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January 1, 2011
Vol. 53
No. 1

Interpreting Dreams

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Kids often dream of making it big, getting rich quick, and seeing their names up in lights. Working with Washington, D.C., high school seniors, educator Kristina Gray noticed a trend. "Each year the list of pie-in-the-sky career goals became more and more grandiose. They want to be America's Next Top Model, CSI investigators, actors, and of course for some the goal is just to be a 'star.'"
What's troubling, says Gray, is that these students have no ideas about how they will reach their goals, the amount of work and connections that go into getting these jobs, or the role school plays in any of this—which can lead to students tuning out, checking out, and even dropping out. Data on why students drop out point to disengagement as a huge factor. Although disengagement can affect any student, students of color are overrepresented among dropouts. So, how can educators better engage students who don't see school as a pathway to success?

Start with Critical Conversations

Race and identity influence how students experience school—from relationships with peers and educators to how they respond to curriculum and instruction. It also influences educators' assumptions about how students learn and how much students are capable of learning, say Professors Willis Hawley (University of Maryland) and Sonia Nieto (University of Massachusetts). They add that most of us are not aware that our latent beliefs about different groups shape our interactions.
For example, in a study of low-achieving high school students, Claremont Graduate University professor Gail Thompson found that black and Latino students experienced several roadblocks to engagement in areas such as these:
  • Relationships: Although most teachers said they cared about their students, black and Latino students were less likely than their white peers to perceive these caring adult relationships.
  • Expectations: There's a mismatch between black and Latino students' expectations for their own success and teacher expectations.
  • Instruction: Black and Latino students are more likely to feel that their teachers don't translate instruction for their understanding.
  • Curriculum: Black and Latino students are more likely to say that taught curriculum is irrelevant to their own lives and cultural experiences and hyper-focus on testing compounds student apathy. One respondent said, "You learn about negative black culture. You learn about slavery. You don't learn about positive black people."
  • Discipline: Although teachers feel that they are being fair, black and Latino students feel as though they are the targets for most disciplinary policies. Other research ("Act Out, Get Out?" from the Rennie Center) confirms that disciplinary policies exacerbate equity gaps.
  • Racist attitudes: Black and Latino students are more likely to feel racial discrimination from teachers.

Changing Beliefs and Behaviors

In Acting White: The Ironic Legacy of Desegregation, Stuart Buck draws from sociological research to discuss racial divisions in schools and their effects on student engagement. In schools where black students and teachers are not a part of success narratives and where white students and teachers seem to control the academic agenda, Buck notes that high-achieving black students can be and are accused of "acting white" by their black peers if they do well in school. Ironically, this phenomenon, which can start as early as middle school, is recognized in most racially balanced schools.
"When [black students] feel that [they] are part of a beleaguered group that is caught in a struggle for dominance, it becomes all the more important to stick together as a group and punish group members who seem disloyal. That is what the 'acting white' charge does," Buck says.
Buck offers suggestions at the leadership and policy level to challenge "acting white" as a force behind minority student disengagement: open up alternate pathways to the classroom as a way to encourage more diversity in the instructional leader ranks, and create small schools, including options for black males to attend single-gender, majority-black schools. Buck believes these measures will better engage black learners.
At the classroom level, opportunities for students of color to investigate their own histories and select related curricular materials and more inclusive examples of people of color in academic fields are a start. Teachers should have opportunities to learn from their peers who are good at engaging students of color and students typically disengaged from school work. Also, culturally responsive schools practice targeted and flexible grouping for instruction and provide access to and support for learning high-level content.
Although conversations about race, ethnicity, and identity might be uncomfortable for the adults in the room, students are surprisingly eager to tackle these issues. An inquiry-based approach can be not only a source of engagement, but also the path to more responsive, inclusive, and equitable school culture.
Buck notes some innovative programs that explicitly merge dual agendas of discussing race and academics, including Boston's Du Bois Society and Cleveland High's (L.A.) The Village, where black students and staff can meet to discuss racial issues and academic achievement. Also, Buck suggests that celebrating academic success as an entire school community, building school pride around academics on par with any sports victories, is key to making academic culture accessible for all students.
The Southern Poverty Law Center's Teaching Diverse Students Initiative website (www.tolerance.org/tdsi/) includes a range of resources for improving the learning opportunities for students of color.

