Children of Possibility

I have been teaching in inner-city schools for over a quarter century.  My first teaching position was at Dolores Mission School in the Boyle Heights section of East Los Angeles in 1985.  Fresh out of college, I was a young, inexperienced, naive, idealistic Jesuit Volunteer who wanted to change the world.  Instead, I fell in love with my students and found that they and their world changed me.  I have chosen to teach in inner-city schools ever since.

Currently, I teach music to "disadvantaged" children in the Providence Public Schools (Rhode Island).  Beth Swadener discusses the "at risk" label often used in urban education.  It is an ideology of risk -- that is, risk of anticipated failure based on children's (or families') deficiencies.  The "at risk" label is placed on those students who are "educationally and economically vulnerable" and "able to be isolated and fixed" (1) -- typically, those of color from low socio-economic situations.  Instead, Swadener proposes an "at promise" rhetoric -- one which emphasizes the positive attributes and possibilities inherent in all children. These are the children I teach:  children "at promise" who demonstrate great accomplishments in musical production despite being labeled "disadvantaged" or "at risk of anticipated failure" by those within and outside the educational community.  Even though the arts in education continue to be marginalized, I have been fortunate to witness the possibilities these children exhibit when given the space and opportunity to explore the arts.  For, as Maxine Greene repeatedly expresses, encounters with the arts have the unique power to "release imagination for those willing to engage with them" (2).

My blog, then, consists of the narratives of these children "at promise" --  what I call the "children of possibility."

(1)  Swadener, B.B. (1995). Children and families "at promise": Deconstructing the discourse of risk.  In     B.B. Swadener and S. Lubeck (Eds.), Children and families "at promise" (pp. 17-49). New York: SUNY Press.

(2)  Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and social change.  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc.