Education in Freedom Writers

Education in Freedom WritersFoundations of EducationFilm Critique Freedom WritersHistorically, concepts such as curriculum, syllabus, lesson plan, educational objectives have been all-important words in education. These concepts do not exist in a vacuum. Teaching and larn argon often affected by social, governmental, economic, and historical factors that are not accounted for in the formal curriculum. The consider Freedom Writers explores some of these factors from the vantage point of Ms. Gruwell, an inexperienced middle class ovalbumin female instructor at an integrated schooldays, Woodrow Wilson Classical High School inLong Beach, California. The film is set in the racially charged atmosphere of 1994, less than two years after the Los Angeles riots sparked by the acquittal of the Caucasic officers who were caught on camera brutalizing Rodney King, an African American. Her group of racially diverse at try students are unflatteringly denominate unteachables. Before she can teach basic concepts in poetry, however, Ms. Gruwell has to contend with and overcome the racial stereotypes, start teacher and student expectations, curt discipline, socioeconomic restraints, and unforesightful bureaucratic policy that have resulted in her students negative office to their teachers, school, the educational system, and life in general. They intend that their educational boundaries are limited, that their teachers are not invested in them, and that school is solely another prison to which they are delegate during the day to fight the undeclared war. some(prenominal) teachers and students believe that the students are acceptless and that attempts to teach them using the formal curriculum is an exercise in futility. This paper explores how trustworthy factors external to the educational institutionsracial stereotypes, low teacher and student expectation, poor discipline, socioeconomic and historical restraints, and myopic political policyaffect the educational process as portrayed in Freedom Writers. Initially, Ms. Gruell assay an ineffective teacher dominated, teacher centered approach to educating her students. Try as she might, however, she could not bewitch the students raise in her lessons. The students regarded her as an outsider and that she had to gain their discover in the beginning they would give them hers and allow her to teach them. Ms. G was forced to revise her teaching style and strategies to reach her students. Eventually she expelled the curriculum and scarcely listened to her students. Her wisdom was in recognizing that she had to connect with them and to understand that they had needs that had to be ack nowadaysledged and barriers that had to be demolished before they would be taught. She assigned materials intimately minorities and discrimination that they could relate to including The Diary of Anne Frankand Elie WieselsNight. She empowered them with words by giving them diaries in which they could release the ir sustain stories. She devised activities and field trips to help them learn respect and tolerance of ace another. The student listened to guest speakers, and conducted a field trip to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum so they could experience racism, intolerance, death and in stillice in a new context. She was even able to raise funds for class projects and outings. Once she had gotten their interest, Ms. G relentlessly built on themes that which was familiar her students. In so doing, she achieves what thus far had been seemingly impossible acquire her students interested in filling education.Ms. Gruwells pedagogical style evolved to resemble the point Approach. Inquiry is a student-centered pedagogical model which is based on the idea that teaching and learning are enhanced when students are active agents in the teaching and learning process. Teaching is most effective when students are not just passively digesting arbitrary nurture, precisely are engaged in th e actual construction of diverse, relevant, and real adult male knowledge. Thus, the very nature of the Inquiry Approach means that it is highly effective framework for catering to students contrastive learning styles and for facilitating the management of challenging curricula. The learning sequence is based on concepts that facilitate effective learning rather than arbitrary classroom activities tackling real-world questions, issues and controversies, developing questioning, research and communication skills, and solving problems or creating solutions. Schema activation, articulating sassy methods of processing ideas, drawing ideas and generating new ideas from experiences, conducting independent research are important to Inquiry. Inquiry is authentic lessons and glut are focused on authentic, relevant ideas that students are actually interested in. This is the ultimate genius of the Inquiry Approach the deep understanding of self-generated content in an authentic context whic h extends beyond the classroom. temporary hookup Ms. G might have opted simply to teach the established curriculum, she instead opted to teach the students in the route they inevitable to be taught.One of the important themes of Freedom Writers is that teaching and learning do not meet place in a vacuum. Rather, the classroom is a microcosm of the larger society where a host of social, historical, political and economic factors converge in the classroom and directly impinge on the education process. This plethora of factors puzzle out the educational process and how effectively a teacher can teach.Political agents included the school arrangement and the Board of Education all cogs in a system designed to suppress the advancement of minorities. The thickened label of unteachable placed on the students only exacerbates the sense of oppression these disenfranchised minority students feel. The school serves as microcosm of the larger society where oppression was even more pervas ive and detrimental. rather