I had never heard of this movie until my friend bought Freedom Writers. It came with it and was full of big names - Brendan Fraser, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck - so why had we never heard of it before? Well, it was made in 1992 before any of them were big. Anyway, I sat down to watch it and was reminded, very strongly, of Dead Poets Society. In School Ties, which is set in the 1950s, a senior from Pennsylvania, David, goes off to St. Matthew's, a private school, to play football. One catch - he's Jewish. So he hides that he's Jewish because none of the guys like Jews. Of course they find out, but I don't want to tell too much more of the plot and give it away.
One of the teacher's in this movie, Mr. Cleary, is horrible. He pushes one of the students so far that he loses it, cracks, and has to leave the school. The amount of pressure that is on these students is amazing. Most of them are fourth or fifth generation boys whose families have gone to Harvard or Princeton for years. They have to make it in or else they have failed. Putting that much pressure on students is not a good thing. One of the boys, Charlie Dillon, tells a story about a boy who hung himself because he didn't get into Harvard.
The Anti-Semitism in this movie is also very apparent. From the first night that David is there, Jew jokes are heard. You can tell that he is uncomfortable with them, but doesn't say anything because the view that his friends have of Jews is so very stereotypical. This is, of course, one of the main conflicts in the movie, because when David's friends find out he is Jewish they do some horrible things to him, including blaming cheating on a test on him. This is not so very different from schools today, and it is not only limited to private schools. In schools where there is little diversity and no teaching of that diversity, stereotypes flourish and are taken as truth. David's teachers did nothing to dispel the stereotypes, and the head of the school is even seen to have and believe stereotypes about the Jewish people. It should be schools' jobs to teach about diversity and other cultures and belief systems so that these hurtful stereotypes are less likely to take hold and be believed. Multicultural education should be a fundamental part of our curriculum so that the things that are portrayed in movies like this are not repeated in our classrooms and society.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Sunday, April 22, 2007
The Shame of the Nation
The Shame of the Nation by Jonathan Kozol is one of those books that really opens your eyes to what it is really like outside the Luther bubble and away from ideals and how things should be. His book explores apartheid schooling in the United States today and the resegregation that is happening in many inner-city schools. This book really went along with the movie Freedom Writers and both make me feel as though I would like to teach in an inner-cit school for a little while.
Some of what Kozol wrote was shocking and both frustrated and angered me. He talked about how students are packed into buildings that haven't been renovated in over 30 years and are not able to accommodate the hundreds of extra students that attend classes in them. He writes about rats in classrooms and teachers trying to teach in closets or foyers. He described lunch shifts that started at 9:30 and went until two, and the children waiting in lines for over a 1/2 hour before they even got to the lunch line.
He also writes about the curriculum that are used in some of these schools. Like in Freedom Writers the students are not given actual books but workbooks for subjects like math and reading. There are, of course, standards that the teachers must meet and follow if they want to keep their jobs. The most shocking part of this book was when Kozol talked about rubrics and the language used in the classroom. The language reflected the standards and rote-and-drill curriculum that the teachers had to use. The students were labeled as Level 1s, 2s, 3s, or 4s - 4 being the highest level, one being rock bottom. In one school a principal had the children stand up according to what level they were. He did not even have the Level Ones stand up, it was as if they didn't exist. Then on top of that, the children start picking up on this language and use it to refer to each other. Other words like "Meaningful Sentences" or "Word mastery" are also use, and the students do not know what the words mean, like "mastery" or "meaningful, outside the context that they are used in school. "Word Mastery" is the number of words you can learn in five days or when you get a 100, explained 2 students to Kozol. That is just sad. And the rubrics! One school had a Rubric for Filing - for making a line! For goodness sake! Teachers have better things to do than to make sure that their students are Level Four filers and that they are showing pride as they file from place to place. I would like to know how they expect these children to have pride when they are in buildings that should be condemned, are crowded 30 or more to a classroom, and are not given proper materials to work with.
I feel that this book, or one very like it, is one that all Education Majors should read, but not be forced to read. It is after all like 300 and some pages. As perspective teachers we need to be aware of what is going on in our schools, why it is going on, and what we can do to change it.
