The community around Walker Middle School is really quite interesting to me. The immediate community next to the school is primarily low and middle class families, which I found surprising because I’d always been told that West Salem was an “upper class” area. The area outside this small community of low and middle class families is surrounded by shopping centers such as Walgreens, Safeway, and fast food restaurants.
Although these areas are important to the “school community,” these areas aren’t generally where the students who attend Walker Middle School live. The students generally come from the wealthier families and live farther outside the immediate school community. If you’ve ever driven around West Salem you’ll notice that the farther out you get the bigger the houses get and there are better communities. The area also offers townhouses and apartments, but compared to other areas in Salem, these communities are much more expensive for smaller amounts of living space.
The ethnicity of the surrounding area of the school is not as diverse as other areas of Salem. For the most part the majority of the families are White, but there is also a large population of Hispanic families, but not as large a population as you would find in North Salem. There are also populations of Asian/Pacific Islanders, African American, Native American, and mixed race, but these populations are much smaller than the White population in the area.
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Kaitlin,
ReplyDeleteA pretty short response to this assignment! Important observations, however, about your perceptions of Walker's community and the sense of West Salem. Why do you think that is the case? Can you describe more specifics about what you see in the community around Walker? Why do you think there are low and middle class families around the school? What are the implications for your teaching from the observation that more well off students coming from outside in and less well off students live around the school? Regarding ethnicity, are these your observations or do you have data? Do you have a sense of the ethnicity/racial make up of the neighborhood around the school?
I don't see any statistics/demographic data yet that you will need to include in your final version. Also, the most important part of this reflection is your paragraphs that talk about the connections between what you see and know from data and your future teaching.
Kaitlin,
ReplyDeleteAs a long time Salem resident, I always found the thought that WEst Salem was the wealthier part of town to be true; however, I have observed the same things that you have about the structure of that part of town surrounding Walker. The demographic and house make-up is certainly different than the overall community in West Salem. There is a diversity of lower income track homes to very high end mansions. I'm curious what that means to your teaching and to your students? Do you think that the minorities live in the school-surrounding neighborhoods, or are they spread wide? What is the atmosphere around the school itself? Does it feel safe? How do you see it as a potential teacher? What do you think parents moving into the area think? I'm interested in your findings about that school as I had many friends from high school that went to Walker.
I've always heard that West Salem was the ritzy part of town, but when I was comparing demographics of high schools, I was really surprised to find that Sprague actually seems to be the taker of that title. However, I haven't been to West Salem very often and thus don't have too much to offer there. I think you make good observations, particularly about the fast food and supermarket area being so close to the lower SES homes and the 'mansions' farther out. Why do you think this is? Why does this matter for your teaching? One more question I had--what type of stigma do you think students from West Salem High are branded with? What do you think it would be like to be a student from a lower SES home who goes to WSH when interacting with the larger Salem Community?
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