TR# 2 - February 7, 2012

Stand and Deliver/MAS

Readings:
Tucson Daily Star Articles and Ed Ops on TUSD Mexican-American Studies Program
Hubbard & Power - Chapter 1. - Finding and Framing a Research Question
Teacher Inquiry – Chapter 4 - Coresearching and Coreflecting:  The Power of Teacher Inquiry Communities

Movie:
Stand and Deliver (1988)
A movie about Jaime Escalante based on the book Escalante: The Best Teacher in America, by Jay Mathews documenting the events of 1982.

Reflection:
Actors:
Angel  - driven but in conflict with his peer group
Anna –very bright but parents in conflict with education
Sophia –self esteem issues and role conflicts
Sophia boyfriend – struggles with immediate gratification and long term goals

Some ideas from the movie:

• Bring the content to where the students are
• Applies the content to the real world
• Expectations are set high and students live up to those expectations
• Department head has low expectations.  She does not believe the kids can do the math; she thinks the kids will fail and lose self-esteem
• Contact with students
• Parent support (?)
• Instant gratification vs. Long-term satisfaction

Good Quotes from the movie:

• “They learned that if they try really hard nothing changes.”
• “They lost their confidence in the system that they are now qualified to be a part of”
• The testers who had PhDs were Black and Hispanic.
• “There were some illogical computations for students of this caliber.”

      There are some comparisons between this movie and the MAS, but the issues are very different.  Both revolve around Mexican American students at the high school level and deal with forms of discrimination.  However, I think that the movie is not as politically charged as the MAS.  Math is a mainstream curriculum that cannot be challenged by the state, where as the MAS is more political in nature and can be debated.  The students in the movie were accused of cheating while the MAS were reprimanded for challenging a historical perspective different from the leaders of our state.  Even though the students in the movie had to retake the test to prove their innocents, they had an avenue with which to do this.  The students in the MAS program are up against powerful politicians that are not interested in compromise and want to enforce their standpoint.
     In reviewing the articles and from what I remember about this situation, I think that both sides were so polarized by the issue that they could not come to an agreement. If they could have had a civil discourse about the issue instead of an emotional fight where both sides would lose face if the other gave in, then I believe the MAS would still be in existence. 

Coresearching and Coreflecting:  The Power of Teacher Inquiry Communities
     My big take away from this chapter is the creation of  “safe spaces for real dialogue”.  Without a safe space for conducting research not much will be accomplished.  The creation of a community of inquiry is keep to the success of any research.  Only with this kind of environment will teachers be able to learn and make changes in their lives and the lives of their students.

Questions to Ponder:

• Doesn’t being an individual mean you are allowed to participate in your own culture? Or are we all to do away with our individual cultures and assimilate into a “melting pot culture” designed by the dominant government?
• Is it a crime to study individual cultures and governments and how they have made an impact upon the United States of America?
• Are all of the other ethnic studies being banned from TUSD?
• Will it always be the case that the one’s with the purse strings are destined rule over the rights of what students are taught in the classrooms?
• The judge talked about no damage to the teachers, but what about the damage to the students.  To me, the judge is taking the students out of the equation and saying to them that your history is not important to Arizona and the United States of America.
• Isn’t it ironic that the history of the oppressed is being brought to life in classrooms of TUSD?