Not exactly teaching related... but sort of.

The first school I worked at, let's called it Yut is a school located in a not so great neighborhood, while school two (let's call it Yee) is located in a very odd part of town where there are lots of wealthy middle/middle upper folks mixed with hippies and homeless. The first few weeks of student teaching in Yut, my friend's stuff got stolen in the classroom she was working in. Throughout the semester, we had multiple break-ins and stuff stolen. But even in a more affluent area of Yee, there appears to break ins too. Those thieves sure are low to rob schools. Anyhoo, that's not what I was going at. In Yut, the Mandarin Immersion program I worked in, I often saw parents drop off their kids every morning. I would greet most of them and chat a little bit. I really envy these kids being able to brought to school by their parents; I was always dropped off by my grandma. I mean I love my grandma, but my parents were never around to even look at my homework. Which makes me wonder... why did I even do it? Haha. They never went to the parent-teacher conferences either, and I was always translating for my grandmother, so I could have gotten away with a lot of things as a kid. Darn, I could have slacked off in elementary school. Ok, back to student teaching! Yee is a very affluent public school with a strong PTA force to help the kids achieve their goals; every day I see parents waltzing around volunteering. Hell, there is a fieldtrip to the Academy of Science coming up and I can't even go as the student teacher because there are parents who have to do a lottery to chaperone! Well, fine by me. I can always go by myself outside of teaching. But man, these parents... don't they have jobs? Or other things to do? I mean it's great they can invest time and money in their kids' future... but I see a huge discrepancy between Yut and Yee. Money talks. These kids at Yee are learning more, have more resources, they get music, dance and LOTS of extra curricular activities... It's sad how the quality of public education varies so greatly even though these schools are suppose to be getting the same amount of funding from the government.

equality does not=equity