Some of what Kozol wrote was shocking and both frustrated and angered me. He talked about how students are packed into buildings that haven't been renovated in over 30 years and are not able to accommodate the hundreds of extra students that attend classes in them. He writes about rats in classrooms and teachers trying to teach in closets or foyers. He described lunch shifts that started at 9:30 and went until two, and the children waiting in lines for over a 1/2 hour before they even got to the lunch line.
He also writes about the curriculum that are used in some of these schools. Like in Freedom Writers the students are not given actual books but workbooks for subjects like math and reading. There are, of course, standards that the teachers must meet and follow if they want to keep their jobs. The most shocking part of this book was when Kozol talked about rubrics and the language used in the classroom. The language reflected the standards and rote-and-drill curriculum that the teachers had to use. The students were labeled as Level 1s, 2s, 3s, or 4s - 4 being the highest level, one being rock bottom. In one school a principal had the children stand up according to what level they were. He did not even have the Level Ones stand up, it was as if they didn't exist. Then on top of that, the children start picking up on this language and use it to refer to each other. Other words like "Meaningful Sentences" or "Word mastery" are also use, and the students do not know what the words mean, like "mastery" or "meaningful, outside the context that they are used in school. "Word Mastery" is the number of words you can learn in five days or when you get a 100, explained 2 students to Kozol. That is just sad. And the rubrics! One school had a Rubric for Filing - for making a line! For goodness sake! Teachers have better things to do than to make sure that their students are Level Four filers and that they are showing pride as they file from place to place. I would like to know how they expect these children to have pride when they are in buildings that should be condemned, are crowded 30 or more to a classroom, and are not given proper materials to work with.
I feel that this book, or one very like it, is one that all Education Majors should read, but not be forced to read. It is after all like 300 and some pages. As perspective teachers we need to be aware of what is going on in our schools, why it is going on, and what we can do to change it.
Freedom Writers
The movie Freedom Writers is one of those movies where when you watch it you say to yourself, "That's why I want to be a teacher." This movie followed a first year teacher through the first and second years of her teaching experience at an inner-city school in California that was primarily made up of "minority" students, and the movie followed her struggles with a group of students that had been labeled as trouble-makers and gang members.
One thing that really got me about this movie was the fact that the department head and the senior English teacher were so unhelpful. The fact that they wouldn't let Erin, the teacher, use any of the books really bothered me. It wasn't like anyone else was using them. The students needed to feel respected and part of that was being seen as valuable enough to have actual books. I think it was pretty amazing what Erin was willing to do to support her class. The senior English teacher really rubbed me the wrong way. When he asked the one student to give them the "black perspective" on the book The Color Purple, I was shocked. He was so clearly and outwardly racist when he talked with Erin in the teacher's lounge. As a teacher, you should be supportive of all your students, no matter what race they are from. He was so angry that the integration thing had "ruined the school" when it was probably the fault of people like him and the fact that people are not willing to look deeper than the skin a person has and were unwilling to enroll their white students with "gangsters". Anyway, more about that in my next blog.
The stories that the students told were very powerful and very moving. What they were able to experience in Erin's classroom is what I think real learning is. It shouldn't be all test scores and GPAs. Real learning can't be measured by a bubble test.
I think that this could be repeated in other classrooms in other schools, and it should be what we strive to repeat and instill that kind of learning in our students. Okay, so getting extremely famous people to come to schools might be a little different to replicate everywhere, but every teacher can work to bond her students, to make them see what they have in common, not what separates them. What the head of department said about this kind of teaching being wrong and a waste of time was very wrong. This is the kind of teaching that we dream about and hope that all of our children experience.
One thing that really got me about this movie was the fact that the department head and the senior English teacher were so unhelpful. The fact that they wouldn't let Erin, the teacher, use any of the books really bothered me. It wasn't like anyone else was using them. The students needed to feel respected and part of that was being seen as valuable enough to have actual books. I think it was pretty amazing what Erin was willing to do to support her class. The senior English teacher really rubbed me the wrong way. When he asked the one student to give them the "black perspective" on the book The Color Purple, I was shocked. He was so clearly and outwardly racist when he talked with Erin in the teacher's lounge. As a teacher, you should be supportive of all your students, no matter what race they are from. He was so angry that the integration thing had "ruined the school" when it was probably the fault of people like him and the fact that people are not willing to look deeper than the skin a person has and were unwilling to enroll their white students with "gangsters". Anyway, more about that in my next blog.
