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High-performing urban schools have climates that nurture the commitment and engagement of teachers, parents, and students. This short video by Dr. Lynne Perez from the National Center for Urban School Transformation and Power Pont detail the perspectives/attitudes of parents, teachers, and students from successful urban schools.

I agree that students wanting to come to school is a big part of it's success. I really dislike hearing from students "I hate this school" etc. That is why nurturing them and making them feel wanted is important. If they feel wanted then they will want to be at school. When parents see this and hear from their child how much they enjoy being at school they will also be on board too. Thank you for sharing this!

I think the concept of this video is relevant. Brian you said you do not believe you are a nurturer; however, I think all educators are to some degree. I think nurturer is often translated to caudle, which is not the case. Teachers have an obligation to provide their students with the best possible education. This education does not just develop overnight. It takes a variety of components to bring it all together. We know students need to feel safe in their environment. We know that students need to feel accepted in order to collaborate and communicate to the best of their abilities. If students feel stifled, they lose to drive to achieve in a class. A big part of this develops within the social and emotional aspects of school. With this is mind, educators are nurturers. Doesn't mean you can't hold your students to high standards. Doesn't mean you let them make excuses for themselves. No matter traditional or progressive. Strict or lenient. Teachers by nature are nurturers because we help our students. I am a high school teacher too, and I still make sure that my students are comfortable and confident in their classroom because I know they will engage and learn more if I do.

Article abstract: This article explored "the personal and professional changes experienced by a teacher education faculty who embarked on a joint project relating to urban education. The faculty members committed to write book chapters applying their areas of expertise to the challenge of preparing teachers for urban schools." With a qualitative research design, the results showed a detailed description of the staff's "discoveries, thoughts, doubts, and reflections at three points during the project" The study's results revealed "an evolving perspective on urban education focusing upon understanding the lived experiences of the children" as a means of implementing meaningful education for these urban students.

I think what I'm starting to see is that the essence...is not developing recipes, quick fixes and a how-to-do-it book as much as it is to begin to talk about the need for understanding such issues as passion, resilience, compensatory kind of skills...I'm getting more to the point of talking about what a person takes into the environment...So if we try to just give our students a whole lot of tricks saying this will work and that will work I think we're setting them up for failure. So we've got to try to turn some of their attitude into philosophy and understanding of the urban setting. It's more knowledge and attitude than it is a skill. That's a change. That's not the way I was approaching it (ST, 11/6, pp. 1-2).

I agree that a lack of experiences in urban schools causes hesitation and confusion. I remember going to a school-wide urban education training when I first started teaching in my district. Having some experience with attending and student teaching in an urban school setting, I was astounded by the lack of knowledge of some of my peers. Most of them thought they would be able to build relationships with the students right away and demand their respect. As our student population changed and we gained experience, we became less hesitant and started brainstorming ways to involve our ever-changing community in order to develop better relationships.

The Key Learning Community is based upon the Theory of Multiple Intelligences developed by Dr. Howard Gardner of Harvard University. I visited Key during my undergraduate work. I am a huge fan of Howard Gardner.

I am also a fan of Dr. Howard Gardner. With my profession, I think it is so important to realize the whole-child and finding ways where all students can succeed. My high school friend did Teach for America with Kipp Indy. She fell in love with the school's mission and commitment to learning. After her 2 years with TFA, she stayed on and is now a coordinator for collegiate education.

I really appreciated what Ron Smith, the principal, said: "Children are naturally curious about the world and they have many ways of expressing what they know. They have questions of their own that should be taken seriously by the adults who surround them." I think this applies to all levels of learners. Curiosity and intrigue are so important as students grow academically. This is why probing questions were invented! Heuristic thinking and wonderments from our students allow them to explore and discover new meanings and gain new knowledge. I just really found myself connected to this statement and thought about the applications inside my own classroom.

Take two kids, one from a low-income family, the other middle class. Let them run around and do little-kid things in their respective homes and then, at age 5, enroll them in kindergarten.

I feel this shows how important it is to start educating children at a young age.

This topic/article really strikes home for me. One of my dearest friends works in Mississippi in a Pre-K class. Her effervescent personality, dedication, and perservance would make any child want to come to school. She is in a very high poverty school system but overcomes this obstacle in her teaching and with her students. Preschool children are at an age where money and SES have no baring but influence and change do. Thanks for sharing this article!

The traditional, patronizing view of teachers, that they are to be treated like saints and paid as if they'd taken a vow of poverty, has lately gone through a schizophrenic inversion. Open the newspaper most any day and you'll read about "bad teachers" who are holding children back and, through their unions, conspiring to remain well compensated.

