Pedagogy Matters: Administrator's reflection of culturally relevant approaches for a Middle School in Deep East Oakland

Pedagogy Matters

By Sunny Dawn

1/27/17

EDA 611A

“Organizations that only employ "people of their kind" in leadership and high visibility positions will not be tolerated by people of other cultures,”  (Short, 2002). This statement made in 2002 seems dated and obvious but I start my paper with it because of the current political climate we are all witnessing at the moment.   I  agree that not tolerating the ignorance of high visibility  positions is actually an understatement in regards to our students and educators reactions to our current  racist Trump leadership.  This paper will highlight who I work with daily in “Deep East Oakland” including the educators who advocate for them.  Issues around race and class will be a major focus for how I discuss our pedagogy and approach with major highlights of why when our current president was elected, the very next day we had over 80% of our students walk out and leave campus in a protest with other students from nearby campuses.

Our school is 63% Latino (or what we term “Raza”), 31% African American and 6% other or Pacific Islander/Asian.  98% of our students are low income and suffer from extreme poverty and violence.  We pride ourselves, at Elmhurst Community Prep, in our ability  to engage in hard issues  and conversations around race; data and teaching  with an equitable lens; and what it means to be a student of color in today’s America.  As educators, we  also dive in deep on discussions related to race and discipline. We just had a professional development this past week, where we had profound discussions around referrals and race (see slide 1 below).  We noted that we need to engage why our referral rate for African Americans, although dropped, is still disproportionate to our overall ECP population.

Proportionality in Referrals By Ethnicity,  2016-2017 (Betlach Presentation 1/25/17)

Professional Developments of the day that followed looking at this data included workshops (delivered by our Coaches/Admin.)

Social Emotional Learning

Teaching and the Brain

Trauma Informed Practice

Book Dive- For White Folks Who Teach in The Hood

We have many strategies in place to teach to this distinct population of Oakland whose graduation rate statistics show 50.6% for African American boys (SFGate 4/12/13).  We attempt to have teachers who represent the racial makeup of our school and take on mentoring roles.  As a staff,  we are engaging in work and year long inquiry with Zaretta Hammond’s text, Culturally Relevant Teaching Practices. Besides the mindset shift in approach to teaching, staff are also engaged in (including myself) “taking on” a focal student to dive in deep with and get to know beyond the day to day. This looks like not only being an advocate but  having a personal connection as to the inner workings of that student’s struggle and how it can inform our school’s  practice and that educator’s pedagogy or approach to learning.

Furthermore, our academic schedule attempts to have 2 levels of safety nets built into the daily schedule and curriculum. This is in the form of a targeted Study Skills class which meets students at their level at a given subject they are struggling in with a specialized instructor to meet their academic needs.

For example, even I have been inspired to be a part of this schedule. ( “All hands are on deck” at 5th period, no teachers have a prep period at this school wide intervention hour).  Since early literacy is in my wheelhouse as a past elementary teacher, I take a small group of 8th graders reading at 3rd grade level and work with them in a reading intervention group 4 times a week for 40 minutes.

Additionally, ECP  has a big focus on our advisory program and find that we use a lot of academic outreach strategies there. Including grouping advisories by gender, race, and grade level.  For example we have 2 Advisory groups for African American boys, 2 for Latina Girls, 1 for Latino boys, and even our Principal is invested in teaching an advisory course.

To meet the needs of our English Language learners we just recently added a new class that has an alternate schedule for 6th and 7th grade students who are not proficient in English, as determined by CELDT scores.  They are pulled from their history class and do the period in ELD instead.  We are hoping this changes the course we see of students with low SRI scores for ELL students as well as the overall harder time these students have  in all courses due to language acquisition issues.  

There are multiple ways we engage our families with ECP.  We are completely transparent in our mission and core values with  social justice as a main tenant we believe in.  When students are at risk for failure or are in hard times we are reaching out to families consistently to engage with interventions, updates and next steps.  Some families need counseling themselves for the trauma they experience in the neighborhood of 98th Ave. and so we have multiple counseling agencies as well student advocacy groups that work with us. There are so many organizations and programs trying to assist it takes entire full time position to manage all these people, our Community Programs Manager, who herself is Latina (and also teaches an advisory).  This week she also recently created a family event, called “Data Night”. This night was to educate parents on what it means for students to have a low SRI score, what SBAC means, what are cognitive rubric tasks.  This initial education will then be followed up by 1 on 1 appointments with myself on how we can target students where they are struggling and supports parents can do at home.

We all have heard the term it takes a village however when the village is assaulted by daily physical violence, environmental racism, and federal threats of deportation creating trust with students and families is the hardest thing to do at our school in our village.  

As I reflect in this paper on our school and the question of race and culture I most note It is hard to be the place that is a government institution and yet is also so supposed to be the safest place in the neighborhood.  Currently, I would say our students are in a state of fear especially our immigrant population who hear the rhetoric of our new President and can’t make sense of what it means for the families.  Now, is the most important time for us at our school site to be aware of who are students are (racially and culturally) and what we can do for them as the students too will  “not tolerate” this current racist regime.

It is this investment in the future of these students that drives me daily. It is this investment in educators who also do not tolerate the current trend of war on low income people that I come to work for daily. It is in this small story I share of a school not giving up on an educational system not set up to care for students who have daily trauma that I know Pedagogy matters.