Inspirational Teacher

The most inspirational teacher I have ever become engaged with was my high school accounting, government, and economics teacher.  His name was Mr. Long.  Mr. Long was not only a teacher in multiple classes, but the high school football coach as well.  He always pushed me to succeed in the class room to the best of my ability and most of the time I found this extremely stressful, but looking back on it I am so very thankful for what he did.  Not only did he push me in the class room, but on the field as well.  After a long rough day of school and you thought you were out of Mr. Longs ‘crosshairs’, there was practice.  On the field Mr. Long stressed the importance of teamwork and dedication and was a great example of this since he was much older than most coaches around.  When you went to practice, he was not any different than during the classroom or someone running into him at the grocery store.  Mr. Long was a very straight forward man and taught me to be the same by pushing me on and off the field.  In the classroom, he put forth as much effort into my education as I would allow him and wanted me to build off my strengths.  On the field, he pushed me to be the best player, both mentally and statistically, I could be.  After all of the influence he had on both my education and athletic career, I have him to thank for all he has done to make me the man I am today.  Because of everything he has done, I want to thank him.

Banking Concept of Education

1.) Paulo Freire’s “narration sickness” is when you are sitting in a class room and the teacher continues to ramble on about a subject, but the students get nothing out of it. After the students have studied the facts the teacher wants and passes the test, the facts get tossed aside and nothing was ever learned.

2.)  Narration sickness reminds me of the No Child Left Behind Act because instead of actually helping the student learn they are just providing the student with answers, more or less. They do this because in the long run the teacher looks like they are getting their points a crossed in a well-developed way. In the long run, students get nothing out of this and they move on with little thought to how they did well on a test.  It’s a grade and they got a good one.

3.)   Mr. Durfee is a wonderful example of an instructor who used the banking concept practices.  He taught all math classes in my high school. The way Mr. Durfee taught was by lecturing something all day and if you had a question he would tell you to look into the book and study.  He expected that the students should know what to do by simply memorizing the book.

This kind of teacher has so many disadvantages that the students face. The reason is because they will not obtain anything since they only need it for a set amount of time.  I did not learn much at all from Mr. Durfee and became my own teacher in a tough subject.

4.)  Mr. Long was an excellent example of a great teacher.  He taught many different classes like government, economics, and accounting. The way he taught was fun and easy to retain the information.  Mr. Long would teach through personal experiences and current events.  Along with the current events, there was a lot of dialogue going on throughout the entirety of the class period.

Mr. Long was very educated in the subjects he taught. He never made someone feel dumb for asking a simple question and could relate well with all of his students.  There was never a dull moment during his class and made the learning experience very fun and eventful.

5.)   Athiens is the culture that embrace the concept of liberated or problem- posing education that Freire spoke of in his “Banking Concept of Education.” The class that I face these in the most would be Business Research and Writing.  During this class there is a lot of dialogue between the teacher and students. The class that could benefit from more practice of dialogue would be my Intro to Christian Thought class. During this class the teacher lectures the entire time with little time during, or at the end, to answer questions.  This makes the class hard and very frustrating.  I have troubles learning this way and my grade reflects that.

Civil Rights

What is passive resistance?

Passive resistance is a way to represent yourself and to do it by disputing something without violence.  It can be done by doing symbolic protests and/or many other demonstrations as long as violence does not exist.  There was one person in particular that everyone knows for using passive resistance and that would be Martin Luther King.  He used many ways to get his points a crossed without using violence and is a key example.  Another would be Judith Hand, he presented a strategy for abolishing war in general.

Photo #1

Who: Anti-segregation demonstrators

What: People being sprayed with a fire hose

Where: Birmingham

When: 1963

How: In a line and sprayed

Why: Believed something different than everyone else

Reaction:

Looking at this photo, the first word that comes to mind is pain.  The pressure that pushes the water out of fire hose is extremely strong and can feel like something is splitting you in half.  This is very inhuman and makes me shutter just thinking about being in that situation and feeling the pain of the hose.  Not only would I have not liked being sprayed, but I would have hated doing that to people that simply have a different belief than my own.

Photo #2

Who: Blacks and white policeman

What: Taunting the policeman

Where: In front of a department store

When: 1963

How: Singling out the policeman

Why: Because the color of the skin

Reaction:

When looking at this picture, curiosity sets in me.  I wonder if that policeman has the belief that whites are greater than blacks, or if he is just being put into the stereotype.  I realize that the blacks in this picture have hatred towards whites, which was put there by the whites themselves, but what if the policeman is just trying to do his job and sees the blacks as equals.  Now I realize the odds of that being true considering the time period and that it was said that the law was against them, but do you think the blacks would take this into consideration or would they careless what he thought?  These pictures leave me wondering more often than not.

Discrimination today:

I believe that there are many different types of discrimination today.  Most of it that happens today though I believe is much more modest and more of a self-belief.  There is discrimination not only on the skin color of someone, but also on gender.  I believe that there might be more discrimination on the gender side of things than color.  Maybe this is just what I see more, but this seems to be a bigger issue in my eyes.  Men and women are blaming each other for everything and anything these days.  It is being to become ridiculous. 

Pathos, Logos, Ethos:

1.      Strive for reaching a personal level with reader.

2.      Try to keep my opinion out of it and use facts.

3.      Make sure to bring in statistics if possible.