of serving as a springboard for the students to self-actualize and escape the bonds of the matrix of domination by challenging them to achieve high standards, it instead send the same oppression the prevented the students from self-actualizing in the first place. A simple example is the reading list for class. Instead of allowing the students to interact with high quality, challenging reading material such as Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet, they students were expected to read a condensed version of the diddle which was below the reading standard for their grade. Even worse, the main concern of the head of de fall inment, Ms. Margaret Campbell, was that the students would damage the books instead of reading them. She was not concerned with challenging students to reach for high academic accomplishments. She simply fed into the machinery of the matrix where unteachable students continue to perform much more poorly than their Caucasian counterparts. What s he fails to realize is that this location simply perpetuates the very issue that she complains about. According to Carborne II in Race, Class, and Oppression Solutions for active Learning and Literacy in the Classroom.The disadvantage perpetuated by this oppression can influence a students motivation to win in school, and has been sh stimulate to negatively impact academic performance and levels of self-esteem. In many urban school settings, the racial impact of socio-economic status is reflected in the academic performance of minority students in those schools as well as in the sense of hopelessness that often accompanies it.The influence of historical factors and the influence on situations to education is fair in Freedom Writers. The film is set in 1994 soon after the 1992 race riots in Los Angeles which were prompted by the televised police brutality of Rodney King. With the single exception of a male Caucasian student, Erin Gruwells students are minorities African-American , Latino, Asian, and Mexican. Traditionally, undereducated, deprived and marginalized, these students grew up with a long history of racial, economic, educational, and social inequity. They come from neighborhoods that are traditionally controlled by crime lords, drug kingpins neighborhoods where drugs, broken families, gang-life and violence are a way of life. Survival dominates their thinking, and most are reassured that the will not reach their 18th birthday. The hate the system that warehouses them in integrated school and forgets that they exist. Their primary goal in school is to survive the day.Learning is of secondary importance particularly if the education comes from a Caucasian, the representation of the system that they hate so much. Initially, Ms. Gs students resisted her attempts to educate them, because they had been socialised to think of Caucasians as them racially oppressive forces that historically have undermine and disenfranchised minority races. The student s refuse to or cannot respect her as a teacher or even as a human world because she is one of them. They fail to acknowledge the possible controlling ramifications of being educated by her.The most damning fount of this kind of oppressive system is that it is self-perpetuating. Over generations, the oppression has become firmly engrained in the lives of minorities to the point where they internalize and manifest the stereotypes even as they resist them. For example, while Ms. G was genuinely interested in her students, but after years of discrimination and ill treatment, her interest came across as sympathy, or worse pity. Her positive attitude was not accepted at face value. Instead her display of what the students interpreted as what Freire legal injury false charity was yet another bit of proof that the system was stacked against them. The fact is that she call for to show charity because of the systemher systemput minorities at an unfair economic disadvantage.Economics pla y a major role in Room 203. Researchers such as Jonathan Kozol (2008) and Berliner (2006) record startling correlations amid the achievement gap and which are directly linked to economic prosperity. According to a Trends in maths and Science Study TIMMS (2003), American schools with the most wealth possess the highest test scores. Conversely, American schools with the highest levels of meagreness achieve the lowest test scores. Hodgkinson (2008) reports even more startling statistics the United States has the largest total number of children keep below the poverty line. In this demographic, 33% is African while only 14% is Caucasian. Hodgkinson asserts that long name investment from government and non-governmental agencies would be the best way to alleviate the problem of student performance in underperforming schools. Investment like this would have a ripple effect in the larger society by breaking the cycle of poverty. However, the issue is far too complex to be solved by a s imple injection of financial capital into poor performing schools. A collaborative effort is needed where students, parents, teachers, school administrators, and teachers converge as a single entity to combat this issue.Initially, Ms. Gs students resisted her attempts to educate them, because they had been socialized to think of Caucasians as them racially oppressive forces that historically have undermine and disenfranchised minority races. Their attitude toward her was based on their previous experiences with white teachers and other privileged members of a racially oppressive system, who do not understand the struggle that they had experienced as minorities poverty, discrimination, crime, drugs, racism, and death. In fact, for these oppressed students, these individuals are actually part of the machinery designed to perpetually oppress minorities. With her constant smile, her high minded ideals, and her feeble, misguided attempts to save the minority students from their own lives , she fit perfectly the stereotype of white