Not enough time is spent thinking about education
Spending over ½ a billion on the building and niceties of area where this money could probably be better spent.
Public schools need more help/attention than they get. From parents and nonparents.
WHY is there a reality TV show about this...
America
is POORLY rated on math and science skills bottom numbers. Out of 25
countries rated we were 21st and 24th. But we are confident!
Students
need to be challenged, made to do things they may not want to:
math/english/science are all “required courses” to a very limited level
but there are some things that should likely be added to this.
Physically active classes (PE or Gym, whatever you want to call it),
public speaking classes, and in this age of computers some level of
typing skill should be taught.
More
study involving hands on. Find ways to make the topics relevant. This
is likely an ongoing thing but teach something from multiple real world
angles whenever possible.
The
focus on teaching to standardized tests likely helps kill creativity. I
understand the need for “standardized testing” for reasons of mass
analysis but it is inadequate for a vast number of reasons. How can you
fairly judge people across the board without a balanced or standardized
system that applies to everyone. Even with the notion of standardized
tests that breaks down at a point. While a standardized test is great
for things like math or science - hard information based topics -
subjects like art, english or humanities in part defy standardization at
heart and to try to do so takes away from it. Seriously...standardizing
art...
What does it take to engage students. What criteria must be met for a student to achieve
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Second Formal Paper
The
expressed job of a teacher is to educate the students, usually within
the formal bounds of their particular topic. The students taking French
are expected to know how to order coffee in a bistro under the Eiffel
Tower if ever the situation should present itself. The ones taking math
are expected to know how to factor a polynomial for some made up reason
about how it will be necessary later in life. Even the kids in History
are expected to memorize dates and names so they can win at trivia night
with friends at a bar someday. In all actuality much of this
information will never again get called up willingly if ever because it
is all part of an expected curriculum we have to or think we want to
take at the time. All through high school I had all sorts of teachers
whose classes were forgettable primarily because these were the lessons
they taught. While the teachers themselves are fondly remembered as
people, I usually can’t remember much of what they were telling me in
their classrooms. Looking back though, it becomes apparent that the less
obvious role of a good teacher is to prepare us, using the confines of
their given subject, for situations in the world outside of high school.
Two good examples of this were my Drama teacher Ms. Love and my history
teacher Mr. Mewinney.
Ms. Love was not the stereotypical burnout flower-child, all love and soft edges, kind of drama teacher depicted by many shows and movies. She was instead one of the more demanding people that I ever worked for and I learned a number of things from her that I still use in some part in my everyday life. One of the things that I used to make jokes about was how in football and many of our sports there was the “I made it onto the football team” team and the “I tried out for the football team” team. While there may have been some disappointment in not making the cut there was still the JV team to fall back to. Just about everyone who tried out got a role. This was not the case with the Oregon City Drama program. Ms. Love took pride in the shows she put on at the high school with a high level of production going into them. These could not always be shows with an ensemble of thirty people. Many of the shows had a cast of no more than ten or so people on stage. So even though there could be thirty to fifty people trying out for the show, many just could not get in. You had to show up at the auditions prepared; dressed appropriately, resume in hand, and get through your audition in a calm and collected manner. My many attempts at getting onstage always wound up in failure but I found later when I went to apply for jobs many of the same themes were present. Show up dressed nice, bring the required material and get ready to put on a convincing performance.
The second part to this lesson was that just because you had the role did not mean that it was yours. There are many things that go into a production, and if someone is not pulling their own weight than it can negatively affect the whole group. If you missed too many practices she would remove you and bring the understudy up to fill your position. Even a place in her classroom was not secure just because you were on the roll sheet. Most of the classes she taught were multi-semester, which meant that if you were not keeping up with what was expected of you she would remove you from the roster at the turn of the next semester. Again all of this equates easily to the workplace where if you show up late enough times you will quickly find yourself unemployed. The same goes for underperformance, if you cannot uphold the expectations a job places on you then they will eventually let you go.
