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Personal subjective stance / my social location.

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Personal subjective stance / my social location.

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I identify as a woman who is a New York, northern-European white American mother, daughter, granddaughter, friend and teacher.  I don’t know if I understand (yet?) the entirety of the debate around the foundations of modern education, however the starting point of realizing just how White and European-focused (lensed) my learning has been, has been eye-opening. I would like to ascertain for myself where I can fit my work into this conversation AND how I can incorporate movement and body confidence into that same work.

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One of the Cathedral's peacocks on the close.

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In 7th Grade, I switched to the Cathedral School of St. John the Divine from a more conventional private school elsewhere in New York City.  Cathedral’s location in, what was then, a mixed neighborhood of academics and low-income residents, meant that the student population was far more racially diverse than my previous school. My experience there was a revelation:  where I had previously felt alone and isolated in a fairly elite, competitive and homogenous environment, at Cathedral we were encouraged to voice our thoughts and feelings and support one another.  As a choir school, any student in the cathedral choir received a reduction in tuition, which meant that the school was also far more economically diverse (as well as musically talented!) than my elementary school.  The great equalizer in fact, was the choir.  If you were a chorister, you were one of the cool kids and singing was just as likely to happen in the halls of the school between classes, as in choir practice.  While I was not part of the choir, the experience of being a part of this community for two years, where everyone was appreciated and shown affection, has never left me.  Knowing that school could be a place of diversity and community was an important part of my childhood, where I often felt alienated from my schooling world. The fact that it was a racially mixed school taught me to see my city and neighborhood through new eyes, where I felt more connected to the different races and languages around me than I had in my very white, elite school.  Cathedral was (and is) still part of a privileged world, but it was also very connected to the life of NYC in ways that many institutions are not.

As John Dewey wrote, a key part of education is “the school as a form of community life” (Dewey, Article 2) and this theory couldn’t have been more clearly illustrated and contrasted for me than my elementary and middle school experiences.

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First Learning Memory: Planning for the Future 

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First Learning Memory: Planning for the Future 

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I grew up in a family in which education was a huge influence on our actions, conversations, and thinking. My parents are sociologists of education at Pennsylvania State University. We talk about school, childhood, and society and analyze its effects constantly. We are white and upper middle class, and I had the fortunate access to many resources in life and schooling. I attended public school in a town mostly populated with families tied to academia. Therefore, the school environment could be quite competitive at times. I struggled with this because of my innate desire to please and perform academically.  Because my parents study schooling themselves, they never downplayed the importance of school and learning. However, they made it privately known to my brother and I that they considered certain aspects of our school experience to not serve us as learners. For instance, because I struggled so much with perfectionism and would often express feeling overwhelmed by school, they agreed with me that my teachers expected too much homework or memorization. Or because many parents in our school community were extremely competitive and went to great lengths to ensure their children were on as many sports teams as possible, in every school musical, and placed in advanced classes, my parents explained to me how this was, in the long run, harmful for kids to be over-scheduled and pressured. They impressed on me that I could choose what I wanted to devote energy to and never interfered with these matters unless I expressed genuine interest in an extra curricular or subject.

Even with the pressures I felt in my school environment, I was in many ways the product of the “hidden curriculum” of which Anyon discusses in Social Class and the Hidden Curriculum of Work. I intuitively understood, even when I felt I did not measure up to my classmates in some ways, that I would be given the resources to end up in a similar social standing and class as my parents through the way my schooling rewarded creativity and reflection, thus subconsciously preparing me for specific occupational privileges in my future.

