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Urban education is a strong discussion point in todays society, as we try to

reform our current system and figure out how to best suit the needs of our
students. One way of considering this discussion is from the perspective of
the community and how students thrive in different settings.
This semester in Education in the Community has helped me see the
topic of education not only as a system to educate, but also as an entity to
foster growth and development. There are so many different ways to define
community in this context. It can be a group of people from the same
background, living in the same area, of the same religion. In terms of
Education in the Community, I like to think of a community as a group of
people striving towards a common goal.
In my opening interview, I spent some time discussing stereotypes and
where I believe they stem from. I talked about how I believe that everyone
has some sort of prejudice to varying degrees, but what is truly important is
what we do to overcome these beliefs. Throughout the semester, I think I
have become slightly more optimistic about the state of prejudice we are
currently in, but Ive also become more aware of more subtle things that I
hadnt considered before.

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The main example of this is the Why Question project that we did, and
I researched the standards for hair in African-American culture. Before this, I
had the idea that racial prejudice was very black and white, only based on
skin color. I am now learning that there are so many other factors that play
into racial stereotypes and prejudice, more than just the color of someones
skin.
These factors are important to consider when discussing what it means
to educate in the community. With so many different types of communities,
educators need to keep all of them in mind, being sensitive to students
backgrounds, and taking on a significant role in their lives. It is essential to
see students as more than just their labels; a poor student is so much
more than just being poor. In the TED talk led by Chimamanda Adichie, she
spoke of growing up in Nigeria and having a servant work for her family. Her
parents told her that he and his family were very poor, and the only emotion
expressed towards him was pity. When she went to visit him one day, she
was shocked when she saw a beautifully woven basket that his brother had
made. She says, All I had heard about them was how poor they were, so

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that it had become impossible for me to see them as anything else but poor.
Their poverty was my single story of them. (Adichie, 2009)
This TED talk was a turning point for me. Coming into this course, I
knew I wanted to help students of all backgrounds and levels of income, but I
will admit that I was guilty of seeing them as results of disadvantage. I have
learned to now see them as so much more, as individuals that each bring
unique contributions to the classroom. When educators learn to accept
students as unique individuals, they can start to develop a learning
community and teach as part of the students communities.
This semester, I was partnered with a campus-wide organization called
Jumpstart. It is run through AmeriCorps and about five corps members, along
with a team leader, go into a local preschool in a low-income area and carry
out session plans twice a week. Jumpstarts goal is to help every child enter
kindergarten with the same opportunities and experiences. Often, children
from low-income areas start elementary school significantly behind their
peers from higher-income neighborhoods. Jumpstart helps in providing equal
opportunities for these young students.

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My group worked in the Parker Hill Fenway Headstart, where I helped

with biweekly Jumpstart sessions and additional classroom assistant time. I
was assigned to three partner children, all around three or four years old,
and I would help them with things such as recognizing letters and sounds
and read to them.
One important piece of Jumpstart is parent involvement. We always
made sure to keep parents updated on their childs achievements, and if
they came to pick up their child early during session, we would take some
time to go and talk to them, ask them how they are, and tell them about the
sort of things weve been doing in the classroom. For our final session, we
had a small graduation ceremony where we gave our partner children
scrapbooks for the semester and certificates for completing Jumpstart. We
invited all of the parents and encouraged them to all come for the Jumpstart
graduation. I was shocked at the turnout the classroom was packed, and
almost every student had someone with them, sometimes even multiple
family members. What I found most surprising was the number of parents
that showed up, despite not being able to speak any English.

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In Social Class, Culture, and Good Parenting, Guofang Li discusses

the struggles faced by many families of low socio-economic status. He writes
on a case study, Contrary to the stereotypical notion that low-SES families
are not involved or do not care about their childrens education, the Myer
family was actively involved in their childrens school work at home. This
speaks volumes against the stereotype of many parents simply not caring
about their childrens school work. In Jumpstart, I consistently got the feeling
from parents that they were very interested in the work their children were
doing, how they were doing, and what they can do to improve. Li goes into
where this stereotype comes from and continues, Their efforts, however,
were constantly thwarted by their work and financial demands. (Guofang,
2010, p. 167)
There are many invisible factors that influence a parents involvement
in their childs education, and teachers and school administrators need to
cognizant of this, as it can sometimes be misconstrued as the parents being
lazy or not caring. The Jumpstart graduation was such a wonderful event,
with parents, teachers, and volunteers coming together to celebrate the
childrens achievements. After that, I couldnt imagine thinking that parents

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from low socio-economic status just simply didnt care about their childrens
education.
Continuing to foster this sort of positivity towards parent involvement
is important for educating in the community. Too often, I think schools are
seen as a separate entity, completely apart from a students home life. When
parents are actively involved, the school becomes an integral part of the
students community as a whole.
In the blog Edudemic, Leigh Whittle discusses different things for
teachers to keep in mind when interacting with parents. The one that stands
out to me the most is making sure to treat parents like adults. When parents
feel like they are being spoken down to, they wont be as receptive, and this
fuels the idea of parents against teachers instead of parents working with
teachers.
The Minneapolis Story is an excellent example of parents and teachers
working together towards a common goal, which goes back to my earlier
personal definition of community. The narrator says, School reform
shouldnt pit parents and teachers against each other. She goes on to talk
about a school district in Minneapolis, where parents raised money from

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funders by saying they were going to work to get rid of bad teachers, but,
in fact, they hadnt actually come across that many bad teachers. They
realized that there is a more important underlying issue, mainly having to do
with the way that funding is divided among schools. She continues,
[Parents] decided to build relationships with teachers and collaborate to
improve schools. Together, they fought the closure of an underachieving
school, and as a result, the school reopened with additional funding.
Their work goes to the root of the issue of our education system:
politicians often think the easiest way to fix the problem of
underperforming schools is to just close them, when in fact, giving adequate
funding to already existing schools seems to be a better solution. It seems
that teachers are often blamed for underperformance in schools, but when
parents were surveyed on their childrens teachers, they actually gave them
decent performance ratings. It turns out that the actual problem parents had
with their childrens education was the high number of students assigned to
each teacher.
Perpetuating the stereotype of lazy, underperforming teachers is so
harmful and prevents people from seeing the real problem, which lies with

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the allocation of funding. I know now that I need to investigate an issue from
all angles and consider all different opinions before settling on my own idea.
This goes in with my own willingness to be disturbed. Its easy to choose a
scapegoat to blame and go along with what the general consensus seems to
say.
This semester, I have learned to take a step back and examine the
situation in ways that I never would have considered. I witness the topics of
our discussions every time I go into Jumpstart, and the service-learning
component of this course was invaluable in furthering my understanding of
the coursework.