Precious

This movie shows how 16-year-old Claireece P. "Precious" Jones suffers throughout her life. Since she is abused physically, sexually and mentally, she finds it is hard for her to focus on her study. Precious has been arranged to an alternative school to help her to change her lousy life. It is not only for her academic but also for her psychological therapy. Precious cannot focus on her study because of she is mentally disturbed and he black experience keeps appearing in his mind.
What will I do if one of my students has the same problem? Then I realise that as teachers, we must concern about our students. Sometimes teachers tend to scold their students for not paying attention but they never notice that the students are actually in dilemma or problem. By giving them input and homework will not be helpful to them until the students are able to accept the lesson.
From this movie, I see that being a teacher is a tough work. But a good teacher will always be there for their students to help them. Teacher's touch can sometimes be an effective remedy to the unfortunate students.

Chalk

Chalk is a documentary of teachers' life. It shows how the teachers survive in teaching field. When I watch it, first thing that appear in my mind is teaching is not an easy job like others assume. From the documentary, one of the teacher has a lot troubles with his students that take away his presence as a teacher in the class. It means he is unable to control his class. This is not good thing in teaching if the teacher cannot manage the students.
Problem is still a problem until you sole it. So, the particular teacher decides to learn his students attitudes and styles. Why he does so? Because he wants to know his students very well. Once you know your students, you will automatically know what your students need. This teacher learns the slang that is used by his students. He slowly learns it and the students are slowly getting closer to him.
Personally I think, to be a good teacher is not that easy. It takes effort and passion to develop self as a good teacher. It sounds difficult but it is not impossible.

Research Paper

Research paper is kind of a nightmare to me. To analyse a literary work is more difficult than solving a math problem. My supervisor wants something new and original for my research paper. Every time I submit my draft, my supervisor will ask me what's new about it. It drives me crazy after my supervisor wants me to work on something else, something original.
Since supervisor does not allow me to work on text that we have learned in class, I choose to leave King Lear and work on The Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe. This text is an interesting text that talks about superstitious. I use this opportunity to write about superstitious in human nature. And the idea has been proved as an original idea and I consider it as my first draft even though it's pretty late. Now I know what and how to write. =)

Finding Forester

First impression that I give to this movie is 'boring'. But still i pay attention and watch it.
Forester in this movie reminds me to Peter Elbow who introduces the idea of Free Writing. Forester teaches the boy, Jamal Wallace to write stories. Forester finds that Wallace is facing difficulty to put his ideas in flow. Then. Forester asks Wallace to keep writing without thinking. It is like it is free for you to write anything on the paper. I think this idea is really good and it should be used in class.
Like Forester does, as teachers, we should let our students to write freely. It will make them write more and the stories they write will be more interesting.
In fact, this movie is focusing on literature as a subject. Producing stories is a part of literature. Wallace in this movie is actually producing literary works.So, as teachers, we need to encourage them to keep writing because their writings can be the master piece of the literary works.

Lean On Me

Do you still remember your school's song? I do. =)

The movie 'Lean on Me' is one of the best pedagogical movies that I ever watched. In this movie, we can see that school can be a battle field for some children and the environment may not be conducive and effective for learning. In this kind of environment, most of the students will become miserable and poor in academic.

'Lean on Me' is actually inspired by a true story. It tells us how a principal controls and changes his school. It is awesome and not every teacher can do it.
Mr. Clark is an experienced teacher who is invited by his fellow friends to get back to his old school in New Jersey. He returns to the school after 20 years he left the school. The environment of the school currently is not as good as before. In fact, it is way worse. He is there to make changes to the whole school. When I watch the scene where he comes back to that school, I question myself,"Is he going to succeed?"

The way he controls the staffs, teachers and students is very harsh. But I don't think it is a bad way to control them. If we live in that kind of school, I think we will do the same. Mr. Clark looks like an autocratic leader and a mean teacher but he knows his goals very well. I remember one of his lines which is "If you can't control it (school & students), how can you teach it?" What he says is absolutely right. Teacher control is very important to make sure the students listen to the teacher and learn. In this case, teacher's authority is needed and learner-centered can't be used.

Although Mr. Clark is a very serious person, he actually concerns about the students.
He concerns about students' interest. In this movie, the students do not like the school song and they do not even bother to memorize the lyric. The students find the song is boring and they prefer to sing the song as an acappella song. They love it that way. For the students' sake, Mr. Clark assigns the music teacher to teach all students to sing the school song the way they want. That is a great decision.

The way he touches the students is very special. We can see the result is printed through the students' behaviour. He changes the students from zero to hero and he manages to help the students to pass the state examination as well as makes the students believe in themselves. He provides high motivation to his students and he trusts them. It seems like he brings the miracle to the whole school hold the students' hand to walk to a better future.

Akeelah and The Bee

19th August 2010

"Can you give me the definition, please?" =)

Spelling Bee is a good activity to improve our vocabulary. I love the movie called "AKEELAH AND THE BEE" which portrays a dream of a girl who is able to master thousands of words. What have I learned from this movie? Well, generously speaking, I think this movie shows a big impact in students' life. Akeelah in this movie shows how passionate she is in Spelling Bee. She tries her best to learn all new words. But as teachers, we cannot forget that all students are born with different styles. What I'm trying to say is we need to study how our students learn instead of asking them why they cannot cope or fail in certain subjects. We must provide enough input to the students. Like this movie, the professor himself provides Akeelah enough vocab to compete herself in Spelling Bee. The input will make her confident. In school, all teachers need to do the same. Give students enough input will help the students a lot. By giving them enough input, the students will be confident enough to perform in academic. As the result, all of the students have chances to success just like Akeelah.

Ron Clark's story

I was inspired by a movie called The Triumph whereby the protagonist was an excellent teacher. Ron Clark was a teacher who always believed in himself that he was able to make changes in students’ lives. In this movie, he moved to New York City to teach. He made it and got a job in a public school in New York. He was a bold teacher who loved to take risk and challenge. For him, teaching is like taking risk.

He agreed to be a homeroom teacher to a class which had been labeled as hopeless class. The kids from that class were looked down. Mr. Clark insisted to help the students and promised a change in them. It was not as easy as he thought. It was beyond than that. His students were kind of rebellious, stubborn and uncooperative yet he never gave up. He knew what he wanted and he started to come out with his own rules to that class. It indicated he had a strategy to control the class which I found interesting. In fact, whenever he failed or students against him, he tried his best and negotiated with the students. There was a teacher presence in him. That was what a teacher needed to do if this situation happened.

Being a teacher was a heavy job. The reason I said so because a teacher was supposed to know or able to see the potential of his or her students. Mr. Clark in this movie already did it. Incredibly he managed to see the potential of his students and he helped them to shine the talent that they had. He made it as a part of his teaching. It was wonderful, isn’t it?

Mr. Clark was a good role model for teachers all over the world. He made changes and shined his students. He never looked down upon them. Therefore, he tried to a part of them. He tried to adapt the students’ styles in his classroom which was brilliant. Then he used relevant materials in class to teach and of course the students enjoyed it very much. They even scored in test. Even though at the beginning of his teaching, he used extrinsic motivation to promote students’ interesting in learning, then slowly it turned into intrinsic motivation when the students realized they wanted to graduate from the school.

After watched this movie, I asked myself, “What kind of teacher am I going to be?”