Edutopia Video
The video I watched on Edutopia was “Starting Over In Oakland” and it was a documentary on parent involvment according to the label provided by Edutopia. The video started off with a group of principals talking about how underfunded and dangerous Oakland schools were when they arrived. They then talked to prospective principals who were applying to start new schools or something under an education initiative which created 12 new schools. Then one principal or prospective principal is followed and discusses his school and talks about how they are planning an overnight trip open to the entire school (only about 100 end up looking to go) to the sierra mountains.
As you can tell by my diction, I am a little confused by the video and not really sure what it was about. Parents were mentioned for about five seconds (”these parents really do care”) and I didn’t understand how the schools were set up because they had enrollment and waiting lists. All I really took out of it came from the beginning where they discussed ceiling tiles falling on children, eight foot high grass, and homicides within a block of the school and kids walking through the police tape to get to school. This was not too surprising, I am well aware of that there are neglected schools out there. But I was rather impressed that Oakland actually was doing something to stop this, even if they video didn’t quite convey to me what it was that was being done to fix it. That gives me hope that schools across the country might follow suit and get funding and update.
February 20, 2007 at 9:18 pm
I have seen a documentary similar to this one concerning schools in Oakland that focused on Ebonics as a native dialect for most of the children. The school system is doing amazing programs concerning the mastery of standard English while also allowing the children to keep the dialect they learned at home. The teachers emphasize code-switching between Ebonics and standard English and the children are showing increasing literacy and reading competency rates. You would be suprised to see just how some “bad” school districts are working to positively impact the lives of their students while furthering education.