An introduction to "Exploring Urban Schools" (Gordon Course EDU655/HIS655)

3. Welcome to Exploring
Urban Schools
EDU 655/HIS 655

4. • I’m Larry Kamp and I’ll be working with you throughout the next
few weeks.
• I live in Lynn with my wife Lianne and our adult son Jesse who has
multiple special needs and attends an adult day program.
• I have been a member of the education faculty at Gordon College
since 2014.
• From 1982 – 2013, I taught at North Shore Christian School, a
PreK through Grade 8 school in Lynn.
• I have a deep interest in the life of the city and a special concern
for the way education happens there. The complex social,
economic, and political issues we will encounter and discuss in this
course have become definitionally important to me in the 35 years
that I’ve been involved in urban education.

5. • All of the instructional materials, resources, announcements, notifications, and
assignments will be delivered through Blackboard.
• I will assume that you are already fairly familiar with Blackboard and know how to
navigate your way through it. If that is not the case, please let me know so that I’ll
know how to walk you through any particulars.
• Most Gordon Blackboard users are familiar with at least the basics of submitting
assignments and checking grades. In the course we’ll be using other tools and
resources within Blackboard.
• I’ll introduce the areas within Blackboard that we’ll use. There are several
helpful tutorials that will help you navigate your way through these.
• Course announcements are accompanied by an email that will be set to
your Gordon email account.
A few things to get started…

6. A few things to get started…
• Your first stop should probably be a visit to the course syllabus. Please read
through it and then feel very free to ask me any questions that come to you
regarding class particulars.
• All course announcements and communications will come through your
Gordon e-mail account.
• I realize that this may not be your default account, but please try to
check it regularly.

7. Course “Lectures”
• All of the “lectures” here will take place in the form of a PowerPoint
presentation (like this one) for each unit.
• Hopefully you are watching this in the “Presentation” mode and not
in the “home screen.” Many of the slides in each presentation are
animated, which you will not be able to view properly if you are not in
the correct mode.
• You will be asked to respond to each Unit presentation, either in a
Blackboard Discussion or a VoiceThread.
• This is my first time using VoiceThread, so we’ll see how it goes.

8. Blackboard Help
• When you open the home page for this course, the Main Menu is
located to the left of the page.
• The Blackboard Help link will take you to helpful pages for each
aspect of Blackboard that you need to be familiar with in this course.

9. The menu is very user-friendly, and I will direct you to pertinent links
here as well. If you are new to Blackboard or have not used it much, I’d
suggest starting with Find Your Way Around.

10. Pacing and Schedule
• The pace at which you move through this class is entirely up to you.
• The assignments, reflections, and journals will all have “due dates” but no work will
ever be marked late, even though it will register on Blackboard as being late. I only use
the due dates to keep the Blackboard gradebook organized.
• The exception to this will be the class discussions (more about this below) which I will
ask you to keep apace with regardless of whether or not you are caught up with the
readings. In most cases that will not matter.
• I will regularly check on your participation on the website just to see how you are
progressing through the material. If I see that you have not visited the content or
learning modules for more than 10 consecutive days, I will probably send you an email to
check in and see how you are doing.
• If you know you are going to be absent from the site for a longer period, please let me know in
advance.
• All written work, including the final project/paper, is due by midnight on April 30th.

11. Learning Modules
• The course material – unit content, group discussions, individual
reflections – will be delivered through Learning Modules.
• Learning Modules are accessed through the Course Content area on
the main course menu.

12. • The Course Content contains a number of items that you will need to
get to during the course.
• A Learning Module looks like this:
• Once you click on the icon you’ll
get to the contents of the module.
• The Table of Contents shows you the individual components for the
module which you need to navigate through sequentially. The first
item in the list opens by default.

13. “Lectures”
• The material for each unit of study is delivered through a PowerPoint
lecture/presentation.
• My assumption here is that all class members will have access to
PowerPoint on their computers. If that is not the case, please let me
know as soon as possible.
• PowerPoint presentations often contain short video clips, usually
from YouTube as well as links to pertinent internet materials. I usually
provide the URL for YouTube videos in case they don’t open up within
PowerPoint.

14. Resources
• The Course Content will contain a folder of Resources pertinent to
each unit of study. I add to these periodically and also encourage
class members to suggest additions (and deletions if something in
there is unhelpful or has disappeared from the Web.)
• My expectation is that you will at least look through the Resources
Folder for each unit. I monitor student participation on Blackboard
and include your activity in the resources as a part of your overall
participation grade.

15. This is the text we will use for the course. [Copies of
the text are available at the Gordon College
Bookstore as well as other places I am sure you know
all about.] I am aware that this book may appear to
be somewhat dated – 2003 seems like a long time
ago. To be sure, some of the references, especially to
federal policies and initiatives, will not seem relevant.
But as far as addressing, understanding, and
articulating the central issues and challenges facing
inner city schools, I have never found an educator or
author as significantly relevant and insightful as Pedro
Noguera. Noguera’s considerable experience as a
classroom teacher and administrator in highly diverse
urban schools in Providence, RI and Oakland, CA lend
a high level of credibility and true discernment to his
words here. I think you will find as you go through the
book that Dr. Noguera’s observations, comments,
and cautions are as remarkably appropriate and
germane as they were fourteen years ago.

