My high school experience vs. Gatto's

                My high school experience was different from Gatto’s claims about high school. I would say that more often than not I was not bored and was learning quite a lot. In fact, I can remember times where I was learning so much that I felt a little overwhelmed and definitely not bored. Although, there were certain times in my high school experience were I was bored, learning things that I already had learned, as Gatto described. The difference is that in Gatto’s writing he makes it seem as though the students were constantly bored and not learning anything new. This was not the case in my experience.

"The Banking Concept of Education"

The addition of the information read from the website both further confused and enriched our understanding of Freire’s writings. The continuation of the theme of there not being much middle ground is present. He tends to take an either/or approach to oppression in education. Either the students and teachers are being oppressed, or they endorse the oppression. Freire writes about liberating people through peaceful discussion and the corruption of the education system. He considers it detrimental to the educational experience. Friere goes deeper than analyzing, he criticizes.
“A careful analysis of the teacher-student relationship at any level, inside or outside the school..”
“Second, Paulo Freire tends to argue in an either/or way. We are either with the oppressed or against them. This may be an interesting starting point for teaching, but taken too literally it can make for rather simplistic (political) analysis.”

Notes from Gatto reading

How public education cripples our kids, and why

"I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom. Boredom was everywhere in my world, and if you asked the kids, as I often did, why they felt so bored, they always gave the same answers: They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it. They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn't seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren't interested in learning more. And the kids were right: their teachers were every bit as bored as they were."

 We believe that in John Grotto’s work “Against School”, he is explaining how the current school system we have now is not teaching anything to students. “They said the work was stupid, that it made no sense, that they already knew it.” Here he explains that the students feel that they learn nothing, he explains how the students feel about their work which obviously is not good.  “They said they wanted to be doing something real, not just sitting around. They said teachers didn't seem to know much about their subjects and clearly weren't interested in learning more.” And here he explains how the students wanted to learn new things but were not able to due to the teachers not knowing their own subject or wanting to learn more about it themselves. “Teachers were every bit as bored as they were.” Lastly here he explains the problem. If the teachers are as bored as the students then the students will not learn anything because there is no instinctive to learn.  

We agree that Gatto is right but wrong, with his opinion. In the writing there are many examples of bias due to his experience in Manhattan.  “I taught for thirty years in some of the worst schools in Manhattan, and in some of the best, and during that time I became an expert in boredom.” Here he generalizes all schools with what he learned or experienced in Manhattan. “Boredom is the common condition of school teachers” Again this is bias from what he learns, and this is his personal belief. Yes in school there are good teachers and bad teachers, but to claim all of them to be “Bored” is a pretty big generalization that we felt was not accurate. “Of course, teachers are themselves products of the same twelve-year compulsory school programs that so thoroughly bore their students,” Yes it is true that the teachers come from the same school system as us, but all teachers come from a different era and area of school from us, which makes their school experience different from ours. “Who wouldn't get bored teaching students who are rude and interested only in grades? If even that.” While this is true for the most part in teachers who have the misfortune of having a bad class, some teachers do not find this as an excuse and actually make the students thrive. This idea of teachers taking a “Bad” class as a challenge and then turn around and make the students thrive can be seen in the Escalante case where he turned a class of students who would have dropped out and helped them thrive in school. 

Stand and Deliver (Part 1)

Good Teaching: Mr. Escalante is very playful and does not get intimidated easily. This is displayed when he first starts teaching, in the scene where the gang members come into the classroom. In this scene they enter the classroom and attempt to intimidate Mr. Escalante. However, Mr. Escalante was not intimidated and diffused the situation by making them take their seats.

                Mr. Escalante is also very good at engaging his students, and we saw this in the “chef” scene. He used a creative and visual way to engage his students and teach them about fractions. He dressed up as a chef and brought a knife into class, which definitely caught the attention of his students. He cut apples into various fractions and had the students identify what fraction of an apple they had.

Bad Teaching: Mendoza (the lady in charge at the staff meetings) displayed bad teaching in the staff meeting scene. In this scene we saw how she had no confidence in her students. She says that she “believes they will fail and have their self-esteem shattered”.

