I believe that the most important thing that K-12 education needs is more dedicated teachers.  Just as i saw in the movie Waiting for Superman , statistics show that good teachers that teach up to 150% of the required cariculum produce students with higher learning levels.   In any other company, small business or workplace employees are promoted for working hard and doing their job to the best of their ability, and those who don't are let go.  Unfortunately for students across the country, this is not the way that careers in teaching are set up.  There are thousands of teachers who barely even teach 50% of the cariculum, yet they have no penalties due to regulations and laws protecting their jobs.  Because of these laws,  many teachers are able to teach nearly nothing and still keep their jobs.  I think that changes need to be made in the school systems so that teachers are rewarded and promoted for doing their job well, and fired or disciplined for skating their way through the system and doing the bare minimum for their students.  Better teachers make better schools, better schools make better students, and better students move on to be successful and make a difference in their community and the country.

Both Gilyard's Essay on The Arts and Humnanities in Schools, and the NEA article on Arizona's Latino History Program brought up valid points about problems in the educational systems in the United States.   Throughout my experience in K-12 schooling, the classes that are the most inspiring to me such as art, drama, or music seem to be the first ones to get cut from the schedule when there is a lack of funding.  Personally I believe that there can be other more effective ways to cut spending rather than take away the classes that are anything other than basic science, history, math or English.  Although these classes are considered to be "more important" than humanities classes I strongly disagree.  For many students including myself it is hard to do well in a subject that doesn't have some sort of significance to personal interests, and by cutting art or music classes, school districts are taking away the place where many students excel the most and pushing them into an academic box of sorts that limits their posibility of finding their passion.  These articles are important in Unit 3 of this class because we are looking at what is most important in K-12 schooling in our opinions and preparing to write a paper that backs up our opinion.  In these articles we read about the loss of underestimated classes that are actually the most important in the long run, and this helps to gather more ideas and form an opinion on what we think is most important in educational systems and what can be changed.

Against School- John Gatto

After reading John Gatto's "Against School", I feel inspired.  I have honestly never felt like I was "meant" to go to school, but I had to because that is what I was "supposed" to do.  K-12 schooling does have some good social aspects, and students hopefully learn how to have manners and respect eachother but lately I have been seeing less and less of anything good coming from traditional schooling.  When Gatto made a point about how Abe Lincoln and Ben Franklin weren't in school I could not help but smile.  That is proof that even without formal schooling children can grow up to be successful and make a positive change in the world.  I hope that by the time I have children there are more options for schooling that focus on building good character and being good citicens because I believe that that would be much more beneficial than the public schooling system we have today.

WS sections 48 and 49

Section 48 in the Writing Simplified text book is all about classification of similar things and the different types of classifying those things.  I can use classification in my upcomming paper to create different categories in K-12 schools that I would like to improve, and how I would improve them. For instance two of my categories could be issues that can be fixed, and issues that will have to be dealt with for years to come. 
Section 49 in the text book is about comparing and contrasting.  I can use comparisons and contrasts in my third paper when I am writing about the two different movies that we will watch in class.  I can compare the differrent schools, teachers and students just as I did in my second paper, and I can use contrasts to show the differences. 

paper #2 draft

Abbey Levenstein

Great Teachers

There are many different theories as to what makes a great teacher, from years of practice and experience to any number of different teaching styles.  The most important attribute in my opinion, however, is to have a caring and sincere passion to inspire students to learn.  My essay will compare Two such teachers, one very influential in my  own life, my 12^th grade English teacher Theresa and  the  humorously innovative Mr. Escalante, from the movie Stand and deliver.  Both of these educators have such a passion and love for what they do, that it is apparent in success of their students. 

For myself, I have found that my willingness to work hard and actually find enjoyment in a classroom can be difficult, depending on the subject, especially if I don’t feel some sort of connection with my teacher.  I have had experiences with both extremely enthusiastic teachers, who love their jobs and go above and beyond expectations to help their students, and less invested teachers who seem to just do the bare minimum for their class and to receive a paycheck and benefits.    In my 12- year educational career I had the best time and most enjoyable learning experience with Theresa.  We came together at the Kingston High School alternative school, Spectrum.

The unfortunately now defunct, Spectrum was a lot like Vocational Education that Mike Rose described in part one of I Just Want To Be Average.  Many of the students at Spectrum were labeled.  Some as “trouble-makers” or “outcasts” and all were teased because they didn’t  “do well” or “fit in” in the regular Kingston High School environment.  Spectrum was the place where everyone, faculty and students alike, was friendly and accepting no matter what your background or personality was, and luckily for us, we also had the best teacher a student could ask for.

