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Inner City Stars |
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LeTUS executive director Louis Gomez has little recollection of his elementary and secondary school science education in New York City's Harlem. The product of city parochial and public schools, Gomez only remembers that it was "awful." Awful for two reasons. First, the teachers weren't prepared to teach science. And second, educating adolescents is tough no matter what. "Kids get bored," Gomez says. "I know because I was a bored kid. What was awful was nobody could figure out how to engage us." LeTUS is making progress in providing challenging engagement for middle-school students. But never one to be complacent, Gomez insists the center still has a long way to go in creating curricula that are inviting to urban children. And it is these children that Gomez and the center most want to reach. The lack of opportunities for engaging education is put in stark relief when looking at youngsters in large urban schools who face the additional challenges of poverty and racism. Their schools also suffer from the lack of academic supports from college-educated parents that suburban schools invisibly supply. "The Galapagos Islands curriculum is great for kids whose houses are strewn with Discover and National Geographic magazines," Gomez says. "LeTUS curricula sometimes require higher reading levels than urban students are in the habit of seeing. But we can't say to kids, 'Here's this cool Galapagos project. Come back to us when you've got better skills,'" he adds. For that reason all the center's researchers pay close attention to the literacy and math implications of the curricula they develop. "It's a generalization, I know, but school materials generally have certain assumptions embedded in them that suggest you're middle class, that you're like me," Gomez says. Still, this urban-educated optimist, who discovered his own passion for learning when he took a college course in cognitive psychology, believes that the opportunity for genuine school reform is better today than at any time in American history. "For the first time ever, there's a national commitment to provide all students with a high-quality education," Gomez says. "But educating all students can't mean we're going to get all kids to value what we value," he says. "It should mean that we're going to find a way to incorporate what they value in school activities that engage them and promote learning." By saying that every student deserves a high-quality education, Gomez suggests that leaders are saying something people "rarely say out loud. We're saying we're going to take students — with their poverty, historic lack of access and disadvantage — and work in schools to mitigate these problems." Gomez likes to say the center is part of the technical assistance to this revolution: "The revolution wasn't us. It's when business and government leaders had the chutzpah to say they're going to educate all kids to high standards." Quite simply the center has chosen to focus on students in urban settings because that's where the need is greatest. "The one thing that I flat out want to show is that urban schools can be leaders in science education," Gomez says. "It's not that other schools can't succeed in reforming science education, but people need to know that urban schools can." — W.L.
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