There are plenty of movies in the world showing the audience their perception on the failing school systems and steps to fixing it. Fixing it means taking it one teacher and one classroom at a time to trigger a ripple affect. Take a look at "freedom writers," where Hilary Swank played an high school English teacher at a poorly; failing school. This school contained troubled students who were participants in gang related activities and they were classified as incapable of learning. Once they got an English teacher who refused to give up on them and showed them that they are capable of learning everything changed for the better. Hilary swank went above and beyond for her students giving them somewhere they can belong too. With all that being said I believe this movie derived from the movie "Stand and deliver," which holds similar attributes. The differences between these two movies are the subject matter that both teachers taught throughout the movie. Edward James olmos whose characters name was Jaime Escalante, taught high school math to troubled students who hassled him and also had gang affiliations. Once he found a way to control his students and taught them the foundation of math he wanted to teach them higher math. So, he pushed his students to achieve more and gave them self-efficacy.
During the movie we were instructed to take notes on what was stated in the movie that really stood out. As the movie became more in depth there was a point where the character Ana wasn't allowed to return back to school. Once the teacher heard about her situation he immediately took action by showing up to her families business to speak with her father. It said "thanks for your concern, but her mother, brothers, and sisters work here it's a family business she's needed here". During this time period it was expected for all family members to help with the family business, so they can take over once their parents are gone. Perhaps in his case he didn't want her to continue her education because he did not want her to surpass him or even might of thought it would of been a waste of his money and her efforts. Although he may not wanted Ana to return to school he rethinked his decision based on his visit from Ana's math teacher and decided to send her back to further her education.
In other news, Escalante's students were moving into learning a more rigorous math, calculus is the name. The only way they could move forward was to attend summer school, stay longer hours on school days, and attend Saturday school. This helped them prepare for the AP exam. This refers back to the concept in our previous class, putting an end to the summer slide. Students would be opposed to putting in this extra time to prepare for the AP exam because they rather be out doing other things. However, everyone actually worked hard and attended every session leading up to their AP exam. Their exam scores were astonoshing and reflected what they learned throughout the school year.
Escalante students received great scores on their AP exam. Although that was the up side to them taking the exam, it said they must have cheated because of the scores they received and they all had the same wrong answers. The reason their wrong answers were similar was because they had the same math teacher who taught them all the same way. If they were in the same class setting as these students they would of seen that one point in the movie where all the students got the wrong answers. It was harsh to see these students who worked extremely hard being accused of cheating. It's always the question of how would the accusers like it if they were in their shoes? So, they took the AP exam again to prove them wrong for accusing them of cheating where they received high scores once again. I'm pretty sure the audience wanted to see the look on their accusers face and to see them reinstate those old test scores. It was from this point in time that those AP scores went up throughout the years.
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