Reading this article reminded me of the movie Stand and Deliver where Jaime Escalante teaches high levels of math to some undereducated and underprivileged kids in some inner city high school.
Reading this story reminded me of hearing about how in other schools people can’t go to the bathroom because they get attacked there. In my school the worst thing that happened in the bathrooms was people turning the light off. I don’t know if I ever appreciated the safety of my school as much as I should’ve.
She says that on the test she gave them difficult essay questions and that the kids mostly answered with insights she had given them two days earlier but she seemed pretty content with that. This reminded me of a test I had on The Great Gatsby in high school where I kind of knew what the essay questions would be and I ended up using a lot of information for multiple questions and I think I was faking it a lot or maybe even “b.s.ing” but I got 50/50. I think I either took advantage of my teacher’s methods or it was just graded easily. I find it interesting that the teacher didn’t really seem to have a problem with it. I think she must’ve felt that even if they had simply learned something by almost copying and pasting then that was good enough, at least for these inner city kids. If this were a higher quality school she may not have preferred that.
This did remind me of Stand and Deliver. It also reminded me of another movie called Freedom Writers even more. It is the exact same situation: white female teacher comes to the trouble class to teach them English. She has them keep a journal and teaches a unit along the lines of 'prejudice,' in which they discuss what happened to the Jews during the Holocaust. The problem kids all end up loving her. Reading this was like deja vu.
ReplyDeleteThis article reminded me of the movie To Sir, With Love. It's an old movie starring Sidney Poitier and its about how when he started teaching he was really discouraged, but it was okay in the end. I really liked this article. It showed that as long as we endure, things will turn out allright.
ReplyDeleteI have never seen 'Stand and Deliver' but I can definitely agree that I never had things rough in my high school. My classes were challenging and my teacher would have never allowed bs-ing, something to which I'm most grateful, seeing as most TAs come right out and say that they won't allow it. I guess I was lucky. Learning to think for myself and write that down has become easy to me.
ReplyDeleteI agree. I also don't think that I fully appreciated the safety of my school either. The kinds of kids that are described in this article with knives and very rude were, luckily, rarely found at my school.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree - thinking about kids who aren't innately different than us but are in such drastically different school and home situations makes me so grateful for my high school, with its quality classes and teachers, sufficient textbooks, heating, plumbing, all of the little things. It is so easy to take it for granted.
ReplyDeleteI agree. My highschool was fairly safe. There were times that certain exchanges were made in the bathroom but there was never any violence going on. And I can definately relate on the B.S.ing comment. There were times that I would feel like my paper was no good but then I would get it back and get a good grade on it. I'm not sure it was just that I didn't have confidence in my piece or if I just got lucky.
ReplyDeleteSAtand and Deliver is an awesome movie. I agree with you they are a lot the same. It is stuff like that that makes you realize what you really have, like safety. I loved my high school so much. It is so nice to be able to go to a school every day that you feel safe inside of. It makes me want to work harder because i have so many blessing with my education and so many people don't fully take advantage of that.
ReplyDeleteLike you i though of Stand and Deliver, one of my favorite movies. This commentary helped me appreciate teachers that actually challenged me with purpose.
ReplyDeleteThis actually reminds me of Freedom Writers (book and movie... both are pretty eye-opening even though most people don't read the book). The truth though is that even though there is still a ton of problems with people doing things like that, things here in America are still improving.
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