Ms. Gruwell's Report

Gruwell was twenty four years old when she first began her teaching career at Wilson High School in Long Beach. At the time Long Beach was labeled as “gangster-rap capital” by MTV due to the portrayal of guns and graffiti. She brought it to the attention of school’s administration her new teaching methods for “unteachable” students. Unteachable students who were mainly people of color that experienced much hardship within their personal lives. Therefore her first group of students were “unteachable”. “The administration had already say this group of students as an unteachable, at risk group and wasn’t expecting Gruwell to reach them.” (Paragraph 4) This mean that the students were hostile from the start, making clear they weren’t interested in listening to their new teacher and even taking bets on how long she would last before she quit. Student saw Ms.Gruwell as joke. But she shows no sign of weakness and makes it known she will not be done how other teachers were done. All teachers that taught these students pervious years quit because they did not listen, and did not do work. Other teachers gave up on students, instead of finding ways to help

Bound by her own pledge to professionalism in educating the kids she is so blessed to have, Madame shows sign that she might possess human qualities, after all, when she admits that she was inclined to yell at Latoya as she was becoming frustrated on having to repeat herself, consecutively. However, Esme is able to withhold her wit and refrains from doing so as she has vowed to talk and listen privately, as of late. Upon speaking with the student alone in the hall, Latoya calmly informs her that “they are in the shelter this week and [she] must drop her little sister off and take the train over… it takes longer than [expected]” (Codell, 1999). Stepping back a moment to gain perspective, these are fifth graders. The same one where you look forward to daily recess freshly removed from the ideas that the opposite sex have ‘coodies’ and light up sneakers are cool. Remember? Oh, yeah! And you walk your sister to drop her off in the mornings before school and then jump on the inner-city Chicago train to get to school, yourself. As a teacher, you’re taught that your students will live very different lives and of the necessity to make accommodations accordingly. Students’ backgrounds cover a vast spectrum, and in order to achieve equity in your classroom, you must accommodate these students and cater to their specific needs so that, they too, have an

I am aware that there are better and worse high schools out there than Fremont High School. And yet, reading Kozol's account of the terrible conditions that are endured by these students made me feel more aware of the severity of improper or inadequate education that poorly funded schools provide. All of these problems, alongside my awareness of my fortunate years of education, make me wonder, just as Mireya did, as to why, "...[students] who need it so much more get so much less?" (Kozol 648). Interestingly, I have little to comment on Kozol's actual writing style, even though he wrote this account of his. I was just so attached to the characters within that school that I wanted to be able to reach out somehow; Kozol definitely achieved something very touching here.

There were many diverse aspects to this book. Most of this book is a recall from either the main character, or one of his students. This book is intended to open people’s eyes to see that in order to change the world we must first change ourselves. Being able to go through this story and see the mistakes, and the good decisions, teachers in Michie’s life have made, has taught me that the best way to teach is through love, justice, cultural empathy and imagination. Some of the points brought up in this book include the positive and negative sides of physical contact with a student, classification/stereotyping, race, gangs, police brutality/lack of justice, and children not being able to escape peer pressure.

She discusses the importance of respect between the teacher and student. Those who may not be familiar with a respectful relationship between an adult will learn it at school by the teacher providing acceptance and assistance to their needs. A teacher is not to provide passive displays of aggression to show that they are disappointed or frustrated. The best would be to pull a child to the side preferably when other children are not around to discuss how a respectful relationship would work. A teacher should form close relationships with those in his/her classroom. Making sure that children feel loved helps encourage them to learn.

