Blocking exercise for paper #2

I.  Teachers play important roles in the lives of their students. Wearing many hats, they do far more than present a lesson. Over the course of the day a teacher may play the role of educator, ally, confidante, disciplinarian, protector, health expert, counselor or advocate. This type of personal interaction, plus a teachers own positive attitude,  develops a rapport between teacher and student setting the stage for a successful learning environment allowing them to guide or mentor their students. It is the role of mentor that is the most important and Mr. Escalante and Ms. Watson are two teachers who are great mentors.

1. The body

A. Mr. Escalante has passion.

1. Though we are not explicitly told why Mr. Escalante chose to teach, we can assume that it was a choice that he made because he had passion to do so.Early in the movie, Mr. Escalante is taking the garbage out to the curbside and while there visits with a neighbor. The neighbor is surprised to hear that Mr. Escalante that  is now teaching and surmises that Mr Escalante must have gotten laid off instead of this career change being a choice that he has made. 

1. His own passion for teaching spilled over onto the students to help them learn or prepare themselves for learning.Through his own passion he asks the students whether or not they have desire, or ganas; you must have ganas to learn. By checking in with them about their ganas and supporting that, he was creating an atmosphere where everyone was there because they were ready and wanting to learn. “You already have two strikes against you. There are some people in this world who will assume that you know less than you do, because of your name and your complexion. But math is the great equalizer… You’re gonna work harder than you ever worked before. And the only think I ask from you is ganas.”
2. We learn that not only is he teaching his students at Garfield High School, but he is teaching an adult english class as well.

1. Mr Escalante has high expectations.

1. On the first day of class he arrives at the high school which is a very chaotic scene. He learns that though he was hired to teach a computer class, the computers have not arrived so he will be teaching math instead. The class he is to teach is very unruly and that first day no teaching takes place. He is able to assess which level the students are at, re-groups and begins teaching math. He begins setting up the structure and expectation of the class. He makes it clear that if you come to class, you come to class prepared. If you come to class you participate. 
2. There is tension between the faculty and Mr. Escalante because he is creating expectations for their success in learning and challenging them to do more they thought possible. Raquel Ortega, the head of the math department, objects to this because she thinks that he is creating a situation where they will only be disappointed and the situation will be for nought. His response is that. “they will rise to the level of expectation”. 
3. By the end of the year, the students have risen the level of being able to take the calculus AP exam. However, this will take some preparation time over the summer in order to do so as well as time before class, two hours of class during the regular school day, after school until M-F and Saturdays 7-12. Mr. Escalante will only teach this intensive program to those students and their parents who sign contracts agreeing to the terms of the class. This challenges the expectation of parents and families of the students. One girl’s mother questions why she would do this because, after all, “boys don’t like you if you are too smart”.

1. Mr. Escalante is personally involved in his students lives; he takes an interest in them.

1. When he teaches algebra, he creatively writes story problems that the students can relate to; they reflect their lives.
2. Mr. Escalante earns the respect of Angel by showing him that he is capable. By doing so, Angel does develop the ganas, but is conflicted because he may be teased by his friends. Mr. Escalante is sensitive to this gives him extra books sot hat he doesn’t have to carry books around.
3. When Mr. Escalante learns that one of his brightest students will be dropping out of school to work in her families’ restaurant, he goes to the restaurant and petitions her father to allow her to stay. He convinces him that she is smart and that her completing high school and going to college will be of greater help to him than any work that she could do for him at this time.
4. When the students are falsely accused of cheating, he personally goes to speak with the men who are conducting the investigations. Mr. Escalante is very angry about the injustice of why they are questioning the students. The students are given the option to retake the class. The students agree to this, but they only have a one day to prepare, so Mr. Escalante once again uses his own time to help them.  He stood by the kids and believed in them

