Community Planning, Curricular Design
This post is being cross-posted from the Disruption Department Blog as a continuing exercise of pushing the boundaries of learning in the city of St. Louis. Any comments are much appreciated!
A few conversations I had yesterday on the twitter led me to think about what role the Disruption Department could have in facilitating/mediating community conversations about what/where/why/when students are learning and who has major responsibility of “teaching” in urban schools.
I posed the question then, and I pose it again now, has there been successfulcollaboration through the curricular and social design process in any urban public schools?
And by that I don’t mean “input” or “review”.
I mean actually building the academic and social workings of the school through community collaboration.
The question itself underlies a mindset that unfortunately many schools consciously or unconsciously have: that families are liabilities.
I’ve heard too many times school faculty and staff blame parents for actively making decisions that set their children up for failure (and thereby not including their participation at times), while also blaming them for not doing enough.
Colonialist, elitist, and condescending attitudes towards families don’t solve the problem.
Maybe more perniciously, there are biases that aren’t exactly conscious. I have them. You have them. We
