The Realization that Superman is Not Real

               

Notes on Waiting for Superman

"The realization that Superman is not real."

Geoffrey Canida?  (need to look up) "The uneasy feeling each morning of wanting to believe in our schools, but taking a leap of faith."

In 1999 Geoffrey created a documentary film on education.

10 years later it was time to pick a school for his own kids despite his feelings on education, but he is lucky, "He has a choice." For some families it is the luck of the draw.

Anthony’s father past away from drug use when he was in 2^nd grade. He was sent to live with his grandmother.

Daisy wants to be a nurse, a doctor, and a veterinarian; this idea came to her from the books she read in the library. She has already written a letter to her potential college, she looks to be of elementary school age. Daisy Father is unemployed and they live on the sole income of her mother.

Bill Clinton, "I would like to be the education president."

$4300 per student in 1971 to over ____ per student. (need to look this up)

Since 1971 reading scores have flat lined.

Francisco wants to be a reporter, he looks to be about 6 years old, his mom says walking into his school in the Bronx is a desk with a security guard.

Bianca lives in Harlem she is an elementary school student, her mother says that she will go to college no matter how many jobs she has to hold.

January 2002 in spite of unmet promises they (Bush) were finally going to fix education “No child left behind”

Alabama 18% of 8^th graders are efficient in math, NY 30%. The worst percentage is in Washington DC are nation’s capital.

Daisy’s father dropped out of school in 8th grade to put food on the table, her mother cleans the local hospital. She will attend Stevenson Middle School this feeds into Roosevelt 50% of Daisy’s class will not graduate at all. Drop out factories.
Over 2000 drop factories were found in Steve Barr’s research?

9^th grade reading at 3^rd grade reading level. Blaming failing schools on failing neighborhoods or vice versa?
68% of inmates in PA are high school dropouts 33,000 per year versus 8,000 per year for a private school.

Antony’s grandmother prays for him daily, his mother has other kids that he doesn’t even know.

With a good teacher this year Anthony is showing promise.But he will probably go to an academic sinkhole.

Time how to fix America’s schools. Michelle Reys lack of accountability for kids.

Francisco is behind in his reading and at risk of repeating first grade.  His mother looks at his classroom and feels like why do they even bother but she has no choice in sending him there.

Students with high performing teachers learn 3 times as fast. A bad teacher can cover 50% of the lesson plan a great teacher can cover 150%.

Teacher tenure guaranties their job for life. Public schools tenure is automatic.

Teachers organized because lack of pay. Teachers union NEA NFT, more money than the Teamsters or the NRA goes to Democratic Party. PEPAC (look up)

Jayson Camris teacher of the year.

Cannot pay teacher that is knocking it out of the park more it is not in the contract.

280T dance of the lemons, pass the trash, or the turkey truck.

In NY there are 600 teachers in what is called the rubber room where unfit teachers spend time reading and playing cards for full pay.

1 in 2500 teachers has ever lost their teaching credentials.

Charter Schools public schools with public money but independently run based on the lottery system.

Guaranteed to graduate from college.

Bianca’s mother pays 500 per mos. for her school.

Francisco’s mother is taking him to reading studies and was told to take him beyond the school.

Magnet schools? Charter schools. In Charter schools every student behind in reading is assigned a tutor to get caught up.

In 1970 American schools were number one.
Redwood City in Silicon Valley where the average home is about a million dollars Woodside High was ranked in the top six % of the nation, but there is tracking. Summit School does not do tracking but works on the lottery system.

Schools were made to produce managers, workers and farmers but the world has changed and now the need for a college education is a requirement.

Daisy has been entered into the Kip lottery.

Bianca’s mother has been reduced in hours at work so she is behind in tuition they would not allow Bianca to go to her graduation ceremony. The school is directly across from their apartment, so Bianca watches her class graduate from her window.

Bianca has been entered into the lottery in Harlem’s charter school.

In Harlem’s charter school students bring with them other problems from home poverty, crime, students know more people who have been to prison than to college.

Too many people try to help once the child has fallen behind but what if we don’t let our children fall behind? “NO excuse.”

There are now 82 Kip schools across the country.

The right accountability and standards.

Anthony has gone to see the Seed school in Washington DC a boarding school, the odds of getting in are slim, Anthony wants his kids to have better than he has had.

In the summer of 2008 Rey proposed to give teachers a choice keep tenure and get a modest raise or give up tenure for real raises but it was found so threatening that it was not even allowed to be voted upon.

We’ve tried money laws and the latest reforms.

Bianca did not win the lottery.

Daisy was not accepted.

Francisco was not accepted.  

Anthony was not accepted.

Amanda did win the lottery at Summit School.

"Don’t give up so that kids will believe again that education is a way out."

