- by Charlotte Paille -
Growing up in a suburb of Rochester, I heard a lot about the Rochester City School District. However, it wasn’t until I took the course Mythbusters: Urban Schools Edition that I really learned anything about the district. Here are 3 things I learned from my experience:
RCSD has amazing resources and programs for its students.
I had the opportunity to visit East High School to speak with a student in the Teaching and Learning Institute — a program for students who are considering becoming teachers. I had the pleasure of speaking with a senior who had a paid internship through the program and will graduate with a full-ride scholarship to the University of Rochester. She spoke highly of the family environment within the program and was excited to share with me her teaching experiences that helped prepare her for a job in education.
TLI is one of many programs at East High. The students at East showed my class the vision center where glasses are made for students by students, along with the culinary and optics programs, just to name a few. I also learned about programs elsewhere in the school district, such as FIRST Robotics Competition Team 191 at Joseph C. Wilson Magnet High School, HOLA Dual Language Program at School #12, and so many more. It showed me that RCSD has incredible resources that really set its students up for success, which I never knew about.
Media negatively skews the surrounding communities’ views of RCSD.
After learning about these programs, I wondered how I went so long believing RCSD lacked resources, while growing up only a short drive away. Through an analysis of news articles in class and listening to a panel of parents at East High, I realized that local news sources focus their reports on the negative events within RCSD rather than celebrating the positives. Even when the positives are reported, articles may have words or phrases that give a negative connotation, allowing the greater public to continue believing RCSD is a “worse” district than neighboring ones. However, that is far from the truth. As the parents at East High pointed out, many neighboring districts struggle with the same issues as RCSD; the media just chooses not to shine as much of a light on them. This made me completely rethink how I let news and media impact my opinions of places and people before I interact with them myself.
Just because a course isn’t required for your major, does not mean it’s not valuable for your future career.
When I signed up for this course, I was hesitant because it meant adding an extra credit and more work to my semester that I don’t actually need to complete my major. Now that I have finished this course, I would argue that I did need this course because it has prepared me to be a more equity-minded teacher no matter what setting I end up working in. Now when I’m asked, “Aren’t you worried you’ll be placed in RCSD?” for student teaching, I can confidently respond with excitement instead of fear. I would highly recommend that anyone pursuing a career in education take Mythbusters: Urban Education Edition because it helped me view urban education in a brand new light that I will value for the rest of my career.
Charlotte Paille ‘23 is majoring in math and inclusive adolescence education and plans to teach middle or high school math in Monroe County, New York.
