Impetuous and 20 Something: First Assignment: Get to Know the Demographic

Purpose: In order to educate, one must first be educated.

Learning about the students, with whom I choose to work, seems like a natural beginning to my journey in education. If I can understand the thoughts and plights of my urban demographic, maybe then I can serve them better. Recognizing the cultural uniqueness of the student's community will allow me to create positive constructs of their world. These constructs will provide to me the skill set to continuously infuse cultural elements into the classroom, ultimately, making me a better teacher (Delpit, 2002).

Albert Bandura, a social learning theorists, once said that "virtually every phenomenon that occurs by direct experience can occur vicariously as well- by observing other people and the consequences for them". While I am from the city, I am not familiar with the current vernacular or modern trends of the District's youth, therefore I decided to get out into the neighborhood to observe my students and their peers in academic and non-academic settings. In doing this activity, I hope to observe positive interactions between the students and their peers, as well as the students and their instructors. By observing urban social etiquette, I will be able to gather information on my students' primary and secondary Discourses in the hopes to avoid the unintentional interaction faux pas.

Opening

Poor, Black kids can't learn; they just don't get it. Not to mention, they are preoccupied with drama in their home lives.... Just listening to their language they just sound ignorant. This was a common misconception that I heard upon entering the world of urban education. I heard this from administrators, neighborhood citizens,and even worse, colleagues. How can students learn, if their adult guides do not believe in them or if teachers are holding them to a lower standard than their more affluent peers. Urban students must have teachers and other adult figures who support and believe in their infinite possibilities, while taking into account their cultural differences.

This is a new concept which was obviously not uniformly practiced by my teachers when I was in school. Attending school in Washington, D.C., my teachers rarely took into account the language, music, or general culture of my generation. I distinctly remember my teachers saying that we were to leave the "tomfoolery," what they called our urban banter, at home. The classroom was for focused learning and Standard English, only. Because of these strict rules, my abilities to code switch became effortless. I only hope that the students that I observe demonstrate the working ability to code switch.

Destination: The Washington Middle School for Girls, 1901 Mississippi Avenue S.E., D.C., 20020