First Post! Ch. 1&2

I'll be the Director this week - :)

A little over 200 words... but here it is.

Creative Connector:

            The first passage I really connected with was the bottom of page 5 to the middle of 6 where he’s talking to the students about what they read on their own (“nothing”). The author goes on to describe the texts he used in order to help the students take an interest in reading, texts that would connect to things the kids were interested in. In art education at Naz we subscribe to the “Big Idea” concept in unit and lesson development, basically it says that there needs to be an element of relevance to student experiences in everything you do or they won’t care. Reading this section I could picture these kids engaged and not realizing the information or reading skills they were acquiring. The passage then says that these days were few and far between, that he was just struggling to keep his head above water most days. This passage felt a little like my high school student teaching experience. I felt I did a great job incorporating relevant information and fun activities that students were, on good days, really engaged in. I had a few classes that felt to me like chaos and no matter how cool the lesson was my pride for the day would come from helping one student, or just getting out of class without writing a referral. I understand the frustration all too well.

            The other thing that stuck me was that through the introduction and the first few chapters the author keeps referring back to the movie Freedom Writers, and how he doesn’t intend this book to come off like that, that he is some “white savior” there giving everything to these kids and turning their lives around. I laugh because after I read that portion of the book I turned on the TV only to have Freedom Writers flicker back at me. I cry like a baby whenever I watch that movie. It’s a tearjerker and a beautiful story. As a viewer I like it.  As a teacher it makes me a little angry, its not my job to “save” kids – who’s to say they need saving? It is my job to give them the resources, namely education, to let them help themselves. Also, I already have guilt because I have a life outside of the classroom, now I have guilt because I don’t spend my own money on my students like Hillary Swank does. There are all of these images of us as saviors in Special Education classrooms and in under funded programs. It’s refreshing for the author to admit to us that, no, he didn’t fund their way through college. Yes, he failed in some areas. Yes, the students failed in some things. No, not all of them are magically lifted out of poverty by his hand. Most do, however, remember something from his class because they made it connect to their lives.

Essence Extractor:

Students need legitimate power in the classroom; if learning isn’t applicable their real lives take precedence.