Overview
Our students have valuable cultural wealth that they bring with them to school. Until this past year, I would unintentionally look at our students (and families) with the lens of deficit thinking that focuses on cultural poverty and its disadvantages rather than the wealth students bring to our school and community. Now with a new perspective, I see families in our community who share this positive strength of cultural capital. The way Yosso explains the types of cultural wealth, called aspirational capital, is encouraging and positive:
… aspirational capital is the ability to hold onto hope in the face of structured inequality and often without the means to make such dreams a reality. Yet, aspirations are developed within social and familial contexts, often through linguistic storytelling and advice (consejos) that offer specific navigational goals to challenge (resist) oppressive conditions. Therefore, aspirational capital overlaps with each of the other forms of capital, social, familial, navigational, linguistic and resistant.3
With this new lens, I hope to pass on this perspective and positive learning attitude to my students as we lay the groundwork to build them up as peace builders in our community.
Our school, Mount Pleasant Elementary STEAM Academy, is part of a small community in the eastern foothills of San Jose, California. We currently serve363students (Kindergarten through 5th grade) in general education with a focus on Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM). We provide English Language Development (ELD), Structured English Instruction (SEI) in kindergarten and first grade, English Language Arts (ELA) Intervention, a Reading Partners program, Homework Clubs, and an after-school program equipped with its own trained staff.We also partner with counseling agencies to support students and families through the inherent tensions and stressors in our area.Several non-academic after-school activities are offered as well ranging from athletics to traditional cultural dance.
The school demographics provide important information for our teachers to keep in mind about the different cultures students are representing and services they are receiving during the school day. Approximately eighty-seven percent of our students are Hispanic, eleven percent are Asian, one percent are Caucasian, less than one percent African American, and less than one percent American Indian. Eleven percent of our students require Special Education services, Fifty-five percent of our students are English Language Learners, seventy-three percent receive Free or Reduced Lunch, and ninety percent are English Learners, Foster Youth, or eligible for Free/Reduced-Price Meals (unduplicated count 2014 used for California’s new Local Control Funding Formula - LCFF).
In the most recent years we have refined our teaching strategies to align with the new Common Core Standards and movement to provide educational goals that support students in deeper comprehension levels, creating lessons intent on developing the five “C's” – Critical thinking, Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, and Civic engagement. Our district has also applied a more culturally encouraging perspective to better connect with our students, and to empower them with the cultural wealth they already embody.
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