Finding Forrester

Finding Forrester is about a boy named Jamal Wallace who is actually a very intelligent young man but is not accepted in the community where he is from. There is a man that is always watching him play basketball from the window above the basketball court he plays in. Jamal has to deal with people judging him just because he is African American thinking he is going to do something to them when in reality he is actually very smart and would not do that.

Jamal goes into the man's apartment because of a dare his friends told him to do and accidentally leaves his backpack in their with his writing in there. When he retrieves it back from him the man had made comments in his books about his writing and Jamal went back asking him for more advice. The man told him to come back with 5,000 words on why he should stay out of his house in a more violent manner. The relationship between Jamal and the man is definitely strange in the beginning because the man is obviously upset he broke into his house but at the same time likes his writing.

Jamal gets asked to attend a private school for his test scores and basketball team. The man is also going over his writing and tells him he is surprised he is 16 and black and acting like he is racist when he is really just testing him to see how far he can push him. You can really tell by the man being mean to Jamal, he is really just testing him to try harder. He also has to live with his brother who is not helping the situation in any way by being a parking lot attendant. Jamal is introduced to a book in one of his new classes he is asked to do an assignment with. He later finds out that the book that is reading is by the man that has been helping him with his writing, William Forrester. Jamal tells him he knows who he is and they make a deal. Forrester tells him to keep it a secret of what he found out and Jamal says only if he keeps helping him with his writing and he does.

This movie does not only give lessons on writing but also on life. A boy from the Bronx befriends an older, wiser gentlemen that helps him through difficult times in his life. One quote I loved from the movie is when Forrester tells Jamal that you write the first draft with your heart and you rewrite with your head. I feel it really taught Jamal how to become a better writing and be a better person. The relationship begins to strengthen throughout the movie and it shows with how they act towards each other helping each other and bonding over watching TV together. I really loved this movie and everything I learned from it. It showed me how two different people can become so close and help each other out in so many ways. I also loved the message of diversity how an African American boy can bond with an old white man and he teaches him all of these writing strategies at the same time. It also shows how just because someone is an African American, that doesn't mean they cannot bond with white people in general. He not only creates a strong friendship with Forrester but also creates a strong relationship between him and a white girl at school. The strong bond between the two of them really inspired me to realize anyone can help someone out even if they are part of another type of ethnicity group.

Girl Rising

Girl rising is a global campaign for girl's education. It is about a movie that tells the stories of nine different girls from around the world who face arranged marriages, child slavery and other disasters. Each one of the girls is paired with a different woman to tell their story. Some of them even played their own parts, but some of them were not allowed to keep their identity a secret. All of these girls went through such horrible situations but used the power of education to get them through it.

When watching the movie about the nine girls the one story that really stuck out to me was the first little girl named Wadley. She was a Haiten child of the dump when an earthquake struck and they were left with nothing. Even before the earthquake, they will still living in poverty for generations. The one thing about this that inspired me the most was that she still tried going to school even with everything she had going on in her life as in doing chores for her mother and working. Even when they turned her down, she still stayed because she wanted to learn. The urge she had for learning was so amazing, it made me think about my children. Sometimes I feel as if they just don't want it and don't understand that with an education, it will take them so far. I wish I could show just this part of the story to my students and then maybe they will see how blessed they are to be receiving an education and want to try harder. Wadley is still to this day in school even after getting turned away every time. It is so great to see motivation like that in such a little girl.

Another story that really touched me was about Mariama from Sierra Leone. She started out talking about how she is just a normal girl living a normal life and even added in that she texts! The only difference was that she was the first of her family to not only go to school but work at a radio station. She was able to take something she not only loves but is learning about and put it into her life as a radio station host. When her father told her she could not do it anymore she fought for what she wanted. He would not budge for a little but he finally let her go back. I think by working as a teenager already really sets up her life for her because if you can start at such a young age, she will definitely be ready for the real world. Even today she is still hosting her radio show and getting ready to take college eligibility exams. The fact that not only is she using what she learns in school but is also doing what she loves and is good at is a huge part in educating children. I think if they know they are good at something they will want to do it but if they know they are not good at something they will not want to do it. Here is where positivity comes in. Mariama was positive in herself to go back to do what she loves and thats how I want my children to feel coming into class. I try to make it as fun as possible every day to the point where they want to come to school.

