things, reflect on how we teach.

The “cemetery method” is one way of teaching. Students sit still and the instructor lectures. Lecturing has proved to be the least effective of all teaching methods, because it fails to engage students actively. An active learner inquires, groups with others, critics, explores and produces something. A lecture just requires quiet listeners.

For instructor and students, becoming active teachers and active learners is a real challenge. Our institutions’ physical environments, for one, work against active modes of instruction. Both instructors and students may find internal reasons not to change. By its own nature, not every discipline is equally predisposed to active learning.   

Active teaching and learning feed also on a few important techniques. One is the demystification of standards. Let us not assume that students have a clear understanding of our standards. Let’s show them what we mean by a high quality paper or a good exam. Let’s acknowledge the need to teach the basics, from keeping margins in an essay to taking notes.

Active teaching builds on what students already know, which is an aspect directly related to finding and exposing the cultural relevance of what we teach. Connections to students’ experiences and lives should be included in our teaching.

These techniques bring into question the appropriateness of our curricula. How much of it can we use and how much should we change? This is a debate to be had among faculty and administrators at any given institution.

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The question and answer time with Pedro Noguera expanded some of the issues presented by him. The audience discussed the quality of our remedial courses, the relevance of class content over process or vice versa, and the important consideration that if our teaching is to change, the educational structures must change along, becoming more flexible and allowing for a more fluid communication both within and across institutions, including communication between schools and colleges.

The need to break our isolated modes of teaching was also mentioned. We, educators, are afraid to discuss our teaching practices, of observing and being observed. We need to share, debate and discuss our teaching, more so because very few of us were in fact trained to teach. An effective teacher, Pedro said, utilizes a variety of teaching techniques, has content expertise and is able to create a good relationship with her/his students.

In identifying factors that have influenced students’ success, a personal connection with a teacher appears to be one of the most important. Similarly, students who group with other students and identify with the institution as a community seem to have more chances to succeed.

**********

The small group conversation with Pedro included some of the topics above and some new ones. QCC faculty discussed more effective ways to communicate with their classes, such as getting students’ feedback on their teaching during the semester rather than only at the end. Instructors mentioned the fear to talk openly with our students about our teaching and to alter power dynamics within our class. There was a general sense that students’ voices and perspectives must somehow come to inform our teaching more radically.

Innovation attempts may some times be stopped by departments and administrators reluctant to deviate from traditional curricula. Students are some times resistant to change too if they perceive that new methods are more demanding. This resistance may have cultural roots (i.e. international students), and one way of addressing it is by making the rationale for our teaching methods explicit to our students. Ways to turn around reluctant students were discussed. The connection to a mentor came up again as an important factor. Pedro compared teachers to coaches in the sense that both must teach students how to persist. 

Moving beyond practical teaching alternatives, some instructors expressed the need to discuss uncomfortable issues such as poverty, race and gender, and the degree to which they shape our teaching practices and our students’ learning. These themes, present in the readings that Pedro recommended for the group discussion, were collaterally addressed but not fully acknowledged during the discussion. Some instructors suggested setting a more focused agenda for future seminar meetings and others expressed concern at the thought of having the discussions be guided by the need to produce immediate concrete results. Participants agreed that a more focused discussion on the speaker’s recommended readings would be helpful, but acknowledged the appropriateness of an open and less structured discussion for this first meeting.

One of the two students present during the seminar briefly intervened and shared her story as an immigrant student who gained access to college through the GED exam. She spoke of the variety of teachers she had encountered during her college life at QCC, not all of them equally concerned about her learning. She expressed the significance of having discussions like this with students, which prompted the suggestion for including more students in the conversation, if not physically (for lack of space) at least through the group’s blog.

The seminar finished with an invitation to contribute thoughts to the blog.

Two questions for blog discussants (feel free to address them or to discuss your own ideas):

In one of Pedro’s recommended readings (“And what will become…?”), the inadequacy of the educational institutions serving Latino students is discussed as one of the many factors contributing to their educational hardships--specially for second generation Latino students, who have lost the drive and sense of direction many of the first generation immigrants have. I find that openly discussing this and other unjust social circumstances in my students’ lives (such as the gradual increase of recruitment of Latinos by the Army; a very current issue) contributes to form a stronger sense of self than just pointing at the fact that “education is the key to success” or suggesting that “everyone can succeed if s/he really tries”. It seems to me that a sense of “who you and your circumstances are” is necessary in order to imagine yourself somewhere else. What are your thoughts on this?

Other recommended readings (“Savoring Reading”, “Working with Marginalized” etc.) explain successful literacy approaches with students that are similar to ours. These programs have succeeded in bringing joy to the acts of reading and writing for students who had utterly rejected those activities. I would love to discuss with you the factors that account for this “conversion” and to consider what institutional, personal, and societal changes would take to implement them at QCC (huge question, I know). 

