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Beyond the Intersection - 3 points - 30 Nov 2021

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Group 5 - Tara Collins, James Moreira, Quinton Estick 

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Group 5 - Tara Collins, James Moreira, Quinton Estick 

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Main points that were discussed about the reading:

Curriculum needs to be inclusive!!

Despite the geographical location, there should be no reason for kids to feel like they are less than others because of where they grew up

Curriculum needs to touch on important relevant topics and relate to your students

Humanize the schooling/education/tailor the education to the students you are teaching

the use of “streaming” can be detrimental to students especially students in low income areas

It is pertinent as teachers to not jaded or biased when they are working in certain neighbourhoods, your primary task is to teach, and aid these children in school, you need to be a role model and know how to adapt to certain situations

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Life at the intersection - Laura Colacci

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Life at the Intersection Notes

In some of my courses we discussed lack of funding in schools and how that can impact a student’s education. When trying to create a literacy rich environment and include books that represent different cultures and speak on different topics, it may be challenging to incorporate such books due to funds. Carl E James looks at the “great divide” in the funding to which schools in the GTA have access based on the income level of the neighbourhoods in which they are located. Schools that are in impoverish areas generally receive income from school-generated funds such as fundraisers held by school parent councils or book fairs. Schools in the jane and finch area are unlikely to have the funding base that would enable them to obtain educational resources. They are at a disadvantage.

Another topic we looked at in my theories class was teachers being involved with the community and or neighbourhood they teach in. We asked the question is it their responsibility to education themselves on what is going around them? how can the community play a part in their teachings? James says that “it is those teachers who encourage students to be active participants in their learning, as opposed to passive recipients of information who will make the educational process meaningful and productive for students”. (p.126). I personally think it is important to be aware of the students you are teaching and where they come from. Samuel shared his feelings about his community neighbourhood through speech writing, he talked about the negative perceptions and assumptions teachers and other students may have about specific communities and how that make a student feel helpless. Teacher must recall that a student’s life, their experiences, aspirations, their beliefs are mediated by the communities in which they live in. Teachers’ knowledge of the community and their students is key to building a healthy relationship with them and is upmost an essential component of teaching

“The idea of schooling in low-income, disadvantaged neighbourhoods should not be merely about preparing students to “get out” of the neighbourhood”. As I was reading this sentence it took me back to my middle school days where I was told that the schools in our neighbourhood are not the greatest and that where you are going is better. Had we had a “strong school-community relationship” where they could create innovative solutions to help impoverish schools maybe I could have gone to school with my friends in the area and experienced the schooling system in my community.

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Honouring lived experiences is something I learned that is reinforced in the reading. By honouring the lived experiences and the stories of our students and where they come from, we can humanize the classroom and have the students further resonate with school. This is something that is especially important to pay attention to with the students who may not fit the dominating culture of that society. I also learned about universal design when assessing lessons and forging rubrics. I think that this would also go a long way in creating lessons and is reinforced by the reading, because what is good for one student may not be good for the other, and vice versa. By creating student inquiry led lessons, the students are able to internalize the content in a way that is meaningful to them. Lastly, code switching is something that was mentioned in the reading. Although it is not something I am very familiar with, I believe that understanding code switching as a safety mechanism and its functions in society offers insight to some of the oppression and hardship that marginalized communities face. This is an important barrier to be aware of when teaching your own class full of diverse students.

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Carl James' Article Summary and my views

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Carl James' Article Summary and my views

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After reading Carl James’ article, “Life at the Intersection”, I reflected on several ideas and thoughts that I have gathered from other courses in response to this reading. Firstly, when reading about Kulsoom’s story of how her immigrant family lived in the Jane and Finch area, I thought of a discussion I had with my group members in another course regarding the impact of culture and what defines culture. We discussed that culture is ever evolving and it is hard to define it as one entity. Rather, culture can be shaped by one’s ethnicity, race, nationality, religion, geographical location, and family.

With that being said, Kulsoom describes that her mother wanted Kulsoom and her brother to grow up in a multicultural neighborhood where their skin colour would not pose any racial abuse and where multiculturalism is welcomed. This made me think of how, in my other course, family plays a massive role in their child’s exposure to their culture. Kulsoom’s mother clearly did not want to suppress their culture or make them feel ashamed or belittled by it. By living in a diverse neighborhood, Kulsoom experienced her culture without feeling out of place.

