My school’s background

I started this practicum as a provisional teacher in a Korean Dual Language
Immersion school, Yi Hwang Academy of Language Excellence in Duluth, GA. This charter school is opened last year. Students take English, Math, and Science class a half-day in English, and they take Art, Music, P.E, and Science classes on the other half-day in the target language (Korean or Mandarin).
This school was previously placed at Suwanee, but the school just moved to the
building in Duluth a month ago. Even though the building has been moved, two cities are still in Gwinnett county, so the neighbors would not be very different.

Gathering the data: Racial demographics, discipline demographics, gifted & talented demographics, & special education demography

Since my school opened up last year with the pandemic situation, there is no official data to represent the school. I could not find any reliable sources from the links provided, and nowhere else.  Therefore, I will gather 3 neighboring schools that have similar characteristics to my school. 

1. Parsons Elementary school- Gwinnett county public elementary school which offers the Korean DLI program
2. New Life Academy- Charter school that offers Chinese language courses situated in Suwanee
3. Chattahoochee Elementary school – Gwinnet county public elementary school that is neighboring my school.

Guiding Questions

1. What disparities along lines of race, economic class, and ability were uncovered through this ecological analysis of your student teaching classroom/school/district/community?
   1. How do these social conditions impact the development, worldview, and relationships of your students?
2. What community assets exist around your placement school? How can that impact your classroom instruction and/or student support structures?
3. How can the awareness generated in your investigation impact your mindset and professional decision-making process to work towards equity and justice?
4. How can the awareness generated in your investigation impact your instructional practices to work towards equity and justice?

Analysis

First, it is very disappointing that I cannot look at my school’s data for this project. It would have been a clear view what kind of school it is and I will have a clear mind set of environment and background. I can share my school’s logo here.

When any adults take a glace to this logo, they will easily think this is related to academia and hardworking learners. As it shows, my school offers both dual language immersion program as well as gifted program and Integrated curriculum model. This school essentially wants either high performing students or students who can perform exceed their level. Every student has their own strength and that may shine in one of the advanced curriculums above. As far as I know, this school has been opened since last September and it received more than 200 enrollments this year. I think this is a fairly good result when you think about the pandemic situation last year. This school may appeal some of the parents who want their kids to be successful academically, so they may enroll this school. 

After this, I will be comparing three schools that were neighboring to this school due to its lack of public data, but I try to put information as much as possible.

All three schools, Parsons Elementary school, New Life Academy, and Chattahoochee Elementary school offer gifted and talented programs. I thought this may indicate they are well-off or academical schools, but I found out that most of sub-urban and urban schools offer gifted programs. I added New Life Academy because it is a school with a Chinese language learning. The data shows that it has 66% of black or African American and merely any Asian in this school. On the other hand, Parsons has 46% of Asian were enrolled and Chattahoochee enrolled 17% of Asians were enrolled. Gwinnet county has 10% of total Asian elementary student population, so this number is ginormous. Also, I assume that my school will have more than 50 percent of Asian population in total. Therefore, this particular Duluth area is Asian-centered community based.

Parsons’s financial score is very high and educationally succeeding in this district. Chattahoochee was poor compare to other school around this area. I could not find New Life Academy’s financial score, but since this is a charter school, it may be benefited from PPP. 

About the students with disabilities, both Chattahoochee and Parsons marked about 15% of students. On the other hand, New Life Academy shows only five percent of students with disabilities. Moreover, I am working in my school as a specially education service teacher as well, and I only take care of 5 students out of more than two hundred. Therefore, this shows that my school has less than 2.5 percent of students with disabilities. Even though the number is low, but this may lead to a conclusion that charter school is somehow not a choice for parents of students with disabilities.

Even though a great number of students are Asian in this area, Black/Hispanic suspension rate was highest among all three schools. 

What kind of conclusion can I draw from these data? A high percentage of White and Asian population, but still there is a high percentage of suspension rate from Black/Hispanic students. Because my school offers both gifted programs and Integrated Curriculum Model, most of our teacher’s concerns were struggling learners. And I think more than 50 percent of students are Asian in my school, also this schools are situated in the “Asian Community” I think that parents are very interested in students’ academic outcome. Based on what I saw in this charter school, this is not a tendency. Asian parents are very interested in this. Some parents are not very attentive in this, so this may lead to slightly less successful in school. This slight difference can make the significant difference at young age. The teachers concerned about negative feedback at young age. Even though a kid marks intermediate level in math, because his or her peer is very excellent in math, the kid may feel like a failure in the classroom. I think this can be one of factors in deviation of school.  

I always thought about this, because I felt the same issue when I was little. Positive reinforcement is the key for this. I feel that anyone in the society has their strength. The strength, however, is specialized to various field. I just mentioned Math, but math is not the ultimate factor that determines he or she can be successful in the future, and also math is nothing to do with self-esteem for most of students. “You are not doing it well, correct this.” I do not think this is good feedback for a kid, even though he is not doing what he supposed to do. I will just give more time to finish that at home, or I will listen to why he is not doing the work, so that he can feel respected, not like a failure.