Anthony receives a call from the charter boarding school, he was enrolled, and there was space for him!

This film made me feel like I took my own education for granted and still maybe do when there are so many out there that would give anything for the opportunities that I have had. Education really is a luck of the draw depending on where you live, your school, your parents, and your teachers and we need to do something to make sure that all children have the same opportunities.  

Chalk

                                                                            

Notes from Chalk, A Mockumentary

First day of school with Mr. Stroope’s History class, “Show up and be prepared.”

Coach Webb. 2^nd year of being a coach

“History is society, technology, culture…”

Mr. Lowery is teaching History for the first time, he had previously worked as a computer technician, I believe.

Mrs. Reddell’s first year of being assistant principle

Mr Stroope, “Don’t be their friend.”

This is a mockumentary of a school where the teachers act more like the students.

The teachers act out more than the students do.

Mr. Lowery goes to the library to find a book on classroom management because his class shows no respect for him.

There is a meeting where Mr. Stroope points out that Teachers are making long distance calls, borrowing paper, and petty cash “hey that’s gotta stop”

Mr. Stroope calls Wills parents… not!

Mr. Lowery imagines dancing with Mrs. Webb, he later admits to being divorced almost 2 years.

Lowery throws out a student after his cell phone goes off in class the third time in one week.

It seems to be getting to Mr. Lowery that no one is taking him seriously.

Stroope is picked as one of the 2 teachers for teacher of the year.

Lowery has a teacher parent conference with the mom of the student that was dismissed from his class; it takes place at the parent’s house. He has a glass of wine with the student’s mother and has to call a cab.

Mrs. Reddell is working long hours not seeing her husband and tired of hearing all the teachers complain about other teachers. She admits a lot of them are complaining about Coach Webb.

Mr. Stroope lost teacher of the year.

Mrs. Reddell misses being a teacher, she is not enjoying her position as A.P.

The spelling hornet is a spelling B where the teachers try to spell slang words that the kids use. After several of the students quiz Mr. Lowery he wins first place.

The kids get Mr. Lowery to “spit” (Rapp) something.

Mr. Lowery is not sure if he is coming back the next year, he is not sure that he likes teaching that much. “Being a teacher, it’s a gift. Maybe it’s something that you have to learn, but no one has taught me.”

I thought it was a funny spoof, but there are some teachers out there who might resemble certain characteristics of some of the teachers in the film. I especially liked Mr. Lowery’s line “Being a teacher, it’s a gift. Maybe it’s something that you have to learn, but no one has taught me.” I think that is a very true statement of some true life teachers. Some may never have had the gift in the first place. I think it takes a very special type of person to be a teacher, and not all of the skills required can be acquired through education.

Lewis Black and Mike Rose

          I would have to agree with Mike Rose’s number one resolution, “To have more young people get an engaging and challenging education.”  That is the goal but how do we get there from here? I certainly don’t have the answers but know that not enough of our time is spent asking the question. According to Lewis Black we are 24^th in Math and 21^st in Science and yet we find it necessary to spend half a billion dollars on the structure of one single school? How is this possible and who decided this was where the money would be best spent?     

          Lewis points out how skewed our focus has become with NBC devoting one week to the problems with education, and a year round program detailing incarceration. As with Mike Rose I have watched many quick fixes come and go but nothing is working. However, blaming our teachers for all of the struggles with our education system makes about as much sense as blaming our doctors for the countries problems with obesity.    

          I think that what needs to come first is keeping the student in school to begin with, which is why I think it is so important that we find a way to engage our students with a challenging educational experience.

What I think about education, or what I would change about it. Would definitely start with education not being graded by simple test scores, I’m not sure that you can grade knowledge and understanding or even readiness to take on the world or to even be a productive part of it for that matter by sitting a child down in front of a piece of paper. I feel that education should be more about creating critical thinkers, teaching students to think for themselves and to stand on their own, independent free thinkers as mentioned in my second paper.

            There are students who graduate high school without the ability to balance a checkbook or manage their own bank account and what about understanding credit reports and scores. I know that much lies on that of the parents but some children were just not given a fair chance in this category (again a draw of the lottery). You can’t always rely on the parents because so many don’t have the knowledge themselves to share. I also agree that students should be taught to understand more about politics and voting.

Group Work

In our group we discussed real life preparation, balancing a checkbook, managing a bank account, understanding the importance of good credit. We talked about understanding politics and the importance of voting, in my opinion the importance of using your own voice which I believe is another skill that we could focus on in k-12.  We also touched on standardized testing.  

