what i think i know about urban teaching

Willie Martinez
CURR 523
Dr. Rebecca A. Goldstein





I have been raised in an urban community practically my whole life. I attended

and graduated from Passaic High School in the City of Passaic. My city is a small urban

city of about 3.25 square mile and my Graduating class of 2001consisted of about 2000

students, of which only half graduated. Please keep in mind that this is only the

graduating class of 01 and that there is only one high school for the city of Passaic. As

you can imagine saying my school was overcrowded would be an understatement.

Many of the ideas we discussed in class as to what we think about when we think

of teaching in an urban school were all present. My school consisted of about 45%

African American 45% Latino and about 10% other. All of my classes consisted of at

least 25 students per teacher. And growing up in this community my biggest concern in

school was safety. There were a lot of gangs in my school many of which were due to

cultural diversity. All the gangs were split up by race. Almost every day at 3 o’clock

when you left school the corners were filled with kids and depending on which group you

belong to, or what race you were, determine which corner you were allowed to stand on

and which ones you weren’t. Fights broke out pretty much everyday and usually for the

dumbest reasons. Some one-stepped on some ones shoes or they stared at some one

else’s girlfriend for too long and that was of course disrespectful. While in high school I

attended 2 funerals for “friends” that were killed because of there gang affiliation.


Surprisingly I didn’t run into to many drug problems while I was there. Not to

say that there went available it just wasn’t the main focus for my schools. You can

always find marijuana if you wanted it but I never saw anyone popping pills, or dealing

with any hard drugs such as cocaine or ecstasy. Of course alcohol was present at almost

every social gathering outside of school. And teen pregnancy was not such a shock, there

were at least 8 or 9 girls that were pregnant while in school and most ended up dropping

out before they could finish.

Just as diverse as the students were the teachers at Passaic High School. I had

teacher that were Caucasian and of course did not live in my community, and I had

teachers that were Hispanic and African American. Not all of them lived in my

community but they seem to adapt better than the Caucasian teachers. To be honest the

White teachers seem to be less happy about teaching there. Many of them seemed to be

annoyed or scared. I noticed that the other teachers had a better report with there class

room. Not to say they were always in control but they seem to handle the students a bit

better, especially those that had gone to Passaic high school before and came back to

teach

I personally came from a single parent home and my mother just so happen to be

a teacher at my high school. I dreaded this while I was a student there, she knew all my

teachers and knew if I have given any of them any problems. She pushed my to take

some of the more advance courses while I was there and made me participate in activities

such as the Science fair and peer mediation. Even with her watchful eye I still manage to

hang out with the wrong crowed from time to time. In the end out of all my friends in

high school I was the only one of them that made it to college. Once I was here in MSU I

realized just how inadequate my high school was in preparing me for my college

experience. I struggled a lot to keep pace with many of the other students in my major.

Sadly this is of course not the case for most highs chool students. I didn’t see many of

my friends parents to be to involved in there school lives. Of course many of them had to

work to make ends meet, this meant taking over time and working weekends. Leaving

the kids to deal with all the stress of school on their own.

Now that I am grad I guess I want to go back to my old high school and see if

I could possibly make a difference. I did have one or two teachers that I must admit

influenced me to be a better person not just a better student. This was so important since

many of the student’s parents couldn’t be involved at all. The other teachers almost seem

to give up on us before they even got to know us. I had teachers tell me to enroll in the

army after high school, because college was most likely not an option for me. In fact one

of my best friends in high school was told by his math professor that he would probably

end up in jail after high school if he didn’t join the army, he took this to heart and joined

the navy even though he had a good enough SAT score and was accepted by William

Paterson University.

Hopefully Ill be able to take my life experience back with the knowledge I’ll gain

here and be able to push at least some of the students forward. I heard the saying that if

you can change the outlook of just one of your students and thus help him/her have a

brighter future then you could honestly say that you’ve done your job as a teacher. But

imagine if you can have the influence on the whole class room. I realize that in every

school and community there will be those that love to learn and really want to make

something of him or her selves. These are the kids that wouldn’t need some one like me.

But this is really a small percentage, the rest of them are in school because they have too.

Those are the students that I really want to work with. Many of my friends were like

these kids. Only in school because they had no were else to go for 8 hours, but many of

them were smart, real smart. Their parents either didn’t want to be involved or couldn’t

be involved with their kid’s academic life. Mainly because they were too busy at work

trying to make ends meet. Their children ends up getting rob of a good education, which

in turn forces them to get a job so they can help with bills. Soon they have children of

there own and get sent to the same school were they will probably end up in the

same life scenario. But if these kids find just one good teacher that makes them feel

intelligent and yes even loved then the cycle can be broken and that really the only way

any community can move forward. Hopefully I will be that teacher to these kids the way
my mother was for me and many of her own students