EDUCATION 101
Community Assignment
Voices of the Community Session: December 11, 2012
Introduction
To borrow the spirit of longtime Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Tip
O’Neill’s mantra, “All politics is local,” teachers often find that teaching for social justice
begins by knowing the neighborhoods and communities from which their students come
to school. They find it is important to learn about the history, values, and issues that help
them understand these neighborhoods and schools as public spaces. Porsche, in Kathleen
Cushman’s Fires in the Bathroom (2003), says, “Get to know their neighborhood – see if
the students are having a hard time” (p. 1). At the same time, it’s important for teachers to
be aware of and careful of assumptions that may be made as a result of getting to know
the neighborhoods where students come from. As Alexis explains, “Just because I live in
Harlem doesn’t mean my brother sells drugs, I live in a crack-abandoned building, or I’m
on welfare. Someone I know comes to my apartment and says, ‘Wow, I didn’t know you
lived in a place like this,’ because the house is clean” (Cushman, 2003, p.6).
Prompting Questions
What questions do you have about the community in which you teach? What features of a
city, town, or neighborhood are important for you to know about and reflect on during
your practicum? How might these same features assist you in considering the type of
community you might choose to teach in next year? These questions should guide your
work on this assignment and help you understand the skills and knowledge you need to
relate to your students and community members and design effective lessons for your
classes.
The Assignment
This assignment is an opportunity to explore the community in which you are learning to
become a teacher. By getting out into the community and talking with the people who
live there, we are asking you to consider how that community shapes the values and
expectations which your students and their families have about school and about teaching
and learning.
In the groups to which you have been assigned based on geography & types of
communities, decide on roles and set up a timeline for completing your work. Show us
what you have learned about your community through the voices of the people from that
community. Each group will complete work for a presentation and discussion in the
Crane Room on December 11, 2012.
For this project, you should create a poster, podcast, audio-slideshow,
exhibit, website, video, or some combination of these that you can
display, share, and talk about. Focus on talking to people and sharing
their narratives.
Some specifics to further guide you:
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ask your students what it is like to live in that community and attend school there;
talk to members of the community (shop-owners, educators, local figures, and
more), finding out where they congregate, how they’re involved in the
community, what roles they have there;
present a neighborhood, town, or city profile that includes population size,
median income, demographics of the town, of the school district, and the schools
per-pupil expenditure (here is a good resource: http://profiles.doe.mass.edu/);
physical area and topography of the community, & division into neighborhoods;
note the governance of the school and community – what is the form of city
government? Are there town meetings or council meetings? Is there a school
board or committee? Are its members appointed or elected? Does the mayor or
equivalent town representatives participate in the school committee?; and
include unique features of the town or city.
take a walk and/or drive around the community, taking photos, video, or
sketching; think about the physical layout, types of housing, and the natural or
human-made boundaries, etc.;
visit public buildings and other sites of interest;
go to the town or city hall to collect materials;
think about how the community is similar to or different from the community(ies)
where you attended school and how that contrast impacts your view of the place;
look at local newspapers.
Notes
These prompts are suggestions for how you can get a sense of the community. You will
probably have more information than you can comfortably fit on the poster, podcast,
video, etc., but select carefully those salient bits that you find the most telling or that
surprised you the most about your inquiry. Use the voices of the people in the community
– quotes, audio clips from informal interviews/conversations, video clips, images,
pictures – to highlight interesting aspects of what you find. Finally, be prepared to share
orally how the information you have gathered will inform your relationships with
students and parents and have an impact on your teaching.
You should enjoy this! Eat the food, walk around the neighborhoods, and see the world
through the eyes of the people who live there.
Resources
We know that these are professionally produced, technologically savvy narrative stories,
and it may be intimidating that we’ve posted them here, but it’s always instructive to see
really great work, so use these as inspiration as you begin to collect the stories of your
schools’ communities. Again, how you present the personal narratives and stories about
your school’s community is up to you.
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The oral history project StoryCorps (http://storycorps.org), in particular the stories
collected as part of the StoryCorps National Teacher Initiative
(http://storycorps.org/initiatives/national-teachers-initiative/)
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Shop School, a New York Times produced audio-slideshow story about the
Automotive High School in Brooklyn
(http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2007/10/23/automobiles/autospecial/200710
24_SCHOOL_FEATURE.html)
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RadioDiaries, an audio autobiography project (http://www.radiodiaries.org/)
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In Boston, Busing Revisited, a text and photo slideshow about the busing in
Boston (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/10/03/us/BOSTON.html)
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When I Grow Up, a text, audio, and photo slideshow featuring children from
Kalamazoo, Michigan talking about what they want to do when they grow up
(http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/09/13/magazine/kalamazoopromise.html#/?slide=index)
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An oral history project featuring photographs, text, and audio about the village of
Kiana, Alaska (http://jukebox.uaf.edu/kiana/html/index.html)
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The Southern Foodways Alliance Oral History Project
(http://southernfoodways.org/documentary/oh/index.html)