Thursday, October 09, 2008

$125K to Teach Future Highschool Dropouts

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Only 32 percent of Black men graduated from New York City public schools
on schedule in 200
6.

Only when we decide that we are teaching young people, young urban people
with the sole intent of liberating them, will we have any success as educators.

Apparently, there is a school in New York that thinks that paying teachers
$125K per year will make substantial gain in transforming the lives of
future drop outs. Cristine Gralow writes in the New York Times,

The Equity Project Charter School (TEP) will open in September 2009 in Manhattan’s Washington Heights community, and it will aim to enroll middle school students at risk of academic failure. Students with the lowest test scores will be given admissions priority. In order to recruit the country’s top teachers to work with these at-risk students, the school’s founding principal will cut administrative costs and put a higher percentage of the school’s public funding into teacher salaries. He’s also seriously raising teacher qualifications, offering teachers a potential $25,000 bonus, and expanding the school day and work year for teachers. The principal will make $90,000. There will be no vice principal.
Only then will they become critical thinkers who feel that they can make a
contribution to society. In Living for Change, Grace Bogg's
discuses
what young people need in order to be engaged in school.
She writes,
Meanwhile, watching high school dropouts hanging around on our corners, as our communities deteriorated, I began to talk less about education to govern and more about creating a system of education to address the needs of these young people and of our communities at the same time. Instead of seeing our schools as institutions to advance individual careers, I argued we must start turning them into places to develop our children into responsible citizens- by convolving them in community building activities, such as planing community gardens, preparing school and community meals, building playgrounds, cleaning up our rivers and neighborhoods. In this way our children will learn through practice, which is the best way to learn.
Unless you are educating oppressed people with intention of liberating them
all efforts will
be unsustainable. That is not so say that there will be no success,
what ever that may or may not mean, what I am saying is that paying more
isn't scalable, and it isn't sustainable.

In Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Friere gets to the heart of the matter
when he writes,
Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communicating, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize and repeat. This is the "banking" concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing and storing deposits.

It is not surprising the the banking concept of education regards men as adaptable manageable beings. The more students work at storing deposits entrust to them, the less they develop the critical consciousness from which would result from their intervention in the world as transformers of that world...The capability for the banking education to minimize or annul the students creative power to stimulate their credulity serves the interests of the oppressors, who care neither to have the world revealed nor see it transformed. The oppressors use their "humanitarianism" to preserve a profitable situation.

No pedagogy [way/method of teaching] which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among oppressors. the oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption.
While I think its commendable that the school wants to pay the teachers more,
teacher pay does not address the fact that a banking system of education
will only produce people who only survive, not people who are critical
thinkers who feel that they can make a contribution to society

Most urban public school's aren't anything but jails with training wheels.

I don't believe you, you need more people.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

“Only 32 percent of Black men graduated from New York City public schools
on schedule in 2006.”-------------------

That is just a amazing stat. We are currently living in the times of a undefined yet destined to be catastrophic impending economic crisis, while practical wisdom tells us that a Bachelors degree is the new high school diploma, and 7 out of ten of my younger breadren won’t even graduate? This would be even more depressing if I wasn’t sadly already familiar with the state of things in Detroit.

Dropping out is a key part of the Prison Industrial Complex fast tracking..


“The capability for the banking education to minimize or annul the students creative power to stimulate their credulity serves the interests of the oppressors, who care neither to have the world revealed nor see it transformed. The oppressors use their "humanitarianism" to preserve a profitable situation”--------------------

Whoa… That is one of those brain stimulating pargrahs


“The capability for the banking education to minimize or annul the students creative power to stimulate their credulity serves the interests of the oppressors, who care neither to have the world revealed nor see it transformed. The oppressors use their "humanitarianism" to preserve a profitable situation”

I agree with you wholeheartedly. The highly rigid dissemination of “knowledge” by educators and forced regurgitation of it by pupils has always perpetuated a stifling environment. The quote you pulled from Friere reminded me of decrees bestowed upon me by one of my secondary education orientated professors in college in which she told me. “The number one job of a educator is to create “good citizens”. Given what a “good” citizen is supposed to epitomize, one could come to the conclusion the educational system is severely impaired from capitalizing on all of the potential energy millions of young minds across our land hold.

