Chalk Notes Part 2

Gym teacher and assistant principal have fight in the office. The says she shought it would be good to have a friend as assistant principal ut it's turing out that it isn't.
Someone is also taking the shitory teacher's food from the fridge.
The day of the anouncement for the teacher of the year award and the history teacher has a massive over the top speech. It's clear he spent way too much time and effort on this.

I'm not actually sure how I feel about this subplot because it's the least believable part of the whole thing. Chalk os a "mockumentary", which means it's a fake doccumentary, possibly with comedy or drama bits, but this throws from the theme the rest of it set. For most of the rest of the film everything was believable and realisticaly accurate to what it's like to teach in highschool. Reading Wikipedia aout it it even said than many teachers said it was very accurate. It's possible the history teacher got this award and this upset when he didn't get it, but in this film it throws my suspension of disbelief out the window.

Chalk Notes part 1

a school
trust falls
awkward history class
"I thought when I entered administration I would be taking things home" turns out it's more work
goals: against sarcasm, cleanliness and organization, lesson plans
lesson plans need more detail
fight outside, lots of yelling while breaking it up
"creative response" breaking stuff
students argue, they're uncontrollable
this history teacher is super awkward
kids take and hide chalk
"it's like teaching, right? you do your best but you're not gonna get all the kids"
The gym teacher likes the idea of having a friend in administration. Nothing good can come of this.
Gym teacher has disagreement with another over the lateness of a kid and the enforcement of rules
This could be important because the gym teacher has the friend in administration
The history teacher is very bad at controling the kids. He says to have one of them teach the cass for some reason and I guess it backfires so he just leaves.
The other history teacher is very intent on winning a thing for teacher of the year because he was nominated. He decided to make it a bi dal both for himself and for his students.

Ranked most important

by me
Bell Hooks - Critical Thinking
Keith Gilyard - Children, Arts, and Du Bois
Jerry Large - Gift of Grit, Curiosity Help Kids Succeed
Barry Boyce - A Real Education

by group
Jerry Large - Gift of Grit, Curiosity Help Kids Succeed
Bell Hooks - Critical Thinking
Keith Gilyard - Children, Arts, and Du Bois

I especially liked the one on critical thinking, especially after a Theory of Knowledge class I took, which was about about critical thinking and examining how we know things. I think critical thinking is a fundamental skill and should be at the core of education. It stabs right into the heart of Gatto's writing on the controlling effects of school and doesn't include any of the childhood limiting bits I don't agree with (more in detail in some other entry, can't remember which). The group thought that Gift of Grit was better, but it made my number three spot, so I'm fine with agreeing with that.

Whatever I like

So I've been going through all my have finished blog post drafts, tidying them up a bit and publishing them. I've been doing it for a while now and was getting pretty tired of it, but I remembered I have a post where I could write whatever I wanted, so here it is.

The Spy

Team Fortress 2 is a great game. I like it. There's a competitive scene where people take it more seriously, focus on one class (character with certain ability/weapon set), and play against others in highly skilled and coordinated games. My main class is the spy, who can temporarily go invisible and achieve an instant kill backstab from behind. In competitive my job it to focus on priority targets to create an advantage for my team that can be capitalized on, and I usually die as soon as I get my pick. Recently my team made it to one of the highest divisions. We played well and received medals. Even more recently, though, my team was forced to disband after a player left and we had trouble finding a replacement. The next season doesn't begin until late January, and I plan on playing backup for an even higher division. Until then I'll be taking a bit of a break for finals and the holidays. In general, competitive gaming is not taken too seriously or just isn't very well known. While traditional sports are impressive for the athleticism, competitive gaming is impressive for skills like communication and formulating plans quickly.

PS. Sorry  ll the posts are horribly out of order now. Since I'm doing this by order of drafts and not from the syllabus I don't really know the dates to put on them, but I've started naming them better, so that should help.

Stand and Deliver notes part 2

students take AP test
kid who's "too dumb" passes
18/18 students pass ap calculus test
Escalante is presented with a plaque
board thinks students cheated and decided none passed
representatives try to get students to confess but fail
Escalante receives anonymous letter of resignation
he goes to leave and his car is missing
"they've lost confidence in the system they're now qualified to a part of
"I could make twice as much working somewhere I'll be treated with respect"
"Respect? Those kids love you"
Escalante goes to argue about the board's decision, say they're racist
the students agree to retake the test
they have to study all of it in one day
"dumb" stops studying and leaves Escalante's place
 gets involved with an unnecessary subplot
students take cinematically stressful test, they'll all tired
that one girl from the restaurant leaves part way through
school gets computers
kids all pass
roll credits
true story

The ets scene:

I would just like to see the test
I understand what you're going through, but the problem is between the school and the ets
there were some unorthodox and illogical computations
averaged fewer than 4 wrong, while other schools are close to average 14
I would like to see the proof of wrongdoing
There is no proof of wrongdoing, just suspicion of cheating
If this was beverley hills high school they wouldn't have sent you two to investigate
There is something going on no one is talking about it, and you know what it is
nobody has the right to accuse me of racism
I'm going to call security
go for it
you didn't show me the test you didn't prove anything
If I catch you on the street I'll kick the shit out of you

In what ways did reading this website enrich, complicate and or confuse your understanding about Freire’s banking concept.