                Mr. Escalante also displays a little bit of bad teaching in the scene where the “hair net kid” arrives late to class, because he took his grandmother to the doctors. In the this scene the kid walks in and Mr. Escalante tells him the counselor is looking for him and to have fun in pottery(?). It’s good teaching to be hard on students about tardies and absences, but in this scene it was too hard. When it comes to family emergencies or illnesses there should be a little bit of leeway.

Paper 1 - Educational Narrative Final Draft

How I learned to snowboard

            I started snowboarding when I was in ninth grade, so when I was about fourteen years old. Many of my friends participated in ski school, which was offered through our junior high and high school. I had seen how much fun they had, so I decided to give it a try. Ski school was on Saturdays and they started very early in the morning. We had to be to the bus by 5:00 am so we could make it up to the mountain and have plenty of time for snowboarding.

            The first Saturday of ski school is the one I remember the most. Being a teenager I loved to sleep in, so getting up at 4 am was not the most ideal situation. However I wanted to learn to snowboard, so I got up and made it to the bus on time. The bus ride to Stevens Pass was about 3 hours and in order to save time we had to change into our ski clothes on the bus. Being almost six feet tall at the time this was rather difficult, because I hardly had enough room to get everything on. Although, it did prove to save time and before I knew it I was off the bus and ready to get on the mountain.

Thankfully, as a part of ski school I had lessons and that was the first thing we did. The lessons were about two hours long and because I was in the beginner’s class and it was everyone’s first time snowboarding, we started by learning how to get up. When you stand up on a snowboard you almost immediately start moving, so even though this sounds pretty simple, it proved to be rather difficult. The first fifteen to twenty attempts, I would stand up and within ten seconds fall right back down to the ground where I had started. Eventually I got the hang of standing up. The next thing we learned was how to go down the mountain. This was way more difficult than standing up, because it required us to maintain balance while moving and to control where we were going. Unfortunately for this first lesson we were only able to learn a little bit of this, because after about forty five minutes of it our lesson was over.

            After my lesson I met up with some of my friends who had already done ski school for a couple of years and we went to lunch. This was exactly what I needed, after just a couple hours of snowboarding I was already tired, and this let me recharge my batteries. However, little did I know that how I would really learn to snowboard was still to come. You see after lunch I went out with my friends, but they did not want to go on the boring beginner runs that I had been doing and was more comfortable with. They wanted me to go with them and told me I’d do fine on some of the intermediate runs. Now don’t forget this was my first day ever on a snowboard and intermediate runs were steeper, longer, and had narrower trails than beginner ones. The thought of going on an intermediate run was intimidating and felt like I was attempting an expert run. I was definitely uncertain about it, but after talking with my friends, they somehow convinced me to go.

            The first challenge I had to deal with on the intermediate run was the chair lift. The hard part about chair lifts for snowboarders is getting off, because we only have one foot strapped in. It is very easy for your other foot to slip off and make you fall right in front of the other people getting off at the same time. The difficulty was the speed of the chair lift, because on the beginner run the chair lift was much slower and gave me more time to get off. Now I was on a much faster lift and one that felt like it hardly slowed down so I could get off. So I was very worried and of course fell as I got off.

            After falling, I moved to the side, strapped my other foot in, and was ready to go. My trip down the mountain took about a half an hour due to my constant falling. I honestly couldn't tell you how many times I fell on that run, but it was definitely a lot. I fell so many times that I found myself getting frustrated and thought that when I finally get down the mountain I was never going up again. However, I did notice as I got farther down the mountain I was learning from each of my falls. I found myself able to stay up just a little bit longer than when I started the run. My progress at the time felt painstakingly slow, but it was progress.

When I finally reached the bottom and met my friends, who had made it down the mountain in about five minutes, they told me to go again. I was very hesitant, because of how much I fell on the first run. However, I realized that falling was a part of learning, so I agreed and went back up. I fell even fewer times the second time down the run, which was very encouraging, so I continued to go down it all day. Each time falling less and improving my snowboarding skills.

            The reason this experience was significant to me was because I didn't just learn to snowboard that day. I learned that not giving up is important and can make you successful. I also learned that sometimes taking a risk, which was going down the intermediate run in my case, can be frustrating, yet rewarding. If I hadn't gone down that run I would not have learned to snowboard as fast as I did. I would probably have stayed on the beginner run and learned at a much slower rate. The saying “you learn by doing” was absolutely true in my case. 

