Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons^™

Small Schools And The Issue Of Race, Linda C. Powell

Occasional Paper Series

Bank Street College of Education, in conjunction with the Consortium on Chicago School Research did a study of small schools in Chicago. This paper examines one element of the findings in depth - the interaction of race and school size. Powell argues that small schools are by their very nature an anti-racist intervention.

Historical Perspectives On Large Schools In America, Robert L. Hampel

Occasional Paper Series

Hampel evaluates the large school versus small school debate from a historical perspective. Until the 1970's, the small school was seen as the problem, not the answer. This essay will look at five beliefs, each firmly held for a long time by most educators.

Small Schools And The Issue Of Scale, Patricia A. Wasley, Michelle Fine

Occasional Paper Series

Wasley and Fine write this essay to respond to the oft-heard claim that small schools are not a systemic reform strategy. They argue, instead, that there is now a broad professional and community consensus for small schools; major policy moves within urban, suburban, and rural communities are being advanced to create and maintain small schools, and substantial social science evidence documents the efficiency and equity potential of small schools .

Resist School Pushout With And For Black Girls, Joanne Smith

Occasional Paper Series

Girls for Gender Equity (GGE) is a Brooklyn based, intergenerational organization committed to the optimal development of girls of color. GGE centers the experiences of young women of color, in particular, Black cis and trans young women, LGBTQ and gender nonconforming youth within advocacy campaigns, participatory action research and programming.

Young women of color disproportionately experience a continuum of violence ranging from verbal, physical and psychological abuse, to sexual assault and rape, homophobia, transphobia, racism, classism, poverty, state sanctioned and institutional violence. Forty percent Black and 37% Latina female students don’t graduate from high school, compared to 22% of white …

Restorative Schooling: The Healing Power Of Counternarrative, Veronica Benavides

Occasional Paper Series

Deficit-based thinking and subtractive schooling on negatively impact children from minoritized communities. This paper considers the unique role of families as leaders in the restorative schooling process, and offers educators research-based guidance on creating culturally responsive learning environments.

Introduction: Reading And Writing The T/Terror Narratives Of Black And Brown Girls And Women: Storying Lived Experiences To Inform And Advance Early Childhood Through Higher Education, Jeannine Staples, Uma M. Jayakumar

Occasional Paper Series

Staples and Jayakumar introduce this issue of the Occasional Paper Series that speaks to the #SayHerName social justice initiative. The movement aims to expose the experiences of Black and Brown girls and women who are subject to police violence in society and various violences in schools. In response to this movement, this issue includes stories of Black and Brown women from early childhood education through higher education.

Steady Work, Tom Roderick

Occasional Paper Series

Roderick's remarks made on the occasion of receiving an honorary doctorate from Bank Street College of Education in 1999. He speaks about his steady work in conflict resolution programs, because there is always a need for conflict resolution in a world where conflict is natural but violence is taught.

Forever Undone [Poem], Kate Abell

Occasional Paper Series

Kate Abell shares a poem following September 11. It is a personal expression of never forgetting the images and events of September 11.

The Nyc Board Of Education Mandates Pledging Allegiance [Poem], Kate Abell

Occasional Paper Series

Kate Abell shares a poem following September 11. It is a criticism of the requirement of pledging allegiance to the flag in school.

Principles For Responding To Children In A Traumatic Time, Sal Vascellaro

Occasional Paper Series

A list of principles that aim to help educators in their struggle to respond to the range of traumatic experiences many children have to live with—the death of a loved one, serious illness, violence, drug addiction, homelessness. This list offers something tangible to use as they respond to the children in their care.

The Children Keep Reminding Us: One School's Experience After 9/11, Kate Delacorte

Occasional Paper Series

This essay reflects on the experience of a new preschool that was located a few blocks away from the World Trade Center and had not yet opened at the time of September 11. After the event, the school held meetings with teachers, parents, and their children. The conversations highlighted the overwhelming difference between the needs of the parents and the needs of the children. Through sharing of fears, experiences, and emotions, the new community grew closer.

