Promising Practice Letter

                                                                                                 November 5, 2014

Dear Mr. A,

Thank you for taking the time to present “Teaching While Brown: Learning Under the Influence” during this fall’s promising practice conference along with your uncle. Listening to you discuss the racial barriers that still exit in education and what can be done now to help solve the problem was inspiring. Furthermore, it fit in well with the conference’s theme of culturally responsive curricula in STEM. The cultural aspect of your presentation became evident during the mental activity you asked us to do. After having us reflect on characteristics of our favorite teacher, you pointed out that race, gender, ethnicity or any other superficial trait possessed by the teacher was not among the list. Here race wasn’t an issue. Instead it all came down to how the teacher made us feel. To further prove your point both you and your uncle gave examples of teachers who didn’t look like you, but still impacted your life. All of which led to the assertion that urban students shouldn’t have to wait for a teacher who looks like them to come along and give them a quality education. Especially since most people who look like them at the moment, don’t go into education.

 As a student at RIC learning about how to become a teacher, my professors have spent a good deal of time showing us the potential of every child. I went into the profession partly to change students' lives regardless of who they are.  However, I soon found that being raised in an all-white public school setting led me to develop some subtle stereotypical thoughts that would be detrimental to my teaching all students well. A really important step in shifting my thinking process has been my going to CF and other urban schools. Of even bigger help is having discussions on this topic regardless of how difficult it is for people to speak about. This has been a long process for me and I still have room to grow like many other educators.  Although, it seems some educators have further to go than I do given the severity of the “us vs. them” attitude you highlighted through your personal experiences on the subject. Given the aforementioned, I think the opening activity really stood out to me because it is a quick, useful, and poignant way of showing other colleges that students can learn from anyone despite outward appearances.  

The conversation that addressed STEM really connected with me too, which I found surprising. As a future history teacher, I don’t exactly have to worry about the content covered under the STEM subjects. However, you approached STEM from the angle of increasing tests scores by improving critical thinking. Such a skill is one that can transfer to any subject and is one that I find incredibly important for students to develop. What really struck me though was that the majority of the suggestions (i.e. storytelling, relevance, and authenticity) are all ideas I am learning in my classes at RIC. Due to the time constraint, you weren’t able to go into much depth on your solutions. I agree at a quick glance that the ideas to increase critical thinking would work given all the reading I have done in my classes on the subject. However, reading about an idea and hearing about it from someone currently in the field of secondary education are entirely different. So even though you couldn’t add much more to what I have learned thus far, your authority on the topic reinforced that what I am learning as a future teacher candidate is something I actually should be doing as an educator. 

Despite siding with your educational philosophies, I can’t get past the stories you told about people who hold a conflicting view. The one that I keep thinking about the most was a story in which one of your colleges said the way to increase test scores within the school was to give the teachers “more white students.” You then become offended and responded to the other teacher in a hostile manner. My first reaction was to be angry at the other teacher also, so I can understand why you lashed out at this teacher. However, I am wondering if you were able to have a more calm conversation with this teacher later on down the road about his poor attitude? If so, how? If not, do you wish you acted differently towards this teacher at any point during your relationship? I ask because I am curious to know how you go about opening and maintaining a dialogue with a teacher who is part of the current problem. I would like to do everything within my power to help eradicate the gap in education and I think an important step in doing so is having these difficult conversations.

I look forward to your response. Already the information discussed during the session made me more confident in my approach to teaching critical thinking and broaching sensitive issues with other professionals.                                                                        

 Sincerely,

             Kendra King