Gift of grit

Jerry Larges ideas were very vague. He didn't explain anything in much detail. Basically his idea of grit is children that are only babied for their first few years and then sent free. I think his ideas need a lot of improvement and more explaing about the Toughs book. "Grit is one of the characteristics of successful people...self control, zest, social, intelligence, gratitude, optimism, and curiosity" All these qaulities doesn't mean these kids weren't babied a lot throughout life. A person can be successful pretty much no matter what. He shows some proof when he talks about the KIPP academy and what it does for the kids. But then again, he really didn’t explain anything about the academy. Everything they mention about what most parents do is wrong, that isn’t necessarily what they do. Every child turns out different. Every child has a chance of being successful. I know someone that was babied through their whole life so far pretty much and they turned out to be successful and know what they want in life. Large mentions in the article that poor families in the KIPP academy show great test scores. Tough believes people that come from low income families wont be babied as much and somewhat distant from their children compared to upper income families. They may have done some tests but I don’t think all this is necessarily true. Every child can be successful.

Compare and Contrast final

     There are so many things that make up a good teacher, being compassionate, genuine, organized, helpful, patient, knowledgeable and so much more. Good teachers are those who can really make people learn, and cover everyone’s learning abilities. Everyone learns in different ways. A good teacher is a teacher that really helps you understand what you are trying to learn. The way they teach can affect if you pass the class or not, even graduate.  If they aren’t a good teacher it can affect you all threw your schooling and even throughout life. Henry Brooks Adams states “A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” I will be comparing two teachers that I was not very fond of along with other students. They were not a “good” teacher. Teachers make up our everyday lives as students; they are role models that represent how it affects our education for the rest of our life, a role that my past English and Marketing teachers did not achieve. My past English and marketing teacher did not achieve that role.    

     I had an interesting English teacher last year in college. Our first impression of her was “wow is this women really a teacher?” She did not put off a professional vibe at all. And she kept that image all quarter. She was pretty laid back and we never accomplished anything during the two hours of that class. We would have bullshit discussions that never related to English what so ever. For example we talked about things that were going on in the world, really controversial topics, such as video nasties, sex images with Brittney spears & video game characters, racism, kony 2012 etc. The class would always get in a debate about something. A big thing that struck and irritated the class was that she was pretty rude to students. She acted really immature and in no way acted like a professional teacher. According to Dan Brown in his article, What makes a great teacher? He states, “It’s crucial that teachers form professional learning communities to share and incorporate best practices” This would be something that my teacher needed to do. She would call things out to students and kind of make fun of them in front of everyone. Also she would give them feedback on their work in front of everyone, even announce their grades on things in front of the class. Teachers aren’t supposed to do that. There is a thing called privacy and a thing called “some things are better left unsaid”. “There's a time for daring and there's a time for caution, and a wise man understands which is called for,” John Keating states from the film Dead Poets Society. We were a college class and she treated us sometimes and told us we acted like we were in high school. Everyone agreed that that was extremely wrong of her to say. Considering many of us had been in college for a while. She said that we shouldn’t be late too class and that we weren’t in high school anymore. Well everyone can be late to a college class, we pay to be there. Rachel our English teacher would also have high expectations for our papers and give us feedback that never made any sense. No one would ever understand her instructions. You never did anything perfect, there was always something she would go on about within our papers we had to write. She would criticize every little thing she could. “Students will rise to the level of expectations,” Mr. Escalante states in the film Stand and Deliver. She had expectations but didn’t enforce them, so we only rose so far. A teacher is there to make you feel good about yourself, not pick you apart and change you. You don’t want a teacher that would piss you off. Overall, she was not professional and that is opposite of what a teacher should be.

