Samantha Antrum | West Philadelphia students need investment

The Vision | Current conditions make it impossible to provide a valuable education

By The Vision and Samantha Antrum 09/23/14 10:01pm

T h is summer, I did something a bit unusual. While many students worked at internships and prepared for the upcoming school year, I prepared lesson plans. Hired as a co-instructor for a West Philadelphia school summer program, my responsibilities included creating curricula for college access, career readiness and social-emotional learning while managing a classroom of middle school girls. The role sounded deceptively simple. I soon learned that this would be one of the most difficult experiences of my undergraduate years.

By the middle of the summer, I was drowning in sassy, disengaged middle schoolers. I was perplexed by the girls’ attitudes. With no formal teaching experience, few resources and little time to come up with inventive lesson plans, I became so frustrated that I did not remember my love for spending time with students. What really made this position challenging, though, was the school’s circumstances.

The building was filthy. Roaches and mice frolicked about on dirty walls and stained hallway floors. Program instructors watched the unsanitary circumstances continue outside, as the cleaning staff dumped dirty mop water and cleaning chemicals into a flooded drain in the school yard. Internet access ceased and took several days to be restarted, which was a major barrier for instructors attempting to academically engage their students.

Where I once was frustrated with the conditions at some schools, I was now livid. Children attended the program because of its potential to provide fun and enriching activities. Our purpose was to supplement the students’ school-year learning experiences. We aimed to provide encouragement and support for the students, demonstrate that learning is more than sitting in class looking at books.

But I was unable to provide that for my students. I was angry because, given the conditions of the school and the restraints of the program, I could not invest in the students the way I had dreamed. I could not make up for the shortcomings in the school.

For me, this experience was representative of the inequality that plagues Philadelphia public schools. Due to the desperation caused by the School District of Philadelphia’s budget crisis, resources are waning. Teachers and  counselors have been been laid off,  class sizes are unmanageable, art and music programs have been cut,  nurses are not available if students have an emergency, and students are  frustrated by the conditions in their schools and the  instability of the school district.

These are not just any students. The lack of resources disproportionately affects minority students, who make up 90 percent of enrollment or higher in several Philadelphia public schools. Minority students already  confront a myriad of barriers to education, including increased suspension rates, fewer advanced courses and insufficient access to colleges and post-graduation programs. Why is it that even though these inequalities are known, we continue to decrease the amount of support available for minority students? What kind of message does it send to West Philadelphia children to repeatedly eliminate their teachers, their electives and their opportunities for advancement?

West Philadelphia students should not suffer because of budgetary decisions being made at the state level. They should not have to watch helplessly as their middle class peers in places like Lower Merion progress while the opportunity gap expands. At a basic level, educating our children requires the investment that stems from financial resources, such as textbooks, desks, clean schools, teachers.

Beyond that, these kids need personal investment. They need to know that people at the schools believe in them, that they can dream and they can accomplish, that their strengths may be cultivated, that they can improve upon their weaknesses . They need to know that there are people who want them to do better for themselves, who will assist them when they fail and will celebrate them when they succeed.

The children of West Philadelphia need investment.

If we can come together as mentors, teachers, policy makers and community members and choose to invest the time and resources in the students of West Philadelphia, perhaps we can show the students that we do care. Then we can begin reversing the deplorable conditions at some of the schools.

Visit the  Philadelphia Public School Notebook website if you would like to learn more about education in Philade lphia.

Samantha Antrum is a College senior from Buffalo, N.Y., studying communications. Her email address is antrums@sas.upenn.edu. “The Vision” is a column for black voices that appears every Wednesday.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.