Schooling Autobiography

Background/Rationale
All of us come to this course with experiences in schools (elementary, middle, high school and colleges in the United States or abroad, as well as homeschooling experiences, just to name a few). These experiences influence the way we think about schooling. For example, they shape our knowledge about how the school day goes and what content is covered, our ideas about how teachers and students should interact with one another, and whether schooling is a positive or negative experience. As we begin this course, it is important to make ourselves aware of our own ideas about schooling based on these experiences, as well as to learn about the experiences of other people who might have similar and/or different experiences. This assignment is designed to provide an opportunity for you to 1) understand your own schooling experience in a way you might not have before 2) reflect on this experience and 3) learn about the experiences of others. We will also use this assignment to explore how the experiences we have had in school are shaped by our social location – our location in the social structure that is shaped by race, ethnicity, immigrant status, first language, geographic residence (urban, suburban, rural, and region of the country), religion, SES, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
Below I outline the steps you will need to take in completing this assignment. While the final product is a three-page paper that can be thought of as your schooling autobiography, there are two other steps that precede this final product that are critical to crafting this paper: research and reflection
Research
In order to understand your own schooling experience more fully, it will be helpful to you to gather information on your neighborhood and school as well as that of other neighborhoods and schools.
Go to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American FactFinder at https://data.census.gov/cedsci/
(Links to an external site.)
or any other reputable site with Demographic data. This site has a great deal of data on it. Feel free to look around and learn more about what you can learn from the census. For this assignment please look up the racial and SES make-up of the neighborhood where you lived when you attended high school and one or two others of interest, perhaps a neighborhood nearby where you grew up or one that you think is different from where you grew up. To get to the right data set, look on the left sidebar and click on “data sets” and “decennial census.” Now, look over to the right side of the screen towards the bottom and click on the “quick tables” link. This page will allow you to search by zip code and will provide simple demographic data. Take notes on some of the statistics that you find compelling.
Go to publicschoolreview.com or greatschools.org. Look up data on your own school and one or two others. Again, these other schools can be similar to yours or different, you choose. When you look up these schools you will want to pay attention to:
Number of teachers and students, then compute the ratio
Number of students in each grade
The racial and ethnic makeup of the school (both students and teachers)
Students eligible for free and reduced lunch (this number serves as a proxy for SES)
District revenue and spending per student
Reflect
There are several ways I want you to reflect. When I ask you to reflect. I want you to think – turning these issues over in your mind. This reflection takes time so you want to complete this part of the assignment well before you sit down to write.
Class Discussions thus far
Think about the discussions we have had in class and the readings you have completed. Has this changed your perspective on your own schooling?
Your Research
Think about the research you have done on the census data and your school. What did you learn? What did you learn about your neighborhood or school? What did you learn about your neighborhood or school in relation to others?
School Experience
Think about your schooling experience. Reflect back on your schooling experience and consider it in light of what you have learned. What do you notice now about where you grew up and attended high school? Are there particular experiences or patterns of behavior that seem striking to you now? Were there aspects of your schooling experience that were particularly noteworthy?
NOW Write
Please write a 2-3 page reflection on your own experiences in school. It must be typed double-spaced with 1-inch margins and address the following components (about one page per section):
Describe Your School
Give us the demographic data and any other data points you found in research in the paper and why it might be seen as important throughout the paper. Paint a vivid (yet brief) description so that the reader can see the school through your eyes. At the minimum, describe at least three features of the school (e.g., the buildings and their environment, the ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds of the students, the kinds of classes you were able to take) and anything that may relate to the focus of this course (school violence, segregation, and dropout). Put effort into thinking about things that have been not apparent to you until now. Some other points to consider:
What are some of your most significant memories of school?
What type of schools did you attend? (Public, private, Catholic, other?)
What can you remember about your learning environment, teachers, classmates and curricula?
What was the tone inside the building? Did you feel safe? Welcomed?
What was the neighborhood surrounding your school like? The community? Were there prominent businesses in or positive/negative attributes of the community? Did the community affect the school? If so, how?
What other emotions do you attribute to your school experiences? Was school a positive or negative experience? Why?
Write About Your Schooling Experience
Some things you might think about include:
Were there tracks in your school? How were people in each of the tracks perceived or stereotyped?
Which types of classes did you take and in which tracks were those classes?
How did your social status compare and contrast with the other students in your classes? How did they compare with students who were not in your classes?
How did people self-segregate at your school?
Describe the social locations of the following: Who rode the bus and who drove? Who hung out together during the day? Who hung out together after hours? Who were the leaders in your student body?
What was the race and ethnicity of individuals who served in the roles of administration, faculty, school counselor, and staff (security guards, janitors, food service workers, office secretaries), and the PTA.

Describe Insights/Learnings
This is the reflection piece—considering what we have read (especially Unequal Fortunes) and discussed in class, describe what you think is significant about your school—what was most significant about your experience? Communicate to the reader how your view of your schooling has been changed by this assignment. This is not meant to be a laundry list of every insight you have had or a small point you have learned. Rather select two to three significant insights to focus on and describe how the readings or the research has influenced your thinking about your own schooling.
Finally, address this question: Are you here today in spite of your education or because of your education? Why?
A successful paper will use concrete examples from your own schooling experience and the readings, class discussion or research to illustrate and support your points.
Use Royersford Pennsylvania for the location and Spring-Ford Senior High school was the name of my high school.

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