Mr Mewinney was another teacher that did a good job of imparting these more subtle lessons. One of the things that I liked about his class in retrospect, even though it worked against me at the time, was his strict rules and expectations. As far as he was concerned by taking his class you were obliged to complete the tasks assigned. In line with this one of the most maddening rules in his class was that you could get one-hundred percent on every assignment, but if you failed to turn in even one small five point assignment the best possible grade you could get would be a B+. Those coveted A’s were out of your reach because you failed to keep your word. While the only thing at stake in this class was a letter grade, a point off of your GPA, this again was something that moves into your interactions with people everyday. When I interact with my peers I constantly find myself giving small promises of tasks to be done or things we will do. They do the same to me, if I do this for them they will do this for me or even just volunteer to do something without any prompting. I have found it hurts a person more to forget to do one of these small things than to do it at less than one-hundred percent. It is not a grade at stake anymore but your reputation with that person. That tends to affect you more than any “permanent” record the school keeps.
Another thing he taught, though I have my doubts if it was intentional, was how to deal with obstinate people that you are forced to interact with. He was a strongly opinionated person who fancied himself a debater. At the end of the day though he was right, no matter how persuasive your argument was. While I never personally ran afoul of this a friend of mine would often leave any class she had with him incredibly angry because she would often try to question his political point of view. There were a number of times where he would use the classroom as a soapbox to rant, trying to convince us how that rest of the teachers were too liberal or the school system was too protective because when he was a student he...and then he would talk about some incident of hazing from when he was in high school. In the world outside of school you will often have to interact with people that have a point of view that differs wildly from your own and no matter how much you believe in your side, the other person has just as strong of an investment in their own side. What can be more frustrating is when these people wind up being your boss or some other figure you are supposed to defer to out of social courtesy. While he may have been going for a different lesson with his rantings his classes taught us how to deal with stubborn people.
Looking back I can see all of this much clearer than I could at the time. When I was going through this Ms Love was that mildly intimidating, impossible to please woman. Mr Mewinney was that teacher that I never got a good grade in his class who managed to anger a good group of my friends at one point or another. Seven years after I graduated high school these are the teachers that I best remember because of the non-curriculum things that I was able to take away from their classes. I think that this is a strong herald of what makes for a great teacher. While they may have not been my favorite people going through high school, these were the teachers that prepared me for life beyond high school. At the time the grade is all important and its vital that you can remember the hard facts to pass the test. When that last bell rings though and you are banished from the structured world you had known all your life, these unintentional lessons become the most important of all.
Ms. Love was not the stereotypical burnout flower-child, all love and soft edges, kind of drama teacher depicted by many shows and movies. She was instead one of the more demanding people that I ever worked for and I learned a number of things from her that I still use in some part in my everyday life. One of the things that I used to make jokes about was how in football and many of our sports there was the “I made it onto the football team” team and the “I tried out for the football team” team. While there may have been some disappointment in not making the cut there was still the JV team to fall back to. Just about everyone who tried out got a role. This was not the case with the Oregon City Drama program. Ms. Love took pride in the shows she put on at the high school with a high level of production going into them. These could not always be shows with an ensemble of thirty people. Many of the shows had a cast of no more than ten or so people on stage. So even though there could be thirty to fifty people trying out for the show, many just could not get in. You had to show up at the auditions prepared; dressed appropriately, resume in hand, and get through your audition in a calm and collected manner. My many attempts at getting onstage always wound up in failure but I found later when I went to apply for jobs many of the same themes were present. Show up dressed nice, bring the required material and get ready to put on a convincing performance.
The second part to this lesson was that just because you had the role did not mean that it was yours. There are many things that go into a production, and if someone is not pulling their own weight than it can negatively affect the whole group. If you missed too many practices she would remove you and bring the understudy up to fill your position. Even a place in her classroom was not secure just because you were on the roll sheet. Most of the classes she taught were multi-semester, which meant that if you were not keeping up with what was expected of you she would remove you from the roster at the turn of the next semester. Again all of this equates easily to the workplace where if you show up late enough times you will quickly find yourself unemployed. The same goes for underperformance, if you cannot uphold the expectations a job places on you then they will eventually let you go.
