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Educational reform and change
Educational reform and change
Educational reform and change
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Mike Rose shares his personal story to the public in “I just wanna be average”, as he reveals the many flaws within the educational system of a high school in an economically depressed neighborhood in Los Angeles. Rose, starting his first day of high school, was placed by an administrative error in the vocational track, due to the results of another student with his same last name. This mistake or error went unnoticed over the first year of his school. His classes were all dead end. The author encountered many terrible teachers in charge of this remedial track; most of these educators were paranoid, abusive, racist, and unprepared. Classes did not provide a suitable learning environment for him and his classmate, who needed …show more content…
“ When his class drifted away from him, which was often, his voice would rise in paranoid accusations, and occasionally he would lose control and shake or smack us” (Rose, 346). Students like these should get full attention, care and love from the teachers in the vocational program or at least more attention than average students do. Teachers could impact a significant change in a student’s life. “If kids come to us from strong, healthy functioning families, it makes our job easier. If they do not come to us from strong, healthy, functioning families, it makes our job more important”(Colorose). Teachers should be influential to their students and be like their role model. Having a good mentor, or dedicated teacher changes one’s outlook on education and success in class. “Students will float to the mark you set” (Rose, 347). This quote means the higher the water level; the higher the boat will be or in other words, how the teachers bring them up that is the water level of the students are at. Same thing with the teachers in the vocational program, the teachers bully, abuses and do not teach the students properly, so the boats will sink lower and lower. The teachers in the vocational program should bring the students up and make them a better student and hopefully can escape the vocational program and join other students in high school or
I had read an essay called, “I Just Wanna Be Average” by Mike Rose. The essay was about Rose revisiting his high school experience. He explains his adventure through school reflecting on his education, learning environment, & behaviors of students/teachers. Also he talks about the motivation or lack thereof in him and his fellow peers reflecting on them just wanting to be average.
no excitement. regardless of what the teacher says, this is not a new challenge"(158). Rose shows how he felt abut his early high school as his teacher were supposed to be teaching exciting subject, but ruin subject by just reading out from the book. making it harder for any to really pay attention in class. " No wonder how so many student finally attribute their difficulties to something inborn, organic: That part of my brain just doesn 't work"(158). Rose state that student 's in the vocational education program having already lost interest in classes they try so hard to contemplate with, instead they decide to move on and blame their inability to learn for the reason they can 't understand what the teacher is teaching them. "They open their textbook and see once again the familiar and impenetrable formulas and diagrams and terms that have stumped them for years"(157). From the beginning of their high year the student in the vocational educational program were set to fail. The school treated them as experiment by placing them into class room with inexperience teacher or not caring teacher. where they have to either decided to go with what the school says or try as best they can to well in the
Mrs. Carter, the school nurse, told the principal in confidence about Miss Hiller’s feelings of discouragement and disillusionment with teaching. It will be particularly difficult for the principal to directly approach Miss Hiller with her problems because Miss Hiller may become defensive or embarrassed, and may feel distrust towards Mrs. Carter whom she shared her predicaments in secret. The principal, being a person of authority in school may approach Miss Hiller in the capacity
In fifth grade, I had a teacher by the name of Mrs. Sera. Even typing her name gives me this cold feeling inside; she eerily resembles Miss Viola Swamp from the children’s book Miss Nelson is Missing. Viola Swamp was “the meanest substitute teacher in the whole world.” Mrs. Sera, on the other hand, my full-time educator and seemingly just as mean. She had a long pointy chin, a fairly large nose, and extremely thin lips that rarely ever smiled just like Miss Swamp. During this year leading up to middle school, I struggled in every subject: math, science, social studies, and language arts. The only parts of the day I succeeded in were recess and lunch. I remember one day, I had a test in science. I received a 23%. This is still the lowest grade
Mike Rose does not describe himself as a nuisance, but as a student who was overlooked. This treatment was very a detriment to his education. “I would hide by slumping down in my seat and page through my reader, carried along by the flow of sentences in a story.” (Rose 19) He discusses the teachers’ inability to “engage the imaginations of us kids who were scuttling along at the bottom of the pond.” (Rose 26) This strategy combined poorly with the attitudes of other students who did not want to work hard, who just wanted to be average. (Rose 28) Mike Rose describes that mix of students and how it affected his own perception of education:
IN the early morning light, robert chippendale, English teacher for more than 20 years at Tower High, punches in at 7:04. he will never touch the card again. he is unaware that before this day is over, Tower will be rocked by murder, spotlighted by the ten o'clock news and denounced by the general public. Dressed in a blue jogging suit, he carries over his shoulder his sports jacket and newer slacks- his school clothes- in a garment bag, which he hangs in the teacher's locker room. Lightly jogging down the stairs to the back dorr, he pushes it open to cross the short path to the running track. He lets his mind wander. Is it too late to change his life? Season spent running in circles, starting and stopping at the same point on the track, a metaphor, he thinks, for his teaching career, now rutted like the track itself,in the soft years of familiarity. he bends down to retie his laces and notices that the air is surprisingly
...h School ten years later, Shamus Rahman Khan discovers that the school that claims to have become more diverse still has a lot of inequality in it. The way to succeed in this school is to master the art of being at ease with different things, from students’ own behavior to forming relationships across different classes and cultures. If this does not happen, then the students are not privileged and will not succeed or go off to a good college. The illusion of equality is ripped into snippets because of Khan’s different reasoning behind why only the elite are succeeding.