The last one that really touched me was about Yasmin from Egypt. She went through something so life changing but somehow made it into an incredible story about how she was not the victim here, but the superhero. With such a little girl going through something as horrible as rape, its not a surprise her mind tried to think of something else because she would have been too scared to anything with her life if she did not. This little girl puts all the different stereotypes about men being stronger than girls when she explains how she escaped from the man. Knowing that this little girl was able to stand up for herself makes me feel as if I can do anything and not only myself in general but girls.

This movie has opened my eyes to actually see what is going on in other countries. Seeing girls not only going through such tragedy but overcame them by themselves gives me hope that one day the girls that I will have in my classroom will stand up for themselves too if they have to.  Wadley, Mariama and Yasmin all had people that were trying to push them away from education but the girls were the ones that hung onto it and never let it go. Wadley never stopped trying to go to school even when she got to to leave, Mariama keep pushing for her to keep on doing what she loves and Yasmin made sure to use whatever imagination she had to put such a tragedy into a hero story. By giving an education to more girls like this, there will be less disasters for others to go through in these countries. By giving them an education they will know how to handle these situations on their own without anyone to help them. By watching these videos, it should not only open up boys eyes but also the girls to see what she can do. We are trying to remove these disasters to happen again so we must remove these barriers by giving the students an education.

Building Core Skills and Rules for Engagement in the Classroom

There are seven engagement factors in engaging students in the elementary classroom. The first factor talks about health and nutrition. If a child is born with low birth weight in my classroom, that can be lead to a lack in brain development so to help in fixing this, if I as a teacher will have the parents as well as myself stay on top of the children's health in the very beginning, it can lead to a healthier life leading to more in brain development. The second factor talks about vocabulary. To engage students more into wanting to learn more, it helps when they already know as many words as they can because they would want to use those terms to show their peers and teachers what background knowledge they already have. Going along with that, the third engagement factor has to do with effort and energy. To get the students to not be lazy, I would want them to have experience with the real world to bring into the classroom. This will give them connections to what we are learning, helping them remember material better. The fourth engagement factor has to do with mind set. They have to have a view of the future and want to grow up and do something with their life. They shouldn't be in school because they have to be but because they want to be successful in life and to be successful, they have to put in the work and as a teacher I will stress this every day. The fifth engagement factor has to do with the cognitive capacity. If students grow up in poverty, that affects how much knowledge is actually getting put into their brains because with growing up with so little and learning so little, the brain becomes adapted to that and can only take in so much information until it just can't anymore. The sixth engagement factor has to do with relationships. "Strong, secure relationships help stabilize children's behavior." (Jensen, 2009) If my students have good relationships with me and people who will help them, they will want to learn more because they know there are people out there that care about their learning and want them to learn as much as they do. I will make sure every day I build my relationship with my students by sharing stories about my life and having them talk about theirs to get connected. Lastly, students need a non stressful environment to learn in. If students have a stressful home life, they can use school to go to and get away from all that stress to just learn and have fun while doing it. By involving all of these engagement factors into my students education, it will aid in an easier way for children to learn by having them want to learn what they are being taught.

Some other ways to not only build engagement but to build core skills in my classroom is to have a good attitude on what I am doing as a teacher. I will make sure to always have meaningful conversations with students using affirmations and talking about their own personal life. As much as this will help me as a teacher, I can learn a lot out of it from not only the students but myself as well. I want to learn about myself as a teacher but I also want my students to learn about me as well. By sharing something new with them every day, they can relate to me and build stronger connections making it easier to talk about other material in the classroom as well. By using those connections, my students will be able to share with me as a teacher what they like, and I can then build off those interests by placing interesting games or challenges having to do with those interests into lessons giving them motivation for wanting to do more with what they are learning.

When it comes to assessing my students on what they know or do not know, it is always important as a teacher to use as few words as necessary and really focus on being interactive with my students. By giving them interactive games and lessons, it makes it more enjoyable for them to learn about and easier for them to remember about in the long run. When I was a child, I remember doing this one project in science class on rocks that I was so interested in because I got to use my hands and do something on my own instead of having someone tell me what I had to be doing. By doing this on my own, I was able to focus more on what I wanted to learn about which was awesome because with that choice I remembered everything I was supposed to learn because the activity was so much fun.

Another thing I really focus on when trying to engage my students is to assess them in the right way and to build on those core skills by having good energy with them. If I excited about learning what I am teaching and I show it, why shouldn't the students be that excited as well? Energy is contagious and if I show my students I am happy when they get something right, they should be just as happy because they are doing something good for themselves. According to Jensen, "Celebrate effort as well as achievement." (Jensen, 2009) By doing this, I can pack acknowledgements and celebrations into every single class.