As stated above, section one is about how to fail and how to prevent failing. In this section it introduced us to a teacher, named Elizabeth Dozier, who became a principal in some of the poorest schools in Chicago. The book also introduced us to Nadine Burke Harris, who is a pediatrician and opened a clinic in the poorest part of San Francisco. Each of these women took an interest in the children and families that are affected by poverty. Dozier became the principal of Fenger High School, and the first thing she did when she arrived was removing almost all the teachers. She brought in young and ambitious teachers, who she thought would make a difference in the school. One of the best decisions she made while she was at Fenger was to enforce a zero tolerance policy for violence, because gangs were a huge problem in the community and the school. Dozier sent twenty five of her most troubled students to an intensive mentoring program. The book then goes on

There are a group of students from Woodrow Wilson Classical High School who were apart of the new integration plan following the L.A Riots in 1994. Due to the unfamiliar school setting, students separated themselves into different groups: the Latinos, the African-Americans, and the Caucasian. A new caucasian teacher, Erin Gruwell, comes to the school to teach English to the Freshman and Sophomore class. Before the school year started, the Principal handed Erin Gruwell a list of students who were failing English, the majority of the students had grades in the fifties. Seeing the scores, made her realize that the students needed a great deal of work in order to improve their reading, the mass majority were reading at the 5th-grade level and were the freshman class in High School.

Mrs. Hood’s model as a kid was her granddaddy, a former teacher. This sparked Mrs. Hood’s desire to become a teacher. Her teaching

“The Sanctuary of School” uses good details, personal experience, and narrative writing style to successfully help the audience with difficult periods in their own childhood. The amount of details the author used, helps the readers visualize her childhood. It makes the audience put themselves in her shoes. The reader can feel her emotions and reactions to certain situations.

A: Being a student has a great effect on my view of what exactly an effective teacher is. A teacher, in my opinion, is one of the hardest yet rewarding jobs out there. Throughout high school I had the teachers who I excelled in their classes and I also had teachers who I didn’t do as well in their classes. As a high school student, some of that may have been due to the fact that I was a stubborn teenager, but the teachers did have a lot to do with it in some cases. In order to be an effective teacher, I feel that you must know your students on an individual level. Some teachers showed interest in who I was and then

The article “Lesson of a Lifetime” by Stephen G. Bloom is about Jane Elliot’s exercise to teach third graders what racial discrimination feels like. In the exercise blue eyed students are treated as inferior by the brown eyed students and then it is reversed. This allowed the students to step into a child of color’s shoes for a day. Her experiment was featured on a show and it caused an uproar, especially in her town, Riceville. She then practiced the exercise first in her classes but, then to larger places such as the U.S. Navy. Many people feel anger and hatred towards her because she has a blunt no-nonsense demeanor. Some people hated her exercise and some people loved it. She argues strongly for it because even if it hurts the child a

The article "The Lesson" by Toni Bambara explores the social values and norms by doing so she is making the readers think. Bambara writes about a smart young girl who questions and examines the realities around her. As I read the story I viewed the conflict there is between Sylvia and Miss Moore because of Sylvia's understanding of the division between the rich and the poor. Another point I perceived from Bambara writing was how it is not easy for a poor child to grow in a society where you have to be around people who do bad things. The writer also states that Sylvia is a "wise street black girl" who lives in a negative environment overall

In Ann P. Beatty’s essay “Survival Skills at a School in LA”, she writes from an outsider’s perspective explaining the various situations that display the harsh realities of her school community. When the students speak of the situation, the reader connects and opens up to their world while they build trust with the information they are presented with. Beatty’s impactful details create an emotional attachment to the reader while she establishes a lack of authenticity on the subject.

Throughout the movie, she also demonstrates lessons involving varied practice and self-directed learning. Ms. Gruwell made learning relevant for her students by appreciating their differences and connecting to ideas they related to. She considered what her students’ lives were like outside of school, where they were coming from, and how that affected their preparedness to learn. Ms.

But after reading the diaries we can see that she now realises that she was wrong about her pre-judged thoughts. In the last shot of the diary scene, we see Ms Gruwell has now finished reading the diaries and is sitting at her desk, thinking. As the camera pans across her head from right to left, we can see in the background the change of atmosphere as it goes from a dark room to a light room with the combination of soft music, in order to show that Ms Gruwell has now developed a new thought and a new light. The effect of this technique is to show that Ms Gruwell now understands in depth what her students are facing and the impact its reality creates on their lives every day. The use of this technique makes the audience challenge their thinking about the lives of students who are living in impoverished and corrupt environments.