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STUDENT REFLECTIONS

Sources:
[1] Interviews with WKCD
[2] Proficiencies: Performance Assessment at Urban Academy (videotape)
[3] Teaching American History: An Inquiry Approach (videotape) [Note: Students are not identified in this video and we have given them fictitious names.]

On the mark of a good teacher

Vance: The mark of a good teach is that no matter how weird or boring you might think their subject is, their love for it us what pushes you to learn something. It could be rat feces or some nasty topic and the fact that their eyes are glowing when they talk about it makes you want to know something about it. If he cares about it you’ll get at least a little of it.     . . . It’s good when a teacher allows you to fail and accepts something even though it’s not right, but you’re on the road to something right. There’s a lot of pressure on high schoolers to get it right or else not hand it in, because you think it’s stupid. Lots of teachers will give you every step leading up to the answer. But you’re not really learning anything, you’re just reciting it.

    . . . Avram always tries to challenge your ideas about something. Sometimes he’ll say something completely opposite to what he believes, just to get you to argue. He loves to argue—to exchange ideas, turn your viewpoints on their heads. It’s nice to have conversations about politics, religion, anything with an adult who doesn’t think you’re a dumb teenager. [1]

Justin: Everyone knows that the teacher runs the discussion, but at the same time, you’re able to argue with the teacher, and argue with everybody else’s points, so they’re on the same level with you.” [3]

Lilia: They’ll ask a question and they’ll step back and let us discuss the question. [3]

Alexis: He tries to make us understand with our own minds rather than just tell us the answer. They don’t want to tell you how to do it—they want us to figure out for themselves. We break up into groups of threes to try and figure out each math problem. Sometimes it’s frustrating when we don’t know how to do it, so he throws hints. It can still be frustrating, but it’s rewarding when we figure something out on our own. Although sometimes people still won’t understand, he lets it be known that you can come to him outside of class for help if you choose to. It’s hard, it’s frustrating. It feels like they’re not teaching. But then after we’ve got our minds and our juices flowing, he’ll tell you. And then he’ll put another couple of problems on the board and move on. They don’t treat us like children. That’s where the frustration is, because students are used to that. We’re like ‘Break it down for me!’ And they say, ‘Break it down yourself.’

    . . . I never learned how to write a paper except ‘introduction, body, conclusion.’ When I got to high school, I didn’t know how to compare three books. I’m smart—I say some good things, but I don’t know how to organize it. So my teachers told me new ways to do it. They would say, ‘Here, you can have a tape recorder,’ or, ‘Just write what you think about these three books and then we can think about how to organize it; we’ll sit down with you and work on it.’ Now I’m not afraid any more.

    . . . When you finally get it, you realize that what they were telling you was actually helping you. You were so upset you didn’t want to listen, but they won’t let you give up. [1]

Mika: The teacher goes as slow as necessary—he gives examples, tells stories, makes assignments to clear up questions. Charts, handouts, blind guessing. He puts a problem on the board and you can’t stop until you get it. You walk in and he says, ‘OK we’re doing statistics.’ But instead of explaining what it means, he says, ‘You have ten minutes to hand in an answer.’ And after a bunch of guessing about something you know nothing about, you come up with an answer and he tells you how close that is. It’s good, after you realize that’s what he wants you to do. They throw you in the lake and if you learn how to swim, great. If not, they’ll throw you a stick and you figure out what to do with it. [1]

Eric: What’s the point of the Constitution? It sounds like a pretty boring question. It’s hard to get into it at 10:30 in the morning, generally. So he’d change it, he’d throw in some other piece of information, like: ‘Because, you know, all the people who wrote it were like these rich landowners—who were they writing it for? Were they writing it for themselves or were they writing it for the people?’ That kind of thing builds up more excitement in kids, it sort of rouses us up from our incredible exhaustion and tiredness and gets us involved in the class. [3]

