July 14 Reflection - Robyn

I really enjoyed watching the movie in class on Thursday. Surprisingly, after taking so many education classes (and history classes), I never felt like I had a grasp on the history of public education. It’s so interesting to learn about the basis of public education and “common schools”, which were built on the premise of providing common knowledge that would give all students an equal chance in life. This was supposed to be independent of wealth or status in society. It’s hard to believe that hundreds of years later, we are still dealing with similar problems. We are still dealing with the achievement gap, or as Brie put it during one discussion, a resource gap. When I think about the resources available in my mom’s school, where every classroom has a Smart Board and more, in comparison to the classroom in which I was volunteering this past year, which didn’t have any technological resources (not even an overhead), it’s almost sickening. My mom has many more opportunities to differentiate instruction using technology, for example, than my cooperating teacher and I did. Even though these schools are both public schools, they are not “equal”. Something else that struck me was that 200 years ago, most teachers were men who were unable to do anything else (those who can, do; those who can’t, teach… or however it goes), and this stereotypical view of teachers hasn’t changed much since then. As teachers in urban settings, we are going to have to face these harsh realities and critical viewpoints. There are so many things we’d like to change in education… how do we tackle them all? Can we? Or is change more attainable if we start small?