The Trouble with Black Boys Chapter 4

In Chapter 4, entitled "How Listening to Students Can Help Schools to Improve", my first thought was addressing the title: OBVIOUSLY. If we want to know how effective our teaching is or what can be changed to make schools better serve students, why wouldn't we ask the students themselves??!! But, in fairness, I do think the students as resources themselves beyond test scores and statistics are often overlooked.

My second reaction was to all of the statistics and issues with public high schools listed in the first two pages. Obviously, this is just an introduction to the actual point of the chapter, but I couldn't help but feel a little defeated when reading these. So much of what I do feels like intensely hard, heart-breaking work, yet as a general whole, I am part of a very large failure to reach kids. When all the ways public high schools fail are listed out for me to read, it is somewhat defeating!

The conversation then switched to the push to create small high schools. I have been part of a TINY high school (165 students total) for the past five years. This upcoming school year, our community and one next to it voted to merge into a cooperative high school. Both high schools are equally small, so even merging together will only mean a high school a little over 300 students. This can prove difficult in offering the range of opportunities larger high schools can offer, but at the same time, this can be an amazing experience. I taught and will continue to teach every single freshman and sophomore. This gives me two years with students, and it means I know the entire school throughout their four years. This personal interaction and relationship can serve some of my students better than extra-curricular activities ever could. So while he debates this point, I do feel in some (not all) of my students, smaller schools better serve them.

I am not surprised that student-teacher relationship was the number one idea for improving schools. I do know my kids, and I know what they like and dislike, and many times I am able to cater the curriculum accordingly to engage them better. Another aspect I found interesting in this was that the students said, "Teachers should show respect to students in the same way that they expect to receive respect." I have always strived to do this, but I realize that some older teachers around me still have the mindset that they "deserve" respect because they are in authority. My response to that is that many of our students are not in families where respect is a valued trait. If we as teachers don't respect our students first, how then will they learn to respect us? We are the teachers. We show the examples. We don't get to demand respect while talking down to our kids. They won't respond to that! I liked that the student voice in this section emanated that point.

I do agree with the students that too much emphasis is placed on testing and test-prep. This year, with our students doing both PARCC and the ACT, some of our juniors were testing for 6 school days in a row. Obviously, by the end of the first or second day, their brains were fried and the tests will never be an accurate result. It's unfair to put that much pressure on these tests. I haven't studied what other countries do as far as testing, so if any of you know, please enlighten me! Surely there are other ways!

In the Discipline and Safety section, I thought it was interesting that so many of their punishments were to do more academic work, spend more time at school, and do something to make the school or community better. I like that they chose discipline measures that cause students to "own" their education and school.

I love the idea of Student Goals and Motivations. By helping our students make goals for themselves, we are helping them to stay focused on how to get there.

My favorite part of the chapter was "In schools where decisions about reform are made in a top-down manner by administrators with little, if any, input from teachers, it is highly unlikely that such an approach to listening to students would ever be embraced." I feel that so often, in Education, reform and standards and decisions are made without ever consulting the teachers, the ones who are actually DOING education every day. Similarly to that, and to circle around to the beginning of the chapter, listening to students, the ones who are actually RECEIVING education every day, would also be a fantastic source of information on what needs to happen in schools!