On different points of view

Maria: Any person can sit in a classroom and have a teacher tell them dates and times and names and places and basically take notes and then study and come in for a test, but it’s like a special kind of education to be able to think about things and realize that there are a lot of things that happen in history that aren’t cut and dry, that people look at from very different perspectives and come away feeling very different things about them. [3]

James: You need to look at a few different things, more than two, like maybe five or six, maybe from a different country. Like the Boston Massacre: American textbooks versus English textbooks are completely different. [3]

Vance: It’s hard to say something’s wrong because it’s someone’s opinion. Different people might see the same thing 18 different ways. You can see that in descriptions of eyewitnesses to crimes, when one person says the person who did it was black, another says Puerto Rican, or male, or female. That’s why you need different sources to get the truth—some grain of truth is the same in each of them. [1]

Tiffany: You’ve got to have stuff behind what you say or it’s just nothing. You could say anything—unless you have evidence it doesn’t make any sense.[3]

Leah: You’re going to be very confused if you just read the things and don’t try to formulate an opinion, because you get so much contradictory information, you have to learn how to extract meaning from it on your own. [3]

On textbooks

Alexis: Textbooks might be trying to indoctrinate you into what the society wants you to know. Our history teacher had like 50 textbooks in the room, and we were supposed to look through and compare what they said about the same event like the American Revolution. Even the dates were the same, but the interpretations were all different and some even incorrect. Instead, we use evidence and actual documents. [1]

Carlos: In our school before we used textbooks, so it’s pretty much one person saying what it is. So it’s pretty much biased. If we use research from this school, we’d be able to see different points of it, and people would be able to understand more about the subject than from just reading one side. [3]

Natalie: My old school was really, really easy. It was basic textbooks—take this home, do a page, come back to school, and it was so easy because the answers would be right there—you’d just copy what it said in the book. You’re not even thinking for yourself, to bring it in. Here you have to think a whole lot. [3]

On proficiencies, inquiry, and hard work

The following comments are from Urban Academy graduates:

Caitlin Schlapp-Gilgoff, Swarthmore College

In my previous school, even if I hadn’t really done enough of the work throughout the semester, if I crammed at the very end, I was able to pull through and do well in the class—or not do well because I hadn’t study well enough for the test, [Either way,] how you did was entirely decided in the last week of class and didn’t really reflect continual work or real ability and development.

Proficiencies avoid that. You really have to know what you are talking about and to work towards a goal. And they develop writing and discipline, like time management, which is really important. [2]

Andrea Barrow, Lang College

When I passed the math proficiency I felt really proud of myself, because I had figured out how to measure the distance between two structures, to look across the East River and figure out the width. Learning like this changes the way you look at your surroundings. [2]

Diandre Verwayne, College of New Rochelle

At Urban, they’re not looking for just an answer, but for how you came about getting this answer. It starts in class. You have to take something and really develop it. Like in one of my classes I did a whole research project based on Christopher Columbus. I started with the idea, the question: Did Columbus really discover America? I took arguments from one side and arguments from another and then came up with my own point of view. I was able to argue many sides.

From this, I’ve learned how to talk not just off the top of my head, but to get myself prepared to respond. I challenge people, I challenge their thoughts, I even challenge my own thoughts. [2]

Kevin Kirby, State University of New York at Stonybrook

Urban showed me that work and effort pay off. I was forced to do a lot of reading, I was forced to do a lot of writing. And I think I have an advantage coming from Urban and going to Stonybrook, having written as many papers as I’ve written and having read as much as I’ve read. A lot of the students at Stonybrook can’t write papers, they struggle, they literally struggle. They ask me, “How did you do such a good job on that paper, you only started a week ago, how did you get an A?” [2]

Shane Serrant, University of Maryland (BA Engineering)

I ended up graduating with a 3.43 GPA. I couldn’t have done that without the preparation I got here, I know I couldn’t have. [2]

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