The stories that the students told were very powerful and very moving. What they were able to experience in Erin's classroom is what I think real learning is. It shouldn't be all test scores and GPAs. Real learning can't be measured by a bubble test.
I think that this could be repeated in other classrooms in other schools, and it should be what we strive to repeat and instill that kind of learning in our students. Okay, so getting extremely famous people to come to schools might be a little different to replicate everywhere, but every teacher can work to bond her students, to make them see what they have in common, not what separates them. What the head of department said about this kind of teaching being wrong and a waste of time was very wrong. This is the kind of teaching that we dream about and hope that all of our children experience.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
England
For this week's self-learning project, I decided that since I will be spending next year in England, I should learn a little bout the country and the culture. I started with finding Nottingham, where I will be attending classes, on a map and looking at its relation to London. That being accomplished, I thought that the next step would be to find out about some of the holidays that are celebrated in England. Of course they do not celebrate Thanksgiving or Independence Day in England, but one holiday they do have that differs from American holidays is Boxing Day. Boxing Day is the day after Christmas and dates back to the 800s. It was traditionally the day that the alms boxes in the churches were opened and the money given to the poor. Also, servants would get the day after Christmas off and their employers would box up their leftovers and send them with their servants.
Another area that I looked into was the lexical (vocabulary) differences between American English and British English. For example an ATM can be called a cash machine or cashpoint and what we call the first floor they call the ground floor. There were quite a few foods that they have that we do not, like bubble and squeak which is a dish of cooked cabbage fried with cooked potatoes and other vegetables. Looking at the words that they commonly use that we do not almost makes it look as though we speak to totally different languages.
Finally, I looked up some of the general cultural things like their government and the religion and social norms. Conservative dress is expected and people prefer to have a large personal space. One thing that I thought was interesting was that the English do not always look at you when speaking to you. Another thing that I found was that you should stand on the right side on escalators and avoid excessive hand gestures when talking. Through this learning project I have discovered that there are more differences than I thought and I will have to continue learning about England in the time leading up to my departure.
Another area that I looked into was the lexical (vocabulary) differences between American English and British English. For example an ATM can be called a cash machine or cashpoint and what we call the first floor they call the ground floor. There were quite a few foods that they have that we do not, like bubble and squeak which is a dish of cooked cabbage fried with cooked potatoes and other vegetables. Looking at the words that they commonly use that we do not almost makes it look as though we speak to totally different languages.
Finally, I looked up some of the general cultural things like their government and the religion and social norms. Conservative dress is expected and people prefer to have a large personal space. One thing that I thought was interesting was that the English do not always look at you when speaking to you. Another thing that I found was that you should stand on the right side on escalators and avoid excessive hand gestures when talking. Through this learning project I have discovered that there are more differences than I thought and I will have to continue learning about England in the time leading up to my departure.
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
Recycle
For anyone who has seen Bill Nye the Science Guy, the music videos at the end of each show will be vividly remembered. One of my favorites was RECYCLE a spin off of Aretha Franklin's RESPECT. Recycling is not only a concept discussed on children's t.v. shows; it is also an issue that should concern many of us as we live in a world where the average person accumulates about 4.5 pounds of garbage per day! How much of that could be reduced, reused, or recycled? This past week in my learning project, I set out to see how much paper I used and how I could reduce that amount. I also made an endeavor to recycle more of the paper that I used. I discovered that in an average week I print off about 30 pages for papers and reading materials. So if there are 2500 students at Luther printing off 30 pages a week that comes out to 75,000 sheets of paper printed off per week! And that would be in a week where no major papers are due and one does not have to print off multiple drafts for editing and in class workshops. This amount overwhelmed me, so I started thinking of ways that I could reduce my paper amount myself and ways that campus as a whole could do this.
Some of this printing, I found, could be reduced if professors would be more specific as to what needs to be handed in and what only needs to be read and reflected on. To type up a whole assignment and then find out you don't have to hand it in is not only frustrating but also wastes paper. Another way that I could reduce paper would be to print off only what I need to hand in. Much editing can be done on the computer and if you don't need a hard copy in class, you can email the paper to a friend to edit and send back to you. Also, not printing off online reading would reduce paper use a little bit. Printing doubled sided would also cut the amount of paper used by half. One problem with this is that Luther only has one double sided printer on campus. I think that it would be a good investment for Luther to replace all the printers on campus with ones that have double sided capabilities. This may cost a bit more in the beginning, but the amount of paper it would reduce would probably end up making up that cost difference. Reducing the amount of handouts that professors give to students would also reduce the amount of paper that we use. With the Katie cite, professors are able to post assignments and extras online. Many professors do not take advantage of this and end up overloading students with papers that they never look at. I think that the Ed. department switching from paper portfolios to electronic ones will also help me to personally reduce the amount of paper that I use. With the electronic system, LINCS sheets will no longer have to be printed - two copies for each one - and neither will the whole portfolio.
