Prompt: Describe what you learned from the Wisconsin Schools Project
Starting off, the Wisconsin Schools Project seemed very overwhelming. Our area was based in Milwaukee County but within certain lines of highways. This caused my group and I to spend a lot of time trying to figure out the boundaries of our area and what schools fit into it. It was difficult to be sure that we had all the schools and were in the correct area, so we found ourselves overthinking about this first step. Because of this, I learned that sometimes I make my schoolwork more tedious than it needs to be. I was so worried about being perfect and exact that it delayed my progress in actually researching and investigating the schools. I’ve learned that sometimes I just need to move on and be open to mistakes rather than constantly being wrapped up in perfection. Even though, this doesn’t have anything to do with the data we found, I think it is one of the most valuable things I learned from this project. Teachers have to be willing to make mistakes and go with the flow. Not every lesson is going to go the way we want in our classrooms, but we will have to be flexible and move on.
As I was researching my group of schools, I thought it was intriguing to see the low ratings. My schools were public and the majority of them were in the Milwaukee School District. I don’t know much about the area that I was researching, but I wondered if a low-income area had anything to do with the poor ratings. Most of the time, there are less resources in low-income areas, so I thought that could have something to do with it. Then I thought about the large number of schools in the Milwaukee District. To be exact, I think there were 156, which means the money that the district earns is being spread across 156 schools. That being said, there could be less attention on the quality of some of the schools, because the district is so large. As a graduated student from the GBAPS district, I have seen some of the effects of what being in a large district is like. Usually, there are fewer opportunities, less extracurricular activities, and the quality of the schools are less than surrounding districts. Even though, ratings weren’t apart of our research, I thought it was still an interesting and valuable topic to discuss.
Another thing I learned and found interesting was the teacher to student ratio. It seems that even in a big city like Milwaukee, the ratio was still pretty small. It was slightly reassuring to see that the average was about 1 teacher to 14 students. That is the recommended ratio and I wonder if that is true for other counties in Wisconsin. As a staff member for the village project, I have 14 students in my first and second grade class. While 14 students don’t seem like a lot, it can be very difficult with multiple behavioral issues and individual needs. I also wonder if there is adequate support staff for those same circumstances in the schools I researched.
Overall, I learned a lot about the wide range of diversity in my schools, along with the cost of living in that area. I enjoyed being able to investigate different schools and share some of my observations here.
