Culture Community And Educational Success

Many Black, Latinx, multiracial and ethnically diverse, first-generation college students turned PhDs—tie their academic success, achievements, and ability to navigate the difficult terrain of higher education back to the critical experiences and lessons learned in their home lives and through their cultural backgrounds. For them, culture matters. This book offers an opportunity for an anti-deficit and positive examination of (Black, Latinx, and multiracial) culture and its role in creating educational efficacy among academics of color. Through personal narrative, educational and learning theory, creative writing/poetry, this hybrid text examines the cultural path to the doctorate. Transformative practice should be guided by an understanding of how an appreciation of a faculty member’s cultural, life, and social experiences can be used to establish a healthy environment that will better appreciate, engage, and retain faculty of color. Along these lines, this text also considers how cultural, life and social experiences translate into pedagogy, mentorship and value as faculty of color.

The key to success, our culture tells us, is a combination of talent and hard work. Why then, do high schools that supposedly subscribe to this view send students to college at such dramatically different rates? Why do students from one school succeed while students from another struggle? To the usual answer—an imbalance in resources—this book adds a far more subtle and complicated explanation. Defining Student Success shows how different schools foster dissimilar and sometimes conflicting ideas about what it takes to succeed—ideas that do more to preserve the status quo than to promote upward mobility. Lisa Nunn’s study of three public high schools reveals how students’ beliefs about their own success are shaped by their particular school environment and reinforced by curriculum and teaching practices. While American culture broadly defines success as a product of hard work or talent (at school, intelligence is the talent that matters most), Nunn shows that each school refines and adapts this American cultural wisdom in its own distinct way—reflecting the sensibilities and concerns of the people who inhabit each school. While one school fosters the belief that effort is all it takes to succeed, another fosters the belief that hard work will only get you so far because you have to be smart enough to master course concepts. Ultimately, Nunn argues that these school-level adaptations of cultural ideas about success become invisible advantages and disadvantages for students’ college-going futures. Some schools’ definitions of success match seamlessly with elite college admissions’ definition of the ideal college applicant, while others more closely align with the expectations of middle or low-tier institutions of higher education. With its insights into the transmission of ideas of success from society to school to student, this provocative work should prompt a reevaluation of the culture of secondary education. Only with a thorough understanding of this process will we ever find more consistent means of inculcating success, by any measure.

Middle- and upper-middle-class students continue to outpace those from less privileged backgrounds. Most attempts to redress this inequality focus on the issue of access to financial resources, but as Producing Success makes clear, the problem goes beyond mere economics. In this eye-opening study, Peter Demerath examines a typical suburban American high school to explain how some students get ahead. Demerath undertook four years of research at a Midwestern high school to examine the mercilessly competitive culture that drives students to advance. Producing Success reveals the many ways the community’s ideology of achievement plays out: students hone their work ethics and employ various strategies to succeed, from negotiating with teachers to cheating; parents relentlessly push their children while manipulating school policies to help them get ahead; and administrators aid high performers in myriad ways, even naming over forty students “valedictorians.” Yet, as Demerath shows, this unswerving commitment to individual advancement takes its toll, leading to student stress and fatigue, incivility and vandalism, and the alienation of the less successful. Insightful and candid, Producing Success is an often troubling account of the educationally and morally questionable results of the American culture of success.

Question 6: Do You Think It Is Important to Teach Latino and Mexican-American Studies? -- "This Question Is Immense"--Question 7: What Kinds of Things Should Be Taught? -- "It Does Not Make Any Difference What Ethnic Group the Teacher Belongs To"--Question 8: Who Should Teach Latino and Mexican-American Studies? Anglos? Latinos? Why? -- "Jumping Through a System of Hoops" -- Question 9: What Does "Education" Mean to You? What Should It Be? Should It Be Different From What It Is? -- "Finding Satisfaction with Your Place in Society" -- Question 10: What Does Success Mean to You? -- "The Availability of Choices" -- Question 11: What Do You Think Are the Most Important Things for a Latino Student to Achieve in Life? -- "They Can Be Their Own Worst Enemy" -- Question 12: What Obstacles Do Latino Students Face in Reaching Their Goals? -- Summary and Conclusions -- For Discussion -- References -- 8 Toward a Self-Definition of Success -- The Politics of Language -- Teacher-Student Interactions -- Mechanisms of Discipline -- School Classroom Instruction -- Interracial Conflict -- Issues of Resistance and Identity -- Summary of the Students' Findings -- Students' and Teachers' Findings -- Concluding Statements -- References -- 9 Conclusion: Students' Concerns and Recommendations for Educational Reform -- Administrative and School Climate Changes -- Students' Recommendations Regarding Discipline Procedures -- Systemic School Reforms -- Students' Recommendations Related to School Reforms -- Transformations in Teacher-Student Interactions -- Concluding Statements -- References -- Epilogue -- Postscript: What Does the 2016 Election Mean for Latinos in the U.S.? -- Appendix -- Glossary -- About the Authors -- Index

Be the leader of a fresh, bold, enduring vision of education for your district or school. The future of learning has arrived, and it requires bold educational leadership and a dramatic redefinition of what it means to be a successful student today. Redefining Student Success invites you to lead this transformation with audacity. It engages leaders with the concepts and actions needed to reimagine schools, address inequities, and help today’s students develop the skills they need for personal, economic, and civic success. This vital guide supports transformative leadership with Concrete guidance on how to create a Portrait of a Graduate and Portrait of an Educator which will help ensure teachers have a unified vision for professional growth and student success. Reflection prompts that help you recognize your strengths, spark discussion among stakeholders, and identify next steps for inspired action. Compelling examples of students already engaged in creative, self-directed problem-solving around issues that matter to them and their communities, together with stories that illustrate how districts and schools have arrived at their own vision of what education must become. Companion guides to 21st century learning for parents and students available online. The time is now to reset educational outcomes, sync schools with the demands of 21st century society, and meet the needs of every learner, in every community.

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface -- Foreword -- Acknowledgements -- 1 Migrant Education: Equity in Context for Farmworkers and Their Children -- 2 Educational Initiatives Supporting Students from Migrant Farmworker Backgrounds -- 3 Helping Educators Connect with Migrant Students and Families: A Culturally Proficient Approach -- 4 Nuestra Familia es Nuestra Fuerza: Building on the Strengths of Migrant Families Towards School Success -- 5 Designing Programs to Meet and Assess the Needs of Migrant Students -- 6 What Can Latina/o Migrant Students Tell Us about College Outreach and Access? -- 7 Migrant Education and Shifting Consciousness: A Cultural Wealth Approach to Navigating Politics, Access, and Equity -- 8 From the Fields to Fieldwork: Cuentos from the Daughter of Migrant Farmworkers -- 9 Conclusion: Future Directions for Migrant Education -- List of Acronyms -- List of Contributors -- Index.

No school improvement effort can be effective without addressing school culture, and in this book you'll learn how to put in place the five pillars essential to building a culture of achievement.