Looking ahead to when I have my own classroom, I can see this learning experience help to manage paper waste and over use. Limiting the amount of pages students can print, reducing the amount of handouts that I give, and, if possible, posting things online would all be very possible in an elementary or middle school classroom. With middle schoolers, this learning experience would also be a good thing to have them try for themselves to see if they could find other ways to reduce paper use in their own lives.
Some of this printing, I found, could be reduced if professors would be more specific as to what needs to be handed in and what only needs to be read and reflected on. To type up a whole assignment and then find out you don't have to hand it in is not only frustrating but also wastes paper. Another way that I could reduce paper would be to print off only what I need to hand in. Much editing can be done on the computer and if you don't need a hard copy in class, you can email the paper to a friend to edit and send back to you. Also, not printing off online reading would reduce paper use a little bit. Printing doubled sided would also cut the amount of paper used by half. One problem with this is that Luther only has one double sided printer on campus. I think that it would be a good investment for Luther to replace all the printers on campus with ones that have double sided capabilities. This may cost a bit more in the beginning, but the amount of paper it would reduce would probably end up making up that cost difference. Reducing the amount of handouts that professors give to students would also reduce the amount of paper that we use. With the Katie cite, professors are able to post assignments and extras online. Many professors do not take advantage of this and end up overloading students with papers that they never look at. I think that the Ed. department switching from paper portfolios to electronic ones will also help me to personally reduce the amount of paper that I use. With the electronic system, LINCS sheets will no longer have to be printed - two copies for each one - and neither will the whole portfolio.
Looking ahead to when I have my own classroom, I can see this learning experience help to manage paper waste and over use. Limiting the amount of pages students can print, reducing the amount of handouts that I give, and, if possible, posting things online would all be very possible in an elementary or middle school classroom. With middle schoolers, this learning experience would also be a good thing to have them try for themselves to see if they could find other ways to reduce paper use in their own lives.
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Finding Truth in Media
Aside from being one of the most disconnected lectures that I have ever heard in my life, Scott Simon's lecture was long and did not hold my attention very well. I thought that some of what he had to say was good, but he did not present it in a way that I was able to follow. He started out with some humor, but he was unable to tie the humor into the main point of his speech, which I am not sure he even got to. He used a lot of stories that were interesting, but very unconnected and in some of them I had no idea who or what he was talking about - probably because I do not read or watch the news very often, but he did not do a good job of explaining who the people were or where he was talking about.
However, I was able to pull some things from his lecture that I think directly relate to teaching. He said, quoting someone else, that "sincerity is the key to [journalism], and if you can fake that, you'll go far." Now I don't think that faking sincerity is a good thing when talking about journalism or teaching. As a teacher you should be able to be sincere when talking to your students, and you should actually care about what you say to them and how you say it. He also said that journalists were as fallible as brain surgeons, and I think the same is true of teachers. We hold the lives of students in our hands and are responsible for what we teach them about the world and even what we unconsciously teach them about how to act, what to say, and what things are important. Students pick up on many things, just like a sharp audience, so we have to be careful and make sure that we act in a way that we would want replicated and make sure that we get the facts right. Simon also talked about how they used to think that the Earth was the center of the universe, and someone had said, it wasn't wrong, you just miss most of the rest of the universe. In our schools we are US-centered and we run the risk of missing most of the rest of the world. We need to make sure that students are informed about more than just US history or US politics or US religion. We are a global society and need to prepare students for this kind of world or they will be missing out. Finally, Simon talked about how you can begin to trust journalism when it has the audacity and integrity to give you facts that you don't really like. The same can be said of teachers. Teachers can be trusted when they trust their students with the truth of how the world is and what has happened in the past. It is not our job to paint a pretty picture of the history of our country or the world; it is our job to make sure that students understand what happened and why it happened and why we need to look at it now. So, overall it was an okay lecture and I got quite a bit out of it, but this also showed me how important it is to hook your audience from the beginning and be able to hold on to them throughout.
