What makes any school an urban school?
The way we name places reflects what we think of them
Potisitve
- Cosmopolitan Schools
- Worldly sophistication; fashionable (social/cultural perspective)
- Metropolitan Schools
- Large city and center of population and culture (cultural perspective)
Neurtal
- City Schools
- Center of population, finance, commerce (geographic perspective)
- Community Schools
- A group of people forming a smaller social unit within a larger one, and sharing common experiences
- Neighborhood Schools
- People living near one another
- Urban Schools
- A city with at least 50,000 people (U.S. Census)
Negative
- Inner City Schools
- Sections of a large city especially when crowded or blighted
- Ghetto Schools
- Section of a city in which many members of some minority group live or to which they are restricted as by economic pressure or social discrimination.
- Slum Schools
- Heavily populated area of a city characterized by poverty, poor, dilapidated or dirty
Possibilities
- Wider range of acceptable thinking and acting
- More progressive ideas
- Global awareness
- Higher concentration of universities
- Context has served as scaffolding for:
- Multicultural education
- Culturally relevant teaching
- Teaching for social justice
- Education for people with disabilities
- Several civil rights initiatives
Characteristics
- The school has a student population above 5,000,
- The school has more than 60% students of color,
- The school is more than 65% economically disadvantaged ,
- The school has more than 11% of English Language Learners,
- The school has more than 15% students with disabilities,
- The school has graduation rates of less than 65%,
- The school has been designated as “Focus or Priority” by NYSED.
Challenges
- High administrative mobility
- Less access to science and math resources
- Inadequate funding
- Factionalized infighting
- High teacher shortages
- High level of student health problems
- Old school buildings
Urban schools typically have a mixture of possibilities, characteristics and challenges. Our goal is to help our students gain the awareness of how different schools can be. Once they reach this understanding they are more likely to quickly adjust to the roles they will be expected to play, and to take advantage of community resources where they find themselves teaching.