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The systemic and institutionalized nature of teachers' work in schools seems to follow several layers. The building or school administration taking its cues from the superintendent, who is interpreting national and state guidelines, produces and set of policies and expectations about how teachers' classes ought to be run...which creates a dilemma for teachers.  Optimal learning can and does occur without students seated in silence. Teachers, in turn, in their attempts to meet institutional expectations, develop and implement management strategies that reify systems of oppression and voicelessness among students. Students, in turn, resist these systemic parameters... The desire for order and control at the classroom level can be connected to teachers' goals to improve test scores... These decisions can be motivated and shaped by institutional and systemic pressures far beyond the teachers' control." (Milner, 2019, p. 23)

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What Milner is writing here is that the decisions teachers make about classroom punishment/management and their resulting deficiencies are often brought about by forces on an institutional level, and thus difficult, if not impossible, for individual teachers to rectify. Teachers are often merely a cog in a much larger system. Flaws in one's own classroom can be fixed more handily; flaws at the systemic level are much more persistent. Teachers are handed down certain expectations and are under pressure from above to have their students meet them. The aim of classroom management becomes the satisfaction of numerical test requirements for the school at large, and not the actual learning of the students.

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With the advent of nationally-mandated standardized testing, the individuality of students in the learning process has progressively been stripped away, with each kid becoming nothing more an "another brick in the wall" (to quote that old Pink Floyd song) to the end of increasing school rating and test scores. And this issue has only gotten worse as class sizes have increased in public schools. With more students to manage, more students to grade the work of, more students to provide feedback to, learning becomes less personalized. The result of this depersonalization is that the teacher concerns themselves less with getting to know their students and more with providing a ready-made, cookie-cutter education that students are supposed to quietly and obediently take in.

This quote spoke to me because of the personal experiences that those members of my family who are teachers have had with bad administration. I've too often seen the honest attempts of teachers to improve the environments of the classrooms struck down at the whims of administrators. The blame is often placed on teachers for bad students outcomes, and this is very much justified sometimes, but administerial problems are overlooked.

How this will impact my own teaching is primarily within my self-evaluation of my instruction. I will have to discern what problems are a result of my own deficiencies and those that are more systemic things.

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"Suburban schools with largely White student populations tend to receive more funding than urban schools, which tend to have larger populations of Black and Brown students... Schools that receive less funding tend to lack safe, modern buildings, small classes sizes, experienced teachers, a sufficient number if books and other school supplies, access to high-quality curriculum, and advanced courses compared to more affluent schools." (Milner, 2019, p. 38)

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What Milner is saying here is that racial disparities in education are often the result of different levels of funding between schools that service majority White student populations and those that service majority non-White student populations, with the former getting more than the latter. While the way funding is parceled out is not done in a intentionally discriminatory manner, the result is still an inequitable distribution of school resources that has a disproportionate negative impact on Black and Brown students. Elsewhere in the chapter, Milner states that this lack of resources, and the poorer-quality education that results from it, contributes to the cradle-to-prison pipeline that runs through schools. And because it is the majority non-white schools that proportionally have lesser funding, it is also those schools that are more affected by the cradle-to-prison pipeline.

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I chose this quote because it spoke to my experiences volunteering in both well-funded and underfunded school environments. The well-funded school in question is Cathedral High School. Cathedral has a sprawling campus, with beautiful buildings and a whole array of niche classes that I've never even heard of before. Class sizes are small, and the teachers have access to a whole array of expensive Apple technologies. The buildings are well-protected, with every student and teacher having a keycard to access the buildings. Compare this to a school like Arsenal Technical High School. It has rather large class sizes, its buildings are old and often beautiful but definitely aging, and a pretty insecure campus. And then you have another IPS school like Raymond F. Brandes School 65, which had to cut its entire STEM program due to lack of funding.

In the case of School 65, students are immediately behind students in other schools due to the lack of STEM programming. Given that STEM positions are the most lucrative and promising jobs these days, not being introduced to them early on reduces the career competitiveness of those students. This puts them in a tight spot, because it may potentially limit their job opportunities in the future and thus  stunt their ability to raise their socioeconomic status.

This quote will in form the way I go about instruction in that I will push myself to be creative with the resources I have, as to go the furthest distance with respect to student learning with what I have available.

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"...making errors is an expected part of the learning process, and getting help from peers and the teacher is part of the classroom culture. Social interactions in the classroom should promote this feeling of community among students, not build a sense of competition between students... Students can begin to feel comfortable asking for help from peers and the teacher when it is a normalized and routinized classroom practice. A teacher can tale steps to build this process into the classroom culture by adding explicit steps to lessons where students consult peers for feedback on their work" (Milner, 2019, p. 86).

