Summary:
New York City Officials allowed a small community in Ocean Hill-Brownsville to control their own scool district as an experiment. Rhody McCoy, a black school district superintendent, became head of the experiment. He was concerned about how we educate young ones in the world today. He believed that we need to focus more on the process rather than the product. Teachers should not get caught up with scores on tests and such, they should be foccussed on how the child learns and what he or she learns. A black girl who attended the school that this experiment was under, Karriema Jordan, described the effect of the changes that were made in the curriculum to focus more on that process to help better educate the black community. Ultimately she believed that with black teachers she was able to learn better because she could identify with them more easily than with white teachers.
What did the new environment offer Karriema Jordan?
The new environment offered a lot to Jordan. With the many new black teachers that were hired within the school Jordan said that she learned more. With white teachers she felt as though she could not relate, and that her teachers didn't understand. However, once more black teachers taught she felt as though she could connect to them more and that they were human just like she was. She was accepted into the school and felt less of an outsider. Therefore her emotional problems at school could be set aside as she learned. She learned about many black people in history which made her feel more important and look at things in a new way. Jordan believed that this small change in curriculum made a huge impact. It made her see the community on an international level as opposed to a small one. This gave her more hope and power which overall could motivate her to do her best in school.
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