Contextual Factors That Affect the Teaching-Learning Process

Contextual Factors That Affect the Teaching-Learning Process

By Nienke Adamse

2/15/2012

Introduction

In this essay I will describe some of the contextual factors that affect my teaching unit in physics.

I teach mixed (several grade levels in one class) high school classes at Upper Kennebec Valley High School. This small high school has 84 students in grades 9-12. The school is located in Bingham, Maine. The school has students from the towns of Bingham, Moscow, Pleasant Ridge Plantation and Concord Township. These are rural towns all within a distance of 8 miles of the high school. The total population of the district is about 1700 people.

The environmental factors I will discuss are the socioeconomics and educational support of the community, the relationships between the towns that make up the district and the relationship between the three schools of the district. I will also describe the school’s population and administration. The classroom contextual factors described in this essay are the physical features of the classroom, the availability of technological equipment and resources, the extend of parental involvement and the organization of classroom furniture and equipment. Furthermore, I will describe the composition of the classes: the students’ ages, gender, race and ethnicity, special needs, achievement and developmental levels, culture, language, interests, learning styles and skill levels. Finally, I will discuss the influence of students’ skills and prior knowledge on my learning goals, instruction and assessments.

Environmental Factors

A-  The community

The towns of Bingham and Moscow are the towns that make up the Maine School Administrative District (MSAD) #13 or RSU 83 school district. The Pleasant Ridge Plantation and Concord Township students are paying tuition to this district. The district has a student population of 254 students divided over three schools: an Elementary (K-4) school in Moscow, a Middle School (5-8) and a High School (9-12) in Bingham.

I have collected the data of the socioeconomics of this district from the 2010 Census information.

Household income:

According to these statistics, the median income is $35,911 per local household per year. Compared with the median yearly household incomes of the state of Maine and the United States, $49,193 and $55,970 respectively, that $35,911 figure is quite low. 20% percent of these households make less than $15,000 per year and 65% of the households makes less than $50,000 per year. In Maine, 50% of the households earn less than $50,000 and in the United States 43% makes less than $50,000 per year. From these data we can make the observations that the median income of this population is about $13,000 less that the median income of the households in Maine and about $20,000 less that the yearly median income of the households in the United States. One can conclude that the yearly income per local household is far below average. However, a definite conclusion on what exactly the poverty rate in this district is cannot be made from the Census information. Another source that could shed more light on this is the amount of students who benefit from the free and reduced lunch services of this district. In these numbers the family size is already incorporated through the eligibility. At the high school with an enrollment of 84 students, 74% is eligible for Free and Reduced Lunch (FRL); at the middle school with an enrollment of 73 students, the eligibility for FRL is 61.5% and for the elementary school with 97 students, this is 79%.

According to the government’s definition of poverty, the poverty line lies at an income of $22,350 for a family of four people. According to the OMB (the Office of Management and Budget), who sets the threshold for official poverty, a household that has an income that is less than sufficient to purchase basic needs such as food, shelter and clothing is designated as poor. Relative poverty is how the household income relates to the median income. In this district, 47% of the population earns less than the local median income and 65% earns less than the state of Maine’s median income. From these data, you may conclude that at least 47% of the local population can be considered as living in relative poverty. According to Jensen, (2009) poverty is: “a chronic and debilitating condition that results from multiple adverse, synergistic risk factors and affects the mind, body and soul.”

So what are the possible effects of poverty on my students? According to Jensen, there are four primary risk factors that afflict families in poverty. These factors are: emotional and social challenges, acute and chronic stressors, cognitive lags and health and safety issues. These factors are multifaceted and interwoven; their effect is synergistic and can cause an endless cascade of deteriorating consequences. Children living in chronic poverty already have deficiencies in many areas by the age of 3; there is no doubt that young children that live in an environment of socioeconomic deprivation have to live with risk factors that can hugely impact their academic success.

Highest education level:

Of the people 25 years and older, 17% did not complete high school; 48% completed only high school; 16% had some college education, 6.6% has an Associates degree; 8% earned a Bachelors degree and 3.4% has a Master’s or higher.

Population by age:

The median age of this community is 41.7 years old; in the US, that is 35.6 years old. 28% of the population is between 0 and 18 years old; 16% is between 18 and 35; 28% between 35 and 55 and 28% is older than 54.

Population by race:

98% of the local population is Caucasian; 1.4% is African American or mixed; 0.5% is Native American and 0.1% is Asian.

Household makeup:

76.1% of the local households consist of married families and 23.9% are described as “other households”. Of the married families, 34% have children under 18 years old and 66% does not have any children under that age. Of the “other households,” 60% have children under the age of 18 and 40% does not.

Employment:

53% of the labor force is employed, 6% is unemployed and 41% is not in the labor force due to retirement or disability.

From the data of the highest educational level, one can determine that very few people in this district have more than a high school education, which limits their options with regard to employment. And 17% of the local population 25 years and older never finished high school. The reasons for these data are too complex to explain in this essay, but being a community member for ten years and a teacher for the last 5 years, I can combine these data with my own experiences and conclude that there is very little educational support from the community. What do I mean with educational support? I would determine the community’s educational support with two factors: First, an educationally supportive home for the students and second, a supportive community in school district matters.

