I will be doing my practicum teaching at Houck Middle School located at 1155 Connecticut St. S.E. in Salem, Oregon. Located off the busy commercial Lancaster Street, Houck Middle School has the feel of both an inner city district and a suburb. According to the school website, Houck is a traditional middle school serving students in grades 6 - 8. The average enrollment for the school is 1,025 students. The school itself is fed by Miller, Eyre, Four Corners and Bethel Elementary schools within the Southeastern part of Salem-Kiezer School District.
According to the website, School Matters, Houck Middle School has an average household income range of $30,000-$50,000. Only 25% of the population has had an education higher than a high school degree. Most of the population in the community surrounding Houck Middle School falls between the ages of 5yrs-40yrs.
Walking around the surrounding neighborhoods I found several new developments next door to the school. After surveying one particular neighborhood I found that the median home price, for those that were for sale, was around $180,000 with a few extremities that included a home for $122,000 and $280,000. However, most of Houck is surrounded by older family homes reminiscent of the ranch home architecture found in the 1950s and 1960s.
The overall feel of the community is shady. Its not quite dark, because of the patches of light that show up throughout the community. There are parts in which I feel safe and secure and I observed kids laughing and playing out in their front yards. Other parts are less lighthearted and I felt lonely and depressed looking at the fading paint and un-kept lawns. There is a definite divide between impoverish and middle class. Just by observing the number of students who stayed at school in afterschool programs until they were forced to leave around 6:00pm told me how disparate their need for supervision might be.
It seems to me that I do develop a bias towards the community. For me, this bias is not a negative bias, but an increased awareness to the needs of safety and security for my students. I don’t think you can ever visit a community and not make an assumption as to what you might expect at the school. It’s a part of our mental evolution that allows us to categorize things to help better our own survival. Before having spent a day with the middle schoolers of Houck I would have expected to find great diversity in ethnicity, race and income and indeed I found these things within the school. However, I may show up to class and feel a bias towards what I may expect, but it is how I adapt after observation and the ability to not let yourself take away the equity of your students that really defines who and what kind of a teacher you are.
I think your thoughts about bias and categorization are really insightful. I sensed a feeling of sadness and depression from your post--directed toward the neighborhood, I guess.
ReplyDeleteDid you look at the map showing the boundaries--and which feeder schools feed into Houck?
Dev,
ReplyDeleteI'd like to see more data about the community, particularly racial/ethnic demographics. Also, are the numbers you provide for things like income levels, education, and ages high/low? What are your thoughts about that data? You imply that it is a young population around Houck. How does that influence your thinking about your teaching?
You note some important observations such as the nature of the neighborhoods around the school having some very different sections. How does that influence your thinking? A nice description of the area and atmosphere. Important observations about a divide between middle and lower class and noticing the number of students staying after school. How do you think this dynamic influences your students? How might it influence your teaching?
A thoughtful last paragraph about bias, as Karen notes. It shows how important time at school can be for some students. We absolutely have biases and can't really keep from categorizing things and people, etc. What we do with that information is the key, as you said. I'd like to hear more in this last paragraph about how you make sense of specific data and observations and relate it to your potential teaching decisions.
Dev,
ReplyDeleteHow come you expected so much diversity in the school just by viewing the neighborhoods? What is the ethnic and racial diversity of those neighborhoods?
Your description makes me sad, too, but almost inspires a fierce desire to be there for those students. Do your feelings affect the way you will approach teaching these students?
You brought up a really interesting point between the divide between middle class and poverty. Does this change any of the techniques you might use in your classroom or things that you will be aware of? I think that you have made some really interesting observations and I would like to hear you analyze HOW those observations strengthen or change the way you approach your class at Houck.