Kozol's school (2)

Walking in the hallways of the high school that I am volunteering in, I am constantly reminded of the schools that are brought up in Jonathan Kozl's article "Still Separate, Still Unequal: America's Educational Apartheid" in which he describes the black and Hispanic population in New York public schools. One school he mentions in particular is John F. Kennedy High School where 93% of students are Black or Hispanic and 3.5% are White. Upon looking up my own school, I found that the percentage for Black and Hispanic students was only 4% less, and there were only 1.5% more White students. In comparison to the 50% drop out rate in these Black and Hispanic dominating schools, only one in four of all students ends up dropping out in the one I attend. Seeing as how the school I attend only opened in 2002, I was able to look back to three years ago (to when the first class would be able to graduate in 2006 after four years) and noticed a 15% drop out rate and that in the school only 77% of students were Black or Hispanic. By 2007, this percentage of Black and Hispanic students rose to 83% and dropout rates almost doubled. At first glance the still new looking exterior with what seems to be normal looking classrooms (keeping in mind that what I see as "normal" is from the point of view of a student in a 97% all White school with an 11% drop out rate in a fairly well off suburban community), I thought that this school was an exception to Kozl's racially separate schools, but upon looking at the school's short history, a trend can be seen that may group this school into one of those that Kozl mentions as separate but still unequal.
In this high school, one out of every six students is currently taking an ESL class. From my own experience I have only seen students that are from French speaking Africa and Spanish speaking Latin America (the classroom is almost split evenly with a handful of extra Spanish speaking students compared to French speaking). Even though there is almost an even split, I can see a huge cultural difference between the two in the way they interact in the class.
The African students tend to be a lot quieter and more work oriented than the Hispanic students in the classroom. In mostly dealing with African students, I’ve noticed that there is probably a lot more fear in living in the States compared to that of the Latin students. Everywhere there are people who speak Spanish or even advertize in Spanish in South Providence, Olneyville, Manton, and many other sections of Providence. There are also many news channels and cable programs in Spanish while there is barely anything in French. I think there is a lot of available cultural information that they could offer to the classroom that would seem new and exciting to the Latin students. I believe that our society could be strengthened by telling these stories of immigrants’ home country, the move to America and the struggles in-between because it promotes understanding. If everyone was able to see things through someone else’s point-of-view there would be a lot less hate.

My bias: from llamas to plátanos (4)

My name is Kevin Gravier. I was born and raised in a white semi-rural community surrounded by little farms growing corn, or that have cows, llamas, horses, donkeys, or sheep. I never really ventured out of my Coventry/ West Greenwich area until I entered college. In fact I had never been to downtown providence or South Providence until last year. I grew up surrounded by my mémère’s and pépère’s French-Canadian-American culture and that was about it. When I went to high school my parents wouldn’t let me take French for the language requirement which got me extremely upset. I knew a little here and there, like swears and my numbers, but I wanted to continue and learn more. They wouldn’t budge. So my first year in Spanish went spectacularly. I was able to pick up amazing amounts of Spanish vocabulary and grammatical structure. I even went above and beyond the class by teaching myself third year concepts and vocabulary because languages and cultures just seemed to get absorbed into my mind so easily. The second year of high school I skipped Spanish two since I took the final exam on the third day of class and received an 88% on it. I continued to grow and absorb more Spanish as the years went by. This past summer I lived in Costa Rica for a month in order to get my 114 credits for Spanish. This experience greatly changed my life in so many ways. It allowed me to absorb Latina culture while experiencing what it was like to live in the third world. Walking to the center of town to take a bus ride to this church to walk along the train tracks to school was a totally different experience than going to school in Coventry. Being constantly surrounded by barbed-wire, razor-wire, and electrified barbed wire on every building (including my own house) was at first very intimidating but later turned into something normal and non-threatening. The first ride from the airport to my house made me want to break down just thinking about the culture change, but I would have to say it was the best thing to ever happen to me.
All of this, my history, is carried around with me everywhere I go. The conservative-slightly-racist-dominating-white-male persona in Coventry is mixed with the outsider-minority-Spanish speaking-Latina culture of when I was in Costa Rica even further mixed with my homosexuality and liberal-affirmative action-diversity supporting college education. This all makes me into, what I believe I am now; a gay white lower middle class Spanish speaking liberal male with a favoritism towards Latinos and Latina culture (even above white culture) and an open mind still not exposed to enough African American students to dispel ALL of the subconscious racism that has been instilled in me from growing up. The last part is what is scariest to me, but I have made many improvements into my subconscious feelings towards African Americans. I wouldn’t by ANY means call myself racist, since it is ONLY subconscious and easily dispelled, but the truth is that it is still there and it would be wrong denying that it’s there.
Being able to speak Spanish is an obvious advantage to my ESL classroom since the majority of the students only speak Spanish. Of course I speak English to the ones who can handle it, but even they don’t speak or ask questions in English to the teacher who has only a basic understanding of the language. One disadvantage that I have is that I am placed with two students from Central Africa who speak French. It has been a long time since I have spoken French, but I am managing to get by. The black-bias that I mentioned ago has been slightly modified after understanding that Africans have a completely different culture than African Americans. I knew this before, but this only brought it even further home for me. I am struggling to remember words, but I still have the advantage of knowing French well enough to teach in it for two hours. One misconception that I thought I would come across would be about Latin-Americans being very loud people, but the truth is that this is actually true in my classroom. They are very loud and rambunctious and cheerful just as I expected them to be.

