UMKC Education Program to Focus on Urban Ed
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Mara Rose Williams, Kansas City Star, May 22, 2008
This fall, the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s School of Education will become a school of urban education, university officials said Wednesday.
The school will train teachers specifically to work in urban schools, with a newly developed curriculum. The goal is to attract a more diverse group of students who will grow into teachers prepared to prosper in urban schools.
Students will not have the option of student-teaching in suburban schools. Instead, they will be limited to opportunities in nine urban districts: Kansas City, Kansas City, Kan., Turner, Grandview, Hickman Mills, Center, Raytown, Independence and North Kansas City.
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Shifting all the course work toward urban education is a giant leap that sprang out of what professors learned from working with students enrolled in the institute, said Linda Edwards, dean of the School of Education.
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About three years ago, UMKC Chancellor Guy Bailey announced that he wanted the campus to become “an urban-serving” institution. Edwards said that announcement factored into the decision to focus on urban education.
The School of Education has about 300 undergraduates each year. In 2007, about 50 percent of those who were student-teaching taught in suburban schools. This year, 100 percent of the student teachers were in urban schools.
Students still will be exposed to suburban education, Edwards said. During the two years they are in the school, they will spend time observing suburban and perhaps even rural classrooms.
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The new curriculum will include more classes in cultural diversity and learning how to use students’ culture and background to connect them with learning, Waddell said.
She said all School of Education students will “take course work that involves them being immersed in the urban school district and the urban community and learning how resource-rich the urban community is.”
Until now, Waddell said, UMKC students, like students from education schools at most universities across the country, have been “trained to work in schools with a middle-class white culture.”
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Experts in urban education, including Howard, say a main cause of poor school performance is the inability of schools to adequately staff classrooms with qualified teachers. High teacher turnover makes it hard to keep high-quality teachers in urban schools.
Howard said many schools of education across the country are adopting some focus on urban education, but only a small number, “less than 10,” have geared their curriculum to urban education the way UMKC is doing.
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Email Mara Rose Williams at mdwilliams@kcstar.com.
(Posted on May 23, 2008)
Comments
If young education majors are prohibited from student teaching in clean, safe suburban schools and forced to work in violent urban hellholes where students are frequently “locked down” after on-campus gang violence, the result is easy to predict:
The supply of student teachers will dry up.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 6:46 PM on May 23
Blacks are the only group who require constant changes which can never fix their problems. “Resource-rich” in the urban community is the biggest joke I’ve read yet… If it is so resource-rich, why are they always trying to adjust everything to make Blacks act like Whites and Asians? Is “resourch-rich” a subtle projection of the writer to really bring rich resources into a land of forlorn intellectual barrenness? No matter how they try to drill oil in a so-calledf “resourse-rich” urban community, they will wear out their own resources to try such a sisyphean venture….
Posted by White is Beautiful Robert at 8:23 PM on May 23
I’d really like to know if they learn how to get these “urban” kids to sit still and listen to the teacher. Without that, not much education is going to happen.
“Urban” is apparently one of the many euphemisms for “black.” How’s this for a general observation on our culture— When people use new euphemisms, it is a sign that they are dealing with a problem that they don’t know how solve.
Posted by Reader-1 at 9:58 PM on May 23
And why is there ‘high teacher turnover’?
Posted by at 10:03 PM on May 23
So, UMKC gets to focus on black children, so I’m sure UMSL will be next. Does this mean that Southeast Missouri State University, Missouri State University, the University of Missouri - Columbia, the University of Missouri - Rolla, Truman State University, and the University of Central Missouri will all get to focus on white children?
Posted by Question Diversity at 10:10 PM on May 23
“In many cases, those teachers landed their first jobs in an urban school and found they were ill-prepared to handle the social, cultural and academic challenges those students brought to class, said Tyrone Howard.”
What Tyrone Jamal Howard really means by “ill-prepared” is that these starry-eyed young teachers encounter the savagery and the low IQs of blacks for the first time, see that there’s no potential for improvement, and then get the hell out before they are raped or murdered.
Posted by Nordic at 10:28 PM on May 23
Damn it! “Urban” means “black,” and blacks aren’t the only students in schools. White gifted students are so plentiful and so much more worthy of this attention and spending than these urban losers who couldn’t care less for academia. I am a teacher whose sees this every year in and out! Stop the cherade! Give credit where credit is due and reward students on performance and not on their race! Why are blacks so high maintanence and yet unproductive that they deserve these resources? I see my 3.8 - 4.0 white students go to the state university while black students who can’t read an analog clock get into fancy private colleges with academic scholarships. I am so sick of it and any white parent should be so, too!