Kinda made me not want to teach....

I would haft to disagree with you and Dead Prez that schools are tatimaont to youth jails, but agree that their structure on so many levels is extremely rancid . I’ve always wished that public schools where based more on the college template. High school was place for me to sleep, hope to not get caught up in the gang bullshit, and get at females. It gave me no hope for the future and ended up telling me I was one of the the most intulectly infeariour pupils of my class.
The college environment invites and demands the critical thinking you speak of, and creates a thirst for learning and a understanding and interest in ones environment and world. Changed me…. But sadly many will never experience due to the horrid state of k-12

One of my greatest political wishes is that states would force cities and counties to pool and divide their educational funds equally so the ecomnoic disparity of centers of education would greatly be decreased.

But given the issue of pedagogy you bring up, I see that even such a radical (for this country) move might not have the effect I would like it to

the prisoner's wife said...

i remember when i first saw the ad they posted for teachers. i was like WOW, this is crazy loot. the application process, however, is a beast & it will be interesting to see if the pay increases student learning (doubtful) or will the quality of people attracted will. i think one of the qualifications is being avail to your students until the night time...which, i'm really not interested in LOL.

motivating boys is a difficult & special case unto itself. i am having the hardest time with my boys...you have to approach them differently. you have to be tough, but caring, because they will freeze you out in a second.

but on to critical thinking. there is a definite shift, albeit slowly, going on in schools to move the work from being teacher-directed to being collaboratively based. all of our PD now is based on getting students to work in groups, giving them responsibilities, teaching them & allowing them to think critically about the content, etc. etc. we are definitely behind. we are functioning on an extremely outdated model of education, but i do believe the tide is shifting. it might be taking too long, but hopefully we will get there soon.

Model Minority said...

we are definitely behind. we are functioning on an extremely outdated model of education, but i do believe the tide is shifting. it might be taking too long, but hopefully we will get there soon.
=========
You know what blood, tho, we will lose two or three generations fucking around with they "shift". Enough is enough.

you have to be tough, but caring, because they will freeze you out in a second.
========
I just finished reading Terrie William's "Black Pain" about Black folks and depression.

You are so right about the freeze out.

Kids who don't know how to feel grow up to be adults who don't know how to feel.

Numb adults, create numb society's.

Real spit.

Its like we need pain workshops. Feel me?

Model Minority said...

High school was place for me to sleep, hope to not get caught up in the gang bullshit, and get at females. It gave me no hope for the future and ended up telling me I was one of the the most intulectly infeariour pupils of my class.
======
Thank you for being honest homie.

the prisoner's wife said...

we definitely need pain workshops. this year i have hella students whose parents have died. they are pretty much abandoned to the foster system or another relative. these particular kids act out (or one just falls into a coma...he SLEEPS) to a great degree & it's hard breaking through. they don't know how to cope & are coping in ways that aren't helping.

school counseling is a joke...we need straight up interventions. i am about to be trained to be an IMPACT group leader. we are running all types of support groups @ our school. wish me luck, cuz our kids need it!

Model Minority said...

they don't know how to cope & are coping in ways that aren't helping.

i am about to be trained to be an IMPACT group leader. we are running all types of support groups @ our school. wish me luck, cuz our kids need it!
====

Love you are amazing.

I am happy and proud that you are one of my oldest readers.

Oh. Peep www.Brooklynmagic.com

I go something for you there.
Ta hehehe.

the prisoner's wife said...

Love you are amazing.

I am happy and proud that you are one of my oldest readers.
======

awww, gracias! one day we will do lunch LOL

went to the site. it's cute. is it your project? what you got for me?

Model Minority said...

Yessum. Thats the new ish.

Umm Hmm. We we have lunch when "I" come to LA lols.

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