May
2008
Reflections on a Day at Idlewood0
I don’t really know what I expected to find at Idlewood Elementary School. I am familiar with the Clarkston area and did some volunteer work at another elementary school on North Indian Creek in undergrad. My experience there was centered around reading tutorials for first and second graders.
Of course that was before Culturally Responsive Pedagogy gave me a new lense through which to view public school education and its effects on students, parents and community. I was surprised that class sizes were so small. I think I had the idea that every classroom would be jam packed with students – like 35 students in a room. I was glad to see the students enjoying recess, even though I wanted more playground equipment for them. The learning cottages/trailers made me sad. They seem isolated from the rest of the school and kind of far from the bathrooms. The air conditioner seemed loud to us, but I guess students and teachers habituate to the noise and press on towards learning.
Mrs. Cunningham’s students were delightful and I thought their suggestions for how to improve their school were excellent – a swimming pool, swimming lessons, Spanish lessons, other languages, computers on every desk and an airplane complete with beds. Ok, so maybe the plane with the beds on it will take some extra work and a whole lot of manipulation of the pork barrel politics for Georgia. Computers, a pool, and foreign language lessons really don’t sound that far fetched. Sadly, it seems we’ve got a lot of work to do to get there.
