Everyone is worried about the poor reading, math, and writing scores of American kids compared with kids in other industrialized countries. Out of 17 countries, we are dead last. Thomas Friedman wrote about how the next generation of Americans are going to hold the country back because of their weak science and math education. He talked to the CEO of Intel, a top U.S. corporation, who said he would rather hire young Americans but might have to hire better educated Chinese people if he has to. It seems
that there are three parts to any solution to the problem of how to make Americans better educated: change the kids, change the teachers, change the schools.
Changing the Students: In the future this could be a great solution and this is the reason why. Jewish people are only 0.2% of the world population, but 54% of world chess champions are Jewish, 27% of Nobel prize winners in physics are Jewish, and 31% of Nobel prizes in medicine are Jewish (New York Times, David Brooks). In the United States only 2% of the population is Jewish, but 21% of Ivy League students are Jewish, 37% of Academy Award winning directors are Jewish, 31% of the major philanthropists are Jewish, and 51 % of nonfiction Pulitzer Prize winners are Jewish. Being Asian is also
good. Asians only make up 4% of the U.S. population, but Harvard has 17% Asian students, and Stuyvesant High School is nearly 50% Asian. A Chinese/American doctor I read about said, “Of all the demographic factors we studied in relation to school performance, ethnicity was the most important…In terms of school achievement, it is better to be Asian than to be wealthy, to have non-divorced parents, or to have a mother who is able to stay at home full time.” John Gatto, in his Teacher of the Year speech, said his students were materialistic, cruel, and have no sense of the future. It seems as though kids need to have some Jewish or Asian genetic material to give them an intellectual edge. We might have to wait a couple of decades for this solution to the problem of how to make American kids smarter.
Changing the Schools: A big criticism of schools is that they have a structure that is so rigid it is like a factory. John Gatto says that schools are so full of rules and testing that they kill kids’ curiosity and keep them from using their imagination. Gatto says that when schools were started, they were based on German thinking about how to control the population and keep students from becoming rebels. The government liked that idea because they wanted workers who would do boring jobs in factories and help make other people and the country rich. Gatto thinks the purpose of schools today is still to dumb down future citizens so they won’t cause trouble demanding change and so that they will be uncritical consumers of whatever is marketed to them. There is some truth in this because people bought tons of SUVs when they could get a good deal on them even though they are terrible for the environment and dangerous to drive. Companies also need smart people to train to be inventors and leaders. More of the jobs available are going to be in technology companies that need smart people. If the companies have to be in other countries then the U.S. will lose jobs and money. It is not that easy changing schools to make students get interested in learning and work harder. Some of the ideas Gatto had about how to make schools develop kids better have been adopted by SOF like the community service requirement to gets students out in the real world so they can learn by doing and the exhibition requirements, which are independent study projects where the students have more say in deciding what they want to learn.
Changing the Teachers: Paulo Freire wrote about the bad “banking system” of teaching where the teacher just deposits information in students’ heads, and they just passively receive it. This system is about memorization and accepting whatever the teacher says without thinking for themselves. The better way of teaching is the “problem-posing system that involves more of an equal partnership between the teacher and the students who have dialogs and think more creatively about subjects. The “banking system” is easier for teachers because they don’t have to get as involved with their students. Dr. Lisa Delpit is an educator who talks about the importance of teachers making the effort to help black children catch up on some things like early reading skills that they did not come in knowing without separating them from the white children in the class. It would be easier for the teacher to send them to a remedial class, but that is not good for most of these children who are made to feel slow or stupid when they are not. They just do not get certain skills early at home although they do get other skills from their own culture that the white children might not get.
