Understanding Community Context in Teaching: College Admission Essay Sample

At the core of a successful leader is a strong sense of personal responsibility. In this global economy, that means taking the initiative to understand the culture of people with whom we work. When I was teaching, I learned that the only truly effective way for me to lead my students was by understanding the culture in which they lived. It took a student named Tony to teach me this.

My second year teaching, I entered the classroom expecting to really have everything under control. After all, I had already spent an entire year in the classroom; this was supposed to be the year I knew what to do. Then I met Tony. From day one, Tony refused to do any of his homework. He began failing the class within the first month because he came to class unprepared every single day. I tried everything I could think of to get Tony to start studying and doing his homework. I came up with incentives to reward him for coming to class prepared and offered to stay late at school so that he could study in the classroom, but every attempt I made seemed futile. I called home frequently to speak with his mother, but she spoke limited English and her work schedule was so demanding that she wasn’t able to be home in order to monitor Tony’s homework. During class, Tony participated and was clearly able to understand the new material, yet I constantly struggled to invest him in studying and completing his work outside of class.

A couple of months into the school year, I was speaking to the mother of one of my other students after school and learned that she was Tony’s aunt. She lived on the same street as Tony and he would usually go home with his cousin after school. I mentioned that Tony wasn’t completing any of his homework for my class, and she told me that she would be able to oversee his homework and make sure that it was completed. Immediately, Tony’s performance in class was much better and his grades improved dramatically, with Tony earning a B at the end of the semester.

What struck me the most was that had I taken more of an initiative to understand the community where I was teaching, I would have learned that the Fifth Ward of Houston was comprised mostly of families that had been living there for generations. Many of my students had at least one family member in their grade and the majority had a family member that was in the same school. Had I understood this, I most likely would have tried to find out more about Tony’s family initially and would have learned that while his mother worked evenings, his aunt was available to monitor his homework.

This experience taught me that if I am going to be successful in working with people from other backgrounds, I need to take the time and initiative to understand their culture.