Pecha Kucha

 

FINAL PROJECT:

https://www.canva.com/design/DAGJcnVWltQ/dnRCiGR6wekqZs5LRXmSmQ/edit

Final Narrative

I was born to two Haitian-born immigrants, their first son. My parents ended up with nine boys, which made my childhood interesting. My parents were new to the American education system, and only having a high school-level education in Haiti left a lot up to the school system to help me grow. This means I was the first to go through the system, and although my mother pushed very hard on how important education was, I don't necessarily believe I was genuinely supported as a student at home. 

This pushed me to be disinterested in school around 3rd grade. I never really struggled, but I also never really pushed myself to be the best student I could be. I coasted on through school until I got to high school. In high school, athletics was the most engaging part of school. I put everything I had into sports and did what I needed to do in the classroom to stay eligible, nothing more, nothing less. This led me through high school, but in the back of my mind, I believe I would've done it anyway for my mother's sake. 

Also, for my mother's sake, I found myself in college after high school. I had no real post-secondary ambition, ideas, or foresight for what I wanted my future to be. I was just going to let life happen. My mother and I visited one college together, and she would not let me leave without signing for fear that I wouldn't go to college at all. At Monroe College, I did well. The professors were supportive and helped me grow. My major was Criminal Justice because, at the time, I wanted to be a police officer. The school had a large Caribbean population, so I always felt in the right place but wanted more. Football was my favorite sport, and the college did not have a team. I kept engaged with cross country and track, but I missed playing football. So, I left and transferred to a new school. 

Being born and raised in New York was all I ever knew. Monroe, I felt supported since I was only an hour away from home. The new school I transferred to was Fitchburg State in Massachusetts, about four hours away from my family. This was my first experience living out of New York. I had some success on the football field but not in the classroom. I felt like an outcast for the first time in my educational experience. This was the first time I would sit in a classroom, look around, and be the only black student. After my first semester there, I flunked out and was asked to leave.   

Going to a PWI wasn’t the reason I failed at Fitchburg State, but it did add to my sense of a lack of community and safety. I returned home to Monroe, where I would get my associate degree in Criminal Justice. Then, I returned to Massachusetts, where I would attend Framingham State. I encountered similar issues I had at Fitchburg State. A little older and battle-tested, I found support and a mentor to help lead me through. I graduated with my Bachelor's in Criminology.

Although I had graduated and was proud of that, deep into my work on my degree, I realized that I did not want to pursue a career in the criminal justice system, but I was too deep in to pivot. Luckily, I had a friend who got me into a teaching fellow program where I would be taught how to teach. I spent my first year as a teaching fellow in a kindergarten classroom. That year was when I had my educational awakening. I grew up believing everything you ever needed was in the school system. Here was where I learned how vital family engagement is to a student's learning journey. 

This realization made me a little frustrated with how my parents raised me. I thought of how successful I could have been if my parents had led me differently and been more engaged in my school work and academics. After some reflection, it became clear my parents did the very best with what they had and knew. My brothers and I were always fed and had clothes on our backs. Wrangling nine boys who didn’t want to listen was no easy feat. My mother gave me the opportunity to pursue higher education. She also allowed me to learn and have opportunities she couldn’t have for herself, and I am forever grateful. 

After a few years of teaching, it was clear that this was not my career path. But I did not want to leave education. I wanted to work with students as whole people, not just the academic side. So, I left teaching to work in a group home for a year while I figured out what I wanted to do with my career. During that year, I applied for behavioral intervention roles at different schools. I plan to jump into the cultural aspects of school. After one more year of teaching, I became a Behavioral Specialist at a middle school. That was my most fulfilling job to date! I didn't get tired of the school year by February. I helped students in a different sense, and I got to be part of the whole school culture instead of in just one classroom. 

Now, I am an Associate Dean at a High school. My job is still to deal with some student behaviors, but I also have to plan and execute ways for students to become invested and engaged in the school community. Our school refers to engaged and invested students as “Falcons.”  To be a Falcon, you do not have to be academically gifted. Falcons are not just our high-performing academic students. Falcons are students who show that they care about their school community. They care about the physical and psychological safety of the school.

Along with ensuring the physical and psychological safety of the school, I also have to create more Falcons. The more engaged and invested a student is in their community, the higher the chance they will adequately care for it. With the school only three years old, creating that sense of ownership over their own spaces is essential. 

I have created student engagement and investment through Say Yes and pop-up events. Through these events, I attempted to pull some of our students into the community by offering events for them to enjoy and have fun outside of the classroom. The events were usually posted on our homeroom slides to reach out to students, allowing them to sign up electronically through TinyUrls, QR codes, and emails. 

Not being a traditional classroom teacher means I don’t have the face-to-face time with students to implement heavily new technology or app ideas. I thought about creating a media or podcast club based on some ideas we learned from  Brittany Richer Ahnrud, but I can’t promise I could run it myself because of other duties. Instead, I would like to expand on my Ideas from last year. 

  Intending to invest more students into becoming Falcons, I decided to have more student voices in the rooms when creating plans. Giving the students more of a voice might help improve investment since they'll have a sense of ownership of the ideas and activities. I can send out interest idea surveys to see what the students want. I can also create focus groups for student and staff collaboration. Getting to know the students and their interests resembles what Dr. Wesch did at his university. 

Towards the end of the year, it was clear that students who were already “Falcons” were signing up for everything. So this year, I would like to reach the students who don't seem as engaged in the school community. In the same sense that Rita Peirson stated that every student needs a champion, I can attempt to be theirs—giving them a voice and a space to share their ideas and fully immerse themselves into our school community. 

I found engagement in sports, which kept me close enough to academics to get to where I am today. Chronic absenteeism is an issue the entire country is facing. Providence itself is a city of school choice. I’m attempting to give the students something to “Say Yes” to at our school. The academics weren’t enough for me to say yes to school; I needed something else to “say yes” to, and that was athletics. Because of that, I kept certain doors open for myself that maybe I wasn't sure I wanted to go through as a teenager. I want the same for my students. To keep them engaged and invested long enough for them to have access to opportunity instead of them shutting doors at fourteen that their eighteen-year-old selves would love to go through.

    My students, being digital natives, have very few issues signing up for activities. Between their phones and school-issued laptops, they have access. Another thing I would like to try in partnership is giving some students access to the Google Docs the plans are being made so they can eventually begin to create their own.

Blog Post #6 Why I Said No to Coca-Cola

 The chapter I chose to read was short and right to the point." Why I Said No to Coca-Cola" by John Sheenan is about consumerism in education. Three school districts in Colorado were offered money to advertise their products in schools. Coca-Cola offered them around 27 mill dollars for a ten-year contract.

The chapter discussed how that could be a terrible idea. Fusing consumerism and education would be a breach of trust in schools. Schools are places for students to learn critical thinking and free choice. Flooding students with intentional marketing strategies during such important learning development ages is not okay. These are purely capitalistic predatory acts. Filling the money gap sounds amazing, but at what cost? For giant corporations begin to get lifetime buyers and start them at the age of five? The chapter  argued against marketing and consumerism in the schools and I agree.