Oh Captain My Captain

Karla Zabel

English 101

Dr. Sonia Apgar Begert                       

Formal Term Paper 2 Final
2-22-13

Oh Captain My Captain

        What is the most crucial role a teacher can play in the life of a student? For many it might be to open the questioning minds of their scholars, to draw them in, making them eager for more knowledge. It might make them want to ask why, to question everything, to show them how to constantly look at things in a different way, and to create critical thinkers who don’t believe in something just because it is what they were told. That was the role of Mr. John Keating from the movie, “Dead Poets Society”. It also describes my English teacher Mrs. Rachael Biel.  Mrs. Biel and Mr. Keating believed that the idea of a true education was to learn to think for yourself.

        An important quality that Mrs. Biel and Mr. Keating had in common was their ability to think outside the box. They walked into class each day with the goal of teaching students to do the same. From the first day of class Mrs. Biel’s students knew they were in for a very different experience. She told everyone on the first day of class to follow her outside. She freed us from the compounds of the classroom walls and into what she called the world classroom. She asked us to select something while looking around. We all found something that stood out to us personally. I selected the American flag, as my father was retired from the Navy. One of my classmates selected a church steeple, while another chose a corridor of the building as a symbol of his hopeful Engineering degree. Two smokers selected the student smoking shed.  Mrs. Biel explained that our assignment was to write a poem about the item without supplying too much physical description. Back in the classroom, we were asked to visualize what fellow classmate may have been writing about. It was amazing how everyone thought differently and definitely out of the box!

        As with Mrs. Biel, Mr. Keating wanted his first day to make an impression on the students too. His first day in the classroom caught everyone’s attention. As he walked through the classroom whistling, he instructed his students to follow him into the main entrance where photos and trophies were displayed from the school’s previous students. “Carpe Diem, seize the days boys” he whispered as they gazed at photos of students very much like themselves. “Same haircuts, full of hormones, just like you, and invincible just like you feel.” Mr. Keating chuckled as he told his students that the young men before them were now fertilizing daffodils. He told his students he wanted them to make their lives extraordinary. Mr. Keating handed a student a textbook. The student read, “To the Virgins, to make much of Time. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying: And this same flower that smiles to-day To-morrow will be dying.” The students nodded in understanding of the poems meaning.

         Mrs. Biel and Mr. Keating shared an ability to draw students in and to get them involved with enthusiasm. Even the quietest of students found a new place in the classroom with their classmates. It was tremendous that each teacher had a way of making their students want to go to class and the ability to make their students want to learn. They had a passion for seeing the light of understanding in a student’s eyes that moment of ah ha! There were days when I left class that I couldn’t wait to get home and share with friends and family what new and exciting concept we had just learned. I absolutely loved sharing that I was learning to think for myself and becoming a critical thinker looking at all sides.

        “Pick a character from this painting,” Mrs. Biel instructed the class one day. She requested we pick a character from the painting to write about. We all sat staring at The Dancing Butler wondering what new lesson we were about to learn. The students got caught up in looking at the man, the woman, and the two dancers in the painting. Without really knowing the artist’s interpretation, the many different experiences of the same painting from fellow students really were as different as the students themselves. This compares to Mr. Keating’s thoughts on not just considering what the author thinks but also on what you think.

        One of Mr. Keating’s fascinating class projects to help students think independently takes place outside in their courtyard. He selected three scholars to walk in a big circle in front of the rest of the students. Within a few minutes the three were walking with the same stride while the rest of the class was clapping along to the beat. The experiment to show conformity and the need to be accepted worked! Keating found unique ways to show students how to look at the same things in a different way. They wanted their students to swim against the stream. They wanted their students to learn to think for themselves.

        To add more critical thinking skills to the class experience, Mrs. Biel showed the controversial film, “An Inconvenient Truth”, by Al Gore. She led her class in an open discussion of fact versus fiction. For example, have there been more tornadoes since global warming or is that new radar and satellite technologies are allowing us to see more of them? Are the insurance industries paying out more money to flood and storm victims? This could be true, or is it because more people are building luxurious beach houses right where storms hit? The class was divided into believers and nonbelievers of the video’s truths. This was critical thinking at its best.

        It is not surprising that Mrs. Biel and Mr. Keating had another common trait that makes them outstanding individuals. These two extraordinary teachers share a genuine concern for each individual student. Their students could go to them for support and comfort for any reason from personal problems to world issues. They were truly devoted to the education and wellbeing of their students. Without a doubt, there is no other memory of any other teacher who was so personally invested in the future and the success of each student.      

        Although it was a passion for my role models to help students learn to think for themselves, that was not always the case for those who made the ultimate decisions. Sadly, Mr. Keating was dismissed because the administrators and some of the parents were so stuck in their own narrow minded views of the world, they just could not understand his teaching style. What the teachers and parents did not understand was that he was influenced by self-starters himself at this same school. Mrs. Biel also seemed to come from a mold all of her own, and she never ceased to amaze us with her ability to guide us to a different place other than where we felt most comfortable. I now know we can all learn from this example:  “For the first time in my whole life,” Neil said, “I know what I wanna do! And for the first time, I'm gonna do it whether my father wants me to or not! Carpe diem!”

