Megan Daughtry Educ 1330 Prof. Kris Sloan April 25, 2008 Travis Heights Elementary: A Look Inside Driving down the road in my little blue mini cooper with the windows down and the wind in my hair. This neighborhood is the typical place to go for a Sunday afternoon drive. The rolling hills lull you into a relaxation that nothing, not even that person that cut you off back there at the obvious stop sign, could get in the way of. Travis Heights, a neighborhood that seems to be stuck in a time where everyone talks to their neighbors still, have block parties, kids play outside. It was quite serene. Nestled peacefully in this neighborhood is Travis Heights Elementary School. Before I dove into this school I did some research on the neighborhood first and what I found was exactly what I would come to find in the statement above. At the Small Planet Guide website they describe Travis Heights as a community with streets that roll up and down a series of small rises that give some residents great views of downtown while others look out on quiet woodland hollows” (SPG). They talk about how the
neighborhood is very political and are very involved in local politics. The neighborhood sits south of the Colorado River and is in between I35 South and South Congress Avenue. This area was first developed in the 1880s and is known for its high-priced houses. Right now the main issue at hand in Travis Heights revolves around new development of real estate. There is a proposal to build new, very posh houses in
this area and get rid of many of the bungalow style houses that have been here since the early 1900s. The citizens are not pleased. From what I found online they describe Travis Heights as picturesque, nostalgic, and quaint. These are all words that I would say perfectly describe this community. The next step I took was to drive around the neighborhood. I drove for a good half hour and got lost in this surprisingly big community. I am a bit shy when it comes to people I do not know so did not go up to anyone in the neighborhood. Plus as serene as this neighborhood was I was a bit weary about being a girl, alone, in unfamiliar territory. So, I chose a place with a lot of activity. I visited Curra’s grill a local tex-mex style eatery in the neighborhood. I walked in asked for a taco to go and an interview with someone who was willing to be interviewed. The bartender volunteered and was happy to help. His name was Duy Le. He asked what the questions were for and after he heard I was studying to be an elementary school teacher he quickly obliged. He told me that he had lived in Travis Heights for two years and has worked in the area for four years. He told me he liked the area very much and that it was very liberal, but that he did not mind that. I asked him what he knew about Travis Heights Elementary and said that since he had no kids he did not know the inside workings, but has heard great things and knows that the community is very involved. I asked him what he liked and disliked most about Travis Heights and he said that he liked the trees and rolling hills. He said he had no dislikes.
After leaving the restaurant I did some more research on the school. The school was built in 1938, so was pretty old. I went to greatschools.net and found that parents rated this school four stars out of five. I found there are five hundred seventy four children that attend this school. Next I found an article in the Austin Chronicle that talked about the apartment complex Travis Park. I noticed these as I was leaving the house section of the community and they really seemed out of place and honestly not the sort of place you would want to be after dark. The principle of Travis Heights spoke about “a disproportionate number of discipline and
academic problems involve kids from the complex” (Nichols). The article described a stabbing that occurred just this past year and a number of drug dealings as well. It definitely showed “Another Side of Travis Heights” which is the fitting title of this article. Principle Lisa Robertson stated “at least one forth (100-150 students) of the entire school population of children live in the complex and that they have lost parent support because of this” (Robertson). I wanted to see things for myself though. I had already been to Travis Heights once but had not read this article. When I called to make my appointment to observe a class for an hour I found the receptionist to be very sweet and understanding. She called me back with in the hour and let me come the next day. As I walked to Mrs. Balthrop’s third grade class I saw things I had not seen from my previous visit. I discovered that the school was very big actually. I walked to another building and in between the two main buildings there was a little garden. On the side of the building by the garden was a beautiful mural of a nature scene. It was much prettier than any school I attended in K-4.
