In
life our teachers can help shape the people we turn out to be. They are role
models for young impressionable students. I believe that being confident and
being flexible to the students’ needs are very important qualities for teachers
to have. Once students can feel comfortable to explore their minds, be creative
and ask questions; they are then able to see their true potential. Teachers have
a very important job that helps shape our future society. Ms. Gruwell and
Ms. Watson are similar in many ways, but they both taught at very different
schools with students that had a different upbringing. They both wanted to be
exactly where they were in their career and adapted to the students
they were teaching. They did this by being determined and doing what they thought
was right for their students despite the schools beliefs.
Ms. Gruwell taught English in 1992 at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach,
California. The school did not have a lot of money and had some of the lowest
scholastic records in the district since the school was forced to do a
voluntary integration act. As a result, there was a lot of racial tension and
gang violence on a daily basis. The other teachers at Woodrow Wilson were upset
about the integration act, and did not believe in many of the students. As
quoted by Ms. Gruwell, “What's the point of a voluntary integration program if
the kids making it to high school have a 5th grade reading level? All the
program is doing is warehousing these kids until they're old enough to
disappear.” She was excited about teaching and seemed to be the only one who
cared about the future of the students. On the other hand, Ms. Watson
taught history of Art at the conservative Wellesley
College for girls. The year was 1953 in Massachusetts. All of the students were
very proper and bright. The teachers’ main focus was preparing the girls for
marriage and keeping their husbands’ happy. People who did not believe in the
conservative ways of living were looked down upon and Ms. Watson was more liberal.
She asked the principal if she was proud of the girls and she said yes. Then
Ms. Watson Stated, “Half of them are already married, and the other half, oh
just give it a month or so! I mean, it's really only a matter of time! That's
what they're doing here, right; they're just biding their time until somebody
proposes!” Ms. Watson had come to Wellesley to make a difference.
On the first day of school Ms. Gruwell wrote her name on the chalkboard board
while everyone sat in their seats surrounded by their own race. The classroom
was very plain with the desks for the students, the teacher’s desk and a chalk
board. She was very excited to teach at Woodrow Wilson high, and came to this
school because of the voluntary integration act. As she was trying to take
attendance they were all talking and laughing, just ignoring her. During
attendance two of the boys started to stand up to fight and she said, “Please sit back in your seats.” Of course they didn’t hear her or
just didn’t care. So she ran out of the class and got somebody to break up the
fight. At Wellesley College Ms. Watson came into class saying” Good morning
this is History of Art, and we’ll be following Dr. Staunton’s Syllabus. The
girls were all quietly waiting, sitting in their seats looking perfectly
poised. One of the girls jumped up to turn off the lights before she could
finish asking for them to be turned off. “From the beginning man has always had
an impulse to create art; can anyone tell me what this is?” The girls knew
everything about every piece of art she showed because they read and memorized
the whole syllabus. One of the students suggested they all go to study since
they already knew what she was going to teach them. Without her saying anything
they all got up and left.
Despite the challenges that
Ms. Gruwell and Ms. Watson faced, neither of them gave up on what they believed
was right for their students. Ms. Gruwell had the class do a self-evaluation
and one of the students gave himself an F. Given the reputation of the students
at her school any of the other teachers wouldn’t care, but Ms. Watson cared. She was outside the classroom with him and
said,
“You know what this is? This is a Fuck You to me and everyone in
this class. I don't want excuses. I know what you're up against. We're all of
us up against something. So you better make up your mind, because until you
have the balls to look me straight in the eye and tell me this is all you
deserve, I am not letting you fail. Even if that means coming to your house
every night until you finish the work. I see who you are. Do you understand me?
I can see you. And you are not failing.”
In Ms. Watson’s class a student hadn’t showed up to class since she was married.
Then suddenly she showed up to class and Ms. Watson told her that she expects
attendance from her. Ms. Watson was then informed that the faculty turns
their head on a few absences when a girl gets married. Miss Watson then states,
“why don’t you just get married when you are a freshmen that way you can
graduate without actually ever having to step foot on campus. Come to class do
the work or ill fail you.”
The teachers were
determined for the students to see life differently. Ms. Watson helped one of
her students apply for Yale Law School, and she got accepted. So a disgruntled,
conservative student wrote a newspaper article stating her opinion on the
subject. The next day she walked into class and said,
“Quiet. Today you just listen. What will future scholars see when
they study us, a portrait of women today? There you are ladies: the perfect
likeness of a Wellesley graduate, Magna Cum Laude, doing exactly what she was
trained to do.” She showed them advertisements for housewives. “A Rhodes
Scholar, I wonder if she recites Chaucer while she presses her husband's shirts.
Slide - now you physics majors can calculate the mass and volume of every
meatloaf you make. Slide - A girdle to set you free. What does that mean? What
does that mean? What does it mean? I give up, you win. The smartest women in
the country, I didn't realize that by demanding excellence I would be
challenging... what did it say? The roles you were born to fill? It's, uh, it's
my mistake. Class Dismissed.”
Then she walked out. The girls sat quietly. They finally started
to realize what she was trying to show them, that they can be more than a
housewife. In Ms. Gruwell’s class the kids were passing around a drawing of a person
with big lips while laughing about it. Once it was passed to a boy in the front
she grabbed it from him. She then finally got mad and made them close their
workbooks. She said,
“I saw a picture just like
this once, in a museum. Only it wasn't a black man, it was a Jewish man. And
instead of the big lips he had a really big nose, like a rat's nose. And these
drawings were put in the newspapers by the most famous gang in history. They
started out poor and angry and everybody looked down on them. They took over
countries. You want to know how? They just wiped out everybody else. Yeah, they
wiped out everybody they didn't like and everybody they blamed for their life
being hard. And one of the ways they did it was by doing this: see, they print
pictures like this in the newspapers, Jewish people with big, long noses...
blacks with big, fat lips. In fact, life would be a whole lot better if they
were all dead. That's how a holocaust happens. And that's what you all think of
each other.”
The students hadn’t heard
of the holocaust, but she opened their eyes to learn from the holocaust. She made
them interested in learning about it and relating it to their own lives.
In conclusion, both of these teachers showed the students that they are capable
of more than they realized. Ms. Gruwell showed her students that they deserve
more than the gang life and opened their eyes to see life in a positive way.
Ms. Watson’s mission was to get her students to see that they are capable of
being something more than a housewife. The teachers were both looked down upon
by their co-workers for being different. Ultimately, they showed their students
that they don’t have to be like everyone else. They both gave hope that their students had
never known.
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