11/1/2019 1 Comment November 01st, 2019I jolt awake to the blaring of my phone's alarm. It's 8:30 am: way too early. The weather? 33 degrees Fahrenheit: way too cold. Nonetheless, I'm excited for the day to come. A quick look out the window relays a wet landscape with—wait—is that snow? A double-take says yes. I don't get too much time to enjoy the flurry-filled scene, though, because we have to get ready and pack lunch. After accidentally destroying some eggs and wrapping up a sandwich containing an excessive amount of spinach, I'm ready to head out. It's 9:40 am. We make our way by foot to the first community partner of the day, David Stovall, a professor of African American Studies and Criminology, Law, and Justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Upon arrival at the Chicago Public Library, Near North Branch, we meet up with him and exchange brief introductions as we wait for the library to open. At 10:02 am, we make our way into a small study room of the library and get right into it. Dr. Stovall engages us with his focused anecdotes regarding race as a central factor in the educational inequity in Chicago. He continually builds upon an extended metaphor of engineering, wondering, "Can conflict be engineered?" and demonstrating how society is carefully engineered to push down African American students and lift white ones. A key idea he touches upon is that people never usually consider how African Americans have always resisted slavery and segregation, remarking that the contentious nature of life in Chicago is critically important to our understanding of it. He poses a powerful question: "How do you justify a system based around African American disposability?" To extend our understanding of the issue, he offers statistics: Chicago Public Schools as a whole is 9% white, but selective enrollment high schools within that system are, on average, 48% white. He makes sure to emphasize that admission to these schools is not about intelligence; rather, it is a measure of the access to resources those children have. A particularly striking example manifests itself in Walter Payton High School, a U.S. News Top 10 High School, which has five counselors. This wouldn't typically be striking, except for the fact that the counselor to student ratio in Chicago as a whole is 1:1155. One to one thousand five hundred and fifty-five. There's something that doesn't add up here. In fact, Chicago—the same city that has 121 schools without any library at all—has two schools ranked in the U.S. News Top 10 High Schools. The disparities he notes are not isolated; he references a conversation he had with a police officer, who gave him an outline on "how to make a killer": 1. Don't give them anywhere viable to go to school, to live, to work, or to eat. 2. Hire a cop to contain them so that they eliminate each other. To round off his point, he emphasizes that no black or brown baby has a natural propensity to crime, BUT we know that conditions can be engineered so crime is more proximal to them. Nevertheless, he concludes, it is important to understand that people have RESISTED—and it is of the utmost importance to document that resistance. He ends by commenting upon the most recent Chicago Teachers' Union strike—that their planning has and should always expect the opposition. For instance, they were responded to with a 16% increase in pay... but that wasn't the issue they were fighting for. Instead, they wanted teachers, counselors, and librarians. After Dr. Stovall leaves, we stay in the study room of the library until 12:30 pm, chilling (is that what the kids call it nowadays?). Upon exiting, we're greeted by icy winds and harsh temperatures (courtesy of the Windy City). We head down to our next community partner: Annie Davis-Korelc of Education Pioneers. Our discussion with Annie begins as many of our other dialogues have, with a quick overview of our majors and reasons for wanting to join this Breakout trip. As we begin to discuss what we each believe to be the biggest challenge facing the Chicago Public Schools, and public school in general, we begin to zero in on American devaluing of the education system and its teachers. Annie brings an enlightening perspective to the discussion when she challenges us to question why Americans began to devalue their teachers despite the fact that in 1800 among doctors and lawyers, teachers were also revered. However, during the early 1800s, the teaching profession began to see a shift towards becoming a more feminine profession and as a result, those in the profession begin receiving lower and lower pay. As the conversation deepens and veers more towards the work being done by Education Pioneers specifically the work the organization is doing to close the opportunity gap through recruiting people with certain skill sets into leadership roles in the education world. After recruiting these people, 65% of whom are people of color that the organization has focused on recruiting, and provides professional development training. Two such programs we learn about being the Summer Fellowship, which is a 10-week program where applicants are placed with partner organization with anywhere from 10 to 30 others, and the Impact Fellowship which is a 10-month program. Furthermore, the organization also hosts workshops for their recruitees which focuses on three key ideas: 1- closing the Opportunity gap, 2- Adaptive Leadership in addressing the root causes of issues, and 3- Change Management. As our conversation with Annie draws to a close, she gives us unique, and interesting perspectives on some of the other community partners we have met and allows us to gain a more nuanced and in-depth understanding of the wealth of perspectives within Chicago surrounding the issue of Education Disparity. After returning home I scrubbed a pot for 30 minutes, finished cleaning up from the morning’s usual breakfast and lunch making session, and spent a bit of time preparing to trick or treat in the harsh cold outside. With the sun finally beginning to drop, and the wind slowly dying down, everyone set to putting together their Halloween costumes and completing their makeup.
When all was said and done we left the house with two Jokers, one tiger, one Princess Leia, one Rosie the Riveter, and a college student. As we raced around the neighboorhood trying to find the best places to trick or treat we were lucky to be sharing with one of our friends their first-ever trick-or-treating experience. With each piece of candy place into our bags, the chilling air became less perceptible as the sheer joy which only comes from the Halloween spirit began to take over. Finally, we headed home to enjoy the comforting taste of ramen and egg and tomato noodles before having our final Rose-Bud-Thorn session and then breaking up into teams and sitting down for a fun game of Jeopardy. With categories such as Chicago History and Our Partners, we got an entertaining review of the week’s activities and all the interesting knowledge we had gained from our community partners. As the night wound down we at down for our final chill movie night together and munched on the bags of candy which lay around our living room. We are excited to do some more sightseeing in the city tomorrow and we look forward to returning to Princeton sharing all the knowledge we have learned on this trip.
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AuthorsCo-leaders: Qing Huang '22 // Nastasia Klevak '22 |