Thursday, November 21, 2013

Gatto, Friere, Rose, Black & Chalk

In Class Blog Post Sence of Chalk and how it relates

In Gatto's Against School he writes about boredom as a common condition, seen in all aspects of education. "anyone who has spent time in a teachers' lounge can vouch for the low energy, the whining, the dispirited attitudes". In Chalk there was a scene that took place in a teachers' lounge, where the teachers sat on an old couch and made petty complaints, while the new history teacher stated that his labeled food had again gone missing, to little response from the other teachers. Gatto points out that while the students blame the teachers and the content, the teachers blame the children for the boredom. In Lowrey's he wonders aloud why the children can't simply pay attention and what it takes to get through to them. He eventually resorts to jokes to keep the students entertained.

"The Banking Concept of Education" from Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed focuses on the idea that students are receptacles for information to be delivered by the teachers. One of the effects of the banking concept is that the teacher is responsible for presenting the spontaneous and and parallel nature of of the content in a way that is regulated and linear. The blind acceptance and blunt presentation of content by both the history teachers serves as an example of their acceptance of their roles as teachers in the banking concept, whether they realize it or not. Even as Lowrey attempts to incorporate jokes and Stroope makes the students work harder for his goal neither of them have changed the actual teaching method.

Mike Rose's Resolutions in Education, states "To stop making the standardized test score the gold-standard of student achievement and teacher effectiveness." In Chalk the history teacher wants to become teacher of the year. He pushes his students harder in order to get the best test scores. Even though he looses at the teacher debate and doesn't fulfill his dream of being teacher of the year, his students tell him "We did work extra hard over the year". Just because he did not win, does not show his teacher effectiveness and mean his students are not smart.

Comedian Lewis Black talks on "The Daily show" on the poor education system. He brings up the debate on charter schools, saying how they are more affective, but of course hard to get into. Chalk demonstrates how regular public schools expect everyone to do the same thing, and not having the students on there level. Even in a simple PE class the teacher says "Some of the students really are not physically fit, but they need to do the activity as well, so we do exercises that everyone can do" In a charter school, you could separate the athletically gifted students and give them a challenge while the students who are not physical fit can focus on a simpler getting into shape class. Chalk demonstrates how we "Dummy down" the system to fit the lowest kids needs.

Friday, November 15, 2013

Final Draft

It's a fairly simple and agreeable concept that education is always different, supported by the existence of countless variables; most importantly the teacher and the subject at hand. To more easily compare and contrast one the other would need to be controlled, and given that I plan on comparing two teachers I've had I've decided to pick teachers of a single subject. Art is the best suited because the demands are just vague enough to let the possibilities for achieving them be limitless. Educators have as much freedom as they may or may not choose to allow, and the students' results reflect that. I've heard it said that "the only way to do art wrong is not to do art", and that's exactly the approach that will be taken comparing and contrasting the methods and results of two art teachers I've had.

In eighth grade everyone had to take an art class taught be what might have been the only art teacher at the middle school. Her teaching methods were very straightforward, and her approach to individual topics was very textbook style. Every week we would turn in 5 sketches, intended to be done as homework for each night of school. During classes we would work on a project which would span two or three weeks. Each project was done class-wide and focused on something specific. Not only would it be in one media, but would have a specific theme or set of requirements. For example, portraits with paint, landscapes in charcoal or masks with clay. They're all classic middle school type art projects, and they were always graded by how well they met the certain requirements as well as the appreciation of the teacher. I remember a lot of people disliked the strict requirements of each of the projects, and I remember being upset that the teacher's personal judgment was the major contributor to the awarded grade. Once I was making a portrait with colored spots like Chuck Close and I remember being told to make it "less Homer Simpsony"The teacher herself was strict and harsh with grading and had a constant no-nonsense attitude, making her relatively disliked among the students.

