How would you define school and class culture?
Class and school culture can be viewed as the ways and means by which schools and students function. School culture can by under- or overachieving. They can be focused on academic, social, or cultural topics, can encourage or discourage activities and ideas, or can prompt or preventing students to reach new heights. As teachers, we can facilitate an improved culture at out school and in our classes. We can hold students accountable and teach them responsibility. We can hold high expectations for all our students, regardless of ability levels, and encourage them to reach their self-defined goals.
What is the relationship between data and school culture?
As we saw from our exercise today, their is slight correlation between school data and culture. Some schools with higher API ratings had problems with student-overload and a high-stress environment. Other lower API schools had issues with student motivation and language and special needs students. I think the culture of the school is affected more by the demographic of students than their school-specific data measures and rankings.
How does SES (socio-economic status) impact school and class culture?
I do think there is the strongest correlation between similar school's demographic and socio-economic status and the cultures experienced at these schools. We heard from teacher candidates from lower achieving schools talk about their ethnic and academic demographics and how many students are full grade-levels behind the class. Parents need assistance in helping their children and many are lacking this help. Higher achieving school know that parent and community funding can "fill-in-the-cracks" when it comes to educational tools such as computers and enrichment activities. This also can be seen as a double-edged sword, with many students from lower socio-economic backgrounds working extremely hard to achieve when they show academic promise while many students from more affluent communities lack the motivation to achieve at their highest levels.
What are some pathways to success?
Differentiation can help each and every student maximize their learning in school. Students strengths must be identified and lessons and activities must be geared toward these strengths on a student-to-student basis. Teachers might start out the year with an activity that could identify their students learning preferences. Multiple Intelligences exist for different people and by teaching to these "intelligences" can benefit student and teacher alike. Teachers can gain new insight into how different learners take in lessons and use this information to plan for future ones.
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