Purpose and Persistence

Clarifying the purpose of lessons is especially important for young black male students, Johnnie McKinley writes in Raising Black Students' Achievement Through Culturally Responsive Teaching. What do students need to know, and what's in it for them? McKinley shares an example in which a teacher writes on the board before a lesson, "We are going to work on these strategies because this will make it quicker and easier for you to do your math." If they don't know why they're doing it, students disconnected from school culture are not just going to do it for their own good, McKinley adds.
"It's important to make connections for students and show how what they're learning is relevant to what they want to do in the future and how certain skills can be transferable," says Gray. "I help my budding superstars realize that they will need a range of academic and professional skills in order to have the successful careers they want."
Once you've convinced students why learning is important, how do you encourage them to persist? All brains, says cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham in Why Don't Students Like School?, need the right conditions to persist in what he calls true thinking (not just relying on memory or how you've always done something). Willingham says all learners tend to avoid this kind of thinking unless curiosity is nurtured in an environment that includes challenge yet opportunities to be successful, adequate background knowledge in long-term memory, adequate environmental clues, and room in working memory.
Students' attitudes about persisting with academic work may reflect their views about learning and intelligence. Do they think intelligence is "fixed" and that being smart means always being right without having to work too hard? Noted psychologist Carol Dweck attests to the power of developing a "growth mindset" among students—the belief that intelligence is something they can grow through constant practice and seeking new challenges—and offers some classroom strategies for supporting a growth mindset:
  • Praise effort, choices, and persistence—not just success.
  • Give opportunities for, and discuss the value of, slow learning.
  • Engage students in goal-setting and reflecting on something they did that required a growth mindset.
  • Coach students to expect (and, eventually, get excited about) challenging work.
  • Design homework tasks that stretch new learning to novel applications or to the next level.
  • Consider how grading can evolve to recognize persistent effort and growth over time.
Rarely do students see the behind-the-scenes hard work that propels athletes, artists, musicians, and actors into the limelight. Changing the classroom to a place that recognizes hard work, not just right answers, can help shift students' worldview. "Although it's important to encourage young people to dream, it's equally crucial that they are taught how to work for those dreams," says Gray. That includes giving them opportunities to practice making responsible choices.

A Culture of Choices

Research shows adolescents want to be responsible and make meaningful choices, but their opportunities to do so actually decline as they progress through school. Students rarely get to practice decision-making skills by setting learning goals, formulating classroom procedures and rules, or even choosing where they sit or how they use their time. Students are trained to be passive and await instructions, crushing their natural curiosity and self-directedness, says Daniel Pink in Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us.
Structured choice is often most deficient in schools serving low-achieving, minority students. Instead, a culture of compliance reigns. In Drive, Pink claims that a culture of compliance suppresses innovation and our ability to become the critical problem solvers the future demands. Yet research shows that when students are autonomously motivated, they have greater conceptual understanding, better grades, and enhanced persistence in school. They are also generally happier and less likely to burn out.
Simply dropping students into a more autonomous environment won't work. They need clear criteria, expectations, and models. Also, too many choices can actually demotivate students. Offer limited choices and gradually expand options as students advance. For long-term assignments, use weekly check-ins to gauge progress and make adjustments. (A sample planning form for a student choice–driven English/ Language Arts project is available at www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed_lead/el_201009_lent_planning.pdf.)
Through critical inquiry of the factors behind student disengagement, connecting students to the purpose of learning, and nurturing student ownership of academics, schools can be sites of dream interpretation, opening students to greater awareness of their own strengths and the skills they will need to pursue their goals.

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