16. "I…spend a great deal of time
working with policy makers on
the issues confronting urban
schools. More often than not,
I am struck by how little
they understand about the
lives of the children served
by failing schools and the
complicated nature of the
problems they seek to
address.“ Preface, page xi, boldface mine
Has that changed very much
since 2003?
One of the early statements I
encountered as I began exploring this
book immediately caught my attention
and led me to believe this would turn out
to be a “must have” text.

17. Assignments
• All assignments will be posted on Blackboard. They will be found in the
Course Content in the folder labeled “Assignments.”
• Assignments will be posted according the class schedule contained in the
syllabus. Please remember that all “due dates” are arbitrary and non-
binding. However, regular and somewhat timely submission of assignments
will allow for a great degree of feedback and interaction from me.
• The following slide lists the suggested reading schedule for the course.
• I will send out a class announcement as I post an assignment. That
announcement will also include a link to the assignment.
• Please consult the Blackboard Help article and video on the correct way for
submitting assignments.
• Using this process allows me to comment on and interact with your submission.

18. Assignment Reading Schedule

19. Final Project or Paper
• There will not be a comprehensive final exam for this course. Instead I
will offer you two options as a final assessment piece:
• Make a PowerPoint presentation on the course material in general or
on any individual context/unit of study within this course that
particularly interests you. Think of this presentation as aimed at a
teacher in-service type audience, or perhaps a presentation to a class
of teacher prep candidates, none of whom may have any personal
experience or training in the uniqueness of inner city schools.
• Some of you may prefer writing a final paper. The purpose of this
paper is to demonstrate your understanding of two of the major
contexts we covered. The paper should demonstrate not only
evidence of understanding but also clarity of thought supported by
citations from and references to reliable scholarly and professional
sources.

20. Discussions
• Class discussions have always been a central focus of my teaching.
Conducting this study as an on-line course makes this a little more
challenging, but the Discussion Board tool on Blackboard will allow us
to have some degree of interaction and discussion amongst ourselves.
• There will normally be one or two discussion questions that you’ll be
required to participate in for each unit.
• Each student is also required to respond to at least one other class
member’s posting for one of the unit’s Discussion Boards.
• I will send a class announcement via e-mail when a discussion topic
is posted and ready for your participation.

21. • Please check out the article on Discussions in Blackboard Help
(located in “Interact With Others.”) The format for these discussions is
not always as seamless and user-friendly as the chat formats in social
media, WordPress blogs, etc. But once you get used to the format and
learn how to find and follow the various threads in the discussion
created by your classmates, we should be able to enjoy and benefit
from some active collaborative learning & reflection.

22. Journals
• I may occasionally ask you to respond to a video, resource, or writing
prompt in a Journal Reflection.
• Generally these will be private and not shared with the class as a
whole.
• Information about the journal is found in the same section of
Blackboard Help.

23. Finally….
If a link or video doesn’t work, or
if you have trouble using any of
the Blackboard tools, please let
me know right away. Avoid stress
and frustration wherever possible
in life.

24. MY GOALS FOR OUR WORK TOGETHER IN THIS COURSE
• Create and raise awareness (Mindfulness)
• Introduce us to the contexts within which inner city children live and learn.
• Deepen understanding
• Provide information and data that enables us to absorb and comprehend the various factors
that affect, often exceptionally negatively, how inner city children learn and grow.
• Elicit and encourage empathy
• Expose ourselves to some of the harsher realities of the urban challenges and obstacles that
many of our inner city children face & help us to see life and learning as they see it.
• Evoke response & action
• Figure out or imagine our role and place in all of this.
• What can we do?

25. You are taking this course at what I hold to be a exceptionally pivotal time in our
national political and social history. The cultural climate seems unsettled and
troubling at times. There is a lot of sensationalist and inflammatory rhetoric
flowing too freely. As I am writing this, national emotions are running high. The
fact that we are facing some significant political changes complicates things
further.
A great deal of what is discussed in this study will be difficult and perhaps
controversial. It is likely that there will be a variety of opinions and divided thought
about these areas. Most of this material is being considered and discussed in the
larger public forum, and often that discussion is characterized by rancor,
intolerance, insult, ridicule, and total incivility. All too often, there has been a
dearth of civility, reasonableness, and hospitality from all sides of the argument.
I am committed to this course being at all times a setting in which all members of
the class always feel safe, respected, and treated with dignity, no matter what
particular position is stated or presented. An educational setting of advanced
learning, thought and understanding such as this course must be a forum for
difficult ideas to be presented and struggled with without fear of exclusion. All
members and participants in this course must experience the security and
encouragement to share their thoughts and opinions freely.
To me, it seems like an
incredibly important thing right
now to be thinking about what it
means to educate and nurture
children in our inner cities.

26. End of Introduction.