      As a teacher you need to be really knowledgeable and be able to explain your assignments in detail to where any student can understand. My marketing teacher seemed to be so sweet. It was my second time taking a class of hers I thought it would be super easy like the first class with her…but I was wrong. We had to create a marketing plan in her class for our future or current business and we broke it up into pieces for each assignment. Well everyone had trouble understanding the assignments. She never taught us much about them. We were taught stuff about marketing but not each thing included within our plan. So according to the teacher, every student was doing it wrong. She would always send them back to us and have us redo them. A teacher should either explain them to the full extent or not assign them. I came to the assumption that she just didn’t know much about the assignment. I could definitely tell that she didn’t create the assignment herself or do much research on it. Her expectations were so high it was unbelievable. She wasn’t ever willing to work with you. Also you would think if the whole class was doing it wrong, something was wrong there and you probably went overboard and shouldn’t have such high expectations. She tended to pull the dumb blonde card a lot. A good teacher would figure out a solution for the whole class or work with us more and provide examples. Paolo Freire states, “Education thus becomes an act of depositing in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor.” This quote makes a lot of sense and has relation to my marketing teacher. She would need to communicate with us and let us fully understand everything. Another issue was that she didn’t appear to be very organized and that was a big concern of mine because she had lost a printed version of my plan I had turned in. She thought I hadn’t turned it in on time but I had my plan done for a while already. Thankfully she took my word for it and I gave her another printed copy and it all got worked out. Being knowledgeable and organized is a key factor when teaching a business management class. She didn’t seem to fit a lot of the qualities needed for that position. She was a nice person, just didn’t necessarily get the greatest teacher vibe from her. It was hard to do well when no one can understand quite what to do for the assignments.

      Here I compared two teachers that I particularly found that were not good teachers. It is so important to be a good teacher and be outstanding in these qualities because it does affect your schooling overall. Dan Brown states, “Many people possess the dispositions needed to be a great teacher.” Both of them had the abilities just needed some work. If teachers don’t teach well, meaning they aren’t knowledgeable, organized and professional, that will affect your school performance, from learning, low grades and frustration with school. Bob Talbert states, “Good teachers are costly, but bad teachers cost more.” You might not want to do school if you have problems with your teachers. You want to like them, and have them be great in all those categories because it helps you achieve as a student. Therefore teachers do play a very important role in our lives as students that will affect us throughout our life in education. They have to do well to have you do well.

First paragraph of rough draft

        Teachers make up our everyday lives as students; they play a very important role that represents how it affects our education for the rest of our life. They teach us almost everything we know. They are our mentors. They have to be good role models towards us. There are so many things that make up a good teacher, being compassionate, genuine, organized, helpful, patient, knowledgeable and so much more. Good teachers are those who can really make people learn, and cover everyone’s learning abilities. Everyone learns in different ways. A good teacher is a teacher that really helps you understand what you are trying to learn. The way they teach can affect if you pass the class or not, even graduate.  If they aren’t a good teacher it can affect you all threw your schooling and even throughout life. I will be comparing two teachers that I was not very fond of along with other students. I believe they were not a “good” teacher.

Mr. Escalante and Mr. MacFarland so similar.

Mr. Escalante and Mr. MacFarland have so much in common. They both push a lot of school work on the students and really get through to their heads. They both teach in ways to help them learn and understand. Mr. MacFarland was also teaching to troubling difficult students. Who were hard to keep in line. I agree with Rose when he states “Though a lot of guys groused in the schoolyard, it just seemed that giving trouble to this particular teacher was a silly thing to do”. They shouldn’t ever tease or take their anger out on the teacher. That won’t end well. If you already do it on others in the schoolyard don’t do it to the teacher as well. A teacher that may be pushing a lot of work on you but he is helping you become very successful in the future. I also love the fact that Rose began reading again and he hadn’t since he was in elementary. The fact that the teacher could have that affect on him is great, Just like Mr. Escalante did on his students. Rose says that Mr. Macfarland had “hooked him”. He got him interested in things again. He states..”He gave me a way to feel special by using my mind.” This is exactly what Escalante did with his students. H e showed he cared , made them feel special compared to what other teachers had done to them in the past. . Mr. Macfarland helped him go to college and that is somewhat Mr. Escalante had done. He wanted them to take the AP Exam to make them want to go.  I never found too many differences  between the two teachers. Just the schools subjects of course. I find them so much a like it was unreal. He really helped the students improve