MY EDUCATIONAL STORY 1

Alexandra Long
My Educational Story
As I reflect on my educational story and how it relates to what I have learned from the
class, I have realized that the actions of my parents, subtle and overt, have been absolutely
critical to my educational experience thus far. Further, since gaining control over my own
education, I have made it my goal to help others receive good educational experiences through
tutoring.
My parents have played a critical role in helping me achieve academic success and
getting me to where I am today. They did this by giving me every single opportunity they could,
outside of school and in school.
Part of Ravitchs (2013) solution to closing the achievement gap includes strong prenatal
care and high quality early childhood education, but my parents went above and beyond this in
providing my twin sister and I opportunities for the future from when we were very little. Before
my sister and I were a year old, our parents invested in a tuition program that allowed them to
purchase tuition credits in 1993 that increase in value every year so that they are worth the
average tuition in the state of Ohio. Because of this tuition account, I have always known that I
was going to go to college. Very recently, while I was at dinner with my dad, he told me Since
your great grandfather (his fathers father) came here from Italy, every generation has done
better for themselves than the last. I want that for you. Each generation doing better than the last
is a stark contrast to the poverty cycle where poor parents raise children with poor resources and
abilities, who therefore cant make it out of poverty and thus raise their own children with the
same problems (Tough, 2008). Throughout my college career, I have tutored Cincinnati Public
MY EDUCATIONAL STORY 2
School students through Bearcat Buddies. Every student I have worked with has been from
impoverished families and most of my buddies can count on one hand the number of people they
know who have even started college, let alone finished. If my parents had not had the means to
send me to college and I didnt know anyone who had graduated from college, I just dont think
that I would be here today.
Another opportunity my parents gave me outside of school was enrolling me in character-
building activities, particularly martial arts. I started doing karate when I was 4 years old and
have since achieved my black belts in karate and ju-jitsu. From the outside, it seems as though
karate is only about learning self-defense, but, it is also about building character, especially for
small children. At the end of every class we would discuss the qualities of a black belt which are
modesty, courtesy, integrity, self-control, perseverance, and indomitable spirit. Tough (2012)
discusses the importance of self-control in educational success, with higher self-control being
more indicative of a high GPA than IQ scores. Tough, however, also discusses the importance of
grit in the success of a child. He defines grit as a passionate commitment to a single mission and
an unswerving dedication to achieve that mission. While we didnt talk about grit in karate
class, I would argue that the combination of perseverance and indomitable spirit is pretty close to
grit. I dont think I received a whole lot of character education in the classroom, but I also
dont think I really needed it because of the character education I gained from martial arts and
from my parents, who recognized and encouraged strong character. I am skeptically hopeful that
character education programs, such as Character Counts!, could instill strong character in
students who are not exposed to character values outside of school.
My parents also opened up many opportunities for me inside of school. For most of my
K-12 years, my mother worked for the school district substitute teaching and administering IQ
MY EDUCATIONAL STORY 3
tests for students to test into the gifted program. My mom knew all of the teachers and
administrators in my school very well and knew who to talk to if something wasnt right.
Looking back, my mothers connections in the schools made a very large impact on what my
school experience looked like.
At my elementary school, a parent was allowed to request a certain teacher for their child
if another of their children had that teacher in the past and really liked him or her. I dont have
any older siblings, but my mom was allowed to request what teachers my sister and I should
have because she worked for the schools. She had substituted for all of the teachers and had a
pretty good idea of whose teaching styles would work best for each of us and was able to match
us up with teachers that were very good fits for our learning styles. In at least one grade, there
was a teacher that I know would have negatively impacted my educational experience so I am
very grateful that my mother kept me out of her class.
In my school district, teacher recommendations from 6
th
grade determined if you would
be placed in advanced classes in 7
th
grade, which in turn determined if you would be placed in
advanced classes in high school. My 6
th
grade teacher was out on maternity leave for all but the
first month of the school year but was still in charge of recommendations for advanced classes
and did not recommend me to take them. My mother appealed the recommendation and got me
into the advanced classes, which set me up to take advanced classes in high school.