Re-Visioning The World Trade Center, Alexandra Weisman

Occasional Paper Series

This is a story that takes place more than a year after September 11, 2001. It is about the complex, ongoing ways that this event has affected curriculum. It is also about the thoughtful and ingenuous ways that eleven- year-old students at the Bank Street School for Children came to “re-vision” the World Trade Center site through three different perspectives.

Living In Question, Cynthia Rothschild

Occasional Paper Series

September 11 and the following months found Rothschild's students asking: "Why is there suffering?" "What has real value for me and for my society?" and, most resoundingly, "Is there a God?" She had few answers. The value that came to the forefront in her post-September 11 teaching was the value of living in question.

"Building Up": Block Play After September 11, Lisa Edstrom

Occasional Paper Series

Like most people in New York City, the children in Edstrom's class were affected by the events of September 11. However, not until five weeks later did these particular five- and six year-olds begin to make sense of what happened. Through the use of block play, they were able to explore the difficult emotions and questions we all had about the World Trade Center attack

Monday, September 17 And Urn [Poems], Rella Stuart-Hunt

Occasional Paper Series

Stuart-Hunt recounts the difference in play styles of a four-year-old girl before and after losing her mother in the September 11 attack. This is followed by a poem she has written titled "Urn".

A Story To Tell, Megan Rose

Occasional Paper Series

Rose recounts her experience on September 11 while being the teacher of an eleventh grade class. This essay demonstrates a teacher's need to be a leader and caregiver in the face of disaster, and subsequently allow for reflection and processing of emotions. Initially, her job stifled her own emotional response to the attack, but she was eventually able to use curriculum and creativity in the classroom to help herself and her students engage and reflect on their experiences.

Safe, Patricia Lent

Occasional Paper Series

The first four sections of this essay chronicle her attempts to make sense of September 11 in the succeeding weeks and months. The final section—”Corn, Beans, and Squash”—was written to and for her students at the end of the school year.

Introduction: Teaching Through A Crisis: September 11 And Beyond, Alison Mckersie

Occasional Paper Series

An introduction to a volume of essays that provided a vehicle through which educators could share their experiences following September 11. This includes how teachers were addressing the troubling questions that the tragedy raised: What kinds of conversations had been sparked among children, teachers, and parents? How had curriculum shifted in response to this heretofore unimaginable event?

User Preferences For Flood Alerts (Risk Communication And Public Engagement In Sea Level Rise Resilience Research Series, Paper No. 2), Juita-Elena (Wie) Yusuf, Carol Considine, Michelle Covi, Donta Council

Occasional Paper Series

Working with faculty and staff from Old Dominion University’s Center for Coastal Physical Oceanography, we developed a “straw man” website for users to sign up to receive flood alerts. The flood alert is based on tidal projections for the Sewell’s Point tide gauge available from the National Weather Service through the meteorological development laboratory (http://www.nws.noaa.gov/mdl/etsurge/index.php) and sends alerts for projected water level. We recruited study participants for one-on-one interviews. Participants were asked to interact with the flood alert signup interface and respond to specific questions about their preferences for flood alerts. We used findings of the one-on-one interviews to create …

Grandmothers As Child Caregivers: A Unique Child Care Arrangement, Kathy L. Reschke, Susan K. Walker

Occasional Paper Series

This paper draws attention to grandmothers who provide child care and the parents and children they serve, by sharing the results of a study of a group of employed mothers from rural, low-income families who used grandmother care on a regular basis. Although their experiences cannot represent those of all mothers who use grandmother care, they are valuable in understanding the perspective of many women with few feasible options who depend on this type of care.

