in the jungle, the mighty jungle...

My final day at James Sales (or at least in the SOCI 240 service learning capacity) was a great one. I got to count fake money with a student for math, observe music class complete with a recorder, xylophone & voice rendition of 'In the Jungle,' rounded out with students reading to me. What struck me most about today, besides meeting some wonderful students, was the fact that there was hidden curriculum. Hidden curriculum is the stuff teachers slide in beyond simple equations, skills, or the basic skeleton of the curriculum. The stuff about life, society, cultural capital, etc. Seeing it again (we did service learning in 387 as well) in the classroom is fascinating because it does exist and it's interesting to see the varying degrees teachers add it on depending on different factors. While we were counting money the instructor was not just emphasizing the math portion, she was also making sure the young girl counted the money out loud and every time it switched hands. She said things like 'You can never trust people with your money,' 'people make mistakes at the bank even,' and 'The customer is not always right anymore and if you learn to count your money every time you will save yourself a lot of headaches.' It was interesting because both the instructor and the student were African American and I was curious how the hidden curriculum lesson would have been different, if at all, if the race combinations had been different. I also concluded today that this class has ruined me because of that very curiosity! Now instead of subconsciously consuming Disney movies, simple interactions or jokes I now am very aware and question the implications behind behaviors and inequality. I even find myself analyzing people's words like never before. I also noticed the heavy emphasis on the WASL today as when we were walking the young girl back to class after counting money the instructor asked if she had worked on the measurements of a ruler yet. The girl's response of no was met with the instructor reminding herself to do that the next time they worked together as the WASL was in a couple months. This struck me more from the fact that we studied the effects of NCLB and standardized testing last semester in 387 and so it was weird to see the 'teaching to the test' phenomenon in action. Some of these kids need extra help and these schools rely on volunteers to satisfy that need, although that is not a reliable source for consistency. Especially seeing the time it takes to switch these children to the resource room and then the limited time they then get to spend in there. The funding for more resources and specialized schedules needs to be increased, but in order to do what seems like a logical and beneficial simple choice actually carries a lot of resistance as the funding scales for schools come from neighborhood property taxes and those won't go up drastically anytime soon since wealth inequality doesn't seem to be changing. They're all wrapped up in each other these social problems, and its sad that wealth inequality affects students who don't even know that they are lacking resources and equal educational opportunities because of national greed and the fact they don't live in the wealthiest neighborhood and that somehow comes to affect their education.