Social Injustices in Milwaukee

Milwaukee is one of the most segregated cities in America. This greatly affects our students in MPS. When you cross a bridge and 99% of the people in e neighborhood are a minority race, you know something is wrong in this city. Students are greatly affected by this since they are with each other on a day to day basis but can live in completely different areas and live completely different lives.

While I was in Jackson, MS for a mission trip we spent a great deal of time discussing social injustices. West Jackson is a completely different place than downtown Jackson that mostly people think of. West Jackson is predominantly African American and about one out of every four houses is boarded up and abandoned. Since these people cannot afford to pay rent to the unreasonable landlords, they abandon the houses and therefore have no credit. By having no credit you cannot buy your own home, which means you have no equity. When you cannot own your own property you must continuously pay rent which is like basically flushing your money down the drain every month; your money is not going anywhere except someone else's pocket. Also, if you do not own the property reside on, you usually do not care about the upkeep of it either.

This vicious cycle that the African Americans are currently in begins with education. If you are not able to get an equal education, or do not care to since you might have much larger problems in your life, then you will not go to college and eventually get a good job. As a future educator, my job will be to empower the students to take hold of their future and realize that they have the ability to break this cycle. With a solid education, they can go anywhere that they want, but they need to be interactive and engaged in the classroom and the content. This is where the educator needs to step in and create a positive learning environment.

Tracking and Labeling Students

This week, the concept of tracking and labeling students was addressed and really stood out to me. When I see that a child has been placed in the lower track I cannot help but feel sorry for them since they will most likely never get out of that track, according to statistics. On the other hand, should we be teaching to the lowest academic level in our class? After discussing this predicament many times in my education classes, many teachers and students believe that combining different levels of student achievement promotes better learning and more socialization within the classroom. I agree that this will keep people on the same level but it seems like we are making the advanced students do the teaching for us. I know that students learn more when they try and teach it to someone else or they better wrap themselves around the concept but it still feels like the question of tracking or not tracking is hard to answer.

What is a huge problem is the fact that our tracking system has become a majority of minority students while the upper track is filled with white students. This cannot be denied or ignored any longer. Teachers need to stop giving up on students that are difficult to teach. Every student deserves an equal education to the person sitting next to them. What teachers need to do, which is obviously a difficult task, is to keep their students on a level playing field in the classroom and not to exclude any student for not being as advanced as others. I do not know exactly how to do this and create a perfect environment but I do think that is why we go to school to become teachers, to learn these kinds of techniques that are desperately needed in classrooms today, especially urban classrooms.