In the 1988 movie, Stand and Deliver, the protagonist, Mr. Escalante, believes that if you hold students accountable, they will rise to the expectations of their teachers. While, granted, this may be true in certain instances, it is neither practical nor reasonable to support this belief. I will now give you several examples of characters and quotes from this movie to refute this belief.
To start, I'd like to bring up Pancho, a student in Mr. Escalante’s class. Now, Pancho is not as reckless and uncaring about his academic future as some students. It is made clear that he is simply not smart enough, and yet Mr. Escalante still demands the same out of him as the best and brightest in the class. This is not only unfair to Pancho, who knows that he is not very bright, but to the rest of the class, who have to wait and slow their learning while letting Pancho slowly figure this out. The teacher is forced to address the class as a group, not pay attention to their individual traits and abilities.
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This leads me to my second example: Angel, the “tough guy”.
He tries his best to manage not only taking care of his frail and ill grandmother, but he juggles that with the trying situations in Mr. Escalante’s class, and trying to have an actual social life. Now, Mr. Escalante does not care about his personal problems or the many reasons for his difficulty to reach his class on time. Another example is when he uses the personal life of another student, Claudia, as a joke to the rest of the class. Now, these are huge problems. A teacher’s main job is to educate their students. If you don’t care about your students, why educate
them? Now, Mr. Escalante says, “If you treat them like losers, they will act like losers.” However, I believe that he got this wrong. It’s actually reversed. First the students act like losers, and then the teachers treat them as such. Mr. Escalante’s way casts blame on the teachers, however, the teachers can only do so much. It is the students that must try. And, if they are acting like losers, it is reasonable for the teachers to adapt to the situation. Teachers pushing around kids who don't give a care about their academic future will only lead to rebellion and trouble. It’s a hopeless cause, because these kids are not losers. Sadly, they've already lost. In summary, as these three paragraphs of solid evidence show, it is unjust and impractical for teachers to expect students to rise to standards that they are either incapable or unwilling to rise to. It’s a complete waste of time, resources, and effort; a literal lost cause. Teachers also need to care about their students, and, by following the “Escalante way”, you don't act in a caring way towards your students. And so, I refute this claim that students will rise to the level of expectation of their teachers.
Often the change and transition to middle is a difficult one for students, so it is no surprise that a student of Juanita’s caliber would be having trouble as well. Her regular middle school teachers were not going above and beyond to make sure Juanita succeed, if anything it seemed as if Juanita was a burden to them. If it was not for the Ms. Issabelle’s effort, Juanita would have failed the 6th grade, and possibly fell through the cracks of the education system.
Even if the willingness to attend and learn was there, he aimed to condition the students into following the rules, avoiding tardiness. An additional example would be when three students refused to answer the quiz, as a form of rebellion in school, Escalante punished the leading student by “being the show” of the cases, wherein he let her sit in front of the class as they were taking the quiz. The student’s associates were pressured into doing the quiz, seeing the effect of the student’s action, thus affecting their present decisions. His punishments were not degrading an individual’s dignity, even if he was playing with their insecurity and guilt from their own
A student should never be denied the right to learn and become successful because of a different skin color, or because they speak a different language. “No saco nada de la escuela” by Luis Valdez is a play that discusses the racism in schools. The play starts with students going to elementary school and then ascending to middle school and college. At the beginning the students were not aware of what racism really was because of their innocence. However, the teacher that they had was very racist and bullied the students of color. That experience made the other kids realize that not everyone was the same and because of color or language they should be treated differently. There are five different students who take part of this play, two of those students were white, and there were two Chicanos and one black. That is great diversity of cultures. The teacher that the students have in elementary school was an example of the other professors they were going to have throughout their school years. Very arrogant and not understanding of the minority students. Their teachers were not really interested in teaching the minorities and always showed her discontent of having students of color. Their teachers didn’t believe that students who were part of a minority should be placed in the same classroom as the white students. Maybe that was because they didn’t know the potential a minority student could have. One Chicano student named Francisco never denied his roots and became very successful. He had many obstacles in his learning environment, but at the end he becomes a great example of perseverance. Francisco is the student who I think showed the greatest development in the play. He had to deal with racism all the time, but that didn't stop ...
In many low income communities, there are teachers that are careless and provide their students with poor quality education. These teachers are there just to make sure that they keep receiving their monthly paychecks and act in this way because they believe that low income students do not have the drive, the passion, or the potential to be able to make something of themselves and one day be in a better place than they are now. Anyon reveals that in working class schools student’s “Work is often evaluated not according to whether it is right or wrong but according to whether the children followed the right steps.” (3). This is important because it demonstrates that low income students are being taught in a very basic way. These children are being negatively affected by this because if they are always being taught in this way then they will never be challenged academically, which can play a huge role in their futures. This argument can also be seen in other articles. In the New York Times
Sometimes as a teacher we try and do well but sometimes we actually end up hindering. So it is important to understand the child’s perspective so avoid such hindrance. For example, in the novel there is a part when the teacher is reading to the class and Francisco tries to pay attention but since he cannot understand he begins creating his own story to the pictures. Some teachers may take this as sign that he is not paying attention, but in fact he is just in his own way. I think it is also important for teachers to learn the culture and language of the students. This way the student can learn effectively.
Introduction Teachers have become gateway keepers to providing education to students. Over the span of several years, teachers have been criticized for being unprepared, unable to adapt to different learning styles, and are increasing the number of students who aren’t learning. With this achievement gap increasing, it brings up the idea of what the education system is doing wrong and what improvements it needs to make. The education system needs to be redesigned to strengthen its curriculum, it’s connection to both practice and theory, and the idea of a powerful educator. The first aspect of this memo contains an interview with Diana Regalado De Santiago, a math teacher in the Socorro Independent School District for the past six years.