1. Ms. Watson is determined

1. Ms. Watson comes to Wellesley because she wanted to make a difference. Coming from the West Coast, Ms. Watson takes a position at Wellesley College teaching art history. Wellesley is an all women’s Ivy league school for the brightest women in the country. She is looking forward to being apart of a school that turns out tomorrows leaders. She learns that she was not their first choice of teacher, but she was available. The staff is turned off by her lack of a doctorate degree, though she is working on it, and her choice of thesis. They are skeptical of her from the beginning.
2. Her first day of teaching is a disaster. She introduces herself and the syllabus that she will be following. As she begins to show the slides the girls one by one call out the name of the piece and it’s importance without having been called upon by Ms. Watson. In other words, they took over the class. The following day she comes back to class with a whole new plan. She introduces art work that is not on the syllabus and asks the girls to look at the piece and consider it without knowing anything about it. In this way she regains control and begins to teach them to think for themselves. She asks them to “look beyond the paint” and “let us try to open our minds to a new idea”.
3. Ms. Watson comes very frustrated when she fully realizes that Wellesley is more like a finishing school than a college. There are classes on marriage and many of the activities on campus center around when a girl will get her ring and be married. Once married, there are a number of allowances for them to miss school. Betty, a married student and editor of the school newspaper, writes an editorial that rips Ms Watson apart. She states that Ms. Watson “has decided to declare war on the holy sacrament of marriage. Her subversive and political teachings encourage our Wellesley girls to reject the roles they were born to fill.” Having read this, Ms. Watson address this very boldly in class by showing advertisements of the women of the day as housewives. She says that it was her mistake, she didn’t realize that by demanding excellence that she would be challenging the roles the girls were born to fulfill.”
4. Though she was asked to return to Wellesely the following year, the conditions that the alumni board had created and the school adopted would meant that Katherine would have to change too much of who she was in oder to accommodate them and so she declined saying that, “to change for others is lie to yourself”

1. Ms Watson had high exceptions

1. Of herself. In the opening voiceover we learn that Catherine Watson had “all her life, she had wanted to teach at Wellesley College. So, when a position opened in the Art History department, she pursued it single-mindedly until she was hired. It was whispered that Katherine Watson, a first-year teacher from Oakland State, made up in brains what she lacked in pedigree. Which was why this bohemian from California was on her way to the most conservative college in the nation.” 
2. Of her students. She again and again encourages them o look beyond and open themselves up to a new idea. They were so steeped in the traditions of Wellesley that the expectations that were in place were traditions that kept them boxed into particular roles, namely those of passing through college with A’s without having to really think and getting married.  She had them word for their grades. When JOan receives a C on a paper she goes to MS. Watson and asks her why. Ms. Watson said that Joan had told her what someone else thought about the question not what she herself thought. In the end the girls were having very academic conversations about what they thought.
3. The faculty. Ms. Watson was incredibly disappointed int he faculty of Wellesley who did not expect more for the girls, but were they themselves caught in the traditions of Wellesley. In particular through the alumni association which was comprised of the girls mothers who led tightly to traditions who themselves were unable to look beyond.
4. Of her lover. She expected truth and didn’t get it, so she broke off the relationship.

1. Ms Watson is personally interested in her students

1. When Ms. Watson learned that Joan was interested in going to law school, she got Joan an application to Yale Law School and helped her apply.
2. Ms. Watson attends Betty’s wedding.
3. Ms. Watson accepts her students invitation to the AR meeting and is a good sport about answering their questions honestly.
4. Though they were unaware of it, Ms. Watson acted as advocate for the students by         heatedly challenging the dean about the expectations that the school had of the girls. 

Mr. Escalante and Ms. Watson are two teachers who are excellent of examples of the most important role that teachers play in the lives of the their students; the role of mentor. Both teachers have passion, high expectations of themselves and the students as well as a willingness to be personally involved in the lives of their students. More than just teaching a particular subject, teachers who are mentors teach their students about life and challenge them to be the best they can be.