In the fourth grade, we were asked to make a trifold brochure with three predictions for our futures at three different ages, each accompanied by a self portrait. I still have the brochure, it is a sweet memory of my hopes for life. The first image is a drawing of me doing a plié, my writing reads “I am 10 and at dance.” The next picture is of me in a cap and gown. It reads “I am 17 and graduating from High school.” The last drawing depicts me in a stylish outfit in front of a chalkboard. The caption reads “Here I am at 28. I am starting my new job as a teacher.” I remember working on this project for homework and asking my parents how long did it take to finish a PhD program? I wanted to allot time for higher degrees in my plan and assumed that I would have the privilege to do so before entering the workforce. Making plans has always been a comforting task for me. It helps me visualize transitions and changes. Therefore, this project was extremely engaging for me. I  knew even at a young age, that I would end up an educator of some kind. This speaks to the power of what children intuitively know about themselves and, when given the opportunity, can express to the world.

Coincidentally, I did start my first job as a teacher at exactly 28 years old but not because I was working on a doctorate but rather because I had the great fortune to do a master’s program in Museum Studies and work as a museum educator before deciding to transition to the classroom. Museum education is a field that, unfortunately, pays very little and expects a great deal of “buy in” in the form of educational currency. This means that the work force is primarily people similar to me in their schooling and socioeconomic status of their family. Though the brochure is in some ways a heartwarming anecdote from my past, it points to a larger inequity in the kind of schooling provided to some based on race and class.

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About a year before I was born, my parents moved into an apartment in Union Square. The apartment they found was across the street from Friends Seminary and even before I existed in this world, my parents had dreams of me attending the small, Quaker school a block away from us. Sure enough, when I turned 5, I began my journey at Friends. From what I remember, my early years in elementary school were positive. I remember my kindergarten through fourth-grade teachers fondly. There was Janet in second grade who was the first teacher to give us homework and Diane in 4th grade who worked with me one on one for what felt like hours so I could memorize the necessary multiplication facts, as well as many other wonderful educators who challenged me and engaged me. As I got a little older and began middle school, my love and passion for school started to shift. Subjects like Spanish and math that had once felt attainable now felt extremely challenging. My parents and educators started to notice a change in my academic performance as well, and they decided to have me evaluated for learning disabilities. Through a long and tedious process, we eventually discovered that I had dyslexia and A.D.D. I remember feeling so confused when I received the news. I had always assumed I was not trying hard enough and the problem was me. It was hard for me to understand that there was an actual reason I was having such a difficult time in school.

In seventh grade, math was especially challenging. I had a very traditional teacher who had been at the school for over 15 years. We had a test or a quiz at least once a week and I remember so clearly receiving my work back week after week with a low score written on the top of each page. My teacher would give each test or quiz a percentage grade and would then write a corresponding word to match the grade. For example, for 70% he would write “fair” and for 90% he would write “great.” Week after week, I received my grades from him with the words “fair” or “poor” written on the top of each page. From what I can remember, he did not offer any extra support or guidance. I recall feeling that he connected well with students who excelled and was more reserved towards students who were not thriving in his class. I did not feel like we were a team working together so I could succeed in his class. John Dewey states, “The child’s own instincts and powers furnish the material and give the starting point for all education.” Even though I could not verbalize it at the time, I knew I was not receiving the support I needed to succeed in his class and my gut was telling me that his way of teaching did not work for me. This experience with this teacher is one I come back to often as I’m starting my own career in education. I think about ways I can be available to students who are struggling and may be overlooked by other educators.

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As a child and teenager, P.E. was the class I dreaded the most because I was so ill-adept at sports.  I was actually one of those kids who was picked last for every team, which hopefully doesn’t happen much anymore.  Because of this experience, even though I loved dancing on my own at home, I came to see myself as “bad” at all organized physical activity. The only activity I did not have this aversion to was yoga, and in my early 20s I finally took my first class and found it to be a welcoming space.

