My original thought for this week’s blog was to create a list of my top five Best and top five Worst movies about teachers and teaching. As my thoughts circled around the story of Jaime Escalante in the movie, Stand and Deliver, and the latest headlines bemoaning the fact that American students’ most recent test scores flatlined in global academia, I deep-sixed that idea.
I couldn’t shake the thought, “If teachers were able to expend their time and energy expressing their belief in the abilities of each and every one of their students, and in sharing their own passion for learning, students’ academic progress would shine. No longer would schools need to use testing defibrillators to jumpstart their pupils’ abilities.
Statistically and stereotypically, Mr. Escalante’s students at James A. Garfield high school in Los Angeles were destined for lives of unwed pregnancy, drugs, joblessness, prison time and more than likely, early demises. Parents and educators had already imposed a death sentence on these teenagers’ scholastic success. The students’ acceptance of their supposed deficient abilities just added to these judgments.
Find out what's happening in Herndonfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Mr. Escalante turned his back on this self-defeating bandwagon. When he scanned his students slouching in apathy, he saw abilities left to wither, starving for nurturing; he saw the students’ untapped academic potential; he saw the desperate need for daily doses of, “I believe in you”. He knew that long-term learning rehab had to take precedence over quick fix Band-Aids if these kids were to be successful instead of facing lives of foregone conclusions.
Then, the same as now, the Quick-Fix Band-Aids box offers skill practice workbooks for any subject. These procedures fall into the One Size Fits All category as the same lessons are accepted in every state with a mere modicum of concern about correlating with each state’s individual needs and learning standards.
Find out what's happening in Herndonfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
The Quick-Fix Band-Aids box pushes a plethora of digital practice tests over teacher/student discussions and interactions.
The Quick-Fix Band-Aids box offers a virtual paper tornado of data collecting forms for teachers to fill out after they analyze their students’ performance on every activity and practice exam.
Will someone please explain to me how these forms boost student learning?
Jaime Escalante understood these resources were nothing more than academic triage. Oh, they had flash but no depth. All students needed to do to complete the assignments or assessments that the Quick-Fix Band-Aids box offered was to turn on their Rote-No Thinking Required-Modes. These robotic formats stifled any passion for learning and doing.
They encouraged the perception that certain learners lacked academic potential. Not only did they fail to improve skills and abilities, but they also became self-fulfilling prophecies for students already clinging to the lower rungs of the academic ladder, by reinforcing preconceived notions.
Like Jaime Escalante, teachers know that the Quick-Fix Band-Aids box pays no heed to how geographic, economic, ethnic, familial and societal factors can affect students’ scholastic success. Contrary to this Results at any Cost mode, these classroom leaders fully understand that neither repetitious test-taking nor data collecting will foster a passion for learning.
Instead, they practice and preach the concept that developing higher-level thinking and comprehension skills will lead to academic success, and ergo, higher test scores.
Instead, they challenge students to grab their knowledge and to shape it into mental mountains.
Instead, they inspire students to reach higher, to try harder and to believe that they possess the power to succeed, no matter their past academic performances.
Escalante realized that his students were searching for something to wash away the emptiness and frustration that swirled inside of them ever since someone scorned their academic attempts. After all, they did keep coming to class most every day, even though they showed a total disdain for learning and for him.
He knew that in order to help them to climb to the top of the scholastic ladder he had to adopt teaching methods that captured their attention instead of dousing their sputtering desires to learn. Incorporating situations from their lives to explain the complex theorems and formulas of AP Calculus that they could relate to was crucial. From his very first lessons, he learned that the textbook’s examples gave them vapor lock of the brain.
Before he could empower his charges to believe in themselves, he had to show them that he was confident in their abilities to achieve school success. In order to accomplish this, he had to chip away at the apathetic and contemptuous facades they had erected to hide their feelings of failure.
Like so many people do, these kids acted like they felt others perceived them. Occasionally, this led to positive actions, but for these students, and so many like them, this was a self-defeating prophecy. People had deemed them as below average students, so they allowed their actions and words to support this belief. Escalante knew that if he were to reverse these conceptions, each of his lessons had to offer substance, and must resemble performance art, complete with a sprinkling of humor and a dusting of drama peppered with a smattering of audacity.
He taught them that they would have to sacrifice weekends of leisure as well as paying jobs, parental exhortations to, “Give up this foolishness,” and anything else that lured them away from their schoolwork if they were to ring the success bell.
He taught them that they needed to consider every low test score as a challenge to develop a confident, “I’ll show you the next time,” attitude instead of wallowing in pools of failure.
He taught them to Stand and Deliver…and they did.
As a Las Vegas headliner and the star of the Spike TV show BeLIEve, Chriss Angel pushes his audience to accept the unbelievable, and they do, even though they know that his performances are based on illusion.
Scholastic success should not be an elusive illusion to any student. Teachers, parents and anyone who understands the importance of a solid education should always exhibit an I Believe in you assertiveness toward all learners. Nothing… nothing is more encouraging to success. The best gift that we can give students, and the one that keeps on giving, is to let them know, by words and actions, “I believe in you.”
Until next week,
