Reflective Essay
The Power of Community: A Reflective Journey in Transforming Education
I was one of the kids that loved going to school. I was not particularly a high achiever, but I loved learning and loved the social aspects of school. I was involved in as many activities as possible, such as soccer, choir, guitar lessons, science fair, and anything else that would be an excuse to hang out with my friends. As any kid, I was not excited about tests or assignments, but I still loved going to school as a child; I thought everyone around me felt the same. Then, around third grade, I started to pay attention to other people and how they felt about school. I started to realize that not everyone loved going to school; some of my friends did not necessarily love it as much as I did, some because they would get bored in class, some because they did not like the teacher, some would get very anxious around tests and assignments, some had much pressure coming from their parents to get the best scores possible.
Everyone had extremely different experiences from mine, and we all were privileged to attend a private school in Chile. It was a bilingual (English-Spanish) school with all the extracurriculars you could imagine, teachers who cared, and a very tight community. Our school had the international baccalaureate (IB) system, so we did not have as many tests as other kids that went to all the other schools in my city because my school was the only one with that system; IB encourages critical thinking and mainly project-based which made a huge impact in how I experience education, I had friends and family members that went to other schools, and when talking to them or seeing their homework or tests, I would see that most of what they were doing was memorization. Maybe their teachers were encouraging critical thinking in the classroom, but at the end of the day, their grades came from standardized testing that did not allow for creativity or critical thinking skills.
I grew up listening to my grandparent's stories of how they grew up, stories that most of the time had an explicit or implicit lesson of "if you work hard enough and make the right choices, anything is possible." Each story opened my eyes more and made me reflect on my privileges. This reflection on my privilege became a significant part of my journey, making me more introspective and engaged in self-examination. My first instinct was to feel grateful for all the work my grandparents and parents had done. As I got older, I started questioning whether working hard and making the right choices was the pathway to achieving goals or climbing the social ladder. I quickly realized everyone was working extremely hard but was not getting the same results as my family. I could not understand why, but then I realized it was a mix of community support and opportunities in conjunction with working hard and making the right choices. However, community support creates social capital that provides a larger array of opportunities and has a huge weight compared to just working hard.
As I was battling with these big ideas, my family got the opportunity to move to the United States. I was sixteen years old when I was dropped off at one of the biggest public high schools in Louisiana; my parents had done their research and moved into an area with a school that was considered good by state standards. This was the first time I felt uncomfortable in a school setting. I did not know anyone; I had no community. US public schools are widely different depending on where the school is. The school was huge, which made it hard to create a community; it was very academically driven. As I mentioned before, academics were never my strong suit. I did okay but not well enough to be in honor classes, and when I tried to do AP (advanced placement), I regretted it because of the high expectations and fast pace of the courses. The system has a way of slowly chipping away at students' spirits.
When I went to college, I started as a Chemical engineering major because I was pretty good at chemistry, and being an engineer sounded like a good job. However, I have always wanted to be a teacher, so I changed my major to elementary education one year and a half into my engineering degree. Things started clicking when I started student teaching at an elementary school. 4th graders were mostly excited about the world and wanted to learn. However, the educational system as is, focused only on scores, would quickly let them know their only value came from scoring high on tests; even if teachers wanted to be different, they still needed to fall in line and do what they were told. I could see how most of them were anxious or nervous whenever they got a bad grade or did not know an answer in front of the class. The most shocking thing for me was realizing that many of them did not even know if the person beside them had siblings. There was an emphasis on academic success but nothing about being a community member.
I started teaching 3rd grade, and I became part of this system. I had so many complicated feelings about it; I wanted to be different and make sure my students loved school and felt like they could do anything. I failed, like many teachers do. I had to teach a curriculum and make sure I was getting results so I could show I was doing a good job and so parents could see their kids were learning. It drove me crazy; I made it a point to change my actions. I started playing games with them so they would get to know each other, and the whole classroom and I changed. Some students that would have never been friends before started to work together. Everyone seemed more willing to help each other, and more kids were willing to ask for help and admit that they did not understand the material.
Focusing on community and connecting my goals as a teacher to their goals as kids was a game changer. When that switch happened, I started to think about how important it is to shorten the disconnect between adults and kids when it comes to education. What is the purpose of education? What are we preparing kids for? Are we doing it in a way that is making an impact?
We are preparing kids to be workers instead of members of society; we need to prepare them for what we know they will deal with. Relationships, professional or personal relationships, are a fundamental part of being a human and a part of a community. We do not necessarily know what students will decide to do as they get older, but we do know they will need people to help them through their journey. Academics are important, but the focus should switch to helping children be critical thinkers and members of a society we are proud of.
Halfway through my first year of teaching, I decided I needed to dive deeper into education, how we got here, and why; I wanted to learn more about myself and the world through education. I applied to GSE without thinking I would get in, but it was the only university with a program that felt exactly like what I needed. When I came to Penn GSE, I was ready to be a recipient of knowledge, intending to learn more about people, culture, what connects us as humans, and what kind of role education plays in improving society. The Education, Culture, and Society program is not a place to be a recipient of knowledge; I learned so much from my peers, myself, and professors. I was pushed to reflect on my life experiences and deconstruct most of what I had learned in the past; I was pushed to acknowledge and question my biases.
Picking the Community action and social change concentrations was an obvious choice for me; I want to learn more about building school communities and the disconnect between children and adults in their lives. There is no better way than going into a community and learning from them. I want my findings to be easily accessible to other teachers who feel the way I have felt and are trying to understand why we are in the situation we are in and want to figure out how to make an impact from inside the classroom and for policymakers who are open to listening to educators. We are not changing fast enough to provide today's children with the right skills to face a constantly changing world. We are disconnected from what their needs will be; we need to stop preparing them for what adults do right now and prepare them as human beings and members of a community so they are ready to thrive in whatever they decide to achieve in a world that will look very different to the one we have right now.