Since returning from Morocco, I’ve been thinking more and more about my research questions. With the current upheaval in U.S. education and the movement toward school choice, the issue of equity is at the forefront of my mind. Though I don’t believe that we should continue down the current public education path just because that’s what we’ve always done, I recognize that many of my students stand to lose more than they will gain if the proposed educational policies of our current administration go into effect. While my time in Morocco was very brief and my observations personal and limited, my experience in Moroccan education has deepened my thinking about equitable education and what equity looks like in my classroom, my school, and my country.
How can schools provide equitable education opportunities?
Contexts Public education in Morocco is centralized: The Ministry of Education is responsible for school buildings, curriculum, and even assigning teachers to specific schools. Because of this, I initially inferred that the limited resources are divided up equally among all public schools. Classrooms have desks or tables and chairs, but they are very crowded. A school may have a projector or two, but those resources are shared among classes or saved for special events. Students must purchase their textbooks and workbooks in addition to paper, pencils, and pens. My host teacher brings his personal laptop to work. The curriculum is set by the Ministry of Education, leaving teachers with little flexibility in regard to what they teach. Teachers are also assigned to the schools in which they work. Regional preferences are taken into consideration, but many first year teachers end up in rural areas where veteran teachers often don’t want to teach. These are all, of course, generalizations based on my own observations, but I think they are useful not just for comparison but also to unpack the idea of equity itself. In my classroom, I have an interactive whiteboard that works with my school-issued laptop to deliver instruction. We are not a one-to-one school, so I share computer labs, technology carts, and large group spaces with other classes. My students have wireless internet access throughout our building. We follow the Common Core State Standards but I have a lot of flexibility in regard to what and how I teach. My district provides textbooks. (We are book-rich.) Students and families are primarily responsible for supplies such as pens and paper, but because we are Title I school, we often get funding and donations for these materials to pass along to needy students. Geography and Socioeconomic Status Both my school and my host school in Morocco are located in rural areas. Many of my students live below the poverty line and rely on free and reduced lunch programs, another issue in the news, to get by. We have school busses that provide transportation and a late bus option for students to stay after school to get additional instructional help. We have incentives for students to stay in school and earn their high school diplomas, and we have options and programs available to struggling students. In Morocco, students in rural areas often live in dorms because they live out of walking or biking distance from school. Like the U.S., Moroccan teachers come in early or stay late to help struggling students. And like in the U.S., for many students these “extras” do help bridge the gaps for students in rural, remote areas. But for many other students, it’s not enough. My students don’t have the same social and cultural opportunities that students in the nearby suburban high school do. They don’t have the same access to high-level advanced placement classes or international baccalaureate programs. While online learning has leveled the playing field somewhat for my students, it does not and cannot take the place of a highly qualified instructor and peer group. In Morocco, I witnessed many of the same issues. Students in the urban and suburban schools were more likely to have access to “extras” like art and music. Teachers and administrators had more access to technology due to their locations in larger cities or suburbs. They also had a wider network from whom they could get ideas and resources. This gap, due to both geography and socioeconomic status, is a difficult one to fill. Even in Morocco, where public education seems as though it should provide equal opportunities, if not equitable ones for all students, there are issues. For example, teacher experience and retention is a shared issue. In the U.S., we know that our neediest students need the most qualified teachers but they don’t often get them. Low income districts in the U.S. often pay lower salaries and have few affordable housing options. They are more likely to have a teaching staff with less experience and higher teacher turnover. In Morocco, I originally assumed that because public school teachers earn their salaries based on experience not location, that there would be less turnover in high-needs rural districts. After talking with new and experienced teachers, I learned that this is not the case. Teachers assigned to rural districts, especially in remote areas often have the least experience and the highest turnover rates. In Morocco, public school teachers can apply to be transferred to other schools at the end of the year. Many apply to suburban or urban locations to be closer to their families and to have more social, cultural, and economic opportunities. Thus the details are different, but the problems are similar. How do we encourage highly-qualified teachers to stay in the areas with the neediest students? Are salary incentives enough? Do we need to rethink our own system of hiring teachers