In my mid-twenties, I was laid off from a job in marketing which I hated. As moments like these often do, it opened up a whole different world to me.  While on unemployment, I started volunteering at my yoga studio in exchange for free classes and realized that yoga was something I wanted to bring more fully into my life.  I enrolled in a month-long teacher training program with one of the best yoga teachers (at the time) in the city.  She was demanding and at times overly critical, but she also fostered an environment of group support and, above all, taught the equal importance of the physical practice alongside that of yoga philosophy and spirituality.  It was the first time I had ever been in a setting where I needed to use my body to study as well as my mind, and it was enlightening. The training was a blend of practice on the mat and sitting on the floor for an academic class listening to lecture, taking notes and discussing anatomy and philosophy.  In fact, we were welcome to engage in seated yoga poses while we sat for lecture and discussion.  As a child, I had always been fidgety and scolded in school for moving too much, so being encouraged to move while I sat—and taught useful ways in which to move--was affirming for me. In addition to movement being the norm, the training also made kindness the rule, rather than the exception, of the class space. We were all encouraged to support one another, no matter our level of physical ability. I was one of the physically weakest students in the class and definitely the one with the least familiarity with sports growing up, given my negative experiences in P.E. Nevertheless, the teacher and her teaching assistants encouraged and supported me to the best of my abilities.

That training taught me that any learning environment can be structured to foster community and support, no matter the age of the students.  It also showed me that physical, experiential learning is not only helpful but sometimes necessary for certain learners.  As I look around schools and playgrounds today I realize there are so many children who may not have typical “natural” athletic abilities but very much need the opportunity to gain physical confidence in, and enjoyment of, their bodies.   As evidenced by my fidgetiness, I was an active child, just not one who found a movement modality which suited her.
In the book Play = Learning, the authors discuss the importance of physical play as it relates to socializing as well as physical well-being. "Children who play together learn to work together."  (page 4, Singer, 2006) This was a lesson I learned a bit later in life, but it still serves as an adult.

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I write as a young white woman who is a recent graduate from Bates College, a predominantly white liberal institution. I have been at Bank Street for a year and have just scratched the surface of unpacking the ways in which I have learned my whole life. This course has been my first introduction to Abolitionist Teaching but have been studying anti-racist teaching for several years. As an educator I strive to continue to learn and relearn.

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A reading that resonated and reminded me of my own elementary school experience was an article I read in another class titled, “Venturing Out in the World with Children” by Salvatore Vascellaro.  This article reminded me of the amazing experiences I had in my Montessori school. One foundational memory I have is of a time in fourth grade when I was on snack duty. Usually for snack duty students would decide to prepare simple snacks. I of course was a very bold and sometimes too ambitious of a child. I decided I wanted to make fresh salsa and chips for the class. The assistant teacher in the class, Morgan, was totally on board. He went above and beyond to help me create the snack. He asked the Spanish teacher, Veronica, to write us a recipe to use in Spanish. Morgan took me and a friend to the store to begin collecting the ingredients for our elaborate recipe. I have vivid memories of deciding what ingredients we would need and how much of each we would need. It is so important for children to go out into the world and have real life experiences. In the Vascellaro article he says, “It is from these kinds of experiences that a sense of belonging and responsibility grows. Ultimately, the venturing outward is a hopeful experiment with the world.” (Vascellaro 2014, pg. 92). As a teacher I am inspired by Morgan’s commitment to his students' ideas and projects. Dewey describes that "education, is a process of living not the preparation for future living." (Dewey, pg. 3). I think Morgan lived true to this pedagogy. He seized the moment to involve us in the trip to the grocery store which made the experience that much more memorable.  As an adult I am an avid cook. I wonder if this moment inspired me to continue cooking at home.

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Preschool graduation with my 2's and 3's teacher who later became my middle school journalism elective teacher. 

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My first educational memory is of the private school I attended from preschool thru grade 8. I grew up in a diverse community in the suburbs of the Bay Area and my school was a reflection of that. When my older brother was entering Kindergarten, the state had cut all “extras” from the public schools and my mom felt that those extras were just as important as the core subject areas. My school's learning was centered around hands-on learning, collaboration as partners and groups, discussions. We had choices in how we wanted to show our learning. The school we attended gave us daily or weekly opportunities in elementary for PE, music, art, and computer.

