February 5, 2007

• If you build
  it…they will learn 

  Educational change begins with
  teachers and curriculum.  Teachers can
  best inspire and manage their students through curriculum designed around real
  issues that affect our students.  Our
  philosophies and attitudes towards our profession and our students spell our
  success and failure.  This is what a
  movie like Freedom Writers is all about. 
  It’s not about a teacher losing her marriage and her life in order to
  help kids, nor is it meant to give a false sense of what a school really looks
  like.  It’s about a philosophy of
  education that says all students deserve to be treated with respect, and a
  curriculum that validates our students’ experiences, and challenges them to do
  something with them.
  

  Freedom Writers is based on a true
  story.  The main teacher, Erin Gruwell,
  discovers a racist note being passed around her classroom, and compares the
  event to Nazi propaganda.  When she
  discovers her students are ignorant of the Holocaust, she sees the need to make
  tolerance the focus of her curriculum. 
  Through literature such as The Diary of Anne Frank and Zlata’s Diary,
  combined with journaling, and discussion, Gruwell did something that wasn’t
  heroic.  She merely taught, and the
  content naturally inspired her students to change.  In my own school, the mere act of bringing in a copy of The
  Freedom Writer’s Diary transformed certain challenging and apathetic students
  into passionate readers. 

              Critics
  complain that such inspiring stories are not real, and cannot be
  replicated.  Nevermind the fact that
  they are based on true success stories, and how the book The Freedom Writers
  Diary makes wonderful classroom curriculum. 
  Tom Moore, in his Jan 19^th NYT op-ed piece, focused his ire on
  the idea that the underlying cause of movie miracles comes from the personal
  sacrifice of a teacher.  He says these
  movies create unrealistic expectations on teachers, who cannot succeed without
  “better and safer workplaces.”  On February
  5, a teacher on the education blog EdWize, described the movie Freedom Writers
  as propaganda for its message that a maverick teacher could inspire her
  students.  “Starting out as a teacher, I
  was well aware of a system fraught with problems so deep that one person could
  not change it. I did not see myself as the person who comes into a classroom
  and stands and delivers.”  

  Although the hesitations of these
  critics are not unfounded, their skepticism is one of the main points this
  movie seeks to address.   Idealist
  teachers abound, and their success in transforming classrooms and helping their
  students comes not only in the face of everyday school challenges, but despite
  these critics reminding them who they are not supposed to be.   “You’re a first-time teacher, you can’t
  make someone want an education.”  This
  is the negative support Gruwell receives from her supervisors, and resembles
  the critics who saw Freedom Writers not as a model for what is possible, but as
  treatise on what cannot be.

  Our profession may be complex in
  many ways, but stories of classroom success reveal simple truths about
  teaching.  Films such as Freedom Writers
  allow us to reflect on our own craft, and to think how each one of us, despite
  the odds, can transform our classrooms into energetic learning communities.  While critics may see only propaganda, self-destruction,
  and fiction, the change agent sees the creativity and ideas that can
  potentially shift the classroom culture that is long overdue for change.

  …………..please share your comments.  Thank you!

   

   

   

  • 11:03 pm
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