Mr Mewinney was another teacher that did a good job of imparting these more subtle lessons. One of the things that I liked about his class in retrospect, even though it worked against me at the time, was his strict rules and expectations. As far as he was concerned by taking his class you were obliged to complete the tasks assigned. In line with this one of the most maddening rules in his class was that you could get one-hundred percent on every assignment, but if you failed to turn in even one small five point assignment the best possible grade you could get would be a B+. Those coveted A’s were out of your reach because you failed to keep your word. While the only thing at stake in this class was a letter grade, a point off of your GPA, this again was something that moves into your interactions with people everyday. When I interact with my peers I constantly find myself giving small promises of tasks to be done or things we will do. They do the same to me, if I do this for them they will do this for me or even just volunteer to do something without any prompting. I have found it hurts a person more to forget to do one of these small things than to do it at less than one-hundred percent. It is not a grade at stake anymore but your reputation with that person. That tends to affect you more than any “permanent” record the school keeps.
Another thing he taught, though I have my doubts if it was intentional, was how to deal with obstinate people that you are forced to interact with. He was a strongly opinionated person who fancied himself a debater. At the end of the day though he was right, no matter how persuasive your argument was. While I never personally ran afoul of this a friend of mine would often leave any class she had with him incredibly angry because she would often try to question his political point of view. There were a number of times where he would use the classroom as a soapbox to rant, trying to convince us how that rest of the teachers were too liberal or the school system was too protective because when he was a student he...and then he would talk about some incident of hazing from when he was in high school. In the world outside of school you will often have to interact with people that have a point of view that differs wildly from your own and no matter how much you believe in your side, the other person has just as strong of an investment in their own side. What can be more frustrating is when these people wind up being your boss or some other figure you are supposed to defer to out of social courtesy. While he may have been going for a different lesson with his rantings his classes taught us how to deal with stubborn people.
Looking back I can see all of this much clearer than I could at the time. When I was going through this Ms Love was that mildly intimidating, impossible to please woman. Mr Mewinney was that teacher that I never got a good grade in his class who managed to anger a good group of my friends at one point or another. Seven years after I graduated high school these are the teachers that I best remember because of the non-curriculum things that I was able to take away from their classes. I think that this is a strong herald of what makes for a great teacher. While they may have not been my favorite people going through high school, these were the teachers that prepared me for life beyond high school. At the time the grade is all important and its vital that you can remember the hard facts to pass the test. When that last bell rings though and you are banished from the structured world you had known all your life, these unintentional lessons become the most important of all.
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
A bunch of things combined
Garfield High School vs Welsey
These two schools are very different in a large number of ways but there are also some similarities. The differences are stark but with an unfortunately similar final outcome. Garfield is portrayed as an under funded school for underprivileged minorities in the eighties in inner city LA. It has a reputation for drugs and dangerous activity where most of the students are not thought to well of and the school is mostly seen as something they have to attend without any real attachment to the location or the people that teach there. Welsey on the other hand is a womens college for the children of the wealthy and affluent. Here the women are allowed to pursue many topics of education from art to law. The school is heavily regulated and very conservative as is shown in the termination of the school nurse for giving contraceptives to students. Where they both seem to share a similarity is they both act as an educational facility who’s true purpose is mostly just to house and maintain the students until they are released to their real lives that often times will have nothing to do with what was taught at the institution. With High School being mandatory for children under the age of 18 the students were required to go but the subjects taught would hold little to no useful information for the jobs they were heading towards. Welsey on the other hand served as a place for the well to do women to stay while the informally stated goal was to get them ready for marriage, again with many of the talents learned stagnating and going to waste.
