In class exercise--Stand and Deliver

1) Interestingly, many of the criteria that I had given for what makes a good teacher in a previous blog seems to be more of an ideal set of criteria versus something that is concrete. For instance, I had said that teachers should be well trained as teachers. In the movie Stand and Deliver, Mr. Escalante is a great teacher despite his lack of training. 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. Through this scene, I came to believe that Mr. Escalante has not had formal teacher's training, but what he does have is maturity, mastery of his subject and a passion for teaching his students.

2) In "What Makes a Good Teacher", Dan Brown lists ingredients that he thinks makes a great teacher. Included in these are teachers training where one can learn the craft of teaching in a situation that has a "reduced teaching load, room to experiment with my practice and access to one-on one feedback from mentors every day". Next, a school needs a great principle; someone who is supportive and provides direction and development. In the school, a teacher needs to have a spirit of collaboration with the other teachers at the school. Outside of the classroom and school, a good teacher ought to have good working relationships with their students families and be apart of the larger community. He also advises teachers to take on leadership roles as a way of helping to direct policy. To sum it up, Mr. Brown believes that "great teachers are cultivated, not anointed".

3) Though Sir Robinson does not explicitly outline the criteria for good teaching, he does challenge the educational system as a whole. He challenges us to rethink the hierarchy of what we value in education with math and language being the most valued, followed by the humanities and the arts taking up the rear. His challenge is value math, languages, humanities and the arts equally because people learn best when things are interactive and not compartmentalized. In other words, we learn best by utilizing all of our senses. He also asserts that creativity is as important as literacy. By educating people to come to the same right answer we are educating people out of their creativity because they are afraid to make a mistake or have the wrong answer versus being able to think outside of the box. He says, " if you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with anything original".

4) Mr. Escalante employs Sir Robinson's criteria of good teaching in his math classroom through the use of creative examples and creating a space where the students are encourage to try and not punished for being wrong. Early in the movie Mr. Escalante comes to class wearing a chef's hat and apron. He begins the lesson by cutting a portion out of red apples and passes them out to students who then tell him which percentage of the apple they are holding. This lesson creatively uses many senses to teach to teach percentages. Another example of his creativity is when he teaches algebra he writes story problems that the students can relate to--subjects from their real lives. The scene in movie that sticks out for me as being one where the students are encouraged to try regardless of whether they are right or wrong is in the scene where they were going to take a test and three students smugly decide that they are not going to take it. The girl, Claudia, is asked to sit in the chair at the front of the room. Upon seeing this the other two students start testing and then Claudia is allowed to sit back in her chair and take the test. Mr. Escalante wanted them to try. These are a few reasons I think that Sir Robinson who view Mr. Escalante as a good teacher.