So far the outlook is bleak, but does that make her an especially bad teacher? While at the time I would probably have thought so, along with a majority of the other students she taught, but there was a surprising amount of really good work that came out of that class. The style of focusing on such specifics is a method used successfully in a lot of higher level art classes as well and is especially good at teaching the technical skills required to do certain types of art, while restricting the freedom to do so. At that point you'd need to define art, and whether or not your definition is the purpose of the class before you could definitively say whether or not she's a good teacher.

Two years later, in tenth grade, I found myself in another art class, and I was shocked at how incredibly different it was from art classes I'd had in the past, specifically the one in eighth grade. It was essentially a free for all, where each month a theme was introduced to be met in our projects should we choose, and if we did choose to follow the theme it had no additional grading requirements and was instead a talking point. At the end of each month we would present our work, and with no set grading standard it was essentially a matter of presenting your intent, progress, any change of intent and the final result. The upside is the limitless bounds of what to do for each project, and the grading method was a filter for effort and originality. Everyone loved or at least tolerated the class, and while the teacher had little to do by means of prescribed instruction she was always available, and often busy, helping people to work with the media they chose. It did come with its downsides, though, including the teacher essentially being forced by her model to give good grades to clearly inferior work. When a student meets the expectations to produce original work or put forward a lot of effort they will score well when what they've created is, frankly, bad. Similarly if a student uses the same media over and over again they'll begin to pigeon-hole their own work because it's all they've become good at. The lack of guidance as an effort for original content also leads students to spend more time thinking about what they'll do instead of actually doing work. The result is a mix of fantastic, horrible, unique and repetitive work. For those that manage to best take advantage of this teaching style they have managed to create amazing portfolios and learning a lot about art, while others stagnate and make no progress while receiving just as good grades.

Both were basic classes, without any special intent other than general art, and they were different from each other in so many ways. While the middle school teacher was strict and formulaic the tenth grade teacher had no strict plan and allowed plenty of freedom. Most of the middle school students disliked the art class and teacher while most of the tenth grade students loved theirs. The middle school class had high quality output while the tenth grade class was mixed. There is no clear way to decide which is the better teacher without, again, outlining the intent. Instead this shows that teaching styles each have their own benefits and disadvantages, something that could have been expected from the start. Other conclusions may include that teachers do not have to be liked to be good. The idea of "knowing what's best" for someone comes to mind, while we've been otherwise lead to believe that good teachers are admired by their students. Another may be that while freedom in education for the sake of creativity and individuality is good and can lead to lack of structure, poor rewards systems and unequal learning.

Before I began writing I thought I would have a bias towards the teacher of the tenth grade class, especially considering her openness to talk about ideas and art, making her generally friendlier in addition to having a more enjoyable class, but upon revisiting the details for this comparison I became aware of the downsides. Ultimately the thesis that there is no way to do art wrong can be confirmed, depending on the chosen definition of art. Given that art was chosen as a subject to to study education methods of a whole it can be projected that there is no way to educate incorrectly either, but again depending on the chosen definition of education. With such an approach the public education system can be considered very successful, but given the criticisms a more important matter is to question the chosen definition of education and its real world intent.

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Because I did not remember the name of the middle school teacher (she doesn't work there anymore either) I decided it would be best to leave neither of the two named for the sake of not personifying one more than the other. Try not to let that affect how you think of think of the way they're presented, because I think I did a good job of explaining their personalities and interactions with students.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Roughish Draft