To make the educational system in this country better, it is necessary to change students, schools, and teachers. Getting students to change on their own is a big challenge (until they can get some Jewish or Asian cultural genes) because not everyone can be that motivated especially if they don’t get encouragement from home. Getting schools to change on their own is hard because they are institutions that have been doing things the same way for a long time. Teachers are the hope for change because they can have the best influence on the students and the school. That means the pressure to make American students into smarter grownups is all on the teachers. They need to get more training if they need it and be paid more so that more smart people will choose teaching as a career. They should also get paid more or get travel grants as incentives when their students show big improvement.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Monday, April 26, 2010
HW # 50 History(school)
Gatto – Against School
John Gatto, who is a retired teacher, describes the whole public school system in this country as if it was a factory that produces kids who can’t think for themselves because that is the whole idea. Schools are individual factories that control kids and teachers with rules and testing that kill kids’ curiosity and any ways of teaching that use teachers’ imagination. Gatto says that when the school system was started, it was based on German thinking about how to control the population and keep them from being rebels. The people in power liked that idea because they needed workers who would do the boring jobs and make other people and the country really rich. Gatto thinks public schools still do this. He also says that public schools are designed not to produce leaders who could cause trouble and that they are also designed to produce people who are great consumers. He calls them “sitting ducks” for marketing things we don’t need like SUVs.
Gatto says that the purpose of today’s public schools is still to create dumbed down citizens who won’t get together and start rioting or something to demand their rights and who will buy lots and lots of stuff to keep big business big. There are only supposed to be a few leaders who will be taught to keep the whole system going. At first I thought that maybe public schools today aren’t the way they are in a negative way (being boring and not trying to develop all the kids) because of evil (selfish) people in power. Maybe they are just out of date because no one has figured out how to change them. When I think more about this, I think he makes a lot of great points. People in power want to stay in power, and they don’t want trouble. People in power also want people who support them to make a lot of money to make the country wealthy. They don’t want a lot of people saying that SUVs aren’t safe and hurt the environment. Now we have Obama in power. It seems like a good time for people who want change in the public schools to make their case now. The things Gatto suggests like “being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids to truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then” sound like great ideas to me if I am understanding what he means. I think it’s a great idea for kids to pursue something they are good at or have a real interest in and be given the time to do that. It’s just that it takes some great teachers to help all the kids in a big class discover what it is they could get really interested in.
Gatto – The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher
Gatto writes about how he gets awards as a teacher not for teaching subjects that will inspire and develop kids’ minds but for teaching school. He describes how he teaches school by doing what the “central control” wants him to do: 1. has kids stay in the classroom and know their place (smart class, dumb class, something in between); 2. teaches kids to react to bells like a trained animal (show some interest after the starting bell and then drop everything with the ending bell); 3. teaches kids to give up all their individuality and get permission for everything); 4. teaches them the importance of conformity to whatever study subjects and rules he decides; 5. makes kids understand their self-worth based on the evaluation of people who hardly know them or what they can do; 6. teaches them that they are always being watched and should have no privacy or private time.
The irony of this essay is that it is written by a New York State Teacher of the Year who is trashing the whole school system. He describes school as a prison where kids have a number and can’t move around and teachers are the prison guards, keeping them in line. The teacher is a dictator, and kids have to conform or else. As in his other article he makes the point that school is a place designed historically to keep the poor, the middle class, and any creative thinkers in their place. Important lessons like self-reliance and perseverance, and caring about others aren’t taught. Kids today are really doomed because when they go home, they have a limited life there too. They are not having time with their families or community members the way they did in the old days. They are mostly watching television, listing to Ipods, or going online – doing pretty passive stuff. According to Gatto, everybody should be glad that this is what kids are doing: just conforming and not developing much as individuals so they won’t rock the boat and will keep buying stuff I guess.
Gatto – Teacher of the Year Acceptance Speech
John Gatto’s Teacher of the Year speech is like a proclamation demanding the death of schools in the U.S. Schools aren’t doing their job because we are 19 in a ranking of 19 industrial nations in reading, writing, and arithmetic. According to Gatto, schools only teach students how to take orders not how to think for themselves. They also create a caste system with homeless people at the bottom so they are a danger to society and to humanity. The combination of school and television for today’s kids is a special killer. Kids don’t learn how to teach or entertain themselves. They are dependent on others. Gatto says his students are also materialistic, cruel, and have no sense of the future. They live in a boring present.
