During my service learning I witness 120 students walk in and out of the classroom. The dynamic of the class room, when looked at in numbers, is very surprising. There are only two white students out of the 120 that my service learning teacher teaches and three Asians. The other 115 students are equally Hispanic and Black. When I put the student’s ethnicity into numbers my first reaction was to blame the school for not having a more diverse community of students. But then I realized that the students are admitted through a lottery of applications. All the applications are mixed into one big box and then the upcoming freshmen are selected. With this being the method used to select the students that attend the school, I realized that the applicants are the ones that form these figures and not the school itself. I then questioned why is it that the majority of the applicants are Hispanic and African American students. Something must draw these students in. I also realized that a lot of the freshmen students have had an aunt, uncle, cousin, brother, sister, or neighbor that has attended the school. There is also a large number of students who will be first generation high school graduates. I then asked myself, what does Coconut High offer to these students and families that keep them applying to the school?
The first answer that came to mind was that it’s a small school. More than half of the students in the school are Spanish speakers. In a small school they are less likely to slip through the cracks that many English learning students slip through in larger high schools. Although Coconut High does not have a program that caters to ELL students, the school and teachers have been catering to these kinds of students and families since the very beginning. The small community also provides a more individualized education and attention for each student. Not only do the students benefit educationally, but also socially. They are surrounded by students who share the same cultural beliefs and native tongue. It creates a comfort zone and a sense of a second home in the school.
A program called School-to-Work is provided at Coconut high. This program places you in a secure job by your junior year. For many families this is a blessing. This is an extra income the entire family can benefit from. At Coconut High students are required to wear uniforms that the school does not pay for; with a job the students can now pay for more uniforms and take some of that load off of their parents. It also gives the students an opportunity to learn the responsibility and how to meet the demands of going to school and handling a job. Considering that all the students come from working class homes the program allows parents to see and know that the school understands their situation and working class culture.
There are many other qualities that the school has that I believe makes itself appealing to the students that it serves. A theorist Lisa Delpit touches upon something that she calls the “Culture of Power” I believe Coconut High has its own “codes and rules,” as Delpit puts it, which makes the school what it is. She describes these codes and rules as “communicative strategies, and presentation of self, that is, the way of talking, ways of instruction.” I believe each school, maybe even structures themselves, has its own culture of power. The Culture of power that Coconut high has come to develop, is one that appeals to Hispanic and black families it serves, therefore the students that the school is composed of bring these assets to the school even as they are apply for it.
I found it striking when you said your students “are surrounded by students who share the same cultural beliefs and native tongue. It creates a comfort zone and a sense of a second home in the school.” Right away my mind went to my own personal experiences with minority communities in Providence and my own feeling of being a visible minority. Last year I had a writing 100 class where our main goal was to go out and do fieldwork in a subculture other than our own. I chose to study Catholicism in the Dominican-American community that attends la Asunción de la Bendita Virgen María on Potters Ave off of Cranston Street. Right away, I drove into the church parking lot surround by people speaking Spanish and entering the basement of the church: this was my first experience in any Hispanic dominated area in my life. I entered the church and was surprised to find a lot of talking, laughing, and reunions that made me wonder if this was mass or a meeting. The mass then began with a little band in the corner playing guitars and pianos to meringue music and the normal start to a Catholic Church service. When the time came for the sign of peace (when someone shakes hands with the people around them) music blared and people got out of their seats and made their way around the church hugging and kissing everyone. This seemed bizarre to me at first, coming from a solemn French based Catholic mass where the slightest slouch was disrespectful and the only sound was that of an organ and the obnoxiously loud cough or baby crying. After going many more times I became used to this sort of worship and began to appreciate it for what it was: a celebration of God, Jesus, and the Altagracia. But even deeper it was a celebration of the Dominican community.
ReplyDeleteIn a country where the currently favored hated group consists of Hispanics, and the constant slogan “we’re in America, speak English” is heard, this sense of community and normalcy creates a safe place for Hispanic people just like your school does for its students. By surrounding themselves with students who look, talk, and have the same cultural upbringing as them, they are in fact becoming the majority and privileged in their own way and in their own setting. White people (or more specifically privileged white people) fear this because in that area, for that moment, the culture of power has shifted. I do have to admit that I felt out of place and uncomfortable in the beginning even though people came at me with open arms. I was constantly worried about being judged or noticed. Those first few visits reversed the roles of society and took away my place of white privilege and let me feel how some minorities feel every day. It made me miss my comfort zone even though there was no obvious discrimination against me in anyway shape or form. Feeling that makes me understand why so many black or Hispanic students would want to go to your school. My point was also supported because when I was in Latin America I went to a few masses and they were almost exactly like the stark Catholic Masses of my childhood. The celebration in the Asunción was more of a real community united under the same beliefs that creates comfort and security. While in Central America, Church plays the role of religion and community, in the United States, from what I have seen, it brings the Latina community closer together as a community because of a shared experience of being the minority, just like in your school.
What stood out to me so greatly was the idea of the small community being the beneficial aspect. I have to encourage this most fully. A bigger school leaves so much more room for students to get lost in the shuffle. When the teacher to student ratio is lower this gives room for much more growth. The catch can be if the school is too small you can run into problems. I attended an elementary school that graduated 8th grade with 13 kids. In such a small class there is so little room for social development. When I entered public high school where I graduated with 300 kids (one of the largest classes to graduate in the high schools history) the amount of students was terrifying. I literally got lost in the shuffle. There were so many kids when going from class to class in could take 5 minutes to just get down a hall way because of grid lock.
ReplyDeleteThe school to work program in my high school was actually removed. The administrators felt that students need to remain in school in order to get a full education. By sending them out during high school, students could be losing precious time to develop skills that they would only learn in school. However, by going into the work force there is certain factors in preparation for the real world that you will only learn "on the job."