Ms. Watson vs Mr. Escalante
Both of the teachers are able to cause an otherwise rambunctious class to settle down and show some form of deference for the teacher. While the student body were very different groups; Mr. Escalante teaching poor hispanic kids and Ms Watson teaching the girls of mostly wealthy upper class families, both groups had an initial disdain for the teacher. In the case of Mr. Escalante he put down the rebellion in the first class and continued to rule the class with a firm hand through the rest of the movie. On the other hand, Ms. Watson held a more tenuous control over her students with momentary lapses where a student would cause her to lose control briefly, as with the editorial written by Betty Warren.
I feel that Mr. Escalante’s control of the situation came in part from his no nonsense policies and the station that he did hold over the students. Whereas Ms Watson was more obviously outside the social circles that most of the girls were privy to and as such they felt freer to challenge Ms Watson as her social superior. I also think that Ms Watson would let her position as a mentor slip on occasion and would interact more as a friend than as a constant mentor as was shown by Mr. Escalante.
Sparse Notes
Julia Roberts teaches at an all girls school where the girls are educated but at the same time being prepared to get married and be a “good wife”
First class goes poorly with students knowing everything as she presents it. Giving her no room to teach. Class bowls over anything she tries to give. Wasn’t respected in day one
Took second day to throw class a curve ball. Made students question “art”
Confrontation to the ideals of what a woman was supposed to be. in the 1950’s
Used the slideshow to demonstrate for the students what was in store for them and what was expected of them.
Tries to help the Julia Stiles (Joan) get into law school in spite of tommy’s interference.
Does try to project onto the students what SHE thinks is way for women to behave. Similar to how the school does but in the opposite faction.
These two schools are very different in a large number of ways but there are also some similarities. The differences are stark but with an unfortunately similar final outcome. Garfield is portrayed as an under funded school for underprivileged minorities in the eighties in inner city LA. It has a reputation for drugs and dangerous activity where most of the students are not thought to well of and the school is mostly seen as something they have to attend without any real attachment to the location or the people that teach there. Welsey on the other hand is a womens college for the children of the wealthy and affluent. Here the women are allowed to pursue many topics of education from art to law. The school is heavily regulated and very conservative as is shown in the termination of the school nurse for giving contraceptives to students. Where they both seem to share a similarity is they both act as an educational facility who’s true purpose is mostly just to house and maintain the students until they are released to their real lives that often times will have nothing to do with what was taught at the institution. With High School being mandatory for children under the age of 18 the students were required to go but the subjects taught would hold little to no useful information for the jobs they were heading towards. Welsey on the other hand served as a place for the well to do women to stay while the informally stated goal was to get them ready for marriage, again with many of the talents learned stagnating and going to waste.
Ms. Watson vs Mr. Escalante
Both of the teachers are able to cause an otherwise rambunctious class to settle down and show some form of deference for the teacher. While the student body were very different groups; Mr. Escalante teaching poor hispanic kids and Ms Watson teaching the girls of mostly wealthy upper class families, both groups had an initial disdain for the teacher. In the case of Mr. Escalante he put down the rebellion in the first class and continued to rule the class with a firm hand through the rest of the movie. On the other hand, Ms. Watson held a more tenuous control over her students with momentary lapses where a student would cause her to lose control briefly, as with the editorial written by Betty Warren.
I feel that Mr. Escalante’s control of the situation came in part from his no nonsense policies and the station that he did hold over the students. Whereas Ms Watson was more obviously outside the social circles that most of the girls were privy to and as such they felt freer to challenge Ms Watson as her social superior. I also think that Ms Watson would let her position as a mentor slip on occasion and would interact more as a friend than as a constant mentor as was shown by Mr. Escalante.
Sparse Notes
Julia Roberts teaches at an all girls school where the girls are educated but at the same time being prepared to get married and be a “good wife”
First class goes poorly with students knowing everything as she presents it. Giving her no room to teach. Class bowls over anything she tries to give. Wasn’t respected in day one
Took second day to throw class a curve ball. Made students question “art”
Confrontation to the ideals of what a woman was supposed to be. in the 1950’s
Used the slideshow to demonstrate for the students what was in store for them and what was expected of them.