By taking advanced classes in high school, I had the opportunity (and room in my
schedule) to explore many science classes at my high school and take advanced math courses. I
already knew that I enjoyed the sciences and math, so when I had freedom in my schedule my
junior and senior years, I took a total of 5 science courses beyond the state requirement as well as
MY EDUCATIONAL STORY 4
taking calculus. Through these more than core classes, I was able to explore future professions
and discover what I wanted to do with my life. Upon reading a report about the percentage of
students in the Cincinnati area who take core or more courses (meaning at least taking the
courses to meet core requirements), I was very surprised to see that only an average of 77% of
ACT test takers in the Greater Cincinnati Area (Ohio only) took core or more courses (Zorn,
2010).
One of the most impactful parts of taking additional classes was meeting teachers who
were very passionate about a more specialized subject and getting to learn about what I could do
with that subject in the future. For example, one of my favorite science classes in high school
was physics. I took physics my junior year and excelled at it, but more importantly, I met the
teacher who has had the most influence on my educational journey, Mr. Bruening. Mr. Bruening
opened my eyes to engineering and encouraged me to apply to his alma mater, the University of
Cincinnati. Typically, protective agents (family) have stronger influence than institutional agents
(teachers) when it comes to college decisions (Teranishi, 2006), I had had enough positive
interactions with Mr. Bruening to trust his suggestions.
Most students in Cincinnati Public Schools likely dont have the opportunity to take
advanced classes so not only do they miss out on additional knowledge, but they do not get the
opportunity to interact with teachers who are especially passionate about the subjects they are
teaching, like Mr. Bruening was about physics. If students lack these positive, inspiring
interactions with teachers, they cannot build positive social capital (Teranishi, 2006) and, in the
case of inner city students, are not likely to meet other role models to inspire them to pursue
higher education. A solution to the lack of extra classes offered in urban schools is the Citizen
Teacher model described by Eric Schwarz in the Waiting for Superman participant guide
MY EDUCATIONAL STORY 5
(Weber, 2010). Schwarz is the CEO of Citizen Schools, which helps professionals such as
writers, business professionals, and even rocket scientists teach middle school students about
their profession in 10 week courses, called Apprenticeships. In my opinion, implementing this
sort of program in urban schools would be an excellent way to expose students to people in
professions that they might not meet otherwise. Also, this program makes taking action to help
close the achievement gap do-able for many professionals. In fact, I think teaching a Citizen
Schools program would be a lot of fun. I hope to get involved in something like this after I
graduate from college.
In short, my parents have continually demanded that I receive an excellent education.
Because of their care, I have also come to demand an excellent education for myself and I know
that I will demand an excellent education for any children I may have. In this way, demanding
great education is contagious and can be used by one person to benefit all of the students in a
school, district, state, or even country.
Another major part of my educational journey has been tutoring other students. I am the
kind of person who truly learns by teaching other people, so ever since I was young I have
taught/tutored my peers in all sorts of subjects.
In high school, my physics teacher, Mr. Bruening, approached me about tutoring a
student from another class in physics, which I did gladly. That, my first formal tutoring position,
led me to pursue tutoring students at a few elementary schools in my district. I attended after
school tutoring programs once a week at two different elementary schools. The programs were in
place to provide a little extra help for students who struggled in their classes. Every student
would arrive with a form from their teacher that said what topics we should work on that week
MY EDUCATIONAL STORY 6
and typically had homework that corresponded to that topic. The students I worked with in
suburban schools were probably on the lower end of the scale for standardized test scores in the
school, yet the teachers were not concerned about tutoring them how to take the tests.
I have also tutored at Cincinnati Public Schools since coming to UC and have found that
the focus is very different here. Through Bearcat Buddies, I have gone into two elementary
schools to tutor children who are on the bubble of standardized test scores, meaning they are in
danger of not passing the required standardized tests. While my experience with Bearcat Buddies
had varied from school to school, I have generally found that when tutoring at urban schools, you
are very much teaching to the test. Each school I have been in has a mantra on how to analyze
questions on the test that students can rattle off quite robotically. When I tutor my student, I
dont have any special notes from his teacher that might clue me in on what topics he needs extra
work on. We just do one lesson after another out of the test prep book and I cant help but feel
that he isnt truly learning anything.
Teaching to the test is an unfortunate side effect of No Child Left Behind, where schools
are punished if their test scores are not high enough. Teaching students to the test can be
detrimental to their learning, as Linda Darling-Hammond observed:
Students in schools that organize most of their efforts around the kinds of low-level
learning represented by most widely used tests are profoundly disadvantaged when they
need to engage in the extensive writing, critical thinking, and problem solving required in
college and the workplace (p. 282).