This speech is so anti-school that it makes me think that Gatto was exaggerating to make a point. He talks about home schooling being a great alternative to regular school. And he says that home schooled kids are way ahead of other kids with their ability to think. Home schooling sounds like a terrible idea to me. First of all I think kids should be in social groups of people their own age. Second, many families don’t have a stay at home parent who can do the schooling, and many parents wouldn’t be great teachers. At times Gatto seems to wish it was the 1800s again when a lot of people lived on farms, and kids could have jobs on the farm and learn from adults. Some of his ideas about how to make schools better have been adopted by SOF like the community service requirement to get students out in the real world so they can learn by doing and the exhibitions, which are independent study projects where the students and have more say in what they are working on.
Freire – Chapter 2 Pedagogy of the Oppressed
This whole chapter, which was heavy reading to say the least, was making a contrast between the “banking” concept of education and the “problem-posing” concept of education. The “banking” concept is that the teacher just injects information in the student’s head, who just passively receives it, files it, and stores it. It is an extremely passive process. The “problem-posing” concept involves more of an equal partnership between the teacher and the student who have dialogues and think creatively about subjects to have a deeper understanding of them and try to think in new ways about them. The “banking” system is about memorization and accepting whatever the teacher says. People in power called the oppressors like the “banking” system of education because it trains people to accept the status quo. The oppressors hate the “problem-posing” concept because it makes minds question everything and could lead to the overthrow of them. The teacher who uses the “problem-posing” method of teaching is developing the individuality of students and giving them some power. The oppressors would say forget that.
This was sort of a philosophical criticism of the kind of teaching that produces conformists. That is the “banking” model where information is taken in but not explored or considered in a creative way the could give the student some real knowledge about it. The “problem-posing” model is more of an existential one, where as we actually learned, the student would be creating his own existence and his own humanity not just being an automaton, who is not really human because he or she is not really thinking for
himself or herself. I think the idea is that the only way society can get better is if there is a “problem-posing” education model used. Otherwise, nothing will change because the people in power want to stay in power.
Delpit – Silenced Dialogue
Dr. Lisa Delpit is a educator and writer who talks about the cultural conflict that happens for African-American kids because they don’t come from the “culture of power” that the schools operate on. She talks about how black children don’t come to school when they are very young having as many early reading skills as white children. They can be put automatically in a remedial program when they don’t need that. They just need a little of the teacher’s time to catch up, and they can do that quickly and stay in the same
classroom. She talks about the codes that “relate to linguistic forms, communication strategies, and presentation of self, that is ways of talking, ways of writing, ways of dressing, and ways of interacting.” Kids who grow up not in the “culture of power” are at a big disadvantage, and it isn’t because they don’t have their own rich culture. It is because the people from the “culture of power” don’t even think about its existence.
I understand completely what Dr. Delpit is talking about. Black kids do come from a different culture that has great strengths but it isn’t the “culture of power.” It think she is right when she says that even liberal white people don’t really want to talk about this fact because it is “uncomfortable.” They want everyone to be treated equally. But black kids do need a little extra help when they are very young, and it shouldn’t be separate remedial help. That makes it seem as though they are stupid or slow. They aren’t. They just need to catch up on some things they weren’t taught at home. Also, I thought it was interesting about the student in the writing class who didn’t just want other students commenting on her work. She said that black culture teaches you to be creative and improvise. What she wanted was help with structure. Cross-cultural understanding is obviously still not so great in schools.
Interview – Mr. Manley
Mr. Manley made the following points about his views on schools and education:
He prefers being at a school like School of the Future that isn’t a Regents school that deals in too much information injection.
He likes the idea of exhibitions and thinks they are way superior to Regents tests.
He went to Columbia Teachers College and learned progressive teaching methods
that are more interactive than methods that are common at other public high schools.
4. He likes to use comedic personality and experience as a comic to communicate as
a teacher.
Mr. Manley obviously is not a fan of the “banking” concept of educating kids, where information is poured or injected into heads and learning is a completely passive experience. He supports the “problem-posing” method of teaching that is more of a partnership with kids contributing to their own learning. He likes dialog in the classroom, and he can get more of it by being funny and getting the kids involved because they are having a good time. He encourages a lot of conversation in the classroom. He also moves around the room a lot encouraging every kid to participate.