The Arizona Kith And Kin Project, Sarah Ocampo-Schlesinger, Vicki Mccarty

Occasional Paper Series

In 1999, soon after the federal welfare reform was enacted, many people in Pheonix, Arizona were transitioning off of welfare and into the workforce. When considering job development in any any community, the focus shifts to child care needs. A study of child care needs in the area revealed that most parents were relying on family, friends, and neighbors for care. The Association for Supportive Child Care (ASCC) became committed to reaching out to the underserved population of kith and kin caregivers in their communities to provide training and support.

Ways Of Caring: How Relative Caregivers Support Children And Parents, Juliet Bromer

Occasional Paper Series

Reports on a subset of findings from a study that explored the support roles of African American child care providers in poor Chicago neighborhoods. Based on ten in-depth interviews with relative caregivers, Bromer discusses five themes: caregiver's adult-focused and child-focused motivations for caring, daily work with children, childrearing advice to parents, and caregiver-parent conflict. Caregivers’ motivations to provide child care and the meanings they ascribe to this daily work suggest new ways of defining a child-focused approach to caregiving.

Family, Friend, And Neighbor Care: Crib Notes On A Complex Issue, Toni Porter, Shannon Kearns

Occasional Paper Series

Before the 1996 federal welfare reform, home-based childcare was either overlooked or looked down upon. Since then, there has been a flurry of research investigating kith and kin childcare - which makes up approximately 73% of child care in the U.S. This essay provides insight into who provides home-based care and the quality of that care.

Introduction: Perspectives On Family, Friend And Neighbor Child Care, Rena Rice

Occasional Paper Series

Introduces a series of essays that explore family, friend, and neighbor child care. This form of child care has often been portrayed as "substandard, unregulated care" without any adequate research to support this claim. In 2005, the National Alliance for Family, Friend and Neighbor Child Care was formed. This series aims to encourage greater recognition of the role that kith and kin caregivers play in the child care continuum - offering a review of recent research, programs, and policy.

Preferences For Modeling Scenarios And Parameters: The Perspective Of Planners And Emergency Managers (Risk Communication And Public Engagement In Sea Level Rise Resilience Research Series, Paper No. 1), Juita-Elena (Wie) Yusuf, Carol Considine, Michelle Covi, Donta Council, J. Derek Loftis

Occasional Paper Series

The purpose of this study is to better inform research and practice in flood modeling by obtaining input from key end users on preferences for modeling approaches and model parameters, usability of flood models, and how information from flood models fit into decision making processes. We conducted a survey of stakeholders and end-users in the planning arena to identify their preferences for flood modeling scenarios and parameters. We also conducted a focus group with local emergency managers to understand how they would use predictive flood modeling for emergency management and planning.

Hampton Roads Residents’ Perceptions Of Sea Level Rise And Flooding Adaptation, Juita-Elena (Wie) Yusuf, Carol Considine, Burton St. John Iii, Michelle Covi, J. Gail Nicula, Pragati Rawat, Kaitlin Giles

Occasional Paper Series

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Queering Education, Darla Linville

Occasional Paper Series

What might it mean to make education more queer? Queerness is not a unitary identity (as is no identity) and queer is not a single way of thinking or being. Sometimes queer is opposition to outness, or resistance to acceptance, and exists in order to disrupt and discomfit. This, too, is queer. How might educators work to make schools more welcoming of queer bodies and identifications, queer the binary categories that define social life, and disrupt the differential privileging of those who claim normative identities?

Public Schools, And Health Care: A Strategy To Promote Social Inclusion, Jana Sladkova, Anahi Viladrich, Nicholas Freudenberg

Occasional Paper Series

Sladkova, Viladrich, and Freudenberg refer to “social inclusion” as the process through which the newly arrived find their voice in an already complex, cacophonous society. They describe an approach to social inclusion for adult immigrants that melds learning English at the same time as learning to negotiate our often-Byzantine health care system. They highlight programs that work and a new perspective on how to maximize the effectiveness of limited adult education opportunities.