December 6, 2010

My inquiry question is:

 What does institutionalized racism look like from a student’s perspective?

The learning goal for my students is:

 I hope that my students develop effective strategies for coping with injustice (racism).

Indicators for success:

Any one of the following things would indicate success.

Students will use language that reflects an understanding of racism as a historical and social force. They will identify support mechanisms.  Can communicate realistic ways of holding people or systems accountable.

Focal students:

I have students in mind- Sam, Saul, but I am not sure yet.

Routine data source:

I will continue to give student surveys every month.

Other data sources:

Student interviews, grades, discipline record

November 30, 2010

The area I want to work on before the meeting, and at the meeting is...
I hope to finish compiling the second round of surveys I collected from my students. I also hope to start building a theoretical framework for my inquiry. I think that Pedro Noguera's The Trouble with Black Boys will help me gain perspective on the work that I have been doing. I am looking at individual experiences, but I don't want to loose sight of the larger issue of institutional racism and I want to contextualize the data with this in mind.

What I am thinking right now about this aspect of my inquiry is...
I feel deeply passionate about the work that I am engaged in. Once I compare the second round of survey answers to the first sample I hope to uncover more about how students feel discipline is dealt with at my site. I think that the next step will have to be asking my students about some of what I uncover to see how I can turn the focus onto student outcomes.

What I am thinking right now...

Although the surveys require a lot of time and dedication, they are an extremely rich source of data. After teaching for 5 years there are certain strategies that become instinctive- like breathing. These are things that I do because I have learned to anticipate when and why my students will be confused. For the most part, these strategies have been born from roadblocks I encounter over and over. Examples are: I make explanations as short as possible, each time I ask a student to read to the class I ask him or her to read in a loud voice so the whole class can hear, I finish my lesson and explain the homework ten minutes before the bell, I ask students to sit forward with both knees under the desk.

Students responses on the survey shows me that there are roadblocks I have been encountering, but I did not know were there. I must develop new strategies that become just as instinctive and will make student more open to the learning.  At first these roadblocks don't seem to be specifically about the learning, but they affect learning.

1. At this moment in time my question has become: how can I make students who are alienated from school due to a feeling of injustice take ownership of their education and relationship to learning and develop resiliency.

2. Being as specific as I can be right now, what I want students to be able to learn is name/identify the process they encounter that makes them feel alienated as well as their strategy for coping/surviving/resisting.

3. I would know my students are accomplishing these goals if I saw them or heard them correctly identifying racism/oppression and responding effectively to it.

4. I can collect information about them doing these things through interviews, surveys, academic progress, discipline data, teacher reflections.

refining my question

1. What did I learn from the data exploration today?
I learned techniques for data collection: group interviews, creating a spreadsheet, surveys with limited answers, tape-recoding interviews, writing student narratives

2. How does this connect to your area of interest for your study this year?
I am looking at the process of identity development. These techniques help make that process visible.

3. What is the current draft of your question?
Focusing on Black and Brown boys, what events/experiences mold/reinforce student identity as learners in school?
-what events are teachers responsible for?
-what events are other students responsible for?
-what are the students themselves doing?

How do students contextualize these events?
How do I make the process visible to students?

4. Your thoughts now.
Next step: eat and then create the spreadsheet.