Articles

Are school uniform policies a perfect fit for all students?

I recently confronted my prejudices. After teaching for many years in a low-income, high-violence area of Oakland, Calif., I decided to do some private tutoring. I sought to avoid the stress of politics in the district and the uncertainty of having a new principal every year for over eight years. Although I had outlasted all of the teachers I had started working with, I felt guilty because this was the population I wanted to serve.

I have always considered myself a thoughtful and considerate teacher. I try to understand where my students are coming from. I want my students to feel safe and respected. Last year, one of my students taught me how even the best intentions can miss the mark.

When I was a kid, I attended two different elementary schools in the same town. They were very different. One was large, suburban and within walking distance to downtown. The other was very small, outside the city limits in an agricultural area and had a significant number of Spanish-speaking students.

This year our school district launched an iPad initiative for the kindergarten teachers and students at our Title I elementary school.

Many suburban schools are facing what for them is a new problem—poverty.

It’s undeniable. Technology is in the classroom in new and instructive ways. Flipped classrooms and interactive instruction videos created by teachers for use by students at home are becoming more popular. Teachers are emerging as bloggers, creating classroom websites and using other digital products. Technology offers the potential to level the playing field for students without direct access to resources available to other students in more affluent schools.

Students who don’t see well don’t learn well. There may be a place to buy eyeglasses in every mall, but for many children, a visit to the eye doctor is a rare event. These children struggle with undiagnosed or untreated vision problems because they don’t have access to screenings or treatment.

My students had questions about the central character in the story Fly Away Home written by Eve Bunting and illustrated by Ronald Himler. And even as 2nd graders, they knew something about the problem. "Homelessness is mean," said James.

My middle school students had started to use words like “bum,” “creeper,” and “hobo” to describe people who are homeless in our city. To my eighth-graders, it was comic relief.