Jensen, E. (2009). Teaching with poverty in mind. (p. 16, 21). Alexandria, Va: ASCD.

Poverty in the Elementary School

Poverty takes a big toll on students in the Elementary School classroom. I have noticed a lot about some students in my classroom that may not have a lot at home and how that affects them in the classroom. One student of mine has just joined this school in November and his parents are divorced. He lives with his mom during the week and his dad over the weekends. His mom owns her own cleaning service while his dad works at a restaurant. I found out very early in the year that when he gets home after school, his mother works until 8 o' clock at night and he has to make dinner for his little brother when this boy in my class is only in 4th grade! Since he has been here, I have noticed that he does do some of his homework but he lacks motivation while he is in school. He also is very quiet and rarely ever smiles. I think his home life is definitely affecting his motivation in school because he is so focused on what he has to do when he is at home with his family that when he gets to school, he loses that motivation he has at home because he just wants to have some time to relax when he obviously doesn't get that at home.

There is also a student in my classroom who I noticed the first day of observing the classroom last semester that something was a little off. I caught him wandering around the classroom instead of sitting in his seat like he was supposed to be doing what he was supposed to. I also had observed in weeks to come that he rarely ever turned in his homework, found it difficult to follow along with the teacher and if he ever got called on he had no idea what he was doing. At this point, I realized he was very below grade level. After realizing this student had some problems, I asked my teacher about him. It turns out that that student's mother had died and his dad is in jail and he had to live in a hotel until he could figure out what to do. He finally got adopted into his mom's sister in laws house along with his two sisters but she already had two children and wasn't doing well in the first place so getting placed into a house that already doesn't have good living conditions probably wasn't a good move. So within all of this happening, it effected him in such a negative way that he has become so below grade level, he has some social problems and he can't pay attention. Also, to add on to this is also ESL, was born early and had heart surgery as a small child. 

According to Eric Jensen in a book called Teaching with Poverty in Mind, "Low-SES children are often left home to fend for themselves and their younger siblings while their caregivers work long hours." (Jensen, 2009) They talk about comparing them with their peers, they spend more time indoors watching television than playing outdoors or in after school activities and this is true for my student as well because I heard recently that he stays at home and plays Xbox instead of doing homework at some points. Eric Jensen also talks about how low-income parents are overwhelmed by diminished self-esteem, depression, and a sense of powerlessness. These feelings often get passed down to their children in the form of insufficient nurturing, negativity, and a general failure to focus on the children's' needs. It also talks about how poverty is a major predictor of depression in children which would explain why I rarely ever see the first child smiling.

Eric Jensen also talks about how some teachers may interpret students' emotional and social deficits as a lack of respect or manners, when in reality, those responses are the only ones they have been taught as a child and don't know what else to do. Maybe for the little boy with the dad in jail, he thinks that walking away from a situation he doesn't like is the right thing to do since maybe that is what he would do at home and at school but he doesn't know that thats the wrong thing to do at school when you are trying to learn.

I have learned a lot of different strategies in helping these children not only from the book but also from my own experience in the classroom. I know now that some of these behaviors that we want them to have might not have been taught to them in the past, so we might have to teach them it ourselves. One of the quotes I really liked in the book was "You can't change what's in your students' bank account, but you can change what's in their emotional account." (Jensen, 2009) This talks about really respecting your students, avoiding demeaning sarcasm and asking student what they would rather do and how they would want to learn the material. I really took this into consideration because I tend to be a very sarcastic person when it comes to working with students, but not in a mean way. I always try to make it funny but I have to be careful to always try to say the right thing because I can joke around about them not having something when in reality, they don't.

A couple other strategies I can work on with students living in poverty are building core skills (short and long-term memory, problem solving skills), if they have difficulty in reading find out where the problem is (vocabulary deficit, comprehension challenge), provide hope and support (build supportive relationships), etc. I really think that last one is a a very big deal and not a lot of teachers realize it. Students who are living in poverty don't have the social skills to try to meet new friends so they are often lonely. Here is where the teacher needs to step in and learn about his interests and try to pair him together with other children in the class with the same interest so they can have something in common and maybe spark a friendship out of that.

Overall, there are a lot of students living out there in poverty but teachers can't just let it slide by because without building that relationship, finding out the problems and building core skills the child is just going to stay in the same spot he is in now which is either problems in his social life or academically as well. Sometimes, when the parents are too busy trying to care for themselves, it's the teachers job to keep that child where he needs to be in life, which is successful.




Jensen, E. (2009). Teaching with poverty in mind. (p. 16, 21). Alexandria, Va: ASCD.