Community Walks
Throughout the school year, I completed two different community walks. The first community walk was a surface-level walk around the community looking at different aspects of the community such as businesses, the housing market, and demographics. The second community walk focused extensively on looking at the community through a specific lens drawing on course readings about the impact of the community on school reform. I wrote an analysis paper describing how my knowledge of the impact of the community on education expanded from the first community walk to the second. The following are quotes from my paper that are reflective of my knowledge:
“Some new insights I have into the significance of the community as a level from school reform are that for a school to be a stable environment the community and parents must be involved, and that small schools have higher academic success due to the support they provide students.”
“With a smaller school, teachers are able to more closely monitor the students and also get to know them better. When discussing the impact of a small school on school improvement, teachers at Chicago Academy High School expressed they are able to get to know their students better especially relating to culture and hobbies. I believe that teachers at my school, including myself, are able to easily gather “funds of knowledge” (Moll et.al) from students because there are more frequent interactions with them.”
“An implication of working at an AUSL is that not all students are coming from the same neighborhood. It is imperative as an educator to create meaningful community building activities within the classroom that enable a positive learning environment and promote educational achievement.”
Community Walk #1: August 2012 | Community Walk #2: April 2013 |
Building Community in the Classroom
When I realized that I had a lot of students in my classroom coming from different neighborhoods, I knew that I needed to develop activities to create a unified classroom of diverse learners. One of the first activities I did was to have my students use the map below to identify their neighborhood by putting a post-it note on the neighborhood they live in. We analyzed the map as a whole to identify any patterns in living locations. After this, I had students partner by distance for example a student from Austin partnered with a student from Irving Park. When in pairs, students had to exchange information about their neighborhoods. They were then paired with another set of students and exchanged in quads. Once these groups exchanged information, each group briefly introduced another group member to the class and a unique fact about their neighborhood. During the reflection, many students expressed that they learned a lot about communities that they were unfamiliar with. This was a very successful activity as it bridged the gap between students from different communities, and gave students insight into different neighborhoods in Chicago. I will be working at an AUSL school in the fall where most of the students come from the same community so I will find a way to adapt this activity to my new environment.