It didn't help much. It didn't even complicate, it just sort of confused. The site seemed to take a random direction. The site was "Why Paulo Freire's 'Pedagogy of the Oppressed' is just as relevant as ever", and it's mostly about the Arab Revolution. That's right, it starts with Pedagogy of the Oppressed and goes to the Arab Revolution. The connection it makes between them is that Freire said "education is freedom". At first I we were confused unsure of what to make of it, sure that the transition was abrupt and out of place. We were convinced to look again, which lead to momentary clarity, only to be replaced by confusion again.

Freire explains: “Revolution is born as a social entity within the oppressor society…Every entity develops (or is transformed within itself, through the interplay of its contradictions. External conditioners, while necessary, are effective only if they coincide with those potentialities”.

We're thinking the writer of this read a different section that what we did. the title Pedagogy of the Oppressed doesn't explicitly say anything about education in the same way the part we read was, and it's entirely possible that large parts of the book are education related tangents. In that way the site could make sense, but because we don't exactly know what part of the book he's referencing or any of the context about this revolution it doesn't exactly help us understand or expand on what we already know. By the end it's all about oppressors and humanity in ways that don't pertain to what we've read.

Final paper draft 2

"Incorporate" is a word that's used a lot in school. The idea of taking something and mixing it up with the rest, usually a fine idea on its own, but almost meaningless as long as diffusion is at play. It's clear that there is something wrong with the public k-12 school system, and it's clear that everybody knows; there's a constant campaign to add more money, retrain teachers, change the tests, maintain the arts, disperse the students and accommodate different types of learning. It can be frequently observed that teachers tell the class that they will do something new for one session, something that will incorporate a different way of learning, teaching, or thinking. Whatever it was may be interesting, but when mixed in with the rest of the curriculum without any of its own context it seems superfluous, and proves to have little advantage. The idea of simply adding novel ideas is as flawed as the existing system that nullifies any attempt to change it, and if alternate teaching is pressed much harder the school system will be more fragmented than improved. In the TED talk title [name] states "[the origin of modern education comes from industrialization, and the need to prepare workforce capable adults]" and has undergone very little change since, especially compared to the world it is supposed to be preparing for.

The path to overcoming the ineptitude and complacency of the school system starts with a fundamental reconstruction of what the purpose of school is and how it intends to reach that point. While the overtones presented by Chalk would suggest that motivation is a larger issue at play than the direction of the education received, abundant evidence can be found for sheer capacity for children to be excited about learningIt is at this point that a critical divide begins to form; the purpose of education is a difficult one to solidify. Is it the prepare students for the real world? Is it to form children into insightful adults? Is it to create thinkers and leaders, or learners and followers? The issue involves the values of the culture. In many places the school system branches off into different paths at a fairly early stage, depending on the kind of education and jobs the the student will have. In America it's important to maintain the belief that anyone can be anything, so while it's easier to specialize branches of education it's important to maintain a single path as long as possible so not to separate the perceived workers from scholars. Within the single path of education every individual student needs to have the opportunity to become leaders or followers, learners, and functional adults, all while learning skills making them capable of performing in their desired jobs.

Such a wide array of requirements demands a school system that is flexible. A system where students can make decisions relevant to their goals while still taking certain mandatory classes. The concept of year grades keeping all students on a linear path also needs to be abolished, and instead students can leave whenever they like after meeting a minimum requirement and are not required to take more than the mandatory classes each year. It is important that students have these freedoms because a common problem in education is that some students learn very quickly while others may learn more slowly, or have personal reasons that don't allow them to devote as much time to school. A highly motivated student may move through the system quickly under a high load of classes while someone else may move more slowly. One student may focus on one type of classes before needing to leave for a more specialized college beyond the public system, while another may decide that they need a job sooner than later and begin taking courses related to the field of a job they can start doing immediately, perhaps while still taking courses headed for a long term goal. Standards and requirements would include taking specific classes before being a certain age, which would be accomplished by the attendance of mandatory classes, making students suitable for entry level jobs. The same method would be used for the the completion of classes required before leaving the schooling system entirely, which would not be based on strictly on age, giving students a large window to complete their public education, and they would leave as fully functional adults. Incorporating the standard array of classes at a young age is important to giving students a small experience of everything, while beyond that the mandatory classes only include everyday math and real world skills. The idea is that students will then have the freedom to take classes they want while still becoming real world ready, and because students are not required to spend as much time on subjects that are not interesting the same total number of classes will be taken throughout the system while producing more self-driven specialized students, competent at a basic level for entry level jobs, entry level jobs within a specific field, as well as prepared for higher level education in said chosen field, at no additional cost to the system.