Freedom Writers
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Freedom Writers http://www.authorstream.com/Presentation/lchuang-199707-freedom-writers-education-ppt-powerpoint/ Slide 1: A Critical Analysis from Contextual Perspective Li-chin (Crystal) Huang Freedom Writers Slide 2: Being enthusiastic/energetic What are these? Integrating teaching and learning knowledge Engaging Professional developments Having pedagogical expertise Mastering the contents Creativity/ingenuity Having sound teaching philosophy Great communicator Being a leader/counselor Caring Edu-politic professional Effective performing collaborating Sound teaching philosophy Understanding education ecology Being passionate €€€ Slide 3: A analysis from the critical and contextual perspectives on a movie – The Freedom Writers, which was a true story based on The Freedom Writers Diary - a collecting writings by a group of labeled as rough, racial and ethnic diverse with high-risk teenagers. They were dubbed by administrators as "unreachable” students. in Room 203 at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach, California, 1994. Erin Gruwell was this inspiring educator whose perseverance and dynamic pedagogy transformed the adversities into hope and success. Introduction Slide 4: The familiar patterns of schooling to which we haveall been exposed are often the learning of stereotypes manifestedin the various binary forms of the socially constructed ideologies. Both teaching and leaning are about the new that comes about from challenging, deconstructing, or decoding those repeatedly “redistributed” languages, in other words, the needs of the creation of the cutting edge. - Davies, 1993 Slide 5: Conceptualized as knowledge that enabled human beings to emancipate themselves from forms of domination through self-reflection and took psychoanalysis as the paradigm of critical knowledge. Note: From Jurgen Habamas of the Frankfurt School in the late 1960s.Frankfurt In the late 1960s. The Critical Approach Slide 6: Addressed the construction of knowledge and relations of power structures within the interplaying contexts of social (in particular, the intersection of race, gender, social class), historical, and political spheres in the educational setting. The Contextual Analysis Slide 7: Framework of analysis Micro level: The Classroom DynamicsThe interaction b/w Instructor’s unconventional Pedagogies carrying specific content knowledge to engage with students Macro Level: The External Environment 1. Racial issues imbedded in culture and history 2. After the Rodney King riot era 3. Racial and ethnic segregation and integration problems in school districts 4. Intersection of social class and race/ethnicity Meso Level:The Internal Power Structure1. Teachers and Administrators 2. Senior instructors vs. junior and new teachers 3. Racial/ethnic segregation and integration problems in school districts 4. Limited resources and funding The Meso Level The Macro Level External Environment Internal Power Structures The Core Micro Level Slide 8: Macro Level: The External Environment Racial issues imbedded in culture and history After the Rodney King riot era Racial and ethnic segregation and integration problems in school districts The intersection of social class and race/ethnicity Slide 9: Meso Level: The Internal Power Structure The unbreakable iron curtain of power structures/hierarchy challenged a young, inexperienced student teacher: Teachers vs. Administrators Senior instructors vs. junior and new teachers Racial/ethnic segregation vs. integration problems in school districts Limited resources vs. funding Honor students vs. “unteachable, at risk” students. Slide 10: Micro Level: The Classroom Dynamics Gruwell enabled her students to reread and rediscover their lives via trust and sharing, in particular, the timing journal writing strategy. The sources of the classroom dynamics consist of the following components: 1. The teacher imbues with passion, caring, and construction the trustful teaching and learning environment through unconventional curricula and pedagogy. 2. Guide students to re-read, rediscover students’ own lives.3. Empower student to reroute the deemed pre-destined predicaments into strength and actions Slide 11: Erin Gruwell’s endeavors as a social change agent suggests that curricular and pedagogical reform retails the courage to teach and to address the complexities of anti-oppressive education. Individual endeavors and system scaffolding are the two keys components to facilitate teaching and learning journey. Conclusion Slide 12: “There are no un-teachable students. They just learn in different time and in different ways”. Slide 13: “Only what is comforting goes hand in hand with a resistance to learning what is discomforting, and this resistance often proves to be a formidable barrier to movement toward social justice…” - Kumashiro (2002). Freedom Writers Does the movie Freedom Writers Represent Typical Stereotypes of People From Ethnical Backgrounds? Monday http://zara-med-5.blogspot.com/ Independant study... “In Long Beach, it all comes down to what you look like, it’s all about colour.”