School-Stories

Education reporting allows one to go inside schools to learn how a new generation thinks about the...

Thu, 03 May 2012 22:01:24 -0400

Education reporting allows one to go inside schools to learn how a new generation thinks about the world. I was frequently inspired by the enthusiasm students brought to their education and the questions they would ask me. This semester, I enjoyed speaking to students, teachers and administrators to gain their perspectives. I focused on technology in schools and was able to observe students and teachers using technology in the classroom at my embed school, Pathways in Technology. As schools incorporate more technology into their curriculum, it is fascinating to report on how it impacts students’ learning, how it is funded, and how teachers use it to build their lessons. By engaging in conversations about education, we hear different voices and ultimately gain a deeper understanding of the issues.

-Kimberly Drelich

My experience covering education was almost uniformly positive, although I think a lot of that was...

Tue, 01 May 2012 09:28:07 -0400

My experience covering education was almost uniformly positive, although I think a lot of that was due to getting lucky with the topics and individuals I chose to write about. I didn’t encounter too many resistant sources. The administrators, teachers, and students at my embed school—the Urban Assembly School for Applied Math and Science—were all happy to talk with me throughout the semester, as were the individuals in the organization SEO who I chose to focus on for my final project. I know I won’t be able to avoid talking with the Department of Education forever—particularly if I continue to report on education after graduation—but at least for this semester, I found it very gratifying to focus more on actual students and teachers and less on broader issues of policy.

-Eddie Small

When I think back on my semester as an education reporter, I can’t help but cringe slightly at...

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 22:50:05 -0400

When I think back on my semester as an education reporter, I can’t help but cringe slightly at how little I knew about the world I was covering. Standardized tests, graduation rates, charter schools; they were almost like living entities that sucked you in and left you with nothing but fancy terminology. With every challenge came new frustrations, whether it was access to schools or busy “communications officers.” It’s easy get overwhelmed and very often, I did. But as I waded through the IEPs and teacher evaluations, you find the reason that brought you here in the first place — the stories of teachers and students whose everyday joys and sorrows are often determined by the turbulence of this world.

I will probably never escape the endless “no comments” from school officials and jargon-ridden report cards, but I will try to always keep in mind that my job is to tell the stories of educators and those who we hope to educate.

- Nikhita Venugopal

I brought a story about this in the week I was responsible for...

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 00:57:00 -0400

I brought a story about this in the week I was responsible for news aggregation. Here’s The Daily Show’s take on it. It’s simultaneously funny and damning.

-Eddie Small

In Harlem, When An After-school Fight Involved a Gun and Me My suburban Canadian heart is still...

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 23:13:00 -0400

In Harlem, When An After-school Fight Involved a Gun and Me

My suburban Canadian heart is still slightly racing just after my first encounter with a gun today.

Since moving to Harlem in August, I thought I’ve seen or heard it all, from a nasty car accident to a police takedown that involved 10-15 squad cars to a drunk woman who pulled her pants down to have sex in the alley across my brownstone. (She didn’t because people walked by.) I’ve witnessed many amusing moments from the window of my third-floor room.

But today I actually became part of the scene when a street fight involving a group of teenage boys interrupted what had otherwise been a beautiful, warm March afternoon for the parents and children who ran down 123rd Street screaming out of fear.

Normally, if you walk on 123rd St., near Amsterdam, in the evening on a weekday, you will see groups of children heading home from school. Some wear the khaki pants and blue sweaters that their charter school uses as a uniform. When it’s warm outside like today, some children and their parents go to the playground and basketball courts in Morningside Park. Almost always, I hear laughter and kids chatting excitedly about whatever interesting event is occurring in their lives. It could be any neighbourhood in New York City.

But I realized today that part of the childhood experience for some students living in Harlem will include memories of guns and police cars.

Today, as I headed after spending the day in a nearby cafe, a group of girls walked a few feet ahead of me, passing the Dominican frio frio cart that usually stands outside the 123rd St. Harlem school building on warm days. Suddenly, the girls started to yell. They first ran east toward Morningside Drive but quickly turned around and ran screaming past me. Everyone started running away. Confused, I looked across the street and saw a mother pushing a stroller frantically yelling for her child to follow her.

I didn’t know what was happening. I thought it was some sort of school game, maybe a big hide-and-go-seek event until I saw how scared everyone looked. Then I heard an elderly woman rush past me muttering something about teenagers, guns, and how someone was going to get hurt.

Two construction workers peered outside from an open door, so I stood with them, hoping they’d let me inside if shots were fired. In middle of street were a group of teenage boys. Whatever the case, someone thought they saw a gun and it caused widespread panic for everyone including myself.

The situation cooled down after a few minutes. A few police cars cruised by after the boys left. You can see the police station from the school building.

No one I spoke to wanted to give their names. One school construction worker, who’s from Queens, said that it was the second time he saw this happen in front of the school building, where at least three schools are based. He’s been working there for three months. The second construction worker said he wasn’t shocked. Guns are a problem in the city, he said.

The mothers I spoke to said that they didn’t realize what happened. One 31-year-old mother said she lived across Morningside Park for most of her life and doesn’t feel like safety is a problem.