For me, my school was more than just school. This reminds me of what Dewey said about the school.  For me Dewey's statement that  "I believe it is also a social necessity because the home is the form of social life in which the child has been nurtured and in connection with which he has had his moral training. It is the business of the school to deepen and extend his sense of the values bound up in his home life." (Dewey, article 2) is relatable to my experience. My school was a community, an extended family, a village of people (educators and other families) that looked out for my social and emotional well-being.

In the 3rd grade, my parents were starting to separate, I remember at dismissal my teacher just standing with me off to the side and letting me just take a moment, listening and allowing me to feel safe to cry. Then in middle school, I was really struggling with math. Ms. C would meet with me during lunch and after school for extra math help to fill in the gaps of what I needed. When I was in 5th grade, my best friend and I decided we wanted to make the basketball team the next year. Her mom picked me up at least 3 days a week from school so we started to seriously practice. What stands out for me is that when her dad came home from work he would coach me the same as he would my friend. He brought me along and provided me with the experience of going to college games to learn from older players.

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I have two very distinct memories of hard classroom learning experiences. The first was my 5th-grade classroom teacher, Ms. V, and the second was my sophomore math teacher, Ms.C. Within both spaces, I felt like there were invisible expectations and I grew to understand that I did not meet them. I was a good student and loved school, but in those classrooms I did not feel a love of learning. I did not feel safe to voice my thoughts nor have my questions answered.

I distinctly remember one time in Ms. C’s class where they had gone over a problem on the board and I had written it down step by step with extra notes but I still felt completely lost. So I gathered the courage to raise my hand to ask for clarification on the problem and was immediately met with a harsh and snapping response that I should have taken notes. I responded by holding up my notebook, showing I had indeed been taking notes the entire time; however, I wanted them to do it again or a similar problem using different language because I needed further clarification. I looked around me and everyone was nodding their heads, in agreement. But she quickly shot me down. While just one example, that was the tone and tension that was within the classroom the whole year.

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In reading and discussing each of our pivotal educational moments, I am struck by two major themes emerging in our personal histories: the effect of individual moments and interpersonal relationships in a person's schooling and the broader implications of the educational privileges we received. As Dewey writes, "I believe that the teacher's business is simply to determine on the basis of larger experience and riper wisdom, how the discipline of life shall come to the child." This sentiment sums up the ways in which Kathleen and Nora felt supported as learners and were encouraged to explore the world as they experienced it. It also speaks to how Zoe and Jessica felt unsupported in their experiences of subjects and methods of learning that did not suit their individual style. On a larger scale, many of our moments reflect privileges we received in an unjust education system. For instance, my early understanding of my place in what Anyon calls the "hidden curriculum" and Kathleen's great fortune to have parents who pursued a school with rich extra curricular offerings. The crux of these two themes illuminate our very work at Bank Street: to understand the theoretical foundation and historical basis of our current education system in the pursuit of furthering educational justice and to refine our practices as responsive educators on a day to day basis.

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Second Learning Memory: Comparing Education Systems

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Second Learning Memory: Comparing Education Systems

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My conception of my educational privilege and the injustices it illuminates in our society matured as I aged. One of my formative schooling experiences that helped me conceptualize the American education system and my place in it, came from my time studying abroad. As a teenager, my parents worked in Europe for stretches of time. We spent many summers living in Berlin and Paris. In the 7th grade, we took a sabbatical year in Berlin. I attended John F. Kennedy School, a dual German and American public school. Under the German system, students start the equivalent of high school in 7th grade. JFK is a Gymnasium school, meaning it is a high school that prepares students for university. Students are split into three tracks: Gymnasium (7th-13th grade to prepare students for university), Realschule (7th-12th grade, intended to prepare students for technical jobs or administrative work), and Hauptschule (7th-9th grade to receive "basic" education to prepare students for jobs entailing physical labor). Though schooling splits in the 7th grade, students are put into tracks in the 4th grade. This is decided primarily by teachers in consultation with parents. (This system has changed some in the decades since, I am referencing cultural norms of the early 2000's.)

