ryan+tozier+180+days

180 days

The film starts out describing the current situation of education in the south. The south has some of the worst grades in the US 7 out of 10 of the lowest states. Here we being to learn about one specific school from the south. In one year went from a C average to an A average in this school and they are truly proud of this. The problem with this statistic is that it we are not told if they held the same standards as the previous years. Without that knowledge I don’t know if the students are trying harder or if the teachers are inflating the grades. This school has some of the same issues and problems associated with inner city schools. So assuming that the students were trying harder this is a very impressive achievement for the school.

“Leadership isn’t about having power but empowering others”

One of the issues for this school is that the poverty rate is so high. 80% of students require food bag, and only provide 425 with them out of 10,000 students. The film makes it clear that the source of the problem with students’ grades is not parent involvement because they show many parents working very hard for their children. That said, low parent involvement for meetings makes home centered learning improvements difficult. They think there is low involvement because the parents just don’t have time to make it. In fact only 1 out of 155 parents showed up for a meeting for their children’s education. This contradicts what they showed earlier in the film and provides a more realistic look at the involvement of parents. To try to improve turnout the teachers change their plan to have only one meeting a month to encourage parents to participate.

This school tries on tactic to get kids motivated to do well on tests that I absolutely oppose. The tactic that the instructors use is to provide money for kids who do well on the MAPS test or who show big improvements. I oppose this decision for the same reason that we are not paid to donate blood. Even though more blood may be donated if people were paid, what changes is what you get out of the situation. In the case of school tests when you don’t get paid what you get of a good grade is the satisfaction of seeing hard work pay off. When you are paid that satisfaction evaporates as soon as you receive your compensation of money. It turns getting good grades into a job, and what happens in the future when they don’t get paid, are they just going to stop trying? It really puts focus on money aspects of college or future education and not the joy of learning.

“You are either growing, or you are dying”

You have to acknowledge that the students have seen things some many adults haven’t, including guns and violence. This idea is very interesting and one that I hadn’t thought about specifically before. It is most certainly true and posed a very difficult problem for educators trying to teach these students.

“The best educators in the world are the ones who remember what it is like to be a student”

Many middle schools are called “hand holders” because they to control and responsibility away from the students. This school takes the system the farthest I have ever, which I don’t consider a good thing. Through constant encouragement their hope to see improvement in grades, kids are never left to decide for themselves what is important. It is essentially the opposite of the free school. Looking at the faces of the students in the video I think that they would agree that kids hate this style of learning because they do not look happy at any point during the video. Also in this school, kids have to fill out an application to participate in the Arts, which seems ridiculous to me but might make sense there. Here they teach to the tests and data to maximize scores and make it clear that they have no time for anything else. They focus everything on numbers, but unfortunately, number can always be influenced beyond other factors than just student intelligence and effort. Finally this schools method for helping problem students is to focus on a student and give them almost constant attention, which can segregate him from other students (on top of videotaping his struggles for the film).