My name is Trent Fry and I teach at South HS in Columbus, Ohio. I teach both push in and pull out 11th and 12th graders as an intervention specialist in both math and english. I have taught in Oregon, in an affluent suburb of Portland. I also have spent a year teaching online in title one, predominately hispanic, district just north of Denver, Colorado. I am originally from Ponca City, Oklahoma and got my undergraduate at the University of Oklahoma in special education. I am only in my 5th year teaching, but have got to see a lot. I have been in situations where the struggle was spending $18,000 dollars just as a special education team and have been in situations where the struggle was getting more than 10 chromebooks in a class that averages 15-20.
A simple definition about the community I work in is that it would be considered "inner-city". I would love to apply what I learn in this class and apply it to the students that I teach. However, I am one teacher in a district of 45,000-50,000 students. On top of that, my district is in what they have described as a budget crisis. We are currently set to run out of money early in 2027 and have yet to negotiate our contract. I am unsure of the impact I could have in this setting even in my most fervent state. While the intended beneficiary of this call to action would be the students within my school and classroom, the call to action would not put the onus on them. The true call to action I struggle with. I think it could be as narrow as the district I work in, but could go as broad as the federal government and the way it funds us to be not just have our most at risk students not just survive, but thrive.
Whenever I was looking to accept my current job, I did a little digging around in terms of the data of the students I would be serving, but it was much more real to do so after being there. Our school serves 873 students in grades 7th-12th. The racial break down of our school is 570 students who are black, 114 students who are hispanic, 107 students who are white, 67 students who identify as two or more races, and 8 and 5 students who are Native American and asian respectively(NCES.org). The school was built in and opened in 1924 and according to people I have spoken to, became a predominately a school with a predominately black population in the late 40's. That social culture has become very rich and deeply embedded at this point. I think the largest showing of this is in our marching band. It has a vibe and sound of that of an HBCU band as apposed to the famous marching band of Ohio State right up the street. It is my favorite part of our school. Economically the data is very interesting. The south side of Columbus is very intertwined with gentrification. Within a couple blocks you could be in very affluent to then very poor neighborhoods. The zipcode we serve the most has a median household income of around $54,000(incomebyzipcode.com). Our academic scores are troubling at best. USnews.com has us at 7% proficiency in math and 24% in reading.
I love the school I work at because of the students I work with. However, I would definitely say it is my most difficult job I have had. The school is putting in a lot of effort into educating our students and giving them opportunities after they leave us. However, this doesn't change the fact that they face many hardships from many of the demographics that they fall into.
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