Paper 1 Rough Draft

How I learned to snowboard

            I started snowboarding when I was in ninth grade, so when I was about fourteen years old. Many of my friends participated in ski school, which was offered through my school, and I had seen how much fun they had, so I decided to give it a try. Ski school was on Saturdays and they started very early in the morning. We had to be to the bus by 5:00 am so we could make it up to the mountain and have plenty of time for snowboarding.

            The First Saturday of ski school is the one I remember the most. Being a teenager I loved to sleep, so getting up at 4 am was not the most ideal situation. However I wanted to learn to snowboard, so I got up and made it to the bus on time. The bus ride to Stevens Pass was about 3 hours and in order to save time we had to change into our ski clothes on the bus. Being almost six feet at the time this was rather difficult because I hardly had enough room to get everything on. Although it did prove to save time and before I knew it I was off the bus and ready to get on the mountain.

Thankfully as a part of ski school I had lessons and that was the first thing we did. The lessons were about two hours long and because it was my, and everyone else in the groups, first time snowboarding we first learned how to get up. When you stand up on a snowboard you almost immediately start moving, so even though this sounds pretty simple, it proved to be rather difficult. For probably the first fifteen to twenty attempts I would stand up and within ten seconds have fallen right back to the ground where I had started. Eventually I got the hang of standing up, so we moved onto the next thing, which was to learn how to go down the mountain. This was way more difficult than standing up and took numerous lessons, because it required us to maintain balance while moving and to control where we were going. Unfortunately for this first lesson we were only able to learn a little bit of this because after about forty five minutes of it our lesson was over.

            After my lesson I met up with some of my friends who had already done ski school for a couple of years and we went to get lunch. This was exactly what I needed because after just a couple hours of snowboarding I was already tired and this let me recharge my batteries. However, little did I know that how I would really learn to snowboard was still to come. You see after lunch I went out with my friends but they did not want to go on the beginner runs that I had been doing and was more comfortable with. They wanted me to go with them and told me I’d do fine on some of the intermediates. Now don’t forget this was my first day ever so the thought of going on an intermediate run felt like doing an expert run. I was definitely uncertain about it, but after doing some talking my friends somehow convinced me to go.

            The first challenge I had to deal with on the intermediate run was the chair lift. The hard part about chair lifts for snowboarders is getting off because we only have one foot strapped in. It is very easy for your other foot to slip off and make you fall right in front of other people that are getting off at the same time. The difficulty was the speed of the chair lift, because on the beginner run the chair lift was much slower and gave me more time to get off. Now I was on a much faster lift and one that felt like it hardly slowed down so I could get off. So getting off I was very worried and of course fell.

            I got back up, strapped my other foot in and was ready to go. My trip down the mountain took about a half an hour due to my constant falling. I honestly couldn't tell you how many times I fell on that run, but it was definitely a lot. I fell so many times that I got frustrated and thought to myself that when I finally get down the mountain I was never going up again. Although I did notice as I got farther down the mountain I was learning from each of my falls and was able to stay up just a little bit longer than at the beginning. My progress at the time felt painstakingly slow, but it was progress. When I finally reached the bottom and met my friends, who had made it down the mountain in about five minutes, they told me to go again. I was very unsure because of all my falling but I realized that falling was a part of learning, so I agreed and went back up three more times that day.

            The reason this experience was significant to me was because I didn't just learn to snowboard that day. I also learned that not giving is important and can be successful. I also learned that sometimes taking a risk, going down the intermediate run in my case, can be rewarding. If I hadn't gone down that run I would not have learned to snowboard as fast as I did. I would probably have probably stayed on the beginner run and learned at a much slower rate. The saying you learn by doing was absolutely true in my case. 

Notes from Ken Robinson video

• He was interested in education
• all kids have tremendous talent
• kids aren't frightened of being wrong
• If you're not prepared to be wrong you will not come up with something original
• we are educating people out of their creativeness
• All education around the world has a hierarchy of education:

             mathematics
             humanities
            Art

• In the next 30 years more people will graduate from a university than in past history
• A degree is no longer worth anything. It used to be that if you had a degree you could get a job, but that is no longer true.
• we need to rethink the fundamentals in which we educate our children