That may be the case. Most days, I feel completely safe walking home in Harlem. I live in an area that has been gentrified but still rough around the edges. There have been moments where I felt unsafe, including a time some guy grabbed my arm at the 125th D subway station because he thought it was the best way to get my attention.

But Harlem is a great neighborhood. It’s full of history and culture. I’ve met many wonderful people here. Yet as an education reporter, it was surreal to understand that for some Harlem children, the scariest moments in their life will include a situation like today, when they run down the street terrified.

Looking back, while I didn’t grow up in the safest neighborhood, I think the scariest moment for me was thinking I was going to receive a bad grade or feeling worried that my teacher was going to yell at me for handing in a late assignment. I never felt scared to go to school.

I wonder what these children will be thinking about today. I wonder if they’ve experienced this before. I wonder if test scores even matter when part of the learning environment for these Harlem children includes knowing how to run away from a fight that involves guns.

It’s heartbreaking when the reason a child may not want to go to school is because she feels unsafe.

— Rose D’souza @thewaywardrose (Reposted from her blog)

The parents I have been talking to have said that the...

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 01:10:00 -0500

The parents I have been talking to have said that the conversations they have with their kids about what they are learning is nothing like what they learned in school as a kid. Sometimes the kids are schooling the parents. This music video by Esperanza Spalding is just a cute representation of these types of conversations.

— Raisa Zaidi @raisazaidi

I wonder how many kids think this? I still think about this...

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 01:29:00 -0500

I wonder how many kids think this? I still think about this all the time.

— Raisa Zaidi @raisazaidi

How Not To Be An Education Reporter Soon after New York City’s Department of Education...

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 22:37:00 -0500

How Not To Be An Education Reporter

Soon after New York City’s Department of Education released its teacher evaluation reports, many teachers on the list faced public scrutiny. Instead of assessing the quality of the data in the reports, the New York Post decided to go after individual teachers according to Edwize. Without reviewing the reports for mistakes, the Post publicly lambasted one teacher in particular, Pascale Mauclair, because she was listed at one of the city’s worst teachers.

Critics of the reports believe that the data is too flawed and, therefore, unfairly evaluates New York City’s public school teachers. The Post reporters, however, failed to fulfil their responsibility to critically determine the accuracy of the data before they published it.

As education reporters, we often rely on statistics to find and tell stories. But we should always analyze and report to make sure that we have correct information for public consumption.

— Rose D’souza @thewaywardrose

(Rose previously wrote a version of this post on her personal blog)

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not...

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 09:19:00 -0500

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”

— Albert Einstein

(AP photo, 1954)

Ankita Rao, sitting down on the far left, and her students in...

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 17:43:03 -0500

Ankita Rao, sitting down on the far left, and her students in northern India.

From India to Queens

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 17:04:00 -0500

Why I Am An Education Reporter

Last week I was observing a high school classroom in Queens during a community after-school program. The teenagers were boisterous – hyped to be out of school for the day and chowing down on free snacks. When it was time to circle up for a session on sex-ed, they sauntered down the hallway to their own internal beat, oblivious to the “hurry along” requests of the coordinators.

From the tight jeans to the flirtatious hair flips to the hip-hop dance classes, I was suddenly transported one year back to northern India, where I served as a community coordinator for low income youth in an urban slum area. Like the 18-year-old woman working with the Queens students, it was hard for me to draw the line of authority: to be the progressive, fun mentor while still maintaining some degree of discipline.

When I was in India, everything in my physical life had changed. I was living with families in the slum community, heating water on a kerosene stove for my bath. My students and I studied on the floor of a dusty, hot room, and funds for even the simplest pencils and paper were hard to ration. By the end of the year I had developed a deep-rooted love for my 150 students. I remember the feeling of their palms in my hands and the emotional talks we had about relationships and life as we sat on the terrace against cracked cement walls.

I came back to New York culture-shocked and a little lost in my own country.

But the common thread between the school in Queens and my year in India reminded me that the universality of education is stronger than just appearances. Learning, especially the kind that starts after that last bell, has an amorphous quality, adapting just slightly to cultures and language. From the tribal areas of India to my lethargic Florida middle school, I’ve noticed that students have the uncanny ability to balance unquenchable curiosity with bored, antsy classroom behavior. Similarly, I’ve seen teachers who can canvass their class to do pretty much anything and those who can no longer find the energy to remember why they chose their profession.

I never had plans to be a teacher, but my experience led me straight to education reporting. What I found in classrooms, community centers and homework time in homes were just microcosms of what was going on in a larger sense, politically, economically and socially.

As I start to untangle the New York City public school system, I find myself drawn to stories that have the same heart, the same unbound energy that kept me sustained last year.

And that’s how I know I’m in the right place.

— Ankita Rao, @anrao

- Belleville, Illinois (Associated Press, 1974) We are just as...

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 04:16:00 -0500

- Belleville, Illinois (Associated Press, 1974)

We are just as excited to be covering education in New York City! Our team of education journalists report on issues ranging from charter schools to teacher evaluation systems. Our experiences in and out of the classrooms we visit help to provide a richer understanding of what it means to be an education reporter right now.

"It is a greater work to educate a child, in the true and larger sense of the word, than to rule a..."

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 03:35:00 -0500

““It is a greater work to educate a child, in the true and larger sense of the word, than to rule a state.””

- William Ellery Channing (1817-1901), poet