...eral topic of school. The sister strives to graduate and go to school even though she is poor while her brother blames the school for him dropping out and not graduating. “I got out my social studies. Hot legs has this idea of a test every Wednesday” (118). This demonstrates that she is driven to study for class and get good grades while her brother tries to convince her that school is worth nothing and that there is no point in attending. “‘Why don’t you get out before they chuck you out. That’s all crap,’ he said, knocking the books across the floor. ‘You’ll only fail your exam and they don’t want failures, spoils their bloody numbers. They’ll ask you to leave, see if they don’t’” (118). The brother tries to convince his sister that school is not a necessity and that living the way he does, being a drop out living in a poverty stricken family is the best thing.
putting Rose in vocational classes where he is forced to learn things at a slower pace. The theme
The teachers in Voc. Ed. were not capable of teaching well and did not believe in the abilities of their students. Rose’s homeroom teacher, Brother Dill, physically harmed his students by either shaking or smacking them to keep control in the classroom. Furthermore, the author soon deduced that the entire program was intended to be “a dumping ground for the disaffected” due to the lack of enthusiasm or
For the spring term, the faculty made changes and Philip got assigned to Miss Narwin’s homeroom class. Things got worse when Philip was assigned to her homeroom as if being in her English class wasn’t bad enough. When Philip got back to school he found out he was assigned to counseling. Philip was furious and still wanted to get out of Miss Narwin’s English class.
...and walked home.” Collins contrasts the students’ misbehavior with the teacher’s ignorance, thus implying a relationship between the history teacher’s inability to teach his students and their ensuing misbehavior.
... R.E., and Venable, W. "Implications of Increasing Numbers of Nontraditional Students for Vocational Teacher Education Reform." In Beyond the Debate, pp. 95-102. University Council for Vocational Education, 1988. (ED 303 639)
Correcting this issue will be difficult, but possible. Throughout high school I did not have the best values that I have today. I did what other kids thought was cool like any other high school student trying to fit into a new place. In the future, I plan on pursuing a career in education. I plan on demonstrating the values of equality very thoroughly. Making a safe and pleasant environment is what I am hoping to accomplish. A teacher can impact a student’s life heavily. For example, my sophomore year theology teacher Mr. Finnochio, was a man of integrity. I never met a nicer, more thoughtful person in my life. The way he spoke to the class and respected everyone else’s opinion was extraordinary. He never judged or excluded anyone from anything and he impacted my life greatly. Mr. Finnochio is the reason why I would like to fulfill a career in education. I have experienced it and I know teachers can make a difference in this
To begin, we need to understand the nature of students. The nature of students varies between individuals. The majority of students are well-behaved and come to school ready to learn. Part of this is due to the way they have been raised, but most students are basically good. There is a small percent of students whose nature, it seems, is to make everyone miserable. I do not know if this is because of a difficult childhood at home or because the student just likes to be the center of attention. Either way, there are always students that will give their teachers a hard time. I guess this is their nature. Every individual is different, therefore, the nature of the students I will teach some day will be different depending on their background and other various things that may happen to them as they grow up. For example, a student that has lost a sibling due to an illness or accident, may become very bitter throughout life. The nature of this student’s behavior which is being shaped by this may make this student a cold-hearted and mean student. These are the students that teachers need to spend extra time with and try to make them feel loved, no matter how hard this may be. I, as a future teacher, need to look at students and try to help them out no matter how difficult that may be.