I learned so much through my lived experience and comparison between the German and American systems. At home, I was used to American elementary schools. My classroom teacher was both an educator and a caregiver. An adult was always on hand to monitor social situations between students. In Germany, I was expected to be in class at scheduled times and other than that, there were no adults on hand in the library, cafeteria, or on the campus grounds. I could come and go as I pleased. No one showed me how to get around or how to read my schedule. Students were expected to manage their own time and studies. Teachers read our grades out loud to the entire class. Instructors publicly reprimanded students for wrong answers or not completing their homework.  The most intriguing comparison, however, was the formalized segregation of the education system by socioeconomic status and the stereotypes it perpetuated.

On one day early in the school year, it was unusually hot in Berlin. On days such as this, we had something called “hitzefrei.” When temperatures reached over 25 degrees celsius in the shade, school let out early. (Air conditioning is not commonly used in Germany.) On this day, my new friends and I decided to hang out in the park next to our school. We sat in the shady lawn, surrounded by other students. I knew some of their faces already, my fellow Gymnasium classmates. They wore mostly alternative clothes in dark colors. As I looked around I noticed another group of students wearing lighter colors and different styled clothing. Instead of vintage dresses, Doc Martens, and tweed jackets, they wore light wash jeans, sport wear, and sneakers.  I asked one of my new German friends who they were? She told me they were from the Realschule nearby. “They are different,” she explained, “they like different fashion and their families have less money.” My friend was not implying that their clothing choice had anything to do with household income, rather that there was a different culture of style in the various kinds of high schools. I had some understanding of the school system already but had not yet come to understand the class differences the streams represented. I asked how she knew that they were not from a Hauptschule? She explained that Hauptschule students were typically descendants of Turkish immigrants. The Turkish-German population, much like immigrant populations in the United States, are treated unfairly in a system set up to maintain the privileges of the dominant culture.

Over my time living in Berlin, I came to recognize the cultural differences between students my age that were associated with the kind of school they attended and their socioeconomic status. This blatant and obvious divide in privilege formed my understanding of how education systems perpetuate injustice. Similar to how the U.S. system hides educational injustice behind the neoliberal education reforms that Picower and Mayorga identify in their work, the German system maintains that throughy the division of high schools in an effort to support various types of learners, masking the way in which it perpetuates a “hidden curriculum” to maintain the status quo.

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My second educational memory takes place in high school. I went to a high school with a predominantly white student body and faculty. My high school would definitely be categorized as what Anyon describes as, an "Affluent Professional School". At my high school every year we would have a, "Diversity Day." On Diversity Day, students and faculty would have the opportunity to present about their culture, teach the community to cook foods from their culture, or hold discussions about various topics related to "diversity". In high school, there was definitely push back from the student body about the legitimacy of the schools efforts to celebrate "diversity." At the time, I did not completely understand or even see the harm that was being done by the school by holding events like this but simultaneously not educating the student body on racial inequalities. This being my second year at Bank Street, I now feel like I have a better understanding of why this Diversity Day was not nearly enough work as an institution or student body. I thought of this memory because of the podcast we watched on "Abolitionist Teaching." The Diversity day is an example of what Bettina Love described as, "managing inequality." It is a surface level "celebration" of diversity which ignores the harm the institution does and doesn't get at the meat of the inequities in the school and beyond.

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One idea I am left with after our discussion is the impact these small moments have had on us. In all of our years of schooling we were able to pinpoint specific moments which had positive and negative impacts on us. Students carry moments with them for their whole lives. How can we as educator foster more moments which will be life changing for students? One essential way is to teach from an abolitionist lens. In my second learning memory, and one of Jessica and Tirzah's learning memories we discussed the ways in which our schools did or did not discuss racial and socioeconomic diversity. As students, we had to create our own understanding. I think also the fact that our schools did not discuss this may have left us with the impression that talking about racial and socioeconomic diversity were not topics for the classroom. As educators we must change this for our students. We must facilitate discussions that challenge students to become actively engaged in topics of injustice and to celebrate diversity. Students must feel as though the classroom is a place to question their biases and have open conversations about the injustices of our world.

