paper #3

Our schools and teachers face many challenges with the educational system. From not enough pay to little resources that are available. Everyone tries to point the finger at eachother for the problems. Teachers are not teaching, school is under funded, the students refuse to learn. What does that solve? in order to solve the problem we must first face that everyone is to blame. When we look at teachers, we see educators creating the world of tomorrow. We need strong passionate teachers who are dedicated and motivated to our students. Many children tend to fall behind in class, miss class and drop out altogether. Students are struggling to stay motivated in class which can lead to poor grades and failure. Student's are losing interest in education and teacher's are failing in attempts to teach. Drop out rates increase and proficiency stats decrease as we see in the film Waiting for Superman. In the film they show statistics of proficiency in reading, in which our nations capitol has the lowest of 12%. To ensure the motivation and dedication, teachers should be annually reviewed to see how well they are teaching, to their performance in class.

In the movie Stand and Deliver we see Mr. Escalante teaching his class. Like any normal class, they do not seem interested at all. They rebel and taught him all the time. But we see that he is motivated to get these students to learn. He finds new ways to make the kids interested and when they were interested they learned something. He had used real life examples in his teaching methods. He used an apple to teach the students fractions, when they were able to see the apple and realize what one half meant, they were able to learn and understand one-fourth and two-thirds of the apple. His students have beomce more interested and their self confidence has greatly increased. Mr. Escalante became a friend to the students and inspired them to try harder. In the beginning the class was unmotivated and willing to fail. But as we saw towards the end, the class was much more motivated and willing to take the AP test. Mr. Escalante was dedicated to the student's, this is true when he pushes the class into signing contracts to be in class and to stay late. Also when he has a heart attack and disobeys the doctor and goes back to teach when he shouldn't. As we see in Chalk Mr. Stroop is the complete opposite, he shut his student's down. We see a scene in which he is talking to two of his students. He tells them to not use big words and to not be smarter than he is. This is an example of what a teacher shouldn't be. Mr. Stroope cares to much about his image, he was even more focused on winning the teacher of the year award. Even had student's spying for him. Schools have played the same role as teacher's who only think about themselves. In Lewis Black's rant about public education he points out that a school has spent billions of dollars on the buildings and making it looks better, instead they could have used the money to buy resources for the classrooms. Schools have to be focused on educating the student's than repainting its walls. What does the building have to do with student'ts education?

In the movie Chalk coach Webb was very motivated and dedicated to her class. She wanted to make the class feel better about themselves and to think more positively about what they can do. She believes that if you can make them think they are good in something and have potential in that they will soon think they can do it. She also says that if you hold them at a level of expectation even though you may think they cannot do it, you make them think they can and they will perform at that level. Even though it was her first year teaching, she was ready to go and knew that she could be great for her class. On the other hand Mr. Lowrey was dry and tasteless in his class, he would benefit greatly if he had other teacher's support. Great teacher's are passionate and love what they do. Mr. Lowrey ended his teaching career after his first year. Great teacher's teach 150% of the curriculum, and bad teacher's only teach 50%. Those teacher's do not dedicate themselves to the job and do not care wheter they teach or not. Reviewing each teacher can help pick out the ones that need help and the ones that don't.

Talking about teachers getting reviewed, Mrs.Watson from Mona Lisa Smile was contantly watched over and reviewed. Her goal was to help her class think out side of the box. The whole point of school and education is to pass the student's on so they can do great things. Mr.Watson was trying to make the girls think that their is more to life, though her intentions were good they did not follow certain guidelines the school had. The federal government passes laws and fund schools, the states however also fund schools and pass their own standards that often conflict. Mr.Watson was dedicated to her students and wanted them to succeed, she had even filled out an application for a particular girl. Even though her methods conflicted with the schools, like the laws do she was able to teach the students and they were able to open their minds and become more interested in themselves. Mr.Watson was able to realize that this may not have been the place for her, if we can review teachers and find the problem we can start to understand why and fix the issues.

Akel, Mike, dir. Chalk. 2007. DVD. 18 Mar 2013.

Guggenheim, Davis, dir. Waiting for Superman. 2012. DVD. 18 Mar 2013

Newell, Mike, dir. Mona Lisa Smile. 2003. DVD. 18 Mar 2013

Black, Lewis, dir. Back in black. 2010. Film. 18 Mar 2013

Menendez, Ramon, dir. Stand and Deliver. 1988. Film. 18 Mar 2013