This movie is almost a year old, but I just saw it for the first time this weekend. This movie is a documentary about America's public school system. I found this film really interesting and sad, but I think that everyone should watch this!
The film follows several children in there struggle in public schools and their effort to attend a better charter school. I found that the main message of this movie was: the aspect of a child's education that has the greatest impact on their success is a good teacher.
As I watched this movie I reflected on my own education experiences. When I was in kindergarten to 2nd grade, my mother was my teacher. I don't really remember being home- schooled, but I do remember 3rd grade really well, and feeling like I had learned almost everything before. I had really good teachers in elementary school. When I was in middle school we moved to New Mexico. I went to a high school that this movie calls "a drop-out factory," meaning that the drop out rate is over 40%. I had several good teachers, but I also had some teachers that this movie would refer to as "lemons." I had few teachers in middle school and high school where the majority of the time we watched movies, and I really don't remember them teaching much of anything. I had one teacher in particular for freshman world history who was the coach of the football team. I don't ever remember him teaching us a thing. He would hand us work sheets and we would have to find the answers in our book over the course of the class and turn them in. But, I also remember amazing teachers like my math teachers and chemistry teachers in high school. I feel like I got a good education in high school. I do not think that I was disadvantaged when I got to college. I may not have known as much about chemistry as my peers in freshman chem... but while the other students were relying on their high school knowledge I had already developed good study habits as a freshman in college.
This movie also reaffirmed to me my desire to teach high school at some point. As cheesy as this may sound, I really want to make a difference in the public school system, and I feel like with some practice I could be a good teacher! I will still probably teach at the community college level when I am done with my PhD, but at some point I will teach high school.
Anyway, I hope that you will see Waiting for Superman! And, if you have, what did you think about it?
4 comments:
Never saw this movie, but hoping to check it out now. I was thinking about lemons and I thought of my health class. Given, part of it wasn't his fault, we had no more rooms so our class was held in the foyer of the gym so it was always a mad house. Through my bro sis and I, he lost our work/worksheets all the time. He spent more time challenging class members to wrestle than really teaching anything.
HOWEVER, the one thing I appreciated from this man was:
A PE class was walking through and some kid was cussing. So my teacher held him back and made him do 10 up downs for ever swear word he had heard which was like 6. He gets to about 45 and is so tired he swears again. So this poor kid is being humiliated in front of a class of seniors laughing at him while he is being physically punished for being vulgar. Spoke too soon, not a poor kid, it was funny.
I really want to see this now! I don't have any kids in school YET, but Sophie starts preschool this fall and kindergarten next year. Unfortunately, I never thought a lot about teachers until now... when it's becoming real for us! It's really scary. I know I can teach her lots at home, and especially in the beginning (since she already can read) it's more for the social development. But I think it's awesome you want to teach high school. Teachers are so important! Makes me feel bad that I don't want to do it... it would be so hard! But I am SO SO SO grateful for good people like you who do (or will).
Of course Allen and I saw this being a part of teach for America. The more Allen and I think it through we have come to a conclusin that the only way to fix education is through the home. Teachers can only go so far. We do think that the public school system needs A LOT of help and is still a wonderful tool to help children. But the problem lies in the home. If the home life is good, kids turn out ok. If it is not, they typically have problems. What do you think?
Rachel- I completely agree that what happens in the home has a huge impact on the child (probably the largest). However, I still find it devastating that a child will a receive a certain quality of education based on where you live. Although I think that I made the best of my public school education, it sometimes makes me feel sad when I see how much better other schools were just because they were in a nicer area of town (I was mainly jealous of more AP classes offered).
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