My experience in education has been fun and memorable with similar cultural experiences. I have attended all Catholic schools in elementary school, high school, and now Saint Joseph’s University as well. I can’t necessarily access Saint Joseph’s University yet due to little experience but through my previous educational experiences, I have seen and interacted with many different and unique students. Also, I have seen many teachers in action and their teaching styles. Even though the culture was the same at most of the schools, I always felt included and the teachers always wanted me to succeed.

     My first educational experience was at St. Dominic School in Northeast Philadelphia. In this co-Ed elementary school, the school consisted of mostly people around the neighborhood. The neighborhood was working/middle class. Most of the students were white Catholics but it started getting diverse as I got older. For most of my time at the school, I was one of the only minorities in the class as well as the school. The school consisted of mostly female teachers and all of them were white. But, I never had any issues of felt out of place because the environment was like a family. Boys and girls at the schools did have certain jobs and most of the heavy duty/manual labor jobs were given to the men and some girls started to question this in the seventh and eighth grade. I think the school mostly represented the local community as they always tried to give tuition breaks to parents knowing that not all of them can afford the tuition at their working salary. Also we were blue collar and showed our love for our local sports teams. I don’t think that they taught specifically for working class jobs. In the smaller grades I was taught in a teacher controlled lesson, but once I got to middle school we were allowed to be creative. At one point eighth grade we had to teach the class a lesson. So I disagree with Anyon’s findings somewhat,  because I was not taught a specific way due to socioeconomic factors. Instead I was taught in a variety of ways.  

After my elementary educational experience, I went down to street to Father Judge High School in Northeast Philadelphia. Father Judge was 2 mins around the corner from my elementary school, so the neighborhood was mostly the same with middle/upper working class people. The students came from many areas all around the city of Philadelphia mostly because of the students family members who previously attended the school. School was all boys and mostly white Catholics. Less than 10% of the students were minorities, but like my grade school it was a very inclusive environment. The school was different from when I was a freshman to a senior in the sense that it was run like a regular middle class school early, but as the years went on the school became high class and more preppy. While most of the teachers taught structurally, the school strived on allowing students to become whatever they wanted in life with a fanatic guidance department. No one was being unknowingly forced to jobs based on socioeconomic class which is another fault in Anyon’s argument about schools taking based on socioeconomic classes. 

     I have seen many changes in education in my schooling experiences so far. My grade school was not tracked while my high school was tracked. In grade school, my school was mostly inclusive of all students but they did not have the resources for all students. However, there were learning support centers for extra help during class time for select students. It was similar in my high school, but with tracking those students were mostly separated to their own track if they wanted to be or could be included but there was a choice. In most of the tracks at the high school, students strived to do well and become whatever they wanted to be. This was especially true for the top two tracks. The most of the bottom two tracks, wanted working class trade jobs or the military and did not really want to college. I like tracking, but as we have been reading in class, negative views on tracking can be validated since not all students are included in the same curriculum at the same grade level. The No Child Left Behind act would have had negatives and positives as students could get more help and programs if needed but more standardized test are a negative. My education was “typical” as it was tracked and there were many standardized test. In observing my field experience school, I find that today there are many resources in a “typical” education and many test to determine success of the student and the teacher. There seems to be a lot more assignments and grades to “get a better reading” of a students abilities.