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.  

 

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. 

 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. 

 

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.  

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.   

 

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.  

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. 

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? 

 

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”.