privilege. The author of Race, Class, and Oppression Solutions for Active Learning and Literacy in the Classroom explains this in terms of a matrix of domination where the achievement gap between minority students and their Caucasian counterparts has led to the marginalization of many students by social class and race. The students refuse to or cannot respect her as a teacher or even as a human being because she is one of them. They fail to acknowledge the possible positive ramifications of being educated by her.The movie provides an in-depth exploration of the complex dynamics of expectations. Historically, low expectations were routinely assigned to lower class or minority populations by teachers and the students themselves. The academic downgrade of Woodrow Wilson High School after integration proved that minorities are not as academically resourceful as students from other privileged backgrounds. The poor performance was further exace rbated by the students deficiency of discipline which in turn confirmed teachers negative attitude and low expectations. Perhaps the worst outcome so such attitudes is that they creates a sense of inferiority in these students who now internalize these low expectations of others now manifest them as low expectations of themselves. Clearly, expectations are a double edged sword. Positive expectations are a major contributor to student success, while negative expectations have the opposite effect. Over the last some(prenominal) decades a number of researchers have shown that irrespective of whether the teacher or students have high or low academic expectations, self-fulfilling prophecies assure that those expectations will be met. The results of a study of 30,000 minority students by Harvard University economist and researcher Ronald F. Ferguson discovered the distinct importance of teacher encouragement as a source of motivation of non-White students. Both Mr. Gelford and Ms. Cam pbell, and the rest of the staff, had low expectations of the unteachables in Room 203. From the onset, Ms. Campbell indicated that Ms. Gs objectives in her lesson plan were pitched to a higher place the students ability and advised her to simplify them. She also dismissed the idea that the student should be provided with rich, stimulating material. Mr. Gelford refused to mean the idea that the students would be able to appreciate the novel The Diary of Anne Frank and sneered at the idea that they had the intellectual sophistication to draw parallels between their lives and Annes life. Ms. Gs kids were not expected to achieve as much as the students in Mr. Gelfords advanced class so they were held to a different, albeit lower, standard.The solution for counteracting the prejudicial effects of low expectations is not merely to dispel low expectations or to declare a article of faith in high expectation. Teachers must believe that students have to potential for unlimited success. Rosenthal and Jacobsons 1968 experiment indicated that students showed scarce academic success simple because their teachers thought they would. Had Erin attended to the advice about the achievement potential of the students in 203 would neer have achieved their remarkable academic performance. What drove them to achieve was her simple belief that they were just as capable of the levels of achievement as their Caucasian counterparts.Despite all odds, Ms. G was able to achieve what the two teachers before her had been unable to. She was able to get the students in Room 203 to take an active interest in their own education. Despite all odds, and with great personal sacrifice, she showed the students what it really meant to have an education in an oppressive world. She gave them hope for the future. Once she shifted the focus from her teaching to the students learning, she was able to recognize that the racial stereotypes, low teacher and student expectation, poor discipline, socioe conomic and historical restraints, and limited bureaucratic policy are real restraints that compromise the educational process.The film Freedom Writers inspires me as a teacher. Students today are much more difficult to manage, but as the film shows, management difficulties are rooted in social, economic, political, and historical factors that the students internalize and consciously manifest in ways that compromise them. It takes enormous dedication, patience, and conviction to help students break through whatever constraints the students are seek with. Ms. Gruwells experiences remind me of my first days as a teacher with typed lesson plans and a thousand misconceptions about how students should be taught. Ultimately, we have to understand out roles as facilitators of learning, and more broadly, life. Our jobsvocationas teachers is not merely to broadcast facts. Rather it is to educate students in the sense of helping them to gather and construct relevant information that will hel p them to evolve as creative individual thinkers. Teachers need to find catalysts that generate the prove for learning in their students. We need to strive daily to find creative and revolutionary means to get students to achieve way beyond their wildest expectations. If Ms. G, inexperienced and idealistic as she was, inspired 150 at risk students to persevere and graduate, then so can any teacher. She truly is an inspiration for us all.ReferencesCarbone II, S. A. (2010). Race, Class, and Oppression Solutions for Active Learning and Literacy in the Classroom.Student Pulse,2(01). Retrieved fromhttp//www.studentpulse.com/a?id=113Laurier. J. (2007). Freedom Writers Truly no child left behind Retrieved from http//www.wsws.org/en/articles/2007/01/free-j27.htmlOHara, M. (2009). Freedom Writers Their Story Their Words. A Study Guide. Retrieved from http//www.metromagazine.com.au/freedom/downloads/freedomwriters_sg.pdfTeach for America. (2011). Diversity, Community and work. Retrieved fro m http//www.teachingasleadership.org/sites/default/files/Related-Readings/DCA_2011.pdf