However, I was able to pull some things from his lecture that I think directly relate to teaching. He said, quoting someone else, that "sincerity is the key to [journalism], and if you can fake that, you'll go far." Now I don't think that faking sincerity is a good thing when talking about journalism or teaching. As a teacher you should be able to be sincere when talking to your students, and you should actually care about what you say to them and how you say it. He also said that journalists were as fallible as brain surgeons, and I think the same is true of teachers. We hold the lives of students in our hands and are responsible for what we teach them about the world and even what we unconsciously teach them about how to act, what to say, and what things are important. Students pick up on many things, just like a sharp audience, so we have to be careful and make sure that we act in a way that we would want replicated and make sure that we get the facts right. Simon also talked about how they used to think that the Earth was the center of the universe, and someone had said, it wasn't wrong, you just miss most of the rest of the universe. In our schools we are US-centered and we run the risk of missing most of the rest of the world. We need to make sure that students are informed about more than just US history or US politics or US religion. We are a global society and need to prepare students for this kind of world or they will be missing out. Finally, Simon talked about how you can begin to trust journalism when it has the audacity and integrity to give you facts that you don't really like. The same can be said of teachers. Teachers can be trusted when they trust their students with the truth of how the world is and what has happened in the past. It is not our job to paint a pretty picture of the history of our country or the world; it is our job to make sure that students understand what happened and why it happened and why we need to look at it now. So, overall it was an okay lecture and I got quite a bit out of it, but this also showed me how important it is to hook your audience from the beginning and be able to hold on to them throughout.
Technology
Technology has made huge advances in that last ten or so years, and education is having a very difficult time keeping up with all the new advances. Inadequate funding keeps some schools from getting the technology that they need to keep up with other more well funded schools. I think that when used correctly, technology can be a very good tool to use in the classroom and is something that students need to learn about because technology is everywhere and knowledge about technology is needed in almost every field.
Things like basic computer skills - typing, using PowerPoint, and how to use the Internet, are definitely things that students need to be taught. These are skills that students will need throughout their lives. Other types of technology can also be both fun and useful in the classroom, but it is time consuming. Individually, teachers will have to make the choice as to what technologies they use with their students and, most importantly, teach them how to use. Of course this means that the teacher will have to have proficient knowledge about the technology to teach it to students. Using digital cameras and iMovie can be a a lot of fun, but the time has to be taken to show students how to use them correctly, not just sending them off blindly to hopefully figure it out on their own.
There is educational value in using some technologies, and not only because technology is now such a huge part of our lifestyle. Having students work together on movie projects can teach cooperation and how to work in a group so that one person is not doing all the work. Blogs can create places for students to "talk" to each other about different things that they believe in or have gone to that is outside the school spectrum. There are so many technologies out there, however, that as teachers we cannot cover them all. We will have to pick the ones that we know the most about, will not be too time consuming or difficult to work into our curriculum, and that will benefit the students most when looking at what to use in our classrooms. We cannot just leave technology out of the classroom anymore and it is very clear that it can be used for more than just typing and playing computer games.
Things like basic computer skills - typing, using PowerPoint, and how to use the Internet, are definitely things that students need to be taught. These are skills that students will need throughout their lives. Other types of technology can also be both fun and useful in the classroom, but it is time consuming. Individually, teachers will have to make the choice as to what technologies they use with their students and, most importantly, teach them how to use. Of course this means that the teacher will have to have proficient knowledge about the technology to teach it to students. Using digital cameras and iMovie can be a a lot of fun, but the time has to be taken to show students how to use them correctly, not just sending them off blindly to hopefully figure it out on their own.
There is educational value in using some technologies, and not only because technology is now such a huge part of our lifestyle. Having students work together on movie projects can teach cooperation and how to work in a group so that one person is not doing all the work. Blogs can create places for students to "talk" to each other about different things that they believe in or have gone to that is outside the school spectrum. There are so many technologies out there, however, that as teachers we cannot cover them all. We will have to pick the ones that we know the most about, will not be too time consuming or difficult to work into our curriculum, and that will benefit the students most when looking at what to use in our classrooms. We cannot just leave technology out of the classroom anymore and it is very clear that it can be used for more than just typing and playing computer games.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)