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Reaching out for help and feedback from fellow students and the teacher is a key part of the learning process; as Milner stated previously in the same chapter, teaching and learning is not supposed to be the teacher depositing knowledge into their students, but rather the students actively cooperating in their own learning. Part and parcel to this cooperation with the teacher is cooperation with their fellow students. However, despite how fundamental this principle is to learning, many students are reluctant to do it. As such, it is the job of the teacher to foster a classroom environment that encourages this sort of interaction between student and teacher and student and student. It is to be made so normal and routine that students don't even have to think about doing it, they just go and do it. To this end, an atmosphere of competition is to be avoided.

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I heartily agree with Milner's sentiment that that student-to-teacher and principally student-to-student cooperation is key to the learning process. If one does not understand a certain aspect of the subject matter being discussed, but does not ask for help, then they have not succeeded in learning that material. In encouraging peer help, some of the burden is taken off the teacher, and the students doing the helping gain a better knowledge of the material by explaining it to someone else. While I do think that some competition can be helpful towards pushing students to do better (with things such as Quizizz and Kahoot), I agree with Milner's overall statement that an all-consuming, overarching sense of competition between students is to be avoided in the classroom. If one feels that they are competing with their peers, then they are less inclined to provide help to said peers due to the seeing them as "enemies." Such a sentiment would destroy the communal cohesion necessary to build a healthy and effective learning environment.

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"In addition to teacher-held expectations, not all students hold a deep belief in themselves and their academic ability. Because of this, a caring classroom culture with high expectations, which includes teachers' consistently reinforcing their belief in their students, may also encourage students to take on this mindset for themselves. A caring classroom culture can serve as an effective motivating factor in keeping students engaged in working toward achieving at higher levels every day. Just as students may have believed negative narratives of themselves previously, they can grow into embracing...positive narratives of themselves as well" (Milner, 2019, p. 108).

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What Milner is saying here is rather simple. Some students may not believe that they have the ability to do well academically, and so they do not try. If a teacher constantly reiterates the point that said student can indeed do well, then there is a strong likelihood that this attitude will rub off on the student and they will live up to that expectation for themselves. It is the job of the teacher to create an environment of encouragement for the students that they may not receive elsewhere. To put it shortly, if the teacher believes in their students, the students will come around to believing in themselves.

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The reason that I chose this quote was because it is such a simple idea, but it is one that colors every interaction with one's students. The way one makes lessons, what projects and assignments one creates, how tests are designed—all of those those things and more are informed by the attitude ones takes towards their students. Furthermore, this quote especially brings to mind memories from my own schooling experience. Prior to eighth grade, I was not a particularly good student. I cruised through classes with average passing grades, with little motivation to excel beyond that. I was a bright kid, but with little direction. In eighth grade, however, my teachers instilled in us the importance of doing good work and getting all of our assignments in, with regard to preparing us for the spectre that was high school. Thus, I have immediate experience with how high teacher expectations can rub off on a student.
Thus, the principle expressed in the above quote will inform my own teaching in that I'll try and see in each of my students a reflection of myself, and thus deserving of the same motivation that I myself needed back during my schooling career.

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"Classroom management indeed calls for the restorative discipline model. Restorative discipline is built upon the foundational idea that schools are places where students are expected to make errors and learn from them, both in the learning of content and in learning how to be good members of the school community" (Milner, 2019, p. 161).

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What Milner is expressing here is the idea that schools are places where students are slowly sculpted into well-learned, mature individuals who can function as thoughtful and professional members of the school community. Part and parcel to this sculpting is failure; if a student is learning how to learn and how to think and how to act, then it is implied that they do not previously know how to behave as such. Therefore, it is expected that there will be pitfalls along the way, and such pitfalls should be an expected and embraced part of the learning process. This is the principle that lies at the root of restorative discipline.

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I like this quote because, like the last quote I chose for Chapter 4, it reveals a principle that undergirds all of teaching. In schools, students are not just learning new knowledge and applying it, they are also being molded into good, thoughtful, and insightful citizens. Milner states that the students are learning to be good members of the school community, but I would argue more broadly that they are learning to be good members of the country and world. (The purpose of teaching them, say, social studies, is to not just show to them the whats of the world and how those whats came to be, but also what those whats and hows mean for the people living in the here and now. It is teaching them how to think, how to make connections in the past and present.) This knowledge and behavior is not something that is immediately known to people—nobody is born knowing how to file taxes—and so mistakes are to be expected, and embraced. To err is to be human. In any class, there should be the possibility of recovery for students if it is genuinely desired. What is the purpose of destroying a student academically if they have made a genuine turn?