First Person

Thirty-two urban education students from Swarthmore College recently watched the introductory First Person DVD on their first day of class. Over the next several weeks, excerpts from their responses will be posted as part of this blog.

First Person offers a nuanced portrayal of the lives of high school students in an urban environment. For teenagers who attend high-achieving schools and come from families with generations of college graduates, going to college is an expectation rarely challenged. For such students, struggle revolves primarily around applying to and choosing between a handful of colleges and universities. First Person documents the obstacles faced by public high school students in urban Philadelphia for whom college is not necessarily the next step in life.

Steve, Fresh, Malikka, Macho, Shalisa, and Kurtis face formidable challenges—such as financial strain, family obligations, neighborhood distractions, and deficient high school experiences—to their future as college students and graduates. Shalisa struggles to keep up with her schoolwork as she helps raise her three younger sisters. Fresh has grown up without strong family support, in a neighborhood rampant with drug dealing. He sees an alternative to college in the army or navy, a path commonly chosen by young adults who seek a structured life and financial support. Kurtis finds himself distracted from the prospect of college by his social involvement in street life. Though Malikka is academically driven and appreciates her supportive family, she acknowledges the financial burden her mother will face trying to send three daughters through college. Collectively, these stories illustrate the myriad forces that act against many urban public school students as they prepare for life after high school…

As a prospective teacher in urban public schools, I reflect upon this documentary with anger at the unfair obstacles many urban public school students face, happiness for the rich and promising things in these students’ lives, and utmost respect for the effort they exert each day to construct and pursue positive futures for themselves. What goes on in the classroom does not represent the entirety of these students’ stories. This film illustrates that in order to best support students, educators must be cognizant of and sensitive to outside influences in their lives. Implementing stringent security measures in school buildings does not adequately address the problems in urban schools. Providing emotional, intellectual, and cultural support in the classroom that embraces rather than neglects students’ backgrounds would be a far more significant way to improve urban education.

Thirty-two urban education students from Swarthmore College recently watched the introductory First Person DVD on their first day of class. Over the next several weeks, excerpts from their responses will be posted as part of this blog.

When I think of urban education, I most often envision a poor school within a deteriorating, overcrowded, dirty, struggling, and polluted environment. I imagine noisy, crowded classrooms with inexperienced teachers who cannot control their students. First Person, on the other hand, gave little attention to this aspect of urban education. Instead, the film was devoted to highlighting the lives outside the classroom of students who attend schools in urban environments. As an outsider, it is easy to remove the individuals from such an environment and become caught up with how depressed and hopeless their situations appear. The six students in First Person, on the other hand, are not looking for sympathy. Although some of the students’ schools resembled the picture of urban education I had in my mind, the students try not to let these factors distract them from their goals, for most of which included going to college.

After seeing this film, I believe that all children really want to do something meaningful with their lives, whether that means going to college or being a positive influence to younger siblings. Although self-motivation is important, children need reinforcement and someone to believe in them in order to remain focused and motivated towards achieving their goals. They need someone to support them as they work towards graduating high school and college and transitioning to living independent and productive lives. Despite the conditions of their schools, most of the students in First Person remained optimistic about the future because they had support from their friends and family along with self motivation.

This film has also made me realize that you cannot generalize students in urban environments. Although the schools of many of the students in First Person face many of the same issues, each student lives a very different life. Each student faces the daily pressures of school while dealing with a variety of issues at home and on the streets. As a result, education policy must account for and reflect the diversity of the students it affects.

Thirty-two urban education students from Swarthmore College recently watched the introductory First Person DVD on their first day of class. Over the next several weeks, excerpts from their responses will be posted as part of this blog.

Urban education provokes images of large, graffitied schools in dire condition. I grew up in white suburbia in the wealthy suburbs of Boulder, Colorado. At best, I had limited experience interacting with teenagers from the “urban� sections of Denver. These experiences were drawn from day or evening trips to the city to compete in athletic or debate tournaments. The few experiences I had were brief ones, and only offered glimpses into these communities. I would see dozens of black kids loitering out front of dilapidated schools wearing stereotypical “hip-hop� garb. I vividly remembering having to wait inside a school bus for five minutes outside of one school because an administrator charged with the duty of escorting us 50 yards into the school was running a few minutes behind schedule.

My time at Swarthmore had enlightened my view on urban education, but I still harbor these biases because they were my first experiences interacting in an urban educational environment. Obviously, the portraits of the six teenagers in the First Person trailer differ, in certain ways, from my simplistic, generalized notion of urban education. First off, when I think of urban education, I think black. I was caught off guard when the trailer transitioned from one of the African-American students to one of Caucasian decent….Of course I know that urban schools are not 100 percent black, but when I think urban, I think black.