Understanding context is an enormous “part” of my job. The community and culture values of the communities that feed into our school are important to understand. The community members develop trust for the school and school personnel when one establishes the sense of knowing and relating to the communities everyday “realities” such as unemployment, drug problems, religion, economic gains, graduation rate history… However, understanding and accepting the culture norms are very different ideas.

We understand our school and community culture. We spend a great deal of time building trust and understanding from the community then working towards making suggestions that could lead to academic advances and opportunities for students and the community. We strive not to accept the norms of this society but press forward to make necessary changes that should lead to advancement.

It is imperative that we first understand the context and learn effective ways to initiate change. Without understanding the context, change has generally been avoided and viewed as negative.

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