Although creating a fully effective college-going culture requires a con-certed, system-wide effort by administrators, teachers, and counselors alike, there are a variety of straightforward projects that schools and/ or individual faculty can institute to begin seeding such an environ-ment.

Establishing these sorts of classroom environments also shifts us from a pedagogy of poverty to a pedagogy of plenty.7 Rather than the tradi-tional rote styles ofK-12 learning, which centered more on memorization ) homework with little feedback, and simply moving students on from here ) a pedagogy of plenty thinks beyond just one particular classroom space and students knowing just one particular answer. It creates a place for students to broaden their learning experience and allows teachers to connect a much wider variety oflesson points for students. I often think about one seventh-grade teacher, Mr. Quest, who loved figuring out how to incorporate culture and the surrounding world into the classroom space, and even challenging school norms when doing so. There was nothing he was afraid to use as a learning tool.

The idea that students of color from disadvantaged backgrounds cannot compete at the same level is erroneous. Although individual experiences and home environments influence student achievement, research shows that school environments play an increasingly vital role in preparedness for college and career attainment.

Although people living in rural poverty tend to have some land around their homes, those living in poverty in large urban areas often reside in apartment-style homes, typically known as housing projects, which are government supported. Those living in urban poverty experience higher levels of crime than in rural areas, but they do benefit from public transpor-tation and other large-city conveniences. Thus, while families live in pov-erty in both rural and urban areas, their experiences can be quite different.

Generally, due to systemic forms of inequity, discrimination, racism, and other -isms, more material resources and human capital should be pro-vided to schools with a high number of students of color and others who live in poverty.

A large number of high-need districts that lack sufficient resources often receive the same resources as districts with fewer needs. Some dis-tricts institute "equally funded programs into schools regardless of how many students need them. For example, a district might allocate $100,000 to each school with English-language learners, even though one school might have 200 students with limited English proficiency and another-often a more affluent school-might have only 20 [such students].

After twelve years of doing professional development work with schools, I have concluded that some district leaders and even some principals are not really committed to reforming their policies and practices for the sake of students living in poverty, primarily because they believe what I once did: that if individual ' teas:hers teach more effectively, student learning will improve

n short, the practice of multicultural education has employed an all-too-narrow definition of culture. The term “culture” in school curricula has largely been a proxy for “race/ethnicity,” and while this has resulted in some attention to a more ethnically and gender-diverse set of readings and per-spectives, it has not considered other central aspects of culture.

Throughout the many times that we taught this unit, there were inci-dents similar to the one just described. Students had personal and meaning-ful transactions with the film that facilitated a healthy dialogic space and the completion of superior academic work. One class went so far as to create a newsletter that challenged the school’s approach to issues of culture and power.

Throughout the year a number of students became involved in citywide politics, urging council members to support an initiative to put “children first.” Once the initiative was passed, two students continued to serve on the advisory board of the city council. Students, however, continued to experi-ence the savage inequalities of East Bay High for the rest of their tenure at the school. The wealthy school up the hill finished its $5-million stadium and, to this day, continues to score in the 99th percentile on state standard-ized tests.

We do not agree with all aspects of Vygotskian cultural psychology; for instance, we do not envision the hierarchical relationship between every-day activities and higher-order thinking skills as Vygotsky did. However, we recognized the pedagogical potential of tapping into young people’s everyday experiences as participants in popular culture to scaffold academic literacies.

While Asian cul-ture was characterized as studious and hardworking, Mexican American students suff ered from a “systematic undervaluing of people and things Mexican.”

Because I Was Asian, I Pretty Much Had This Path Set for M

In addition, a U.S. animation company made a cartoon (Mr. Wong) and placed at its center an extreme caricature of a Chinese “hunchbacked, yellow-skinned, squinty-eyed character who spoke with a thick accent and starred in an interactive music video titled Saturday Night Yellow Fever.

he U.S. intervention in Korea, and later in Vietnam, further perpetuated an intensive racist stereotyping and framing of Asians and Asian Americans in the minds of many white and other non–Asian Americans.

White advertisers, cartoonists, and moviemakers commonly portrayed Chinese, Japanese, and other Asian/Pacific Islanders as outsiders or villains, who were often crudely stereo-typed as “inscrutable,” poor at English, criminal, and dangerous

ndeed, the fact that Asian immigrants and their children are heavily pressured to conform to a white-imposed culture, racial frame, and racial hierarchy—and suffer from much racial hostility and discrimination—

Their relatively high levels of educational attain-ment and household income, and their overrepresentation in professional occu-pations, make it seem as if they are doing better than other racial minorities or even some whites. However, the white-constructed label of “model minority” awarded to Asian Americans does not protect them from prejudice and racism.

Complicating matters-and reinforcing many teachers' and other school officials' opinion that ~tud1:._~ts "don't care" about school-is that a significant proportion of students,

Stephanie could not teach her children the pride of their ancestry and could not connect it to the material they learn today were it not for her extraordinarily broad knowledge of the liberal arts. However, she cold me that she did not acquire this knowledge in her formal education, but worked, read, and studied on her own to make such knowledge a part of her pedagogy.

I propose that a part of teacher education include bringing parents and community members into the university class-room to tell prospective teachers (and their teacher educators) what their concerns about education are, what they feel schools are doing well or poorly for their children, and how they would like to see schooling changed.

When the parents contin-ued to ignore the request, the teachers began locking the school doors. Pretty soon feelings escalated to the point of yelling matches, and the parents even approached the school board.

When teachers do not understand the potential of the students they teach, they will underteach them no mat-ter what the methodology.

Children who may be gifted in real-life settings are often at a loss when asked to exhibit knowledge solely through decontextualized paper-and-pencil exercises

it is important to remember that children are individuals and cannot be made to fit into any preconceived mold of how they are "supposed" to act.

They don't start out there.

I loved being Black, but I hated being poor.

They may not reach out to their professors when they are performing poorly in the class, fearing that they will be judged as lacking in the ability to succeed in school.

Orange County includes 34 incorporated cities, many of them worlds apart. As one local demographer puts it, "You have areas of pov-erty and areas of great affluence and less of a middle." 3 Laguna Beach, for example, is 91 percent non-Hispanic white, with a per capita income of $84,000, whereas Santa Ana, the county seat, just 20 miles away, is 95 percent Hispanic (50 percent foreign-born), with a per capita income of$17,000.