Two of my previous blog posts have been published by City Year DC's communications team onto their website. Please click on the pictures below to see them!
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This blog post is a follow-up to the previous one on API educators. Basic Training Academy (BTA) is a three- to four-week long orientation where newly-admitted City Year AmeriCorps members have an opportunity to “meet [their] service team, get prepared and trained for the year ahead, and learn about City Year’s mission, culture, values, and our approach to addressing the nation’s dropout crisis.” AmeriCorps members attend full-days of successive sessions, learning about everything from the organization’s history to the specific interventions used in partner classrooms. I attended the 2017 BTA from July 24th to August 11th, a short three weeks before the August 14th opening day for students attending extended-year schools in the District of Columbia. Each session I attended during this fast-paced preparation period was unique, featuring various opportunities for AmeriCorps members to apply the information given. One particular session explaining the demographics of the nation’s capital divided AmeriCorps members into racial identity groups. I did not notice until I sat with the Asian and Pacific Islander (API) group that API AmeriCorps members formed a minority of the DC corps. There were less than 10 of us in that circle. I began to question why this was the case. Was it simply because APIs only represent 4.1% of the DC population? Possible. Was it reflective of the fact that APIs only make up 2% of the educator workforce? Also possible. Could it be that APIs between 18 and 24 (the eligibility age range for City Year AmeriCorps members) are less likely to participate in national service compared to their White or Black counterparts? I do not know the definitive answer to this last question. But after my conversation with Ms. Soo Kim, the Korean-American kindergarten teacher at King Elementary School, I do believe that APIs have an important role to play in the field of public education. To expand on this point, on February 22nd, City Year DC’s API Affinity Group invited a three-person panel of past API AmeriCorps members to share their service stories and speak about their perspectives on why APIs should serve. Below is a paraphrased version of our conversation. The panelists have given me permission to use their names. A growing body of evidence suggests that students benefit both emotionally and academically when taught by racially diverse teachers throughout their K-12 education. The effects range from positive attitudes toward schoolwork and school faculty to a higher likelihood of graduating high school and taking a college entrance exam However, students are often taught by a homogenous group of teachers. In July 2016, the U.S. Department of Education under Secretary John B. King, Jr., published a study titled “The State of Racial Diversity in the Educator Workforce,” examining the current racial makeup of American public school teachers. The Department noted that only 18% of the educator workforce are teachers of color. Asian and Pacific Islander (API) teachers are a minority within this minority, representing only 2% of all elementary and secondary public school teachers. Although their numbers are small, API educators are not invisible. By stepping into their classrooms everyday, teachers like Felicia Cheng, who teaches 9th grade statistics in Brooklyn, NY, and Susie Chao, who teaches high school English in Fairfax County, VA, subvert the societal and cultural expectations often placed on APIs. Ms. Soo Kim is a kindergarten teacher at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Southeast Washington, DC (a City Year partner school). She is another example of someone showing that APIs do have an important role to play in American public education. In November of 2017, I was able to chat with Ms. Kim about her experiences as an API educator and any advice she has for young APIs hoping to teach in the future. Below is a paraphrased version of our conversation. She has given me her permission to use her name. During the 2012, 2014, and 2016 national elections, I had reached the legal voting age, but could not participate in my country’s political process. I was not yet a citizen, having only my green card as proof of US residence. In May of this year, after having lived in this country for 15 years, I finally received my certificate of naturalization. Today, as my first act as an American citizen, I gave the entirety of my first month’s paycheck to the Kids in Need Fund, a Fairfax County Public Schools program that provides school supplies to the 53,000 district students who live below the poverty line. I feel happy to support the community in which I grew up in a small way. However, I also realize the immense privilege that allows me to donate this sum. As a young individual, I do not have very many financial obligations. I am also a recent college graduate that moved back with his parents post-graduation to commute to work from home. Therefore, after sending the money to the Kids in Need Fund, I began thinking of how I could expand the donation beyond the amount I gave. And the #MyFirstPaycheck campaign came to mind. Due to the Trump administration's strong support, "school choice" has surged as a topic of debate among policymakers. It refers to a market-based strategy of improving public education. By providing parents with options regarding how to educate their child (e.g. private schools, charter schools, home schooling, etc.), underperforming public schools would be pressured to innovate and restructure themselves in order to keep their students and continue running.
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is a strong proponent of vouchers, a school choice system where parents may reroute the public funding tied to their child towards a private school tuition. Last month, Jonathan N. Mills and Patrick J. Wolf from the University of Arkansas, with the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans, published a study on the effect of such a system on the students of Louisiana. The results are not promising for Secretary DeVos and other voucher advocates. Scroll through the slides to check out some other education-related blog posts I've written at the Alliance for Excellent Education and US Department of Education! "The Asian racial group is comprised of more than 48 distinct ethnic groups, and lumping data for Asian students together has masked the educational inequities faced by large sub-sets of the Asian American population." - Southeast Asia Resource Action CenterNote: Some text in this post is directly carried over from a final report I authored for a census data analysis class in late 2016, which examines the model minority myth from a quantitative, historical perspective.
In the United States, the model minority myth refers to a controversial perception that Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) are a monolithic subpopulation composed only of successful and affluent individuals whose children perform exceptionally well in the education system. Last week, I was invited by a former supervisor from the Alliance for Excellent Education (Alliance) to the Embassy of Finland in Washington, DC. I hurriedly packed by bags after my Wednesday classes and flew down to Dulles, so that I could attend the Thursday morning event, titled, "Finland: Education Superpower." Located at 3301 Massachusetts Avenue NW, the embassy is arguably one of the most cozy and beautiful buildings I've visited in the nation's capital. Built onto a forested hillside (a rare sight in DC), natural light floods through the glass panels onto the floor of the main seminar room, making it appear as if fluorescent light is absolutely unnecessary during the daytime. It is no wonder that this building won a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification.
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