Posted by L. Simet at 10:29 PM on May 23
Are fractions, multiplication, physics, ABC’s, etc., somehow different in an “urban” setting? Does 2+2 equal something other than 4 there? Actually, somehow, I suspect it just might…
Posted by HH at 10:44 PM on May 23
I know a lovely young White woman, the daughter of friends, who teaches in Chicago as part of the “Teach For America” program, I believe it’s called. Put up with two years of hell and they pay off your student loans or some such thing. She is a kind and optimistic soul, and has told me about the progress she has made with her charges. Her e-mailed reports sound like she’s teaching the retarded. She got the class to stand in line. She got them to take out their books. No academic progress at all, but she’s sure she’ll make a difference. Sorry, Matty, you’re wasting tour time. Go find some White kids to teach, make the world a better place.
Posted by Schoolteacher at 11:29 PM on May 23
“… resource-rich the urban community is.”
I speak English, a little French and a little Japanese, but have no idea what this means. Would one of you Ebonics bilinguals please translate this term for me.
Posted by Lost in Paradise at 11:59 PM on May 23
My worry about the future is: where are all these urban youth going to work? I really don’t see a future for many of them and they are so dysfunctional who really could even help these people, much less give them a job. The end game is crime, going in all directions. Yes there is something new under the sun, Whites are racial realists in 2008.
Posted by Lars at 11:08 AM on May 24
From the article:
“…Experts in urban education, including Howard, say a main cause of poor school performance is the inability of schools to adequately staff classrooms with qualified teachers…”
Same old garbage: Poor school performance blamed on inadequate teachers. A recent AmRen article also blamed the high number of black suspensions on ‘cultural differences’, and non- ‘effective teaching’; the answers, as proscribed by the ivory-tower gurus are: Teachers [developing] more tolerance…through teacher training.
More tolerance for foul, abusive language? More tolerance for aberrant, deviant, unacceptable behavior? More tolerance for kids whose very mission is to destroy the education of everyone in the classroom?
Do they every think to look at WHY qualified teachers flee these hell-hole schools the very first chance they get? When I started my first job in an inner-city school, I was not allowed to transfer out of that school for seven long years (unless I resigned, which was not an option at the time).
Why do the journalists never ask those who have had first-hand experience in majority-black hell-holes? Instead they ask educational theorists to come up with yet another hare-brained explanation as to why blacks are suspended at high rates and perform at such low rates.
“…Until now, Waddell said, UMKC students, like students from education schools at most universities across the country, have been ‘trained to work in schools with a middle-class white culture.’…”
Anyone who would make such a stupid statement has been locked inside an institution (or asylum) for too long.
The entire educational-industrial complex is non-White driven. The entire K-12 curricula mocks, scorns and debases middle-class White culture and values.
As a teacher, I recently had to complete a number of units of (yet more) ‘multicultural training’ that was required to keep my position. I was hoping to avoid this unpleasant experience as I hope to retire in a few years but I was not allowed to escape and was threatened with a transfer if I refused.
I wish I could have stood up and given my own lecture using facts and figures about IQ differences and pathological behavior as to why the achievement and suspension gap is intractable and there is nothing we can to about it—however, I would have lost my teaching license and my pension on the spot.
Five more years…Five more years….
Bon
Posted by BonBon at 8:55 PM on May 24
Having lived in Kansas City, I must say that the nine neighborhoods listed for urban choices are not all predominately non white. It’s confusing. Any neighborhood outside of Kansas City, Mo is a suburb if you ask me. The blacks usually live in Northeast Kansas City and the eastern part of Kansas City KS.
Posted by at 1:50 AM on May 25
In predominantly white parts of the country it’s normal for student teachers to be restricted to cities. And, of course, that’s not a problem.
Posted by Sleep at 5:47 PM on May 25
These “cutting edge” initiatives, whether they be garden variety guvimint initiated or from the bowels of higher edjukashun, are always good for a raucous belly laugh. As to this initiative in particular, I wonder if the student activity fees and health fees have been revised to cover injuries to “student”-“teachers” arising out of violent encounters with “students”. How about theft and vandalism of vehicles and other personal property? How about post-traumatic stress syndome?
Whatever the answer is to the preceding questions, my bet is that within three years the entire program will collapse from lack of enrollment.
Posted by Flaxen-headed Strumpet at 7:15 PM on May 25
My worry about the future is: where are all these urban youth going to work?
They will be working in Government and Public Service. Affirmative Action will thrive under President Obama, and blacks will hold the majority of these jobs. What the heck, the government is already completely inept. Its a perfect fit.
Posted by Kellie at 1:05 PM on May 26
This is just indicative of the greater problem - as a society, our focus should be on excellence. Instead, we reward and subsidize failure. Instead of reaching for new heights - all our resources are flowing to the bottom trying to just make it stay afloat.
Posted by at 7:58 PM on May 26
“Resource rich urban community.”
Students will become proficient in identifying and utilizing Social Service providers. They will learn to answer questions in such a manner as to maximize benefits.
In addition, they will be provided with highlighted maps and bus tokens to Welfare, Social Security, and MedicAid.
Honors grads will be given the names and numbers of pro-bono civil rights lawyers.
Posted by Look! It's a gh-g-g....SPOOK! at 5:04 PM on May 29