Last entry

The title itself could give a clear picture on how will I describe the whole thing I got from this subject but of course, I could not write it all here as it would be publically publish. So let me just hide and keep some never ending story, drama and also picture of life among all of my course mates.

Other than the thing that happened in class, of course there are some other drama outside the class which I could learn from those things to upgrade my maturity and level of thinking. I do believe that God creates every single thing and let anything happened for a reason. Therefore, I’m looking for wisdom in every single thing I ever experienced in life including the one I got in and outside the class.

Wonderful

Wonderful is the exact word to find the subject I learned with Dr. Jaya with her sweet assistants, Amylea and Alisya. Despite so called, lots of work to be done, I merely found that I love this subject especially the part when we have our movie watching session during the tutorial class with Miss Amelia and Miss Alicia, we have watched so many great and interesting movies and all the movies were related to our future career. The movies are Mona Lisa Smile, Ron Clark Story, Lean On Me, Finding Forrester, Chalk, Akeelah and The Bee and Precious.

All those movies are related with the experienced of the real life teachers and by watching these movies, I can say that I’ve got so many inspirations in order to become a great teacher for my students. I've learnt that as a teacher, we have to deeply know our students and not judging them no matter what happened and we should always be positive.

Time is ticking too fast

Seriously, I do not even realize how fast time could be. Relatively, we never could count on that. However, talking and speaking on fact, time is something fixed according to the 24 hours per day which has been implemented all over the world. Yes, I still arguing this fact on myself whether, I should agree with it.

It already week 10 and I was never completed any of my work. Position paper, research paper or even my blog posts. Hopefully, everything will be going according to what have I planned smoothly. Oh yes, can I stop the time from running at least for a day?

Most Precious Thing

The most precious thing I just realized I got from all the movies I wathched through this subject is everybody is different and unique in their own way. Therefore, nobody is worth to be neglected.

If we have the authority to help, it is our obligation to help. Even if we are just some people with lack of capability, I firmly believe that we still have some space or ability to help.

ROn Clark's story

 

Ron Clark, still relatively early in his career, leaves his stable life teaching at an elementary school in his suburban North Carolina hometown, the school where he is appreciated by both his fellow teachers and his students for his innovative teaching methods which results in raising test scores. Instead, he decides to look for a teaching job at a tough New York inner city school where he feels he can be more useful. He eventually finds a job at Inner Harlem Elementary School, where the students are segregated according to their potential.

As Clark is white and "nice" looking, Principal Turner wants to assign him to the honors class, especially as Turner's job security depends on good test scores. Clark, however, wants to take the most disadvantaged class. He quickly learns that it will be a battle of wills between himself and his disruptive students to see who can outlast the other. But he also learns that he has to understand them, both individually and collectively, on their level to be able to get through to them before he can teach them the standardized materials.

I love the way this movie is plotting but somehow I believe it could be more entertaining if each characters has been put clear distinction and specialty. Besides, this movie could have been better if they could emphasize more on the out school’s life of the main character. Out of five, I give this movie 2.5 stars.

Chalk

Life in the trenches of that most honorable and frustrating profession...teaching. It's the start of a memorable new year at Harrison High. The self-conscious Mr. Stroope is convinced that his time has come - this year he will be furnished with the golden title of "Teacher of the Year," if only his smarter students would stop using words that he can't understand. Peek into Mr. Lowrey's History class and you'll see that he's struggling to even call himself a teacher. Woefully inept due to a complete lack of experience and social skills, he earnestly stutters his way through class. The only interaction his students offer him is when they steal his chalk. Men aren't much interested in the spunky and officious Coach Webb, but "not all P.E. teachers are gay" and she pines for some romantic company.

The film takes the course of an entire school year and describes three teachers and one assistant principal. Mr. Stroope is campaigning for Teacher of the Year but many of his students are a little bit smarter than him. Mr. Lowrey is an introverted history teacher struggling to find passion for his profession. Coach Webb (played by Janelle Schremmer) is a female gym teacher who is struggling to get her students to take her class seriously, and becomes interested in Mr. Lowrey. Mrs. Reddell (Shannon Haragan) is the first year assistant principal who is regretting leaving teaching.

I just love this movie so much as it is not just focusing on one teacher like some other movie always did. Therefore, it brought some different and specialty.

Akeelah and the Bee

Eleven year old African-American Akeelah Anderson comes from a working class family living in South Los Angeles. Akeelah is a bright girl, especially when it comes to words, but finds life at poor Crenshaw Middle School boring and unchallenging, so she doesn't try. But her natural aptitude for words spurs the school administrators, led by Principal Welch, to convince her to try out for the process of the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Akeelah, already feeling isolated from many in her school because of being perceived as a "brainiac", feels that participating in such will make her feel even more isolated. But her joy in learning new words at least gets her started in the process. After easily winning the school's spelling bee, she meets and befriends Javier Mendez, a competitor at the Los Angeles district bee where most of the competitors come from primarily white middle class to wealthy families.

There, she learns about the nature of spelling bee life in all its good and bad, the latter which includes the cutthroat world of competitor parents. An example is Javier's classmate and two time national runner-up Dylan Chiu, whose father will not settle for second best as Dylan enters the last year he is eligible for the competition. Akeelah learns she needs a coach, hers to be in the form of former spelling bee competitor and UCLA English Department Chair Dr. Joshua Larabee, who teaches Akeelah not only the rote memorization of typical spelling bee words, but how to use English in all its glorious facets. Akeelah progresses further and further into spelling bee life without telling her widowed mother Tanya, who sees the bees as impinging into time in her other school work. Other challenges that Akeelah faces are trying to balance working on her spelling against time with her friends, and handling the hopes and dreams of all of South Los Angeles on her shoulders. Ultimately there may be more important things in Akeelah's life than winning the national championship.

I must say this movie is a kind of kids movie from my first impression but trough the end I found it is a family movie. The hardship and courage of Akeelah taught me how a kid could sacrifice anything towards what they want as future teacher, I should have that positive attitude and awareness towards my students’ desires.