Education is always different. This is a pretty simple concept that's supported by the existence of countless factors on learning, including the methods of the teachers, the learning style of the students and the subject being taught. Many subjects have very specific sets of requirements to be learned, like math, which is very formulaic in its demands and as a result is normally formulaic in its teaching. While some alternate methods may occasionally be used, at the end of the day, everyone has learned the same thing in essentially the same way. This may sound ideal from the point of view of an educator, and it's certainly ideal as far as learning math goes, but not the best to study for understanding the nature of education. Arts are the best suited to be studied for understanding the fundamentals of education, because the demands are just vague enough to let the possibilities for achieving them be limitless. Educators have as much freedom as they may or may not choose to allow, and the students' results reflect that. I've heard it said that "the only way to do art wrong is not to do art", and that's exactly the approach that will be taken comparing and contrasting the methods and results of two art teachers I've had.
In eighth grade everyone had to take an art class taught be what might have been the only art teacher at the middle school. Her teaching methods were very straightforward, and her approach to individual topics was very textbook style. Every week we would turn in 5 sketches, intended to be done as homework for each night of school. During classes we would work on a project which would span two or three weeks. Each project was done class-wide and focused on something specific. Not only would it be in one media, but would have a specific theme or set of requirements. For example, portraits with paint, landscapes in charcoal or masks with clay. They're all classic middle school type art projects, and they were always graded by how well they met the certain requirements as well as the appreciation of the teacher. I remember a lot of people disliked the strict requirements of each of the projects, and I remember being upset that the teacher's personal judgment was the major contributor to the awarded grade. The teacher herself was strict and harsh with grading and had a constant no-nonsense attitude, making her relatively disliked among the students.
So far the outlook is bleak, but does that make her an especially bad teacher? While at the time I would probably have thought so, along with a majority of the other students she taught, but there was a surprising amount of really good work that came out of that class. The style of focusing on such specifics is a method used successfully in a lot of higher level art classes as well and is especially good at teaching the technical skills required to do certain types of art, while restricting the freedom to do so. At that point you'd need to define art, and whether or not your definition is the purpose of the class before you could definitively say whether or not she's a good teacher.
Two years later, in tenth grade, I found myself in another art class, and I was shocked at how incredibly different it was from art classes I'd had in the past, specifically the one in eighth grade. It was essentially a free for all, where each month a theme was introduced to be met in our projects should we choose, and if we did choose to follow the theme it had no additional grading requirements and was instead a talking point. At the end of each month we would present our work, and with now set grading standard it was essentially a matter of presenting your intent, progress, any change of intent and the final result. The upside is the limitless bounds of what to do for each project, and the grading method was a filter for effort and originality. Everyone loved or at least tolerated the class, and while the teacher had little to do by means of prescribed instruction she was always available, and often bust, helping people to work with the media they chose. It did come with its downsides, though, including the teacher essentially being forced by her model to give good grades to clearly inferior work. When a student meets the expectations to produce original work or put forward a lot of effort they will score well when what they've created is, frankly, bad. Similarly if a student uses the same media over and over again they'll begin to pigeon-hole their own work because it's all they've become good at. The lack of guidance as an effort for original content also leads students to spend more time thinking about what they'll do instead of actually doing work. The result is a mix of fantastic, horrible, unique and repetitive work. For those that manage to best take advantage of this teaching style they have managed to create amazing portfolios and learning a lot about art, while others stagnate and make no progress while receiving just as good grades. However, like the first, the intent of the class must be brought into question before deciding the success of the teacher, since all students created art and all of them enjoyed it.

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Is Escalante a good teacher?

Considering his objective, yes. His job was to teach them math and he decided to teach them through calculus. His unheard-of success makes him an extremely good teacher from a more literal point of view, but from a point of view slightly more empathetic to the students he was pretty harsh and his demands were almost unrealistic. His insults and the stress of his class sent two students crying, and I've seen people have breakdowns in math class, but for pretty petty reasons compared to the students in Stand and Deliver. It's the sort of situation where I think "He's great at teaching calculus, he's surprisingly good at keeping them going, but I wouldn't want him as a teacher". Which is funny because all the students seem to like him a lot, which I'm not sure I'd be able to do in the same position. I guess it could be said that a different teacher is best in each situation, and while I wouldn't want to be taught by him, and while I may think his demands are unreasonable compared to other teachers, for the students he taught he's perfect. Everything is situational, really.

