Review of “Meeting Students Where They Live: Motivation in Urban Schools,” by Richard L. Curwin, 2010, Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, paper, 168 pages.
Curwin proposes “ten quick strategies…”
Urban schools present their own themes, challenges, and difficulties.
In this pre-COVID-19 title, Richard Curwin shows a great deal of understanding in the way he addresses the challenges of working with students in urban schools. Racism, stress, power struggles, differences and diversity—there are many important themes presenting themselves in urban schools.
Curwin sees that the realities and the stressors of the big city present special issues to the classroom teacher and comes up with some good strategies for rethinking how we approach teaching. Curwin uses his “ten quick strategies to increase motivation” and allows the students input into the class activities.
In this way, he seems to have a connection to Freire.
Curwin also talks about “twelve killers of motivation and their remedies” and talks about the disconnect between school and home. The teacher must help students see the relevance of what is going on in the classroom. Curwin also talks about the importance of acknowledging effort. Too much emphasis is placed upon success and not enough on the hard work getting there. Curwin also has interesting ideas about fairness, and shares some interesting stories.
The most interesting story Curwin shares is that of a student named Charlie. Curwin shares how he explains to a student-teacher the importance of Charlie’s choice of coming to school despite the tremendous adversity and bad home environment he faced. Curwin makes an interesting recommendation on how the student-teacher can reach this student. The result is very telling.
Curwin includes four keys to measuring success: a positive relationship with the teacher; the ability to succeed; the content’s relevance to what is important to them; and the teacher’s passion for teaching and for the material. Coming up with ways to make each day special and each lesson interesting are challenges for the teacher. Helping students see that there are ways to succeed are important, according to Curwin. Irrelevant goals too focused on the future do not make much sense to urban students who live very much in the present and who face lots of stressors.
This text contains some really great ideas for working with urban students, though I suspect a lot of what is here will work in the suburbs and in small town schools also.
The book includes hints on how to avoid and get out of power struggles, ways to deal with perceived racism and address cultural differences, and ideas for setting reasonable expectations. Books on poverty, cross cultural understanding, and the current recession could all enrich what is presented here.
One good text to accompany this one would be: “America’s Poor and the Great Recession,” 2013, by Seefeldt and Graham.
To summarize, I would recommend the text in a foundation course for teacher candidates who will be working in urban schools. However, additional texts related to the focus of the course (strong assessment text for a class focusing on this area) or the purpose of the course (text with demographic information on urban students for a class dealing with teaching strategies for schools in large cities).
This older book still has some relevant solutions and ideas for teaching in the urban school. The text does provide some interesting information from an enlightened point of view but must be supported by a main textbook as examples show above.