[1] Does the movie ‘Freedom Writers (2007, Richard LaGravenese, USA)’ reinforce common stereotypes of people from ethnic minority backgrounds? It has almost become somewhat of a tradition, for ethnic minorities to always be represented within a circle of violent behaviour. The media constantly targets youths from different minorities in ways where hegemony uses culture to promote power. In this case it would be the ruling by cultural influence where white people have the power and dominant control over people from ethnic minorities. Set in Long Beach, California, Freedom Writers (2007) puts forward this negative stereotype of people within the ethnic community belonging to a vicious crime filled environment. The characters within the movie belong to a segregated community, where each race is divided into separate tribes. The students are represented as a central point to the movie, and the way they struggle to break free from the chaotic atmosphere around them to emerge as one, putting away the elements of the ‘Other’, and accepting their classmates for who they are rather than their ethnic backgrounds. The movie has been constructed in such a way that it promotes an ideology of how the community where the students live, is represented as a racially acceptable society. This could be seen as the key reason to why the action of the youths in this film was so demoralised based on all the segregation between them. Freedom Writers upholds strong stereotypes of people within the African-American, Latino, Cambodian, Vietnamese, and Caucasian race and therefore social realism is created as the text deals with issues the teens are associtaed with such as racism, violence, gun/gang crime and drugs. This has therefore resulted in people believing in these given stereotypes. “Racism is like a poor kid who grew up needing someone to hurt.”[2] With reference to this quote, the fact that the movie depicts how racism is accepted in the community where all characters are from is shown in detail through the different use of media language. The costume, props and setting of the movie are all referred to as the ‘urbanised’ look, where people from this area are usually categorised in belonging to a social class of C2/D/E. The quote puts out the impression of how ‘people who have grown up rough, tend to end up rough’ which relates to the Freedom Writers narrative very well. Freedom Writers focuses on a true story in 1994 where a first time teacher played by (Hilary Swank) faces a group of students who have been considered by the government as “un-teachable, at-risk” teenagers. The movie represents street kids who have all witnessed fights out breaking in front of them as well as murders of their own friends and family. Stuart Hall (1977) talks about the way black people are characterized in the media; “…their ‘locations’ are the familiar real-life settings of ghetto, street, police station and drug-bust.”[3]This justifys how the characters in the movie fall within a categorisation of what Stuart Hall refers to as influencing the representation of ‘black people within movies’ and how “headlines and stories have a great impact on their readers and can promote certain negative stereotypes,”[4] supporting how people from ethnic minorities are used as tools of racial objectification. ‘Viacom’ now knows as ‘CBS Corporation’[5] is a large media corporation which owns both ‘Paramount Pictures’ and ‘MTV Films.’ The movie had a domestic total gross of $36,605,602[6], which supports that it was a very successful movie. As Paramount pictures are such a successful establishment, it shows that the movie was used as a mainstream distributor where many people would have watched the movie regardless of its advertising. People in society who have grow under a continous influence of TV, are referred to as “The MTV Generation”[7]. This label catergorises the audience for this particular text as it has a wide influence from the ‘Pop Culture’ by the use of soundtracks such as Keep Ya Head Up’[8] and the soundtrack ‘I have a dream.’[9] Through adapting the MTV generation lifestyle of these audiences, the text creates awareness of issues such as racial profiling and helps engage the audience with the protagonist. The movie does not fail to offer its audience a “Narrative of reassurance” which helps meet their expectations. A theorist, Richard Dyer, talks about how ‘stars are important[10]’ Freedom Writers has used this approach in attracting their audiences to view the movie. Mario