According to Wagner, (2008), one of the seven skills people need to be successful in todays
world is critical thinking/problem solving. It is very clear that, in its current form, standardized
MY EDUCATIONAL STORY 7
testing is not helping to improve childrens critical thinking and problems solving abilities, but
why, then, is there such a difference in the approaches of urban and suburban schools in test
preparation?
One of the class school visits was to Hughes STEM High School, just across the street
from UC. While we were there we spoke to Simon Jorgenson who has worked at both urban and
suburban STEM schools while attending graduate school. One of the things that Simon pointed
out that was most notable to me was that while both schools he worked at were struggling for
monetary resources, the suburban school did not have to worry about its students passing
required standardized tests. This can translate to the suburban vs. urban elementary schools that I
have tutored at. I know that my home school district was struggling for money when I was
tutoring there, but since the students are so advantaged and (for the most part) have parents or
family members who enrich their educations outside of the classroom, there is little concern that
they will not pass tests. In these suburban schools, teachers have some freedom to teach
engaging and even fun lessons to students. As Ive discussed earlier in this reflection, many
students in urban schools, for a number of reasons, are not as advantaged as their suburban
counterparts and are at a disadvantage when it comes to schooling which leads to lower test
scores for urban schools. When test scores go down, pressure is placed on teachers to raise them
and the teachers loose the little freedom in curriculum that they had.
Please note that it is not my goal to give a scathing review of the Bearcat Buddies
tutoring program. To me, part of the program is mentoring my buddy on what it is like to go to
college and to help them form visions of what their future could be like. Most of my tutoring has
been in math, so even though my buddies may not be the best math students, I try to talk about
fun engineering problems to get them inspired to try harder in math class.
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In summary, public schools exist first and foremost to teach young people the rights and
responsibilities of citizens (Ravitch, 2013, p. 237). A secondary purpose of public schools is to
create an intelligent population and to prepare them for the workforce. Todays government
leaders and policy makers have focused so intently on the secondary purpose, to raise the
countrys intelligence, that they have forgotten about the primary purpose of creating informed
citizens.
Before taking this class, I had heard the term Achievement Gap before, but was not
really familiar with what it meant. I had tutored in both suburban and urban schools and noticed
a difference between the two but couldnt really describe what it was. I now think I have a more
firm grasp on what the Achievement Gap really is and how it impacts many, many students
every day. In addition, I have learned specifics about current education policies and, to be
honest, I have gained a lot more respect for educators who must deal with these policies every
single day. Additionally, I have learned a little bit about trends (and hot topics) in education
reform and have learned to do my research before getting caught up in a new and potentially
unproven education reform strategy.
While my formal education will be over in a year when I graduate, I hope to continue my
educational journey far beyond next year. I hope to become involved with Citizen Schools (or a
similar program) to help get kids excited about math, science, and learning in general because I
think getting students excited about learning, as my parents did for me, is critical in creating
informed citizens of the future. I believe that my educational journey will continue when I have
children because I will demand that they receive excellent educations. Finally, I hope to be an
advocate for education in my community, regardless of whether or not I have children in the
education system there.
MY EDUCATIONAL STORY 9
References
Darling-Hammond, L. (2010). The flat world and education: how America's commitment to
equity will determine our future. New York: Teachers College Press.
Ravitch, D. (2013). Reign of error: the hoax of the privatization movement and the danger to
America's public schools. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Teranishi, R., & Briscoe, K. (2006). Social Capital and the Racial Stratification of College
Opportunity. Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research, XXI, 591-614.
Tough, P. (2008). Whatever it takes: Geoffrey Canada's quest to change Harlem and America.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co..
Tough, P. (2012). How children succeed: grit, curiosity, and the hidden power of character. New
York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Wagner, T. (2008). The global achievement gap: why even our best schools don't teach the new
survival skills our children need--and what we can do about it. New York: Basic Books.
Weber, K. (2010). Waiting for "Superman": how we can save America's failing public schools.
New York: PublicAffairs.
Zorn, D., Ludwig, K., & den Hoogenhof, S. v. (2010, November 1). The Achievement Gap in
Greater Cincinnati. The Community Research Collaborative Blog. Retrieved April 20,
2014, from
http://crcblog.typepad.com/The%20Achievement%20Gap%20in%20Greater%20Cincin
nati.pdf