Post #1: The Beginning of Travel & Education

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness. – Mark Twain

Just a simple quote written by Mark Twain can mean so much in the world of education.  One of the biggest problems that we face in education is closing the achievement gap of academic success between minorities students. In a study (Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups 2017) released by the National Center for Education Statistics, has shown that there has been a constant decrease in the gap, but yet it still exist. This brings up the question, "What is being done to close this gap? How, after a century or more, are minority students achieving academic success?

From one of the books that I read, Black School White School: Racism and Educational (Mis) Leadership, some of the most common reasons that the education gap exist is because many teachers of different ethnic backgrounds have this "failure" mentality stereotype of minority students. Many of them are not enrolled or even encourage to enroll in AP courses or the IB program. Even within the black community, sometime value is not put on education as many low-income families are just trying to make it in the world and many students that are born into these families sometimes have to miss school to work and support their families.

Another thing that I have noticed is that, there has been a constant rise in English as a Second Language (ESL) student. When I was in my Educator Preparatory Institute (EPI) program, one of the things they stressed is how beneficial and how pressing it is for teachers to get the ESL certification. Based on a recent statistics from the Nation Center for Education Statistics (2018), the amount of English Language Learners has had an increase from 3.8 million to 4.8 million over a 15 year span with 77% of them being Hispanic.

This then led me to the thought that traveling can be beneficial for education growth in terms of teachers being more open and understanding of the diverse cultures and their views on education. This will help them to be able to serve student of different backgrounds. As I continue to travel, this blog is to not only provide information about my travels but how these culture relate to and view education.