I have to agree that school reform involves a lot of key players inside and outside of the classroom. Kennedy mentioned throughout her text this notion. I liked how she mentioned that teachers feel a lot pressure from within their own schools and by their teammates. During our professional development meetings, I can see the gears going amongst my colleagues as we are listening about RISE, SLO, and even the many other acronyms of RISE. They are feeling the pressure to develop realistic but achieveable objectives. Third-fifth grade teachers are beginning to look combative towards the primary grades as the younger grades don't have the pressure of ISTEP. However, K-2nd grade teachers have the pressure of preparing these students early so they CAN pass ISTEP. It seems like this could be a vicious cycle and it's only in the beginning stages. I think it would be more of a relief for teachers if they had that reassurance and support from districts, government, and other reformers - instead of feeling the pressures and responsibilities within the school walls.

When I read this article it reminds me of Mr. Kimberly from the Kennedy book. Here is a man who I think the public is percieving to be a "bad teacher" because he takes no accountability and still wants to be compensated for his work. I think when public perception is that most people are like him, then it is understandable why there would be anti union movement. If people feel like the union is the only reason why the Mr. Kimberlys are around then I see why they want to disband them. From the other side though, there are a lot of hard working teachers who hold themselves accountable and there is nothing wrong with trying to get as much compensation as they can. Like any profession there is a business aspect to everything. Another issue that builds animosity is that there is a large number of non-teachers who think they know what teaching is like and think it should be easy, but have never dealt with the daily issues that arise from a teacher standpoint. We all think that since we were once students we know what teaching is like, but being a student and being a teacher are two different worlds.

This is an article about how some Chicago schools are using a math software to give students a more individualized curriculum that they can work through at their own pace. We piloted a similar type program at our school for our lower level math classess and it seems to work well for them.

This sounds like a very promising and exciting program. It combines two very relevant topics to our current day and age and those are math and technology. It's also a very creative way to tailor education to each student, and hopefully, students would find it as entertaining or fun as playing a game on the computer.

Our school also uses ALEKS. I like it a lot as a supplement to the classroom. It helps differentiate instruction and allows students to work on the skills that they need. I become nervous, however, when classrooms use this exclusively and completely take the teacher out of the equation. Students can learn very easily how to manipulate programs in order to rush through them with very little knowledge gained.

This article discusses how many urban schools struggle with the plague of inexperienced and/or ineffective teachers because teachers with experience, as well as those who have proven to be effective, are often drawn away from urban schools and into suburban/private schools. Additionally, this article states the if the goal is to give each student an equal opportunity to succeed in the classroom and in life, then teachers need to be evaluated based on their students' scores and not on years of experience so that each school can have effective teachers. 

It seems like most schools always want the teachers that have experience, but how are new teachers to gain experience if they are not given any opportunities? Schools need to work with new teachers that are unexperienced and help them gain the knowledge and insights they need to become a successful teacher in an urban school.

I can't help but wonder why teachers are drawn away from urban schools to suburban/private schools. Why did they teach in urban schools in the first place? While there is surely a wide range of reasons, I am reminded of an article I recently read about the "missionary" mentality, where a sub-group of teachers (as the result of their lived experiences) naively think that Black and Brown students need to be saved from themselves and their communities. As you can see, this mindset is the product of deficit orientations to what students know and are able to do. I continue to want to know what solidarity looks like between students and teachers, and how to develop that. It should be noted, too, that this is not just a White teacher thing. Though less attention has been given to it, I have seen Black and Latina/o teachers "other" their students of color. I'll save my explanation for why I think this happens, but the point is that we grow up and are socialized to strive for and attain a certain standard, based on a certain value system. When this doesn't align with others' values, we tend to make judgements about what is "right" and "best". Obviously, this is bigger than teacher preparation programs, but teacher ed. programs can offer different kinds of experiences that afford candidates opportuntites to see students, families and communities in a different light. Same with practicing teachers - I'm reminded of the Funds of Knowledge work our of Tucson, AZ (Norma Gonzalez, Luis Moll et al.) Definitely raised some good points, Randy and Jordan.

Grand Prize Winner Says Charter Schools Should be Like Cancer Contact: Boulder, CO (May 31, 2012) -- The National Education Policy Center (NEPC), housed at the University of Colorado Boulder, has announced via online video the winners of the 2011 Bunkum Awards -presented for the most compellingly lousy educational research for the past year.

NEPC might be an organization you are interested in checking out. They provide a unique service to the education community: they arrange careful and timely reviews, by the nation's leading scholars, of foundations' and policy groups' (among other groups) research reports.As can be detected from this headline, they are strategically intervening in the faulty pipeline that puts shoddy "research" results in the hands of policy makers, who often times don't have the background to view these exceedingly complex issues with a nuanced perspective like that we are developing.