TED talk notes

3 themes
people are creative
everyone has an interest in education
unpredictability of future
extraordinary capabilities of children
all children have talent and we squander them
education and creativity
creativity in education is as important as literacy
little girl in drawing lesson
only pays attention during drawing portion
"what are you drawing" "god" "but nobody knows what he looks like" "they will in a moment"
kids take at a chance
not afraid to be wrong
if you're not prepared to be wrong you won't create anything
educating people out of creative capacities
people are born artists and have trouble staying artists
telling an alien: "what's the purpose of education? what's the best output? Professors."
public education was created for industrialism
a lot of very bright people don't think they are because
academic inflation\
intelligence:
    diverse - all sorts of senses
    dynamic - interactive
    distinct -
if a man speaks his mind in a forest and no woman is around to hear him is he still wrong?
rethink fundamental basis of education

real time notes

all boys boarding preparatory school
new kid's awkward
other kid's dad tells makes him drop some extracurricular activity
Robin Williams shows up and reminds all the students they're gonna die
kid goes to dinner and meets girl
Robin Williams has students tear introduction out of poetry book, says it's shit
the powerful play goes on, you can contribute a verse, what will yours be?
other teacher doesn't like Robin Williams
dead poet society, hang out in a cave reading poetry
they do it
one kid doesn't want to go because he doesn't want to read or something
they keep doing it
one of them falls in love with this girl he met once and calls her, gets invited to party
a bunch of girls go into cave for a meeting
that one kid goes to the party, gets drunk, gets beet up
one of the kids in the dead poet society put something in the paper saying girls should be admitted at school
he did it in the same of the group
didn't go over so well
one kids father says he can't be in a play he didn't know about
the kid in love goes to the girls school, reads her a poem, pisses her off
she goes to his school to warn him about her boyfriend? who will beat him up
she agrees to go to play with him because he promised that if she didn't like him it'd be the end of it
kid shows up in play anyway, dad comes at end and sees him
dad goes home with son angrily
"you're going to military school, you're going to be a doctor"
son kills himself that night
I guess his name was Neil
"Tod" has breakdown, says Neil's father did it
Teacher reads a bit out of the Five Centuries of Verse book and cries
school does investigation of all students
one kid rats and says "you can't save keating but you can save yourselves"
the leader? kid gets expelled
administration says Neil's death is keating's fault
head of school comes to teach english
keating shows up for belongings
all students stand on desks in protest
"thank you boys. thank you"
roll credits

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Thesis Statement and First Paragraph

My first topic for the second paper was comparing a history teacher I had in ninth grade to one I had in eighth grade. The two were very different and had dramatically different effects on the classes they taught and the quality of the learning, but the further I got into fleshing out the rough draft the more trouble I faced keeping content flowing. Eventually I decided there wasn't enough of a basis for a proper compare and contrast paper and the rough draft was scrapped. The new subject involves the methods of two different art teachers I've had. The following is the introduction, along with a rock solid thesis statement I've decided on.

Education is always different. This is a pretty simple concept that's supported by the existence of countless factors on learning, including the methods of the teachers, the learning style of the students and the subject being taught. Many subjects have very specific sets of requirements to be learned, like math, which is very formulaic in its demands and as a result is normally formulaic in its teaching. While some alternate methods may occasionally be used, at the end of the day, everyone has learned the same thing in essentially the same way. This may sound ideal from the point of view of an educator, and it's certainly ideal as far as learning math goes, but not the best to study for understanding the nature of education. Arts are the best suited to be studied for understanding the fundamentals of education, because the demands are just vague enough to let the possibilities for achieving them be limitless. Educators have as much freedom as they may or may not choose to allow, and the students' results reflect that. I've heard it said that "the only way to do art wrong is not to do art", and that's exactly the approach that will be taken comparing and contrasting the methods and results of two art teachers I've had.