John Gatto, who is a retired teacher, describes the whole public school system in this country as if it was a factory that produces kids who can’t think for themselves because that is the whole idea. Schools are individual factories that control kids and teachers with rules and testing that kill kids’ curiosity and any ways of teaching that use teachers’ imagination. Gatto says that when the school system was started, it was based on German thinking about how to control the population and keep them from being rebels. The people in power liked that idea because they needed workers who would do the boring jobs and make other people and the country really rich. Gatto thinks public schools still do this. He also says that public schools are designed not to produce leaders who could cause trouble and that they are also designed to produce people who are great consumers. He calls them “sitting ducks” for marketing things we don’t need like SUVs.
Gatto says that the purpose of today’s public schools is still to create dumbed down citizens who won’t get together and start rioting or something to demand their rights and who will buy lots and lots of stuff to keep big business big. There are only supposed to be a few leaders who will be taught to keep the whole system going. At first I thought that maybe public schools today aren’t the way they are in a negative way (being boring and not trying to develop all the kids) because of evil (selfish) people in power. Maybe they are just out of date because no one has figured out how to change them. When I think more about this, I think he makes a lot of great points. People in power want to stay in power, and they don’t want trouble. People in power also want people who support them to make a lot of money to make the country wealthy. They don’t want a lot of people saying that SUVs aren’t safe and hurt the environment. Now we have Obama in power. It seems like a good time for people who want change in the public schools to make their case now. The things Gatto suggests like “being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids to truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she needs in order to take a risk every now and then” sound like great ideas to me if I am understanding what he means. I think it’s a great idea for kids to pursue something they are good at or have a real interest in and be given the time to do that. It’s just that it takes some great teachers to help all the kids in a big class discover what it is they could get really interested in.
Gatto – The Six-Lesson Schoolteacher
Gatto writes about how he gets awards as a teacher not for teaching subjects that will inspire and develop kids’ minds but for teaching school. He describes how he teaches school by doing what the “central control” wants him to do: 1. has kids stay in the classroom and know their place (smart class, dumb class, something in between); 2. teaches kids to react to bells like a trained animal (show some interest after the starting bell and then drop everything with the ending bell); 3. teaches kids to give up all their individuality and get permission for everything); 4. teaches them the importance of conformity to whatever study subjects and rules he decides; 5. makes kids understand their self-worth based on the evaluation of people who hardly know them or what they can do; 6. teaches them that they are always being watched and should have no privacy or private time.
The irony of this essay is that it is written by a New York State Teacher of the Year who is trashing the whole school system. He describes school as a prison where kids have a number and can’t move around and teachers are the prison guards, keeping them in line. The teacher is a dictator, and kids have to conform or else. As in his other article he makes the point that school is a place designed historically to keep the poor, the middle class, and any creative thinkers in their place. Important lessons like self-reliance and perseverance, and caring about others aren’t taught. Kids today are really doomed because when they go home, they have a limited life there too. They are not having time with their families or community members the way they did in the old days. They are mostly watching television, listing to Ipods, or going online – doing pretty passive stuff. According to Gatto, everybody should be glad that this is what kids are doing: just conforming and not developing much as individuals so they won’t rock the boat and will keep buying stuff I guess.
Gatto – Teacher of the Year Acceptance Speech
John Gatto’s Teacher of the Year speech is like a proclamation demanding the death of schools in the U.S. Schools aren’t doing their job because we are 19 in a ranking of 19 industrial nations in reading, writing, and arithmetic. According to Gatto, schools only teach students how to take orders not how to think for themselves. They also create a caste system with homeless people at the bottom so they are a danger to society and to humanity. The combination of school and television for today’s kids is a special killer. Kids don’t learn how to teach or entertain themselves. They are dependent on others. Gatto says his students are also materialistic, cruel, and have no sense of the future. They live in a boring present.
This speech is so anti-school that it makes me think that Gatto was exaggerating to make a point. He talks about home schooling being a great alternative to regular school. And he says that home schooled kids are way ahead of other kids with their ability to think. Home schooling sounds like a terrible idea to me. First of all I think kids should be in social groups of people their own age. Second, many families don’t have a stay at home parent who can do the schooling, and many parents wouldn’t be great teachers. At times Gatto seems to wish it was the 1800s again when a lot of people lived on farms, and kids could have jobs on the farm and learn from adults. Some of his ideas about how to make schools better have been adopted by SOF like the community service requirement to get students out in the real world so they can learn by doing and the exhibitions, which are independent study projects where the students and have more say in what they are working on.
