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Sunday, October 04, 2009

Textbooks Must Have Relevance to Our Students

By Mia Sosa-Provencio
APS English teacher
          Too many educators, parents, community members and politicians alike repeatedly beg the question: Why are New Mexico students dropping out at such alarming rates? More shocking is that among Latino students, our state's majority population, the numbers are even more bleak.
        Teachers ask themselves why some students would rather walk the ditch banks or hide in the bathroom than go to class. "Kids just don't care about school anymore" is a popular mantra of many frustrated teachers in the face of so many challenges. What is the solution to this educational crisis New Mexico has found itself in?
        I recently attended an APS Professional Development seminar presented in concert with a major publishing company whose task it was to teach the entire staff, K-12, how to use their textbook as a vehicle of instruction. Throughout the entire excruciating day, teachers were told repeatedly that these pricey, cumbersome textbooks are the magic pill we have long sought. Although teachers are forever engaged in an unending quest for effective classroom materials, neither schools nor teachers were given the choice whether to purchase these textbooks. APS spent obscene amounts of money furnishing one for every student, whether educators plan on using them or not. Through continuing to incorporate these resources or, God forbid, replace our current curriculum with them, we are pushing already marginalized and resistant students farther from our classrooms; among students of color, the damage is greater still.
        School has to look like real life to our students. When students feel like their time is being wasted on assignments and classroom activities that bear no relevance, they know they have better things to do with their time. In a state where students of color comprise the majority, the presence of textbooks such as these that reflect neither their cultural backgrounds nor the issues they daily face is a blatant disregard of an entire community and their contribution to our classrooms. Though a smattering of faces of color can be found throughout these textbooks, the overall themes, characters, settings and authors are once again representative of upper-middle class white America and do not accurately reflect the population of New Mexico.
        Textbooks are the epitome of "school for the sake of school," and our students respond to them as such. Are we training our students to navigate textbooks or the world they live in? Authentic opportunities to master literacy through contemporary and culturally relevant novels, newspaper articles, speeches and the like give them tangible power in the world. School is insulting to our students' experiences and collective intelligence when it takes the form of Language Arts textbooks that look and sound nothing like our kids and are merely practice not for life, but for further classroom practice.
        Textbooks, especially those not reflective of our majority population, do not make our job as educators any easier as we struggle with the dual role of teaching the material and convincing our students that what we are teaching is vital to their individual and collective future. Not only does the widespread use of textbooks in our classrooms grossly disregard the experiences of our students, it also hinders the ingenuity, resourcefulness, creativity and intelligence that brought so many of us to this profession in the first place.
        Teachers have long struggled with the frustration of widespread indifference and increasing reluctance in the classroom, but this problem runs deeper than a lack of interest in the subject matter.
        Our students will not jump through hoops they view as asinine and pointless — their historical mistrust of the educational system is too well rooted. Our students know they deserve a system that is better than this; they merely haven't the resources yet to create an alternative, so they quietly rebel against these injustices in the only way they know how.
        Our work is who we are in this world. When kids perform meaningful work — build something strong and functional, or create something beautiful and artistic — they in turn feel strengthened and more beautiful.
        When the academic business of the day feels pointless or disconnected from the life they lead, the message inherent is that they have no value. Who of us would put our backs to a plow that we know will reap no harvest? Is the act of plowing merely for the sake of it enough to keep our attention to the task? For most of us who deem our time and effort as precious and finite, I am almost certain the answer is an unequivocal no. Perhaps we should afford our students the same respect.