Tries to help the Julia Stiles (Joan) get into law school in spite of tommy’s interference.
Does try to project onto the students what SHE thinks is way for women to behave. Similar to how the school does but in the opposite faction.
McFarland Vs Escalante
While the subject matter was different, both Mr McFarland from Mike Rose’s I Just Want to be Normal and Mr Escalante from the 1988 movie Stand and Deliver would challenge their students and be a catalyst in trying to elevate their students from what would have otherwise been a sub-par educational experience. Both of these teachers showed enough of an interest in their students that they realized that they were capable of more than they had been allotted and challenged them to rail against the labels placed on them.
In Stand and Deliver Mr. Escalante pushed the students with enough drive to accomplish something truly amazing in their Calculus Advanced Placement tests. As he was depicted in the movie Mr. Escalante was a stickler for rules and required all of the students to meet his high expectations for success or get out of the way of the other students. While he did make exceptions on several occasions for the character of Angel he made his disappointment in the character known. He would do the same thing with most of his students at one point or another, push them to some form of breaking point and then pull them back into the fold. With Ana and the confrontation with her father at the restaurant, the scene in the car with ____ where he points out that he only sees the path in front of him, not the consequences of taking each path.
It is a little harder to delve the character of Mr McFarland from I Just Want to be Normal because we are only given two and a half pages of brief information about the authors interaction with him. From this we also saw that he recognized a student that was underperforming and showed enough interest to ferret out the fact that he had been mis-categorized in the Vocational Track. After removing Rose from that track he helped him to succeed in spite of the handicap that had been placed on him by the years in the other program.
Both teachers showed an interest in their students and a desire to see them grow in spite of the rather low expectations set on them by circumstances mostly outside of the student’s control. By doing this one can infer, or hope, that their efforts helped these students out of the path they were on and onto one that would lead to a happier life.
In Stand and Deliver Mr. Escalante pushed the students with enough drive to accomplish something truly amazing in their Calculus Advanced Placement tests. As he was depicted in the movie Mr. Escalante was a stickler for rules and required all of the students to meet his high expectations for success or get out of the way of the other students. While he did make exceptions on several occasions for the character of Angel he made his disappointment in the character known. He would do the same thing with most of his students at one point or another, push them to some form of breaking point and then pull them back into the fold. With Ana and the confrontation with her father at the restaurant, the scene in the car with ____ where he points out that he only sees the path in front of him, not the consequences of taking each path.
It is a little harder to delve the character of Mr McFarland from I Just Want to be Normal because we are only given two and a half pages of brief information about the authors interaction with him. From this we also saw that he recognized a student that was underperforming and showed enough interest to ferret out the fact that he had been mis-categorized in the Vocational Track. After removing Rose from that track he helped him to succeed in spite of the handicap that had been placed on him by the years in the other program.
Both teachers showed an interest in their students and a desire to see them grow in spite of the rather low expectations set on them by circumstances mostly outside of the student’s control. By doing this one can infer, or hope, that their efforts helped these students out of the path they were on and onto one that would lead to a happier life.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Forgive the Roughlayout or Second Paper Brainstorm
After
reading my educational narrative I wanted to get across to my readers
that sometimes the silly “useless” things that you learn in life
sometimes may turn out to be handy. We to often dismiss things are
useless and not worth knowing. Sometimes the alternative may prove to be
true.
Thesis Statement = Main Idea/Main Point
Paragraph1 -
Paragraph2 - Develop Thesis (about the topic)
Paragraph3 -
Conclusion Paragraph
NOTES
Sir Ken Robinson TED Talk
“we dont grow into creativity, we grow out of it”
Education prioritizes math/science/factory work over creativity - art, humanities etc
More people will be formally educated in the next 30 years than in all of human history before that
Memorable Teachers
Mr Mewinney - Hard line, was always right, pretentious. Had a teaching style that I could learn from.
