About

Explores the roles of urban public schools in their communities, the historic, sociocultural, and economic contexts for urban schools and examines what we know about excellent teaching and learning in urban schools as well as reform and activism efforts in urban schools and their communities. Films and readings will interrogate representations of urban students, their teachers, and their schools. We will analyze the purposes, challenges, and possibilities of urban education, consider schools’ relationships to the cities in which they are located and will interrogate the politics of urban teaching. The perspective of this course views urban schools as sites of promise and innovation as well as sites for social and political struggle. Not open to students who have credit for Education 1015 {15}.


Grassroots Activism in Education Website
Peer review of websites: December 8th
Websites due: December 19th at 5:00 p.m. 

Purpose
This assignment is designed to enable you to see the action students, teachers, parents and communities are taking to ensure high-quality urban education. You will gain valuable research skills and learn how to design a website that conveys information effectively.

Essential skills

  • Evaluating web-based and social media sources
  • Utilizing academic data bases
  • Analyzing scholarly and professional articles
  • Synthesizing various sources of information
  • Designing a user-friendly website
  • Establishing a hierarchy of information
  • Analyzing information through writing
  • Referencing sources (websites, social media, videos, images, and journal articles)

Components of the website
There is no pre-determined format for the website. Part of your assignment is learning how to organize information effectively in order to convey content that others may utilize. Here is what you must include:

  1. A description of your topic
  2. A synthesis of the grassroots organizing on your topic (Who is involved? What is their message? How has their work affected their topic? What are the challenges they are facing?)
  3. Links to 8-10 webpages of grassroots organizations addressing this topic
  4. A two-to-three sentence description of each website
  5. Links to 8-10 social media connections addressing this topic (should not be redundant with webpages, although could be an individual involved in one of the organizations)
  6. A two-to-three sentence description of each social media link
  7. A synthesis of two peer-reviewed journal articles on this topic (must have been published in last 3 years)
  8. A synthesis of two practitioner-oriented articles on this topic (must have been published in last 3 years)
  9. A 750-word statement about what you have learned about grassroots organizing and urban education through this project.
  10. APA references