Freire – Chapter 2 Pedagogy of the Oppressed
This whole chapter, which was heavy reading to say the least, was making a contrast between the “banking” concept of education and the “problem-posing” concept of education. The “banking” concept is that the teacher just injects information in the student’s head, who just passively receives it, files it, and stores it. It is an extremely passive process. The “problem-posing” concept involves more of an equal partnership between the teacher and the student who have dialogues and think creatively about subjects to have a deeper understanding of them and try to think in new ways about them. The “banking” system is about memorization and accepting whatever the teacher says. People in power called the oppressors like the “banking” system of education because it trains people to accept the status quo. The oppressors hate the “problem-posing” concept because it makes minds question everything and could lead to the overthrow of them. The teacher who uses the “problem-posing” method of teaching is developing the individuality of students and giving them some power. The oppressors would say forget that.
This was sort of a philosophical criticism of the kind of teaching that produces conformists. That is the “banking” model where information is taken in but not explored or considered in a creative way the could give the student some real knowledge about it. The “problem-posing” model is more of an existential one, where as we actually learned, the student would be creating his own existence and his own humanity not just being an automaton, who is not really human because he or she is not really thinking for
himself or herself. I think the idea is that the only way society can get better is if there is a “problem-posing” education model used. Otherwise, nothing will change because the people in power want to stay in power.
Delpit – Silenced Dialogue
Dr. Lisa Delpit is a educator and writer who talks about the cultural conflict that happens for African-American kids because they don’t come from the “culture of power” that the schools operate on. She talks about how black children don’t come to school when they are very young having as many early reading skills as white children. They can be put automatically in a remedial program when they don’t need that. They just need a little of the teacher’s time to catch up, and they can do that quickly and stay in the same
classroom. She talks about the codes that “relate to linguistic forms, communication strategies, and presentation of self, that is ways of talking, ways of writing, ways of dressing, and ways of interacting.” Kids who grow up not in the “culture of power” are at a big disadvantage, and it isn’t because they don’t have their own rich culture. It is because the people from the “culture of power” don’t even think about its existence.
I understand completely what Dr. Delpit is talking about. Black kids do come from a different culture that has great strengths but it isn’t the “culture of power.” It think she is right when she says that even liberal white people don’t really want to talk about this fact because it is “uncomfortable.” They want everyone to be treated equally. But black kids do need a little extra help when they are very young, and it shouldn’t be separate remedial help. That makes it seem as though they are stupid or slow. They aren’t. They just need to catch up on some things they weren’t taught at home. Also, I thought it was interesting about the student in the writing class who didn’t just want other students commenting on her work. She said that black culture teaches you to be creative and improvise. What she wanted was help with structure. Cross-cultural understanding is obviously still not so great in schools.
Interview – Mr. Manley
Mr. Manley made the following points about his views on schools and education:
He prefers being at a school like School of the Future that isn’t a Regents school that deals in too much information injection.
He likes the idea of exhibitions and thinks they are way superior to Regents tests.
He went to Columbia Teachers College and learned progressive teaching methods
that are more interactive than methods that are common at other public high schools.
4. He likes to use comedic personality and experience as a comic to communicate as
a teacher.
Mr. Manley obviously is not a fan of the “banking” concept of educating kids, where information is poured or injected into heads and learning is a completely passive experience. He supports the “problem-posing” method of teaching that is more of a partnership with kids contributing to their own learning. He likes dialog in the classroom, and he can get more of it by being funny and getting the kids involved because they are having a good time. He encourages a lot of conversation in the classroom. He also moves around the room a lot encouraging every kid to participate.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
HW # 49 History(school)
a. In the film I was one of the "smart kids," who were all Asian except for me. I was the token black "smart kid," like Token in South Park. None of us had a speaking part. The only direction I received was to look sad when the teacher told us that we were just as useless as the rest of the class because all we cared about was our grades. As stupid as it sounds, not reacting required acting on my part(in addition to not laughing). In real life I like to make an effort with my work but I don't think about trying to be a smart kid. Of course I like getting good grades in the same way I like winning in sports. But, I don't dwell on the grades or on the wins and losses.