Rocky Smith - Art teacher, did not learn much about given tasks but still recieved a good grade in class despite this
Carolyn Love - Drama teacher. Hard line, “scary” things were learned. Tech theater/drama. You could fail but it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Ideas -
Different teaching styles. leaniency vs hard expectations. Which produced better results? (subjective?)
Not sticking to a lesson plan, better learned subjects?
Rocky - graded my “work” on its own merit not based on how it compared to the lesson plan. Allowed me to get an A in the class in spite of not doing over half of the assignments. I was still doing something in the class that was “art” related and as a result graded that on effort.
Mewinney - Started the week with an outline on the board that we took the first twenty minutes of class copying down in a specific format. Used rest of week to go over outline as the lesson plan. Hard structure but taught note taking skills.
Carolyn - Expected students to give a strong effort. she was commonly the casting director for the school plays. Didn’t cast many “ensemble” plays. There were ten roles to be cast and many trying out for different roles. Most wouldnt get a role. Favoritism vs actual skill.
Thesis Statement = Main Idea/Main Point
Paragraph1 -
Paragraph2 - Develop Thesis (about the topic)
Paragraph3 -
Conclusion Paragraph
NOTES
Sir Ken Robinson TED Talk
“we dont grow into creativity, we grow out of it”
Education prioritizes math/science/factory work over creativity - art, humanities etc
More people will be formally educated in the next 30 years than in all of human history before that
Memorable Teachers
Mr Mewinney - Hard line, was always right, pretentious. Had a teaching style that I could learn from.
Rocky Smith - Art teacher, did not learn much about given tasks but still recieved a good grade in class despite this
Carolyn Love - Drama teacher. Hard line, “scary” things were learned. Tech theater/drama. You could fail but it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Ideas -
Different teaching styles. leaniency vs hard expectations. Which produced better results? (subjective?)
Not sticking to a lesson plan, better learned subjects?
Rocky - graded my “work” on its own merit not based on how it compared to the lesson plan. Allowed me to get an A in the class in spite of not doing over half of the assignments. I was still doing something in the class that was “art” related and as a result graded that on effort.
Mewinney - Started the week with an outline on the board that we took the first twenty minutes of class copying down in a specific format. Used rest of week to go over outline as the lesson plan. Hard structure but taught note taking skills.
Carolyn - Expected students to give a strong effort. she was commonly the casting director for the school plays. Didn’t cast many “ensemble” plays. There were ten roles to be cast and many trying out for different roles. Most wouldnt get a role. Favoritism vs actual skill.
Notes and Response to Stand and Deliver
He
believed in his student when no one else did. He constantly went to bat
for them. Some would argue that he may have been too aggressive with
the students or possibly belligerent. Many of the things that were shown
in the movie would not be allowed in modern classrooms. The way he
talked down to the students, the way that he would set an example using
one misbehaving student to put the rest in line. Its hard for me to
argue if this is a bad thing. In some ways I think there is too much
coddling, we are not allowed to fail in a spectacular fashion. These
behaviors shown by Escalante could cause some resentment in some
students but at the same time there are those that would react
positively and actually step up to the challenge presented. Overall I
liked his teaching method, though there were times where I found myself
wondering if he may have overstepped. It is a movie, based on a real
story, so I would be curious to know how much of the “examples” shown
were things that the true teacher actually did.
NOTES
ITS EDWARD JAMES OLMOS!
Students disrespectful, doesnt give authority to teacher
his car got broken into, radio stolen
uses odd methods to teach
- chopped an apple in half/removed “25%”
- humor to start a class
- mildly rude to student who was rude to him (finger man)
- Continues to shame students who disrespect him
- makes students repeat lessons “a negative times a negative is a positive”
- “the students will rise to the level of expectations”
- Works with student to allow him to learn
- Lays down firm rules. Makes examples of students so others fall in line
- engages class
Students had obstacles
- Parents who don't support them
- Peer pressure against learning
- “family business” restaurant
His family is feeling distant because he doesn’t give enough time to them
He had a heart attack in the movie, in reality he had gall stones or something equally less life threatening.
