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Word Count 577 180 Days: Hartsville

As I watched this film on the two elementary schools in South Carolina, I gained a new perspective on what is lacking in the American public education system. I learned about the issues that rural cities go through, such as lack of funding. Both students and parents have hectic schedules including a distracting home lives in the sense of financial instability, causing emotional trauma. Because I grew up in towns that many people consider small suburban towns, I did not realize these types of issues (which overlap with many of the issues with poor inner city schools) prevail in rural towns. While watching this movie I found that it relates to the kids from inner city kids because of the underlying issue of poverty.

This movies portrays education in a way that is typically not discussed in public school, it discussed how relationships are the core to a strong education. A school is nothing without teaching having good relationships with their students in way that they can decipher when the kids are feeling okay or recognizing if and when they need additional assistance. Although this movie highlights various goods the staff and administration does, like mentoring kids, accepting that they are different and have different needs there are some aspects to these schools that I would not recommend to other improving schools. I disliked how they announced the students’ scores verbally to the entire class, grades should be private and it’s unprofessional to announce them in that manner. It was an unnerving feeling when the school was paying the students that excelled in the MAP test, although these students should be awarded for their hard work taking these standardized tests. I thought the competition between the two schools were petty and unnecessary as well. After doing the interactive exercise, titled, 180 Days: Challenge, I gained new insight about my teaching style and challenges that students in inner city schools and rural schools face. Based on the answers I gave about issues teachers in the 180 Day Film, my teaching style gave a strong preference to emotional needs, slight attention to the social needs and strong focus on the intellectual needs of my students. This activity gave real examples of the challenges of teaching and creates an interactive way to discover how challenging and complex it is to balance all three main needs of the students. This not only relates to the students but the teachers, the administration, and parents.

I think these media tools can be useful to educated people about certain issues that arise with education however I felt like it is really lacking in the issue of the core issues of education reform. Shortly after watching this film I read the book “Reign of Error” by Diane Ravitch who questions what will ‘fix’ the issues occurring nationwide in American public schools. In the book, she states that the goal of people attempting to amend these issues is tackling both poverty and school reform at the same time instead of picking one or the other. Although this film shows that the faculty and staff of the school genuinely care about the children, they do not try to find ways to alleviate poverty in the area aside for providing food bags. This movie and activity were particularly impactful to me however I felt that the additional literature I read contributed substantially to my views on this topics and what I take out of this.