b. The message of our film, directed by Esther and written by Gavin, is that even a super/savior teacher has weaknesses that can get the best of him/her. In this case Mr. C, the teacher who is played by Will, has just lost his wife and
is drinking in the classroom as a result. The idea is that he feels that he has lost
everything, including his will (get it) to teach. I think that this loss is kind of
a gimick to show that teaching isn't easy and that ideally students have to try to
meet the teacher half way. If they don't, it's too much stress on the teacher, and
if he/she has personal life stress too, the teacher can just lose it. The tone of the film is depressing because the teacher is letting stereotypes of the kids affect how he treats them. There are the grade obsessed smart kids, superficial popular girls, the digital world cool kids, and the teachers lets them all have it.
There isn't any realization here on the part of the kids that maybe there is some
truth in what he says and no sympathy for this suffering guy.
c. This film is nothing like Dead Poets Society and Freedom Writers where the students respond to their teacher's quirky techniques. In Dead Poets Society, Mr.Kedding teaches the class about conformity through a walking exercise demonstrating how after a couple of steps the 3 boys who are walking in a row will eventually perform the same rhythmic walk. Mr. Kedding's goal during his tenure as English professor at Welton Academy is to teach his boys to come up with their own meaning of life and how they want to live it, in this case their own walking style. In Freedom Writers Mrs. Gruwell lays a long piece of tape across the middle of the classroom telling the kids that if a statement she has read applies to them that they should step on the tape. Mrs.Gruwell's goal through this exercise is to get her students (who are mostly gang members of black, Asian, and Latino descent) to realize that they are a lot more similar than they think hoping to promote a more caring environment in her classroom. Our class film seems so much more depressing in comparison to these films because Mr. Kedding and Mrs.Gruwell are instructing in a positive way while Mr. C is acting all negative. Also, in Dead Poets Society and Freedom Writers, Mr.Kedding's and Mrs.Gruwell's students actually care about them. In our film the students don't even react when Mr. C walks out.
d. The teacher/savior is an ideal. When teachers get their teaching certificates, they aren't savior certificates. The teachers aren't social workers (most of them) but in cities and maybe in other places too they might have to try to be to actually teach. So maybe in schools where kids are troubled and don't have parents to encourage them or be able to help them, teachers
should get social work training and be paid more. And maybe in more middle class schools there should be more incentives or penalties for kids to make an effort to meet the teacher half way. These teachers should be paid more too because they have to figure out how to inspire students who just aren't really into it, and that must be a huge challenge too. Teachers should have incentives too. There must be some fair ways to figure out how a teacher is trying to help all his/her kids develop their minds and then getting rewarded for it. It's really annoying to hear what these bankers are getting paid for contributing nothing to others or actually even harming others. People have to decide how important teaching really is and then invest in it just like they have to do with the environment.
b. The message of our film, directed by Esther and written by Gavin, is that even a super/savior teacher has weaknesses that can get the best of him/her. In this case Mr. C, the teacher who is played by Will, has just lost his wife and
is drinking in the classroom as a result. The idea is that he feels that he has lost
everything, including his will (get it) to teach. I think that this loss is kind of
a gimick to show that teaching isn't easy and that ideally students have to try to
meet the teacher half way. If they don't, it's too much stress on the teacher, and
if he/she has personal life stress too, the teacher can just lose it. The tone of the film is depressing because the teacher is letting stereotypes of the kids affect how he treats them. There are the grade obsessed smart kids, superficial popular girls, the digital world cool kids, and the teachers lets them all have it.
