Catch People Doing Good Things & Report It
950 Families Close Digital Divide by Melinda Tuhus | June 9, 2009 12:39 PM
Catching good people doing good things and reporting it for everyone to celebrate and emulate! Truly inspiring! There is in this article recognition of the existence of a gap that has much to do with the experiences and tools that are available to some and not to others.
Just a brief comment: the divide will continue to exist while there are places where some “have much” and others “have little”. Children come to school with a plethora of assets or a lack thereof. When they do not come to the classroom prepared to tackle the on-grade level expectations of the curriculum, remediation (catching up) rather than acceleration becomes the focus of instruction – not with the intention of lowering expectations, but with the intent goal of giving the children the skills necessary in order to achieve them. It is an arduous and difficult task. But it is also immensely rewarding, since the children are smart and prosper when given the time to benefit from well-designed and developmentally appropriate strategies. But it does take time. Still, in the interim, those who do come well prepared hit the ground running, taking off on the educational journey without a moment to waste. Results: the achievement gap continues to widen.
Why? The journey is a marathon. The earlier you start, the more you practice, the better you become, the faster you move, the farther you get. And who has the greatest possibility of moving fast and leaving everyone else behind?
Consider the high incidence of children from low-income families that comprise the enrollment in most inner-city schools. Consider the socio-economic, racial and cultural distribution of the student population in suburban environments and in charter schools where the rate of occurrence of children with critical needs is lower. Poverty must never be used to excuse schools from their responsibility to educate the children that are entrusted to them. However, it can certainly be one of the reasons that explain the challenges and difficulties of urban education.
There is such a need for an acknowledgment of the fact that schools cannot reform alone, in isolation and from within. Communities must reform. Society must reform. Real change requires a greater degree of understanding of the dynamics of the balance of power, and the effect of oppression on the psychosocial and intellectual development of children…coupled with the motivation and commitment to do something about it.
Lisette McGowan, Board Member,
OneWorld Progressive Institute