Thursday night, just days after the FBI released data showing that Chicago had more homicides in 2012 than New York, at least one gunman opened fire on basketball players and spectators at a Chicago park, in the Back of the Yards neighborhood on the southwest side, injuring 13 people, including a 3-year-old baby, a 15-year-old boy, and a 17-year-old girl, the Chicago Tribune reports.
The mother of one 25-year-old man, an aspiring cook injured in the mass shooting, was quoted in the Tribune as saying, “Out here it’s hard for a boy, no matter what you try to do with your life, no matter how you try to change … it’s hard.”
Shell casings found at the scene, Cornell Square Park, the 7.62 × 39 (mm) type, are consistent with witness reports that an AK-47, military-style assault rifle was used in the attack. If that’s the case, the shooting provides little support for either side in the gun-control debate: control measures for military weapons have much more of a consensus than those for handguns.
The park, while not claimed as turf by any gang, is gang-infested, but the infestation falls below the threshold that would cause Chicago police to flood it with officers as part of an “impact zone,” the Tribune reports. Some sources suggested to reporters that the shooting was part of ongoing struggles between the Black P Stones gang and the Gangster Disciples.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel reportedly attended a prayer vigil Friday, where he was very encouraging to residents and discouraging to gangs, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. “The parks in the city of Chicago belong to the families of the city of Chicago. The streets of the city of Chicago belong to the families of the city of Chicago. The front stoops of our homes belong to the families of the city of Chicago,” the paper quoted him as saying.
Homicides are down in the city so far in 2013, compared to the same period last year, the Sun-Times noted: only 305 people (!!) have been killed so far this year, compared to 389 last year up to this point, police records show.
Real-world examples in class
Educators, encouraged to use “real-world” examples to engage students, often completely miss the boat on what constitutes the “real world” for their students. One young person in the above story suffered the loss of a sibling on Labor Day and then injury to another relative in this shooting. It’s hard to put that in perspective, but I’m pretty sure our current attempts to bring students’ real worlds into the classroom missed the mark with that one individual.
The majority of “real worlds” don’t parallel the lives of young people in our impoverished city neighborhoods, though, and I’m certainly not suggesting we use weapons or other dangerous materials in an attempt to simulate the real world. But although the example of losing a relative or friend in a shooting is extreme, it’s still a metaphor for other losses faced by kids who sit in our classrooms. That’s their real world.
The theory behind incorporating students’ real worlds into our lesson plans is illustrated in this story in that it’s easier for a kid to learn about the dangers of a Chicago park if he sees someone shot in that park than if a parent or teacher just says, “This park is dangerous.” How can we bring similar realities into lesson plans for our own students?
The push to bring the real world into lessons is driven even harder by the Common Core. In math, for instance, the Common Core provides examples for many of the standards, but it never actually specifies how the standards are to be taught in classrooms. This is where we need teachers.
For example, what can we teach kids about using formulas by having them list what they ate for breakfast? Well, we can give them the formula for basic metabolism (metabolic rate = basal metabolic rate + activity metabolic rate) and determine how many hours it took to burn off what they ate for breakfast. Note that some kids in the class will eat very healthy breakfasts while others eat breakfasts with low nutritional value. This is yet another opportunity—not in math, but another opportunity nonetheless—to spike kids’ learning potential. But the point is, it connects the lesson to what’s happening in kids’ real world.
Perhaps some kids will eat two Pop-tarts and a sugared beverage for breakfast. That’s 420 calories for the two Pop-tarts and about 140 in a 12-ounce can of Coca-Cola. A teacher might not think this is a good breakfast, but we need to take the opportunity to learn the math first. The sixth-grade math standard 6.EE.A.2c says students should be able to “evaluate expressions at specific values of their variables. Include expressions that arise from formulas used in real-world problems.” Perfect. How many hours will it take to burn off 560 calories if the student walked to school for 30 minutes and otherwise sat at his desk?
The answer will be different for each student, of course. The Common Core doesn’t lend itself to problems like those we ask on our current versions of standardized tests, which feature items that tend not to involve the student’s personal experiences or real world at all. That’s an inherent problem in any current multiple-choice question. In the classroom, however, we can better engage students.
The same would be true for many other examples that fully address the standards of the Common Core but incorporate students’ real-life experiences. In many cases, those real-world experiences will involve pain, suffering, great joy, friendship, family members, boyfriends and girlfriends, and so on, which may be beyond the experience of teachers.
This is where teachers need to remember the value of using real-world experiences in the service of teaching and to remember that it is often impossible and sometimes counterproductive when it comes to maximizing learning to “protect” students from failure. Sometimes it’s better to take those failures as opportunities to learn, not just about life but about math as well. The more comfortable students are seeing the world in terms of math, science, engineering, and technology, the more able they’ll be to succeed as adults.
This report should in no way lessen the importance of stopping violence in our cities, but it’s just a reminder that when we say “real world,” sometimes we don’t know what we’re talking about. My thoughts and prayers are with all those victimized in the Chicago shooting Thursday. I’m glad no one was killed in this incident, and I’m grateful for what we can learn from your strength and courage.