Un trajet au lycée pour mi 1ª clase de English (1)

I take exit 18 to Thurbers ave on Route 95 South. As I get off the exit I merge onto the crowed South Providence street that will eventually lead into a Latino neighborhood filled with walk-in cafeterías, small markets, and busy streets. I pass the Burger King and end up in front of my high school. It is a large tan building, three stories high, that looks fairly new. There is a sign on the top floor with a Spanish sounding name and another one boasting itself as an international school facing the street. I pull into the teacher’s parking lot, since there is no student parking lot near the school, and walk up to the front doors. At the end of the teacher’s parking lot is an empty police car and further up is the locked door to the school. I press the call button and get bussed in and by the time I write out my visitor’s pass and sign in, a loud noise sounds over the speakers signifying a change in class (not at all like the one in my own high school back home). Suddenly, as if I am being transported into one of the wrongfully deemed “diversified” schools that Kozl describes in his article, I find myself in a sea of latin@s loudly speaking either Spanish or English walking in groups down the hallway. I make my way up to the third floor and enter my fairly large, bright and clean ESL room to be greeted by the teacher. He is a tall white and most likely Italian male with slicked back hair and a dark pair of jeans that tastefully blend into his black Adidas sneakers. He takes me aside while the class does their work and goes over what needs to be done that day in his basically group and individual reading exercised based class. At the front of the room sits (and often stands) a very extroverted Dominican student who I will name Pepe who speaks English fairly well, but ends up speaking Spanish for the majority of the class. To the right and back a seat sits a girl who, slightly less talkative, I find myself oddly gravitating to. She acknowledged me the moment I walked in firing off questions to me in Spanish since she only speaks English when forced. In the beginning I talk to her in Spanish, but as the class goes on, I notice she can understand a lot in English so I answer anything she asks me in English. I will call her Yaneli. Most of the class is made up of Dominicans, but there are also a few Puerto Ricans, Jamaicans (who speak Spanish) and Africans (who all speak French). Even though I am fluent in Spanish, the teacher placed me with two brothers from Central Africa who barely speak a word of English, or even anything for that matter. They are silent in a room of loud and excited Spanish voices. I tell them about the deep contrast in their two cultures and they laugh about it and get right back to work in this very relaxed learning environment that the teacher kind of prides himself on. There is a constant flow of work involving reading and comprehending that gets mixed with the somewhat loud and playful atmosphere in the class. All of the students joke around with each other in a very familiar way and most of what they talk about is the readings that they are working on. If I didn’t understand Spanish, though, I would feel totally lost and alienated in this class, which is probably why the French speaking African students are so quiet.