Stand and Deliver: part 2

It was really amazing to see the transformation the students took from the beginning of the movie to the last. And not just in the students but also in Mr. Escalante. They overcame so many hurdles together. The students started out as students who did not care about school, getting an education and learning, caring about what would happen to them in the future, and also having pretty low self-images and low self-esteems of themselves. The school had very low expectations of the students. Mr. Escalante raised the bar for his math students, expected more of them, encouraged them, and helped them be the best that they could be. I really liked that he helped to push them farther and farther to accomplish more and more; And that he was there helping them, coaching them, teaching them, mentoring them, and even cooking for them. He taught them never to settle and to always do your best, even when people think push back. I found this movie to be very inspiring. I wish that there were more teachers like Mr. Escalante in the world, teaching with such passion, kindness, patience, and creativity.

Stand and Deliver: part 1

I always forget that I have seen Stand and Deliver before, until I am about half way through it. What I really appreciate about Mr. Escalante is his ability to adapt. This quality is obvious from the very beginning, when he showed up to teach computer class and they send him to his classroom to teach math. He didn’t put up a big fuss or walk out and say he didn’t want to teach math; he accepted the challenge and walked into his room and started to teach math. He spent the first day observing his students and sort of sizing them up, came back on the second day and approached them in a way that they could relate to him and respect him. He had his work cut out for him. Entering a school that was losing its accreditation, teaching students who had extremely hard home lives and did not feel that getting a high school education was going to help them in anyway. It was a joke to them, a waste of time. In being adaptable, creative, and receptive to what his students had to say; I feel like Mr. Escalante helped to change his student’s view of education and also their personal lives at home.

What I Value in a Teacher

There are several qualities that I value in a teacher; those qualities are encouragement, understanding, roll model, I feel like a teacher should inspire their students and teach them to think critically. Thinking back to teachers I have had in the past I really admire teachers who have taught without making it feel like you are learning. Who teach in a way that makes it fun, interesting, challenging, while applying it to real life. I had a teacher like that when I was in high school taking Japanese for the first time. Mrs. Goto did a good job drawing out good qualities in her students by being very attentive, challenging us when she knew the materials were too easy, being very approachable during and after class, and teaching us things that we could apply to real life. It wasn’t always easy, but she was always there to help us through it. Even though she had a class room of 25 students, Mrs. Goto always had time to help students one on one. She encouraged us to help each other and not just learn from her.  Mrs. Goto used very creative methods of teaching us the material; we danced, sang, put together plays, did exercises, and could only speak Japanese in class. She went above and beyond to really teach her students.  This is my example of what I value in a teacher.

Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde did a wonderful job illustrating to her readers her educational experience that was the first grade. The way it was written made it very easy to picture the scene’s   she was painting and it felt like you were there with here experiencing her emotions and her life. Readers could tell that this was a big life event for her and that it was one that was still extremely vivid for her. Examples of this are when she is describing what happened between her, her mother and the librarian, “My mother was pinching my ear off one bright afternoon, while I lay spread-eagled on the floor of the Children’s Room like a furious little brown toad, screaming bloody murder and embarrassing my mother to death.”  This sentence is a great example of how well she paints the pictures of her experience right before she found she wanted to learn to read.  A few great examples of her school experience with Sister Mary of Perpetual Help is when she sent a note home with Audre to give to her mother that stated, “…Not to dress me in so many layers of clothing because then I couldn’t feel the strap on my behind when I was punished.”  Another is, “She [Sister Mary of Perpetual Help] had divided up the lass into two groups, the Fairies and the Brownies. In this day of heightened sensitivity to racism and color usage, I don’t have to tell you which were the good students and which were the baddies.” Though these great descriptive sentences it is easy to tell that she went to school in a time where teachers were mostly disciplinarians and were able to use physical punishment in order to get their students to do their work.