There are many criteria that would make our students’ homes educationally supportive:

·  A stable and organized household of two parents (there is a direct correlation between living in a single parent home and academic under achievements)

·  School attendance

·  Participation of students in extracurricular activities and the parents’ support therein

·  Availability of information resources (books, Internet)

·  Participation in activities organized for parents such as parent-teacher conferences, open house, and performances

·  Provision of time and space for homework activities

·  Communication with school

·  Support for students’ college aspirations

The absence of these criteria in the home is closely related to living in a low-income household and when this lack is coupled with the negative school experiences that parents had in their youth, educational support in the home will most likely not be forthcoming.

A supportive community in school district matters would show an interest in these matters by attending school board meetings, by demonstrating a strong demand for quality education, even though it might be costly and by showing support (financially, with goods or manpower) by personal involvement in the schools’ activities.

B-  The District

Upper Kennebec Valley High School, where I teach, is part of the RSU 83 or MSAD 13 school district. The towns that make up this district, thus financing it, are Moscow and Bingham. The district was larger when the townships of the Forks and Caratunk were part of the district. When the district decided to close the elementary school in these towns, those towns pulled out. The townships of Concord and Pleasant Ridge Plantation tuition their students out to our district. Pleasant Ridge still has its own superintendent, however. Because I am a community member of Bingham and a teacher whose program has been on the chopping block almost every year, I have attended most of the board meetings; therefore, I have a clear sense and understanding of the decision making process at these meetings. When an important issue has been announced in the community, only a few community members who are interested in the matter show up at the meeting. Depending on the issue, the community members of Moscow usually disagree with those from Bingham. Many attendees are older people who do not have any children at school. They are mostly concerned about the “threat” of increasing taxes that they may have to pay to the district and they are concerned about the low teacher-student ratio and the high cost of keeping the schools open with so few students. However, the Moscow Elementary School is situated in Moscow and the two other schools (the high school and the middle school) are in Bingham. Discussions about which school to close has lead to many emotional discussions and the Moscow community members have considered leaving the district more than once. An interesting detail about both towns, however, is that the town of Moscow residents pay a lot less taxes than the residents of Bingham because the Florida Light Company operates a hydro-electric dam in Moscow and; therefore, relieves the tax burden of the Moscow members. They (FLC) also pay for the free lunches of all Moscow students and each student receives a scholarship upon graduation. So far, the Moscow residents have been hesitating with regard to leaving the district because of the high cost of their special education students (20% of the Moscow students are in the special education program). It seems to me that whenever the board needed to make a decision, their opinion and decisions were highly influenced by which advocates were present in the public. As a relative out stander I have seen this district being reduced to a two-town district and I have seen the lack of solidarity towards each other as a community in order to fight for a decent education for the community’s children. Older residents are primarily concerned about their income and not about the quality of education; while younger residents are living for the most part in relative poverty and they are passive and unmotivated when it comes to fighting for their children’s education. And those parents who do believe that we need to invest more in our children’s education are disillusioned by the total lack of solidarity and the lack of support the community has for the importance of keeping a healthy educational district, despite the costly price it might take to do that. In short, the community that needs to support this district is very much divided; this makes decision making a very slow and illogical process, which really does not benefit the quality of education. This process influences the teaching-learning process of my students. As a teacher, it is difficult for me to have high expectations for my students. For having high expectations does not always result in high student numbers in my class because my classes are electives and many decisions of the board are based on these student numbers. Board members are usually misinformed and not very knowledgeable of the teaching process and they base their decisions only on the limited and biased information that has been given to them. They do not speak directly to the teachers involved and they do not visit classes to become more informed. This reality prevents me from demanding high expectations because the future of my program and my position as a teacher of the district is closely related to student numbers and not to students’ academic success. As the district does not support my having high expectations for my students, this evidently reflects negatively on their learning. It is impossible to teach students successfully when they know they can get away with doing the least amount of work possible and still pass.

The ranking of this school district that I found at the Department of Education’s reading, writing and math ranking of 2010/2011, is also showing that trend. The school district as a whole is ranked 93rd of 99 school districts in Maine. The high school is ranked 107th out of 114, the middle school is 82nd out of 125 (and that is the school they are planning to close!) and the Moscow elementary is ranked 173 out of 178 elementary schools in the state of Maine.

As a high school and middle school teacher, I have been in many whole district staff meetings. Because the district is so small, most staff members know each other well. In an attempt to make the transitions for students more seamless between classes and schools, there have been initiatives to inform each other about the students and their achievements before the new school year starts. It is relatively easy to contact teachers from the other schools and there are several committees with members from all three schools combined. There is also one principal for all three schools. There are curriculum committees who can oversee the gaps in the K-12 curriculum. The open communication between staff members of each school and the curriculum committees is very beneficial for the development of a continuous curriculum and it contributes to the well being of the district’s students, which can positively affect their learning.