Heroic Teachers
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Clark, too, is aware of the effect that low expectations has on student
performance. Clark objects to the principal’s description of them as the “the
bottom of the barrel” and argues that the problem is not with them or their
abilities. “The problem is what you expect them to achieve.” In all these movies,
the administrators (and by implication the regular faculty) have such low
expectations of students that nothing is demanded of them.
When Gruwell tries to use district literary texts that are just sitting on the
shelves in the school’s storeroom, the department chair refuses to let her. Their
reading scores are too low so they won’t be able to read The D iaty o f Anne
Frank, she says, adding that the books will disappear or be returned damaged.
When Gruwell thinks they might enjoy Romeo and Juliet because it is a great
gang story, Mrs. Campbell holds up a “condensed” version: “This is what we
give them.” “They know they get these books because no one thinks they are
smart enough for real books,” Gruwell replies, then asks if she needs to buy the
books for her students. She is told to go ahead but the insinuation is that it will
be a waste of money.
The protagonists of these films are able to understand students in a way that
administrators cannot because they are outsiders “who offer salvation to students
lost in a culture of poverty and despair.”2 Escalante left the corporate
environment to teach; Johnson lacks her supervised student teaching; Clark is an
experienced and successful teacher, but he is an alien in Harlem. Gruwell is
teaching her first class. While the lack of experience and training might well be
considered a deficit by professionals, these films depict it as an asset: their
attitudes and goals as teachers have not been compromised by the pernicious
resignation that permeates the system. Their hearts remain “pure,” and there are
no inner restraints preventing their use of unorthodox teaching methods which
turn out to be far more effective than orthodox ones.
Because they understand that the attitudes preventing the students from
learning are rooted in a lack of mutual respect and low expectations, they also
know that if they are to be successful, they must first earn the respect of their
students, and the plots of these films dramatize their struggles to earn that
respect. The teachers thus find themselves battling on two fronts. On one, they
must combat institutional problems. Both Escalante’s and Johnson’s schools
lack the resources they need. Garfield High School lacks the texts for the higher
level math Escalante’s students need if they are to study calculus (The movie
doesn’t explain where he ended up getting them.). And the facilities they must
use are less than ideal. Johnson’s school has no money for basic supplies. We
have no paper and no pencils, but plenty of students, her colleague tells her.
Gruwell’s district has books, but the English department chair won’t let the
students have them because, in her view, they don’t show the books proper
respect.
On the other side, they are battling a more insidious problem: the low
expectations faculty and administrators have for their low-achievers. The new