There isn't any realization here on the part of the kids that maybe there is some
truth in what he says and no sympathy for this suffering guy.
c. This film is nothing like Dead Poets Society and Freedom Writers where the students respond to their teacher's quirky techniques. In Dead Poets Society, Mr.Kedding teaches the class about conformity through a walking exercise demonstrating how after a couple of steps the 3 boys who are walking in a row will eventually perform the same rhythmic walk. Mr. Kedding's goal during his tenure as English professor at Welton Academy is to teach his boys to come up with their own meaning of life and how they want to live it, in this case their own walking style. In Freedom Writers Mrs. Gruwell lays a long piece of tape across the middle of the classroom telling the kids that if a statement she has read applies to them that they should step on the tape. Mrs.Gruwell's goal through this exercise is to get her students (who are mostly gang members of black, Asian, and Latino descent) to realize that they are a lot more similar than they think hoping to promote a more caring environment in her classroom. Our class film seems so much more depressing in comparison to these films because Mr. Kedding and Mrs.Gruwell are instructing in a positive way while Mr. C is acting all negative. Also, in Dead Poets Society and Freedom Writers, Mr.Kedding's and Mrs.Gruwell's students actually care about them. In our film the students don't even react when Mr. C walks out.
d. The teacher/savior is an ideal. When teachers get their teaching certificates, they aren't savior certificates. The teachers aren't social workers (most of them) but in cities and maybe in other places too they might have to try to be to actually teach. So maybe in schools where kids are troubled and don't have parents to encourage them or be able to help them, teachers
should get social work training and be paid more. And maybe in more middle class schools there should be more incentives or penalties for kids to make an effort to meet the teacher half way. These teachers should be paid more too because they have to figure out how to inspire students who just aren't really into it, and that must be a huge challenge too. Teachers should have incentives too. There must be some fair ways to figure out how a teacher is trying to help all his/her kids develop their minds and then getting rewarded for it. It's really annoying to hear what these bankers are getting paid for contributing nothing to others or actually even harming others. People have to decide how important teaching really is and then invest in it just like they have to do with the environment.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
HW # 48 Treatment for Savior/Teacher Movie
Mr. _________, a new teacher at __________ High School, an inner-city school in a poor neighborhood, experiments with different techniques to try to get 100% participation from his class. Currently he is projecting students’ writing on the walls and ceiling to give it an importance and make them feel invested in what they say. One student doesn’t want to play along. The teacher tells him to pursue some existential thought and the student says that he did. The teacher asks him to do more, and the kid gives him another short answer. The teacher says that the assignment was not meant to be quite that easy. The kid walks out of the class. The students tell the teacher that he embarrassed the kid. The teacher tells the class that they have to be tougher and be able to try any assignment and accept criticism.
Then the teachers tells the class that like Hercules they are going to get twelve
labors and that if they do them, they will get a special reward. The kid
who had been embarrassed says that the students in the class should be
able to give him - the teacher - twelve labors to do outside of the classroom
and that if he is tough enough to do them, he will earn their respect. The teacher said he should already have their respect because he is their
teacher and he is doing his best to teach them. The kid says respect doesn’t
come that easy in their neighborhood. The teacher accepts.
During one of the labors, the teacher almost gets killed. One of the students has to save him. After completing their labors the students and the teacher learn a lot about themselves and each other and get more respect for each other as well as greater self-respect.
Then the teachers tells the class that like Hercules they are going to get twelve
labors and that if they do them, they will get a special reward. The kid
who had been embarrassed says that the students in the class should be
able to give him - the teacher - twelve labors to do outside of the classroom
and that if he is tough enough to do them, he will earn their respect. The teacher said he should already have their respect because he is their
teacher and he is doing his best to teach them. The kid says respect doesn’t
come that easy in their neighborhood. The teacher accepts.
During one of the labors, the teacher almost gets killed. One of the students has to save him. After completing their labors the students and the teacher learn a lot about themselves and each other and get more respect for each other as well as greater self-respect.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
HW # 47 Class film preparation 1
1. In the film, on the first day of class the classroom is darkened and their are bean bags to sit on.
2. There is a computer on a desk in the middle of the room that is hooked up to a projector. There is a normal chair in front of the desk. The teacher asks a student to sit down and type the first sentence or two of an original story. The opening lines are projected onto a wall. Then the teacher asks every student to take a turn adding to the story.
3. The homework assignment is for each student to take the story as far as it goes and complete it.
4. The idea is for students to use each other's ideas to come up with their own ideas.
5. The teacher is like a hyperactive director of a play who who treats the students like paid actors who have to earn their salaries. Students have to contribute to group projects all the time like short scenes from plays, videos, and debates. No one is ever left out. No one can hide in the back of the room.