Theresa is a very up-beat and happy woman with a good sense of humor, which made her class very enjoyable.   She took the time to get to know each one of her students personally, which made us all feel very comfortable and sincerely cared about.   This helped to create a sense of family and comradery within the classroom, so no one was afraid to share their thoughts and opinions.   All too often students feel shy or uncomfortable with speaking openly in class in fear of judgment by those around them.  This is why I strongly believe that making connections in the classroom is crucial for a successful learning experience, because when students are comfortable with their peers and teacher, they will be more likely to speak up with any questions or concerns that they might have about the curriculum.    Therefore the comfortable and safe atmosphere encourages more learning throughout the life of the class.

Another great feature of her teaching style was that she created an atmosphere that made learning fun and exciting.  We would often have class debates, which made for a fun break between lessons and lectures and also allowed all the students to get to know more about each others opinions on topics pertaining to daily life, politics, etc.  She was excellent at keeping everyone involved in discussion, so class was never boring or tedious.   Students can often become distracted in class and adding games into the syllabus enables students to have some fun while continuing to learn effectively.    Many times Theresa would introduce educational games for learning vocabulary or reviewing previous lessons to the class, which kept everyone focused and participating, and also made for a little friendly competition.  It was very apparent to me that Theresa loved being a teacher, and wanted to see us learn and grow because she put forth so much extra effort to not only teach, but to get the whole class involved. 

Another educator that is a great example of what makes a great and passionate teacher is Mr. Escalante, a new teacher in the movie Stand and Deliver.  In the movie, Mr. Escalante is brought in to teach a computer class at a public school in the inner city of Los Angeles.  This school is racked with unruly behavior, and administrators with little or no passion for their career, which caused an environment with little structure.  Also there was a great lack of funding that resulted in an inability to facilitate a class with computers, so Escalante was re-assigned at the last minute to instruct a math class.   Mr. Escalante was able to come in to a class of juniors that are barely at an 8^th grade math level and transform them all into AP calculus students by their graduation two years later. 

Mr. Escalante brought structure and discipline into his class while also making that important connection with his students and reaching out to their families.   He went out of his way to meet the parents or guardians of each one of his students, to assure them of the possibilities for their children’s futures, and share how he planned to help them get there.  Although not all the families were supportive at first, Escalante continued to push the students to do and be the best they could and the support of their families eventually followed.  The perseverance that this man showed for this class is exceptionally admirable as he helped them find value in themselves where they had never known it to be before.  The gift of inspiration is something that only great teachers such as Mr. Escalante and Theresa are able to give.

Just as Theresa often used games to keep the class focused, Mr. Escalante would use humorous word play that related to his students life to keep their attention on the lesson.   This took those monotonous math word problems and made them fun and funny.   Along with his outgoing sense of humor, Escalante never felt that he was superior to his students.  Showing them equality and respect in and out of the classroom made the students more comfortable to retort to his humor with equally witty banter, while feeling assured that it would not end in punishment.   By treating students as equals, teachers can connect with them in a more effective way than if they treated them as inferior because particularly in high school, students are much less likely to rebel against someone that they respect and shows respect for them.

Jerry Large

Jerry Large seems to have done a lot of research about how to basically "grow successful children".  After all this research he came to the conclusion that the children that had more affection shown to them in their first few years of life have a lot more success later on.  He also named a few basic characteristics that make a good person such as self control, social intelligence, zest and most importantly, grit.  Large believes that a "big part of building character is overcoming failure", and do do this you need grit.  Of coarse too much of anything can be bad, but everything in moderation is alright, and if we accuire this at a young age we are more likely to be more successful adults.

Paper #2 Prep

At the beginning of this unit I knew that my 12th grade English teacher would be one of the teachers I would write about.  I am still not 100% sure of who the second teacher is that I will either compare of contrast.   I have narrowed my choice down to either Catherine Watson from Mons Lisa Smile, or Mr. Escalante from Stand and Deliver.  I really like Mr. Escalante because of the extreme difference that he made in not only the class we saw in the movie, but the entire school over time.  The other teacher that I would possibly write about is Ms. Watson.  I like her because she is attempting to make a difference in a time where women seem to have no say in anything.  I am still going to do some more thinking about my choice but I am leaning more towards Mr. Escalante.