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Anyon, J. (1980). Social class and the hidden curriculum of work. The Journal of Education, 1(162), 67-92.

Dewey, J. (1897). My pedagogic creed. School Journal, 54, 77-80.

Picower, B., & Mayorga, E. (Eds.). (2015). What's Race Got To Do With It?: How Current School Reform Policy Maintains Racial and Economic Inequality. Peter Lang, Inc.

Vascellaro, S. (2014). Venturing out in the World with Children. Forging Connections with the World, 90–92.

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Writing has always been my favorite subject in school. Coming from a family of writers, I have been doing my own personal writing since I could hold a pencil. To me, writing made sense. It could be whatever I wanted it to be. I struggled in other areas such as math and languages and writing routinely provided a safe space for me, one where I could express myself however I wanted to without judgement. A specific memory of writing's positive impact on my life is my 5th grade English class with my teacher Leana. Every class period we had with her would begin the same way. We would come in to calm music playing and we would have 5-10 minutes of free writing time. We could write about anything we wanted and could even draw pictures if nothing came to mind in the moment. I remember it feeling like a safe place, one where I could get ideas down on paper that were private and would not be shared with anyone else. I loved this time and especially liked knowing what to expect each day when I came into the class. This structure allowed me to gain ownership over my work and resulted in a newfound consideration over my school work. The fact that writing could be whatever I wanted it to be was appealing to me. There was no right or wrong in writing. I could choose the topic and decide where it went. In middle school, I found other subjects in school challenging. Writing was a space that felt more welcoming to me.

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A big takeaway I have after discussing our learning memories as a group was how impactful each moment in the classroom can be to students. We each had different stories that strongly impacted us as learners and remain with us to this day. This makes me consider every move I make in my current second-grade classroom. What pieces of the day will stay with my students as they move from grade to grade?

The memories we all shared have some common threads but in the end, are all very different. They each reflect how we were as students and the unique ways we saw the world at that point in our lives. I am stuck wondering how we can create more impactful moments with students. Kathleen and I both shared stories of not receiving the necessary academic support, resulting in both of us feeling disconnected from our teachers and left to work through our academic struggles alone. John Dewey states, “I believe that the teacher’s place and work in the school is to be interpreted from the same basis. The teacher is not in the school to impose certain ideas or to form certain habits in the child, but is there as a member of the community of select the influences which shall affect the child an assist him in properly responding to these influences.” This quote makes me wonder how our educational experiences would have differed if other members of the school were involved. I remember in middle school, each subject felt so separate from the other, and at the time, I had no idea my different teachers even knew each other. What if building community was at the forefront of everything we did in the school day? What if teachers got together to make a plan for their students who were struggling? Would students feel an increased level of support from the entire school? Would this set them up for success in other areas?

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A common thread connecting both of my memories is that these experiences taught me something from a standpoint beyond that of the typical schooling environment. It was not so much the specific classroom experiences that impacted me, as what was gained through other moments outside of the “norm” of school learning.  At Cathedral, it was the diverse, welcoming community within a large, yet intimate physical space (the Cathedral close) where we were encouraged to spend time outside of school hours, that taught me the importance and rewards of being connected to my particular community.  In my yoga training, physical awareness and permission to listen to one’s body in conjunction with other forms of learning, was an education I had lacked my whole life.

As Pam Jones has pointed out, schooling as we know it is only part of one’s education. Our entire lives are opportunities for education, beginning with our home experiences as children.  There are the home classrooms, school classrooms, forest classrooms and street/community classrooms, to name just a few.  Professor Jones asks, “What would happen if we could expand the boundaries of schooling?”  Both literally and figuratively?  One idea, raised by Milteer et al. (2012), is that of opening up schools during off hours (evenings and weekends) to the neighborhood community around it. Could we use schools as places for families and neighbors to meet and spend time in regular activities and events that would involve both physical and creative participation? If school felt more multidimensional and related to a child’s own life, we might finally begin to embody Dewey’s idea of, “school as a form of community life”.