Arancha

Metaphors for knowledge

Hello!

This first seminar experience was inspiring and energizing!

The thoughts I share below are in response to an article that contains an economic metaphor for knowledge and for social support structures. In Eliane Rubinstein-Avila’s article, she describes students’ “funds of knowledge” and states that “older children are likely to function as the household’s cultural and linguistic brokers.”

I noticed that I responded strongly to this language and I have some questions to ask -- - What assumptions do we make when we use economic metaphors for students’ knowledge or experiences with learning? What does this language reveal and what might it encourage?

I view this language as being in dialog with or a kind of counterpoint to the notion that students' minds are empty bank accounts waiting to be filled up with their professor’s lectures and I  appreciate that. I am also aware that the students the author describes are under a kind of economic siege. But at the same time, I wonder if these metaphors aren't also dangerously limiting. I don’t want to take part in commodifying students or defining their experiences soley in terms of their use-value in the global economy.

The other thought I wanted to share is that I was so grateful to meet and learn from Ricardo, the student who spoke up during the Q&A and who joined us in the seminar today and I think it is vital that we continue to bring students into our dialog.

I'm really looking forward to the next seminar!

,

Art

Department

and ePortfolio

Susan Lambert

in action

I've just tried out a suggestion from some of the reading! I can't remember which piece it was, but the author suggested leaving subtitles on when you show a movie in class. I remembered that the ESL students I taught in a learning community last semester had asked for this. So I tried it out with a mixed bunch. Did it "work?" Who knows? But I felt clever and competent. John--do you ever turn on the subtitles in your film classes (I mean for films that are in English)?

--Megan

Lecture and Seminar Schedule

Fri., Feb. 23, 9:30 am - 1:00 pm. Lecture and seminar discussion
(lunch included)

Coffee will be Served at 9:00 a.m. in the Well of M-136
Public Lecture 9:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. Room M-136
Seminar 10:30 to 12:30 p.m. Room A-502 Open to Participants ONLY

Urban sociologist, Dr. Pedro Noguera, Professor in the Steinhardt School of Education at New York University, Executive Director of the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education and Co-Director of the Institute for the study of Globalization and Education in Metropolitan Settings (IGEMS). Dr. Noguera is the author of Unfinished Business: Closing the Racial Achievement Gap in Our Schools (2006) ; Beyond Resistance: Youth Civic Engagement and Social Change ( 2006) ; and City Schools and the American Dream: Reclaiming the Promise of Public Education (2003).

"Teaching the 1st Generation:
The Role of Community Colleges
In Creating Pathways to the Middle Class"

More on Dr. Pedro Noguera
Video Sample

Friday, March 16, 10 am - 1:00 pm. Lecture and seminar discussion
(lunch included)

Public Lecture 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. LB-14
Seminar 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. Room A-502 Open to Participants ONLY

Dr. Estela Rojas, Professor of Mathematics, City Tech College , CUNY, Professor of Mathematics and “Scholar on Campus” at City tech, Dr. Rojas has expertise in how students learn, cultural issues related to student success, the effective uses of collaborative learning and active learning. She has spearheaded a successful Learning Communities approach for first year students and also works with teachers in Chile . Rojas has written several workbooks in subjects such as collaborative learning, math anxiety and assessment, which she uses in her activities abroad.

More on Dr. Estela Rojas

Frances Lucerna, is a Co-Founder and Executive Director for
Programs at El Puente, a Brooklyn based community/youth development
organization that nurtures holistic leadership for peace and social justice.
In 1993 she became the founding Principal of America's first public high school
for human rights, the celebrated El Puente Academy for Peach & Justice, a
New Visions/New York City Broard of Education High School, bringing El Puente
to the forefront of the national school reform movement. Her many awards include
"Celebrating Success" from the Children's Defense Fund, the Brooklyn Council on the Arts' Arts Advocate Award and the 1998 Heniz Award for the Human Condition.

More on Frances Lucerna

Friday, April 13, 10 am - 1:00 pm. Lecture and seminar discussion
(lunch included)

Public Lecture 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. LB-14
Seminar 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. A-502

Dr. Ron Scapp, Founding Director of the Graduate Program in Urban and Multicultural Education at the College of Mount Saint Vincent in the Bronx, New York, where he is also professor of humanities and teacher education. Dr. Scapp is the author of Managing to be different: Educational leadership as a critical practice (2006) and Teaching Values Critical Perspectives on Education, Politics and Culture.

Friday, May 11, 10 am - 1:00 pm. Semester seminar  wrap-up & fall planning
(lunch included)