The first things I noticed as I entered Mrs. Balthrop’s class were some pretty bright green curtains and a bunch of hand written stuff on oversized notebook paper posters. She was really layed back and knew her class like clockwork. I counted seventeen kids in her class but she said three were missing. She told me they were going to be doing the problem of the day once I arrived. I sat in a tiny chair and just watched. She had a problem written out on that same oversized notebook sheet and had all the kids gather around her. At the bottom of the page was a box with ABCD answer choices and bubbles next to each. I almost wanted to laugh because I quickly deducted that they were practicing for the TAKS test. After this they did one in a group and so she started talking to me. She said the Math TAKS was one week away and that for each section of the TAKS they do this every single day until the test. That’s a lot of jumbo paper if you ask me. She went on to say that nineteen out of the eighty four third graders did not pass the Reading TAKS. She thought that was not too bad though. I noticed that there was one table that was acting up quite a bit and a few that were talking and she had a really good teacher stare developed but she should after teaching for eleven years. All she did was count to five and by three if they were still rowdy she stared. It worked. I was surprised that she actually told me that “this class more than any she had taught before likes to talk and do not care about work and school.” I thought to myself though how many kids really want to go to school at that age though. I am sure there are some, but I remember loving to talk to my friends more than the actual work. She was very organized and I was overall pretty impressed with her room. I remembered what the article had said about one forth of the schools population being from that complex and tried to see if I could tell. I noticed that some of the kids clothing might
have been hand-me-downs but besides that there was only one kid that stuck out. He was wearing baggy clothes with a well-known rapper on his baggy shirt. I did not judge him right away but I could see how a teacher could. As cliché as it may sound he was the most disruptive in the class. I don’t know for sure if he lived in the “bad” side of Travis Heights, but one could assume. Lastly I interviewed a Teacher’s Assistant who had worked at Travis Heights for 9 years. She was very sweet and young looking for the sake of confidentiality her name was Miss TA. She explained to me that Travis Heights was a very tight knit community and that she liked it there because the staff all had a very close relationship. I asked her why she chose to work at Travis Heights and she said it was because her mom went here back in the 1940s. She said the toughest experience she has had at Travis Heights has been the fact that they overload the school with SBS kids (kids with Social Behavior skills) and that they are understaffed as well. This is actually something that was very apparent just from visiting the school. I asked her what she liked most about teaching and she said, “realizing that you might be the only constant in a child’s life is truly amazing” (TA). Lastly I asked her if there was anything she would change about the school or if she would keep it the way it was. She said that “Since this is such a tight knit community the parents are really involved which is a good thing but that the administration gives into the parent’s needs more often than they should” (TA). Some advice she gave me on teaching was to take things day by day, not to give up when you have had a hard one and not to get too personally involved (as in trying to fix a kids family situations) with a student because you will end up getting your heart broken.
Looking back, what I found online was very similar to what I actually saw in person. Although I will say that the two websites I sited were polar opposites. One talked about a sweet little, pie on the windowsill type community while the other article spoke of drug busts, shootings and misbehaving kids. There honestly was no in between. Now, when I actually visited did I see this obvious difference in the children? Honestly, not really. As I mentioned earlier I was able to pick out one or two kids who were a bit disruptive and dressed a bit “punkish” but this does not mean that they were from the bad side of Travis Heights. I could see where a teacher might treat a student differently if they were from the “poor side of town”, even it is subconscious. I remembered the reading we did in class from Sonia Nieto’s paper on racism and discrimination. There are a lot of biases people have without even knowing that they have these biases. She talks about how “our society tends to categorize people according to both visible and invisible traits” (Nieto pg.45). Maybe the teacher in the class would not have reprimanded this little boy as much if he hadn’t been dressed like a rapper. Sometimes we do or make prejudiced decisions even if we as a person are not racist. In part A from just looking at the AEIS report I would say that it reflects a pretty honest image of the school. Of course the indicator cannot tell you about each individual child or how friendly the school was but it seemed to be a pretty good indicator of academics. In part B when I just drove around and looked at the school and googled it I would say my perceptions were overall confirmed. I had a feeling it would be a friendly cozy school, for the most part at least. One thing I did not know was how much the parents are involved at this school. I have always heard of how parents need to be more involved in a child’s school life and this school does not really have this problem.
In part C when I actually observed and asked questions I was surprised to find how much they really did focus on TAKS. I honestly thought going into this project that maybe everyone was just over-reacting about TAKS. Maybe it really is not one of the main focuses in schools. I was sorely wrong. I could not believe that over an hour of school just while I was there was spent on TAKS prep. I was not even convinced at first I thought maybe it was just that particular day. Nope wrong again, the teacher said that every day the students do an hour to an hour and a half of TAKS prep questions. From the Paul Farhi reading on the Five Myths of U.S. schools his last myth states. “How we stack up on international tests matters, if only for national pride” (Farhi, pg. 3). He later goes on to say that “the American drive is to be the biggest and best at everything” and this is exactly what I saw in the classroom that day.
Overall Travis Heights Elementary seems like a pretty good school. There is a separation between rich and poor kids though and this could definitely have something to do with Travis Park Apartments. The Staff was friendly, the neighborhood was great and I would recommend a parent send their child here. It has been a learning experience on so many different levels and I would go back and observe at Travis Heights any time.
Work Cited Farhi, Paul. Five Myths About U.S. student Achievement. 21 Jan. 2007. Read March 2008. Nichols, Lee. Another Side of Travis Heights: Residents and Austin Interfaith target blighted apartments. The Austin Chronicle Online. 19 October 2007. Interviewed Principle Robertson, Lisa. Accessed April 15, 2008. http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A551931 Nieto, Sonia. Racism, Discrimination, and Expectations of Student Achievement. Read March 2008. Small Planet Guide. Accessed April 12, 2008. http://austin.smallplanetguide.com/rentals/index.php?p=travis_heights_austin_nei ghborhood