Hoping for Change

[Theresa Grimsley]

One of my professors announced the opportunity to work in different middle schools either this semester or just before next semester. One of the opportunities involves going to Morocco. Another is to visit the Navajo Nation's Reservation in Arizona and last but not least to work with an inner city Kentucky school. All of the possibilities are appealing to me and I really hope I'll be able to participate in at least one, because I'm really interested in how literacy is affected/influenced by various factors. I am having trouble focusing my research (very infantile in development)....I am especially interested in economic factors and how they can affect literacy; not by affecting the students' ability to read and comprehend, but how lack of funds and lack of resources affect learning & literacy rates in many schools.

I'm also interested in literacy among non-white students, not because I believe race or ethnicity affects a students ability to read or comprehend, but because the American school system tends to be biased toward white, middle class students in textbooks (especially History, with minority groups being either completely ignored or just touched on as a side note) and also in how taxes are divided and distributed to schools.

I've seen disparities in the city I live in, so I'm guessing such disparities are common elsewhere as well. I think the opportunities my professor presented could help me to focus my ideas more and also give me opportunities to observe and look for any indications that might support my ideas.

So now I wonder, after the observations, then what?

What is to be done? Can anything be done to help the children?
Policies take forever to change and in the meantime children are being cheated.