Across the tracks: An autoethnography of navigating an urban middle school

This dissertation examines the lived experiences of a white middle school teacher thrust without experience into a struggling urban middle school populated with students of color and low socio-economic status. Although at the time the teacher was a successful and experienced Title1 educator, the new school was ranked by test scores to be one of the lowest in the state and was of a vastly different school culture. The school had been required to be reconstituted by the state, yet again, and the teacher was added to the new staff a few weeks into the school year. The purpose of this autoethnographic dissertation is to allow the lived experience of the researcher to provide cultural insights into a middle school which perennially struggles to pass the high stakes summative exams required by the state’s accountability system. The school was once the segregated high school of the district and is surrounded by a neighborhood which has been intentionally and systematically segregated and economically under-developed for almost 100 years. Generational poverty and the accountability system itself are identified as the situational context of the struggles of the school to be deemed successful. The conflicts, cultural boundaries, and challenges the students and teachers must navigate within this setting are explored by the lived experiences of the educator and placed into context by critical theory, critical race theory, and the existing literature. This autoethnography provides the reader the opportunity to be shown urban middle school students and teachers navigating obstacles to academic success in a school designated as requiring improvement by the state and perennially in turn-around status. The autoethnography is in the form of a novel, which allows the reader to vicariously explore the school, its students, and the perceptions of the teacher.
The implications of the effects of the accountability via high stakes summative testing paradigm on the cultural outlooks of administrators is delineated. Changes in the curriculum, treatment of the teachers, the high stakes testing paradigm, and the training of administrators is suggested. The uplifting of voices of competent educators of color working within such schools is enjoined.

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