in the U.S.? As our teaching shortage increases in New York, how are we going to attract and retain highly qualified teachers in our rural districts? Gender Gender equity was not initially one of my research areas. Before my trip, it wasn’t an issue that I often noticed in my classroom. There are very few obvious discrepancies between male and female students in my school. Moroccan students and teachers helped me to notice the less-obvious ones. In Morocco, girls are ambitious. In every class I observed, rural and urban, public or private, the hands raised first and most often were those of girls. When asked what they wanted to be when they finished school, young women answered “doctor” or “lawyer.” In language classes especially, girls dominated. Even in rural areas, where girls are less likely to finish high school because families value their son’s education most or because of fear and anxiety over daughters living in the dorms, girls still stood out as the most engaged and the most ambitious compared to the boys even if they were only a small percentage of the class. As Moroccan infrastructure and investment in education increases, the predictions are that more and more girls in rural areas will finish secondary school and go on to university. Then there are the boys… In general, the teachers that I spoke with often pointed out that the majority of their male students were disengaged. This could be due to the subject area: most of the teachers I interacted with are foreign language teachers and languages aren’t content areas boys in the U.S. gravitate toward either. This could be because of the increasing number of female students attaining higher levels of education, especially in the last twenty-five years. Or there could be (an)other reasons. When I returned to my classroom, I started to notice the gender dynamics more. In many cases, I noticed my male students were also less engaged than their female counterparts with few exceptions. I started to think about what causes this. Is it the content area? Are girls biologically wired for languages in ways that boys are not? Is it my instructional strategies? Could or should they be more gender-based? Is it a consequence of changing social norms as women hold more professional and leadership roles in both the U.S. and Morocco? Perhaps most important of all of these questions, how do we get boys engaged in academics, especially languages, too? Students with Disabilities One of the most important challenges teachers face is addressing the needs of students with disabilities. Differentiation, accommodation, and modification are all aspects of U.S. teachers’ everyday lives to varying degrees. I have always taught with at least one special education consultant teacher in my room. I’ve also had co-taught classes and provided Academic Intervention Services (AIS). Over the course of the last seven years, I’ve worked with students with a wide range of cognitive and physical disabilities. Meeting their needs often tests my creativity and problem-solving skills, and I have found that what often works for high-needs students can be beneficial for all students. In Morocco, I observed that there are few students with disabilities in high school. Teachers said that most students with disabilities, especially severe ones, don’t attend school due to stigma about disabilities and/or lack of educational opportunities. The few that do attend school don’t receive formal accommodations or modifications to level the playing field. Those that do get support receive it because of the effort and expertise of their individual teachers. This means that few students with disabilities finish school. Though there are programs, some run by NGOs such as the Om Arrabiaa Association we visited, to train and employee people with disabilities, these programs are limited. Investing in the education of people with disabilities is important to economic stability and growth. As teachers, we want all citizens to be productive members of society, and we work hard to ensure that all of our students have these opportunities to make successful transitions from school to work. In the U.S., IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) mandates equitable education opportunities for students with disabilities. IDEA has come under question recently as the U.S. Department of Education reevaluates its policies and its role in public education. As a teacher who works with a significant number of students with disabilities, I am concerned. How will we ensure that students with disabilities continue to receive an equitable education without a federal mandate? As education policy evolves and changes, how can we make sure that these students have adequate opportunities and resources? Conclusions I recognize that I have more questions than answers after my experience in Morocco. I do hope, however, that my purpose in participating in Teachers for Global Classrooms is clearer: My goal is to improve education for my students. While I hope the Moroccan teachers I met and with whom I worked did find something I shared useful, mine was and is a selfish journey. Through my observations and interactions of Moroccan teachers and students, my understanding of education and its purpose deepened. Because of this experience, the questions I ask, the goals I have, and the ways in which I think about education in general have changed. I no longer see global education as an aspect of a larger educational concept. Global education is education.
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Mrs. ShepardTeacher, ELL tutor, traveler, hiker, reader, and aspiring citizen of the world. Archives
April 2019
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