In John Gatto’s essay “Against Schools” he states from experience as a school teacher that are current educational system is at fault (148). He claims that classrooms are often filled with boredom manufactured by repetitive class work and unenthusiastic teachings. Students are not actively engaged and challenged by their work and more often than not they have either already covered the concepts taught in class or they just do not understand what is being taught to them. The children contained in classrooms have come to believe that their teachers are not all that knowledgeable about the subjects that they are teaching and this advances their apathy towards education. The teachers also feel disadvantaged while fulfilling their roles as teachers because the students often bring rude and careless attitudes to class. Teachers often wish to change the curriculums that are set for students in order to create a more effective lesson plan, but they are restricted by strict regulations and consequences that bind them to their compulsory teachings (148-149). An active illustration of John Gatto’s perspective on our educational system can be found in Mike Rose’s essay “I Just Wanna Be Average” (157). Throughout this piece of literature the author Mike Rose describes the kind of education he received while undergoing teachings in the vocational track. During Mike’s vocational experiences he was taught by teachers that were inexperienced and poorly trained in the subjects they taught. As a result, their lesson plan and the assignments they prepared for class were not designed to proficiently teach students anything practical. For example, the curriculum of Mike Rose’s English class for the entire semester consisted of the repeated reading of ...
We live in a society where we are surrounded by people telling us that school/education and being educated is the only way to succeed. However, the school system is not up to the standards we want it to uphold. There are three issues we discuss the most which are the government, the student, and the teacher. In John Taylor Gatto 's essay “Against School”, we see the inside perspective of the educational system from the view of a teacher. In “I Just Wanna Be Average”, an essay written by Mike Rose, we hear a student 's experience of being in a vocational class in the lower level class in the educational system when he was supposed to be in the higher class.
In the case study, Jim Colbert, a third grade teacher, struggles to help a boy named Carlos. This Public School 111 was located in a metropolitan, run down neighborhood. The school was surrounded by drug dealers and trash. However, the inside of the school was bright and welcoming. Here the students were placed according to their abilities, and Jim had a 3-A class for the high achieving students. Jim had a routine that he followed every day. He would take the learning and apply it to the student’s lives with practical examples. To begin the day Jim would go through the homework with the students, and here he began to notice that Carlos was misspelling many of his words. Carlos comprehended the readings, but he was behind in his spelling. Jim talked with the other third grade teacher, Paul, about Carlos. Then, he talked to Carlos about the problem, asking him if he could get help at home. Here Jim discovered that Carlos would get little to no help at home. Jim sent home a dictionary with Carlos so that he could check his spelling, and he saw
Lacking the necessary support, many start to devalue the importance of doing well in school deciding that perhaps school isn’t part of their identity. In Susan’s case she’s eliciting multiple forms of subordination, and within each dimension she’s being subjective to different types of oppression; racial oppression, gender oppression, and class oppression, she’s experiencing cultural alienation and isolation and is not only based on her ethnicity as a Latina but is also influenced by how she is treated as a female, as a member of a certain socioeconomic class, and in relation to her English language proficiency, and even her perceived immigration status. In this sense, students like Susan experience different forms of discrimination or marginalization that stems from
Both Erin Gruwell in Freedom Writers and Jamie Esclante in Stand and Deliver faced students stuck in low-income backgrounds and neighborhoods of crime. Despite the low achievement of these students, both teachers were able to foster a mastery of a subject to their students. Even though the subjects of English and math are extremely different, one method united both teachers and allowed them to teach their students effectively— trust. Erin and Jamie were successful because of the trust they put in their students.
Milgram, Stanley. “The Perils of Obedience.” From Writing and Reading Across the Curriculum. Tenth edition. Edited by Laurence Behrens and Leonard J. Rosen. New York: Longman Publishers, pp.358-371, 2008.
“I do really believe, it had been totally impossible to have made it to submit by violence and force.” If an instructor teaches education with vexation and pressure, the students will only learn to hate it, associating it with anguish, therefore, becoming sluggish and uncaring when in the study room. As seen in schools present and past, children rebel against even the slightest bit of work. The work the students are given is completed in drudgery. From experience, children enjoy the classes that have good and kind teachers. Even if the workload is high, they appreciate how the instructor teaches and want to make them proud putting their best effort into their
Escalante believed in all of his students. He did not get rid of anyone he thought would bring the class down. Everyone thought the students would not be able to pass the A.P. class exam, except for Escalante. He was determined to help these kids pass and never gave up on them. He donated a lot of his time to the students in order to give them a better chance of passing and even when he had a heart attack he never gave up. Clark believed in most of the students at his school. When Clark started teaching, he got rid of all of the drug dealers and other delinquents. He believed that they would go nowhere in life. He only gave one of those students ...
...sionate professors who helped shape the type of teacher I would like to be. They found ways to talk to me in a manner that motivated me to want to improve, all while honoring the work that I have already done. I would like to bring this same moral into my classroom, when a child is motivated, passionate,and self-aware of their needs, strengths, and weaknesses, they can and will push themselves to improve. Students do not solely care about how much knowledge an educator has, but they care about how much these educators truly care. We shouldn't judge a person on how educated they are based only on test scores. The most educated person may not be the most suitable person to teach children. I may lack the test scores, however, I do not lack the passion and motivation needed to be a great teacher. If we cannot celebrate small successes, the final outcome is less weighted.