Chalk

I thought that the movie Chalk was actually a good movie when talking about real life education and teacher,student relationships. Throughout the movie it had a variety of of different teachers from all different back rounds also with all different kind of teaching styles and techniques. The movie also portrays a realistic view of teachers outside of their school lives. the connection between teachers is also very realistic and how they get together with each other and talk and converse about ideas and questions they have with in their own classrooms. Every teacher is not going to be perfect but to become a better teacher you must work through adversity and try and figure out what it is you can do to become a better teacher. That is exactly what the teachers did in Chalk. Although there were a lot of weird and unusual things done in this school it most of those weird and unusual situations can be translated to situations and events that go on in school everyday, they just are not as weird and unusual. If you think about them, most of them are dealt the same way. Chalk was a movie filmed to create comedy and laughter in a school setting, but I think there are translations that can correlate to everyday schools. Many events that occur throughout the movie are also events that you can find in most schools such as fights, studnets mouthing off, teachers talking behind backs, and etc... I enjoyed the movie and actually took a lot of good information from it, things to do and things not to do. It also gave me a feeling of what I will be showing up to do with a job in a school, and how to handle things.

Steve Chambliss

I really enjoyed Steve's lecture and his walk through his journey into the teaching world. It really helped me think about all the options that are out there. I really like all the steps that he talked about that helped him. He made you really think about the big picture with his first hand experience. It was much more influential to hear a speaker opposed to reading it out of a book. Creating diversity in my own journey into teaching will be very crucial to expanding my learning. Between the teachers panel last week and the older teacher(Steve) it was a good step by step process of learning for me personally. All the basic principals of being an effective teacher were talked about in the same ways between the two lectures. Being organized and prioritizing classes and having a good feel of what is necessary for a positive environment in the class. I feel that i benefited from hearing all of the people speak the last two lectures. I have enjoyed all of the class discussions and lectures, they have a lot of good points that will help me in the future and on my road to becoming an effective educator just like the ones that spoke to us.

Teacher Panel

I thought having teachers come in and speak was great. Although i knew two of them very well they had a lot of good things to say. I took more from the point of what to do the next 2 years of school and student teaching then from what they do in schools. I thought the technology change was just insane, since i have been out of school and that has been only for a year and half. I cant even begin to think of what it will be like when i enter the teaching world. I thought the most interesting thing they talked about is that you need to be organized. Organization makes a class period go smooth. If I look like i am organized the kids will also give more respect because they know that I have a grip on what is going on. The little tid bits they offered were beneficial more so because it is things that i don't always think about. I also liked the way that Jim asked questions from chapter 2 to the teachers and it really makes me think of the big picture. It also made chapter two much more clear. I enjoyed having the teacher panel and I will take the important information and just go from there in my journey into the teaching world.

Paper Clips

The movie paper clips is a very influential and interesting movie. I thought it was really neat idea that they had come up with to help themselves learn about such a touchy and horrifying event in history. They turned it into a helping cause with creating a goal. The goal was to represent all six million Jews that had been killed in the Holocaust. The way they did that was by collecting paper clips, six million of them and they were the representation of each of the casualties. It was a task that went on over a couple of years. The small Tennessee school made it all the way to the top as they showed up on national television. They received many letters of stories and thank yous from many survivors and people that were involved in the Holocaust. You might be wondering how they learned all the history and facts of the holocaust. The kids got first hand experience as survivors from all over came all the way to the middle of nowhere Tennessee. It is a great story and was a great experience for for the kids.