HW 51

A very important topic in schooling, in my opinion, is: how much power do the teachers actually have in school and disciplining students. Many would think that the teachers and faculty of the school would have a say, which they do most of the time, but as you will see in my paper, other people also have a say.

The book I read was Academy X and in there, the parents have the bigger say in what goes on in the students lives because they have money and can tell
the teachers what to do. The teachers don't tell the parents how to do their work so neither should the parents.

While i was doing research on suspensions, I read that some schools suspend students or little things and they suspend students as young as kindergarten for things such as not listening to the teacher. People critiscized this because teachers need to learn how to handle students and only suspend them it is a serious problem like if a student wouldn't stop fighting. Also, students, especially at a young age, should also be suspended if they pose a threat to themselves or others around them. What could a young person possibly do? Some parents who had kids who got suspended said that it is pure laziness that their kids are suspended because the teachers just don't want to deal with the kids and think it is easier to just deal with suspensions.

HW 50

For the Gatto article, "Six Lessons," I feel like he is the epitome of a bad teacher because it seems like he is in the job as a paycheck and last resort and he wants the students to be like robots. He wants to keep the classroom like a typical class where students sit in rows and read from textbooks. It is a very conservative place. He doesn't let students have even a little bit of say in what they learn. For example, the fourth lesson he teaches is that he has the only say in the curriculum and that he doesn't care about people being curious because all the students should know is what they are being taught. He goes on to say that "Bad kids fight against this, of course, trying openly or covertly to make decisions for themselves about what they will learn. How can we allow that and survive as schoolteachers? Fortunately there are procedures to break the will of those who resist." The last sentence shows how he wants the students to obey him fully. In class, we talked about school being an institution and I think that in this case, Gatto is taking that to the extreme. He rules the place similarly to a prison warden. SOF isn't really like an institution because people have some say in what we learn and we don't sit in rows and are rigid.

In my class, Copeland came in to talk about his idea of saving students and about how that sounds very pretencious and stupid. I somewhat agree with him that it is a very Hollywood storyline of the hero teacher saving kids but I would assume it feels good to help save young people before it gets to be too late. I also like how he said he appreciates it when students are able to grasp the lesson they are learning in class and that he also learns a lot from his students. That is something that Gatto would never dream of doing and that is bad. Students are obviously young but they aren't dumb and they pose good questions to the teacher. The students will learn more if they also think for themselves instead of being spoon-fed information.

HW 49

For my class film, we did a scenario where there was a student being bullied and one of the other students steps in to save the bullied student from the bully and stands up to the bully. Back in the classroom, the teacher is trying to get the students attention unsuccessfully and nobody is listening to him and keeps talking back and throwing things around. Students just keep walking out of the classroom and keep talking back. After a while, the teacher silences the students and starts talking to them about why what we are learning is important and plays a song for us that resonates with what we are learning. The hero student talks back to the teacher saying what he is teaching them is stupid.

I was one of the students in the classroom not listening to the teacher. The teacher gives me a piece of paper and tells me to write my ideas and thoughts on it but i roll my eyes at him and say no.

This story is different than most because there really isn't a hero student in the other films but it's similar to other super-teacher films because the students misbehave and treat the teachers very badly and it takes a while for the students to finally start listening to the teacher. The part where the teacher (Andy) gives us the paper to write things on is similar to "Freedom Writers" where Hilary Swank's character gives her students a notebook to write their problems out. The teacher tries to connect to the students.

I think that "saving" students is something every educator wants to do because I can imagine that it does feel really good to help young people who are in trouble and make their adult lives better. Saving people is a good thing and if a higher authority, which is in this case a teacher, is able to better someone's life, it is a big accomplishment. Teachers who do this are regarded as very good teachers ad have films made about them. I think that teachers who are able to actually able to teach students life skills and not just math, science, etc, that is very important because book smart won't get a person anywhere without life skills. I think it's admirable if a teacher helps students who are in dire need of help more than teachers who just are able to connect with students who are well off but just don't want to focus.

HW 47

Ideas for class movie:
-Teacher at first fails at teaching and calming down students but after a while, he does.
-Teacher fails miserably at helping the students and never succeeds.
-Teacher relates to the students in life experiences and the students grow to like the teacher.
-Teacher helps the students fight for their rights over something unfair going on and then the students like him more.
-Teacher is just all around a good teacher.
-Students like the teacher at first but then something happens or a rumor starts about the teacher so the students start to lose respect or trust.
-The teacher is just an all-around bad teacher.

HW 46

The book I read was "Academy X" by Andrew Trees. It is a true story about a private school teacher and all of his mostly horrid experiences there. He talks about his opinions on students and of teachers and just how messed up the school is, generally speaking. He tries to be a fair teacher and I personally got to see actually how hard it is to be a teacher and control a classroom. It really puts into perspective how different private schools are from public ones.
In the book,the parents basically run the school because they are on the board of trustees at the school, which I later learned was Horace Mann and put a lot of pressure on their kids to get into Ivy's and will do anything to insure that of happening-even doing dishonest things. If a kid gets in trouble, nothing happens because the parents just "buy out" the school in some way such as having an auditorium named after them and the dean and principal are on the parents side even saying "the parent is the best customer" meaning the teachers should treat the parents as if they are shopping in a store. This is a very crazy school system and the students do such crazy things and the teachers will try to punish the students but can't because the students know that nothing will happen to them. The kids are extremely undisciplined which I believe will probably hurt them later in life because as one grows older, less things they will be able to get away with. One case that was very huge was when the most popular and affluent student of his class named Caitlen claimed that the teacher raped her because he wouldn't let her get away with plagirizing a paper. She took off her top at the end of class and then took out a torn shirt and the principal came in and she ran over to the principal "crying" and made the torn shirt look like the teacher did it. The teacher believed the girl and wouldn't give the teacher a chance to explain himself. Practically the whole class was on the teachers side and knew he didn't do anything. He did have a minor, minor crush on the girl and thought she was beautiful, which is of course perverted but rape and a crush, especially in a student-teacher case is a very big difference.
This relates to my topic of how a school is run and what the teachers run the school and this book definitley gives a very different side of who actually runs this private school system. It is shocking to see that people can actually get away with these things. In this particular case, the teachers barely have any say in teaching because the parents tell them what to do through bribery. The tables turned and I really hate it because the teachers don't tell the parents how to run their jobs and neither should the parents. The purpose of school is to learn things but the kids who are on the poor side (middle class) learn more because they can't get everything at the drop of a hat by being bought into an Ivy whereas the rich kids know they can slack off and do whatever because their parents will just get them everything. I can relate this to my own public school experience how there aren't any super rich kids and you certainly can't buy your way into and out of situations and how there will mostly be serious problems if parents get too involved. Things are taken more seriously because everyone has an equal education.