Sitting here, dry but not overly warm, I have been pondering the aspects of equity I encounter among students at my school. It occurs to me that one of the issues I stumble against is my own blindness of assumptions. It inspires the same criticism we have heard in terms of race, gender, and economics: If you are on the winning side (white, male, and rich) you can't see the obstacles others, who aren't you, face. Here are some of the assumptions about students I need to remind myself just ain't so:
They are kids; they know how computers work.
There is a spell checker on the word processor; they'll use it.
They are on Facebook all the time.
They have access to the internet.
They have a school issued computer.
They know how to keyboard.
Their computers all work at the same speed.
Their computers won't break.
They know the difference between casual and professional email.
That alarming tag line after their signature is one they chose for themselves.
They know how to follow directions.
They are going to save their work for later use and reference.
They are able to mimic me in parallel as I do something while displaying it on the overhead.
What the media portrays as the savvy 5 year old able to make a wonderful powerpoint with her wonderful IBM / Microsoft Cloud setup is nearly a fairy tale.
Our school is working in a trimester system, so we get new students every 11-12 weeks. We've just started a new round of classes. I have polled both my old and new students about access to the internet. About 20% say they have none at all. They are unable to get to a library (remember going to a library to study with pals – or was that just Disney?) to access the internet, nor are they able to steal band width from neighbors. With a well organized thumb drive, or remembering to download needed files before leaving school, this shouldn't matter; but it does. This doesn't include students who a) still haven't been issued a loptop; b) have broken their laptop and are without a loaner; c) have parents who can't / won't sign the agreement form. Some of these students behave brashly “What are you going to do about me? You can't just post that essay. I'll never be able to read it.” “Well, your going to have to accept my paper hand written.” So I find myself printing off copies and fighting with students about the need to do revisions.
Isaac, for a variety of reasons, had no laptop and was hand writing a comparison essay. He had pretty much omitted anything in the line of illustrations of the points he was trying to make and I said that he really needed to add those. He pulled out a giant eraser and began to erase what he had written. I gacked, and offered him the opportunity to go down to the library to type there. “No, I'll just erase it and start over.” “Well, if you're going to start over anyway, why not keep this copy and start a new draft?” “That would be a lot of work.” More work than erasing it and redoing all the paragraphs? I pointed out that was one reason to make use of the computer so he wouldn't have to re-write his essay multiple times. Thus enters another of my own prejudices – I remember, with loathing, having to retype, or worse re-write, papers through multiple drafts, cutting them apart and pasting them on new paper so I could add paragraphs to a 3rd of 4th draft. I thought about sharing that with Isaac, but cringed that he would perceive me as one of those walking-through-blizzards-uphill-both-ways adults.
This doesn't even touch the hardware differences, even among school issued computers. MLTI computers are not set up to be gracefully mum when they don't have a network connection, regularly stopping everything to poll the neighborhood for a link. Software is, bizarrely, not installed correctly on some computers, or files have become corrupted. Batteries die even when plugged in and shut everything down. Sarah and Brandan each had computers that would spontaneously shut down. Sarah's problem was her email program and Brandan's a dicey battery. The swap bank of batteries that is supposed to reside in the library hasn't been set up.
So, where am I going now? I am going to find out from MLTI what they perceive is the percent of student homes that has no internet connectivity. I wonder if you could do a straw poll of your students to give me an idea if my 20% is real or off kilter. There is a series of articles in the New York Times on computers and brains that I'm working through for myself and with my Non-Fiction and AP Language classes. I'm also using the “Your child left behind” article from the recent Atlantic Monthly. I'll have some student reactions to those as well as my own reflections.