NOTES
ITS EDWARD JAMES OLMOS!
Students disrespectful, doesnt give authority to teacher
his car got broken into, radio stolen
uses odd methods to teach
- chopped an apple in half/removed “25%”
- humor to start a class
- mildly rude to student who was rude to him (finger man)
- Continues to shame students who disrespect him
- makes students repeat lessons “a negative times a negative is a positive”
- “the students will rise to the level of expectations”
- Works with student to allow him to learn
- Lays down firm rules. Makes examples of students so others fall in line
- engages class
Students had obstacles
- Parents who don't support them
- Peer pressure against learning
- “family business” restaurant
His family is feeling distant because he doesn’t give enough time to them
He had a heart attack in the movie, in reality he had gall stones or something equally less life threatening.
Oppinions About Good Teachers
Personally
I think that there are two essential skills that any “good teacher”
must have. The first is to be able to have fun with the students. I know
from personal experience that without some level of engagement from the
teacher, if I do not find the topic to be interesting then I will not
absorb any of it. So the educator must be able to find a way to make a
topic interesting. I remember from middle school I had a really cool
French teacher who I can still distinctly remember the lesson (if not
the actual words). When he was teaching us the french words for various
body parts he brought in a tear apart doll dressed like a coach. He
would rip off the arm and say the french word. After a few repetitions
he replaced the arm and did the same with the head and so on. The
following year my high school French teacher was a
flashcards-and-workbook kind of teacher. I took her classes for two
years without learning anything more than je ne parle pas Francais, or “I do not speak French.”
The second criteria is that they can retain some sort of control over their class. I have had a fair number of teachers who easily fit into the above category but when it came to student/teacher dynamic they tried to hard to be friends and as a result they could not get the class to fall back into line when it was time to actually teach. One of my favorite teachers from high school was a really cool guy and very understanding with grades and projects, but many of the students did not respect him and as a result there were times where he would “let the class go work on their projects” rather than try to continue the lesson.
The second criteria is that they can retain some sort of control over their class. I have had a fair number of teachers who easily fit into the above category but when it came to student/teacher dynamic they tried to hard to be friends and as a result they could not get the class to fall back into line when it was time to actually teach. One of my favorite teachers from high school was a really cool guy and very understanding with grades and projects, but many of the students did not respect him and as a result there were times where he would “let the class go work on their projects” rather than try to continue the lesson.
Lords Illustrations
Lorde
uses many different way to describe her teachers from colorful
metaphors about the way they ran the class as in the case of Sister Mary
of Perpetual Help by explaining that she ruled “with an iron hand in
the shape of a cross” and her being a “disciplinarian of the first
order” to show how she was quick to punish the students for infractions,
large or small.
Another would be the characterization of the librarian that introduced her to books. She portrays her initial reaction to the librarian being “yet another mile-high woman about to do me in.” Then she continues to explain the particulars of her eyes and her soft voice.
Lorde did not limit herself to physical descriptions though, I particularly liked how she depicted her kindergarten teacher. For the description of her teacher Ms Taylor she talks about how “her voice smiled a big smile” and going on to explain that even after all the years she can still remember what her voice sounded like but she cannot remember a thing about her physical appearance.
Another would be the characterization of the librarian that introduced her to books. She portrays her initial reaction to the librarian being “yet another mile-high woman about to do me in.” Then she continues to explain the particulars of her eyes and her soft voice.
Lorde did not limit herself to physical descriptions though, I particularly liked how she depicted her kindergarten teacher. For the description of her teacher Ms Taylor she talks about how “her voice smiled a big smile” and going on to explain that even after all the years she can still remember what her voice sounded like but she cannot remember a thing about her physical appearance.
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