6. The teacher gives students quotes from books they've read and ask them to interpret them in some creative way on the spot. Kids can respond with humor and even good natured sarcasm.
7. The film focuses on specific kids with distinctive personalities/talents.
8. There are a couple of shy kids, angry kids, and arrogant kids. The teacher manages to get them engaged by acting out their roles and then watch themselves on video being themselves.
2. There is a computer on a desk in the middle of the room that is hooked up to a projector. There is a normal chair in front of the desk. The teacher asks a student to sit down and type the first sentence or two of an original story. The opening lines are projected onto a wall. Then the teacher asks every student to take a turn adding to the story.
3. The homework assignment is for each student to take the story as far as it goes and complete it.
4. The idea is for students to use each other's ideas to come up with their own ideas.
5. The teacher is like a hyperactive director of a play who who treats the students like paid actors who have to earn their salaries. Students have to contribute to group projects all the time like short scenes from plays, videos, and debates. No one is ever left out. No one can hide in the back of the room.
6. The teacher gives students quotes from books they've read and ask them to interpret them in some creative way on the spot. Kids can respond with humor and even good natured sarcasm.
7. The film focuses on specific kids with distinctive personalities/talents.
8. There are a couple of shy kids, angry kids, and arrogant kids. The teacher manages to get them engaged by acting out their roles and then watch themselves on video being themselves.
HW # 46 Research and Writing
2. Over the break I read The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark. The book follows an outspoken and unorthadox teacher named Miss Brodie and her 6 pupils at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls in Edinburgh, Scotland. Miss Brodie's goal is to turn her students into "the creme de la creme" or miniature versions of her idea of herself. "Give me a girl at an impressionable age, and she is mine for life!," Miss Brodie arrogantly proclaims. The 6 girls she teaches and that the book follows are known as the "Brodie bunch," and each girl has a distinctive personalty. The principal of the school, Miss Mackey detests Miss Brodie and makes many attempts to get her thrown out of the school by trying to get one of Brodie's bunch to give incriminating evidence against her. The book takes place in the 1930's, and Miss Brodie is a strong advocate of Facism, as is clearly shown by the admiration she shows herstudents for Benito Mussolini. Unfortunately, one student named Joyce Emily, who tries unscucessfully to join the "Brodie bunch" is encouraged by Miss Brodie to fight in the Spanish Civil War only to be killed in an accident when her train is attacked. Eventually, one of Miss Brodie's favorite students, Sandy betrays her and accuses her of Facism to the principal, Miss Mackey who quickley removes Miss Brodie from her school.
3. The subject of my research paper about schooling is about the impact of extraordinary teachers on their students. Since Miss Jean Brodie is an extraordinary teacher, she demonstrates an aspect of my subject and one that I hadn't initially thought about, which is the danger of a powerful personality.
4. This book describes a teacher who does capture the imagination of her students, and she does try to broaden their minds as any good teacher should do. The problem is that Miss Jean Brodie is a self-centered and arrogant teacher who wants to control her students' minds instead of teaching them to understand the world for themselves. The fact that she is an admirer of Mussolini and Facism shows in her totalitarian approach to guiding young girls' minds. Reading this book has made me think about the challenge for dynamic teachers not to let their teaching be too much about themselves and their own passions and prejudices, but about helping students develop their own passions and opinions.
3. The subject of my research paper about schooling is about the impact of extraordinary teachers on their students. Since Miss Jean Brodie is an extraordinary teacher, she demonstrates an aspect of my subject and one that I hadn't initially thought about, which is the danger of a powerful personality.
4. This book describes a teacher who does capture the imagination of her students, and she does try to broaden their minds as any good teacher should do. The problem is that Miss Jean Brodie is a self-centered and arrogant teacher who wants to control her students' minds instead of teaching them to understand the world for themselves. The fact that she is an admirer of Mussolini and Facism shows in her totalitarian approach to guiding young girls' minds. Reading this book has made me think about the challenge for dynamic teachers not to let their teaching be too much about themselves and their own passions and prejudices, but about helping students develop their own passions and opinions.
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