Another observation that I made was through Sam’s story of how he attended a predominantly white middle-school outside of Jane and Finch. Sam mentioned that it was clear that the school was very different than what he sees in Jane and Finch, and he recognized that he was in the minority. This reminded me of a video I watched for another course about code-switching and why people code-switch in certain environments. To me, code-switching may be used as a survival tool, in which people of minority need to code-switch in order to make it thought a certain situation. As a person of minority, I have code-switched many times before, often without realizing it. Like Sam, I attended a school that had a large white population, although the school itself was diverse. My grade in particular had many white students and, in order to ‘fit in’, I resorted to code-switching by trying to dress the same way as my white female friends or speaking with their jargon. As educators, it may be hard for us to see if our students are code-switching, however, we must come from a place of understanding and create safe spaces for our students of colour and minority in our classrooms.

In terms of educators being more understanding, another observation I made is that educators need to bridge the gap between schools and the community that surrounds it. Carl James’ article mentions that “teachers who encourage students to be active participants in their learning […] will make the educational process meaningful and productive for students.” (James, 126) My question is, how? In another course, we thought of ways to humanize student learning and the important of SEL, social-emotional learning. By having students contribute to learning by using their personal experiences and emotions, teachers are not only able to have a better understanding of their students but also of their community. For example, teachers may assign a journal entry assignment, which enables students to think and reflect deeply about their personal thoughts. This may give insight into the communities our students come from, thus helping educators to create more meaningful learning experiences.

An important point that James brings forth is that “Such teachers engage students in a teaching and learning process that recognizes the community as a source of cultural and social capital or ‘cultural wealth’.” (James, 126). This quote stuck with me as it emphasizes the true importance of understanding communities and how we must proactively engage with this ‘cultural wealth’. Overall, this article helped me reflect on several key learnings that I had in other courses and provided important observations about the importance of bridging the gap between community and school.

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Carl James summary with 3 observations (Daniel Coley)

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Carl James summary with 3 observations (Daniel Coley)

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Streaming has been a topic that came up in my courses and I made a connection between that topic and this reading. The Carl James reading is primarily focused on the Jane and finch community. As someone who lives near that area, I resonated with this article and how it touches on how the media portrays the Jane and Finch community as this place where crime rates are high or it is an unsafe place to live. In actuality, the area is multicultural and filled with so much potential. As a mother described in the reading, it was a place where her children would feel they belong because of the amount of diversity the area has. Streaming is normally viewed as this system in schooling where students can break off into either the applied stream or the academic stream. Applied courses were taken if someone desired to go the college route, whereas the academic stream was more for those who wanted to go to university. At first, this did not seem harmless at all, but it actually perpetuated racist and discriminatory practices. Students from low income homes or marginalized groups were directed to the applied stream and locally developed stream and the opposite was the case for the academic stream. Essentially, streaming was structured around inequity and caused segregation. When I look back to this article, the idea of streaming can reinforce that Jane & Finch was seen as this area where they produced most of these “at risk” youth who get funnelled to the applied stream and are perceived or assumed to be this group of students with low potential. One of the students from the article was “pushed out” of this community because he had potential and he excelled, so he was directed to a predominantly white school outside of the Jane & Finch community.

The article spoke about how there needs to be a collaboration between the students, parents, community members, and educators in order to improve the quality of education for all students. Revitalizing learning will ignite a creative compassion in our communities. Teachers who have knowledge of the communities they are teaching in can help not only themselves in the learning experience but the students most of all, which makes it more culturally relevant. If it was an environment more student centered and less subjective, it would be beneficial for the students. This type of recreation can lead to possibly making connections to the social conditions students live in. Another topic I learned about that connects to this portion of the reading is being a social justice-orientated citizen. These kinds of citizens are those who recognize the bad conditions within the community and society and make an effort to challenge it, hold people in power accountable, and try to find solutions. If the community members and the school are interconnected, there could be great changes within the community. Students are not always taught to be critical thinkers who discuss controversial topics and connect with the community they serve, but they are led to do charities or food drives for example, that are surrounded with incentives for doing community work.

The last point I want to make is that teachers also need to understand racialized students in that being nice to them is not enough, but it is vital to see the challenges they encounter such as racism and the institutional barriers that prevent them from succeeding. It is key to not only recognize this, but to create a pedagogy that allows students to make connections to their community and their social status.

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Read Carl James' Article. Tell us in a one-page summary about 3 observations you have made in your courses that reinforce or disrupt the theory from the readings? Bring the finished summary to class to post and share .

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Read Carl James' Article. Tell us in a one-page summary about 3 observations you have made in your courses that reinforce or disrupt the theory from the readings? Bring the finished summary to class to post and share .