Paper #2 Exercise

    

           

I.        Role: To open a student’s mind, to make them independent thinkers, critical thinkers and to make them want to learn more on any given subject.

Teacher #1 Rachael Biel- English

Teacher #2 Chris Smith- Humanities

One teacher would be a positive example while the other was a negative example.

Rachael really had a way of making her students question what they heard and even what they were seeing and she made them want to know more about everything.

II.      Body of the paragraph

A.      Rachael was an outstanding role model of an independent thinker.

1.      When going to class we never knew what was in store for us on that particular day. Rachael might have us look at a painting and tell our own story of what the artist might have had in mind, as well as how the painting made us feel when looking at it, and then we would share our thoughts with the class.

2.      Another example could be, sending her class out on a beautiful day to write about something, anything at all without telling our readers what we had chosen. It was up to the class to try and see the topic through different eyes.

3.      A third example…

B.      Rachael was also a critical thinker and questioned each and everything she saw and heard, and she pushed her students to do the same. Rachael enjoyed opening up the minds of her students, allowing them to see things in a different way.

1.       One example, she might show us a controversial film to open a topic of discussion among the class, of course the class would be divided, but that was ok, it made for a very interesting learning environment to see where the other side might be coming from, and to show just how differently the same material could be perceived.

C.      Rachael had a passion for teaching and a way of making us want to learn. There were days that I couldn’t wait to get to class, and days that I couldn’t wait to get home to share what I had learned. 

D.     Chris on the other hand just had a way of making you question him. What he was saying, was it based on fact? Was he even serious? Did it really happen the way that he explained it?

1.      As one student in his class I found that he lacked credibility, I questioned the details of his stories and his explanations, even to the point of looking up certain events for myself just to be sure. Maybe that was his way of instructing me?

2.      Students openly disagreed with Chris, almost to the point of argument. This however, I did find to be a learning experience.

3.      He became rather amusing to many of my classmates; we wondered what he would do or say next but didn’t really feel that we were learning.

E.      I and many of the other students felt that he used his authority as a way of hearing himself speak, he spent more time on personal stories than teaching any curriculum.

1.      We feared that he was not actually preparing us for what we might face in the world.

2.      A good example of this was his giving each of us a chapter in our textbooks and then having us do the presentation for the class on the chapter given; this was his way of instructing us. We felt cheated.

3.      I was also surprised that in a year, he never took the time to know us by my name.

Notes for Mona Lisa Smile 1953

"Kathryn Watson made up in brains what she lacked in pedigree."

An art history teacher (Julia Roberts) fulfills her dream at “Wellesley College” an all-girls college in New England. Her first day is a disaster as her entire class has previously memorized the entire text book.

“What is art, what makes it good or bad, and who decides?”

There is turmoil among the girls when it is discovered that the school nurse is dispensing contraception. Betty (Kirsten Dunst) writes for the college paper and states that the school is promoting promiscuity.

Amanda the school nurse is then let go.

One of Kathryn’s students (Julia Styles) is a straight A prelaw student who is planning on marriage once graduating. Kathryn tells her that she could go to law school and be married and gives her an application to Yale.

At one point Kathryn takes her class to see a Jackson Pollack painting, she requests that they look at it with an open mind and tell her what they see.

The schools administration suggests if she likes teaching there that she spend less time on modern art.

Over Christmas break Kathryn’s boyfriend Paul surprises her with a visit to the school. He proposes marriage, but she is confused about the whole thing and turns him down.

Bill Dunbar an Italian professor tries to end a past affair with Gisele a female student.

After being married, Betty misses six classes, a paper and her midterm she is warned to do the work or she will be failed. Betty tells Kathryn that if she is failed there will be consequences.

Kathryn is invited to an AP party for a game of truth or consequences.

Shortly after Betty prints in the school paper that Kathryn rejects the idea of marriage and influences her students to do the same. “Challenging the roles they were born to fill.”

Betty is finding out that marriage is not all it’s cracked up to be and wants more, her mother is of no support to her.

Kathryn is finding herself attracted to Bill; she ends up spending a night with him.

The student played by Julia Styles is accepted into Yale but turns it down for marriage. Kathryn tries to convince her that she can have both but she is convinced and elopes.

Kathryn finds out that Bill has not always been honest with her about his past.

The school’s administration offers Kathryn another year but there are conditions.

Each of her students makes her a painting for her to remember them by.

Against her mother’s wishes Betty files for divorce and decides to move to Grenage Village with Giselle to attend law school.

Kathryn declines the offer to stay on another year.