SES and planning

2. (30 points) Post your review of the socioeconomic status of your school and community. 

• Consider factors such as the educational level of the families, the general nature of the parents’ employment, the type of housing, significant ethnic groups in the population, influence of religious groups, and similar considerations.
• Describe how these SES factors in your school and community have or will affect the selection of music you use in your teaching, as well as how you plan to teach and perform it.
• See Due Dates for your deadline.
• View the Rubric uses to score your post.
• Submit your Reflection Post in the Assignments tool.

My school is described as having between 40-60% students on free and reduced lunch.  Years ago, we were a title 1 school.  But the limits for being title 1 have become more strict and therefore we are no longer considered a title 1 school.  However, we do have almost 50% of our current population on free and reduced lunch.  This makes a huge difference in what we can do as a school.  

We live in an area is is sandwiched between an Air Force Base, NASA, and Harris Engineering.  I grew up in this area and we had a lot of students whose parents were employees of one of those three places.  We were a growing a community and we really focused on the sciences as well as the arts.  However, with the shut down of the shuttle program and the lack of federal funding for NASA, many of the NASA workers were laid off and eventually had to move away from the area completely.  They have since closed 4 schools in the district (most of them in the Titusville/Cape Canaveral Area where NASA resides) and are now threatening to close up to 4 more schools in the area in the next couple of years.

The change for NASA brought about a change for the entire school system in the county.  In addition to seeing school closing, there is a proposal for other budget cuts as well that include eliminating elementary art, elementary music, and elementary media altogether.  It is a scary time in my county.  We were once a proud and growing county and we are now a sad and scrambling county instead.  Their only hope is to pass a half cent sales tax in November.  However, it was previously voted on a couple years ago and it did not pass. 

With these changes, our schools have transformed.  I am in a school that is just kind of stuck in the middle.  We were once title 1 and we still have the same population but are no longer considered title 1.  However, despite being in the middle of these three big companies where most of the students in those areas go to different schools, we do get a lot of students who DO have parents who work for those places.  The parents simply commute longer to work than some of their co-workers.  You can see that the effects of NASA had a major effect on my school despite being 20 minutes south of NASA.  

We are placed next to a park that has camping grounds.  The limit of camping is simply, you can only camp there 11 out of the 12 months of the year.  So we have a population of students who are homeless and live in that park.  They camp in that park and during their summer vacation will travel to a different park and live there for the summer to abide by the law.  These students are easily identifiable by the clothing they wear and what they do not have in comparison to their peers such as back packs and lunches.  

In order to help the students who really need supplies and food, my school does a variety of things.  During lunch, if a student gets a Peanut Butter and Jelly or a milk and they don't open it, they can put it on a table in the middle of the cafeteria.  Other students can then come up and take the un-opened food and eat it . That way the food does not go to waste and the students who are truly lacking and hungry can either eat the food in the cafeteria or take it home for later.

We also partner with an organization called E-Angels located at E-Angels.org.  If a teacher has a student who simply can't afford a field trip or they can't afford supplies for a project or a shirt for a club or even new shows, they can go to E-Angels and ask for a donation.  E-Angels then emails out to all of their "angels" on a mailing list and these people are very good about donating items for the students.  

A third way we help our students is during Christmas, we identify the families who can't afford presents for their children and we get donations from the community to send home with the families so the students receive a gift for Christmas.

In addition to the 40-60% on free and reduced lunch, the rest of our school is comprised of middle class families.  These parents work in places around the community and make enough to feel comfortable and give their students what they need for school.  These parents usually help out in the school as volunteers.  In addition, these parents are very good about making the students who can't afford things to feel like they are included.  We have multiple parents at the bookfair who donated 10 to 20 dollars so that students who can't afford to buy things from the bookfair can take home a book to call their own.

I am new to the school this year and just survived my first year here (and only my second year teaching).  During the winter concert, I chose a nice mix of music from a few up-beat, fun pieces to more serious pieces of work.  I could not hear the END of how much my students disliked the more serious pieces because they wanted to do things "from this decade."  So I decided to try to meet them on their level for the next concert.  This brings us back to the entertainment vs. education problem.  Do I compromise my educational content to please the students and the parents?  No, I simply worked with them to provide them with music that was both educational and entertaining.  I decided to chose the Batman Theme for my intermediate strings students so that they could really work on their high 2 vs. low 2 finger patterns.  I chose Do-Re-Mi from the Sound of Music for my choir in order to help them learn solfege (because they didn't know it before I got here) and to get them to sing in 2 part harmony.  I chose the Olympic Theme song for my Orff and Recorder groups because it was challenging with the number of parts playing at once.  My students and my parents were very pleased with the selection of music for this concert.  While I can't do a "movie" theme every time, I know now that, in order to get these students to learn, I will have to use some music with which they are familiar but still have educational benefits.