My wife and I saw District 9 this weekend and I have to say, the film was quite good. It referenced The Fly, served as an allegory for apartheid and the plight of refugees (a la hurricane Katrina) as well, and it managed to continue to encourage the one dimensional depiction of people of color in major motion pictures.
Maybe I’m nit picking but I’m very tired of people of color being portrayed as only a handful of particular archetypes ( the maid, imbecile, prostitute, pimp, pusher, thug, voodoo priest or priestess, dope dealer, or any combination of the aforementioned) unless the film is written, produced, directed, and filmed by persons of color.
District 9, with all its good intentions of retelling the tale of apartheid with humans as the oppressors and Aliens as the oppressed, still somehow managed to depict almost all of the African actors in the film as barbaric or one dimensional.
For those who have seen the movie, tell me, am I being overly sensitive or is my qualm legitimate ?
Thanks for twitter. I found the digital/live action short film that district 9 is based on.
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I use my blog to reflect on what informs my practice and to refine how i do things in the classroom.
I often make reference to Paulo Friere’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed as one of the major influences on how I approach my relationship with my students and my pedagogical practices. However, now that I’m working at a new school I find that Friere doesn’t necessarily hold all the answers anymore.
I used to work in a school in an area of Atlanta that was in “transition.” The neighborhood was plagued by criminal activity, the school was often broken in to, and my students were often more concerned with their lived realities than my math class.
I’m not there anymore and the lens through which I viewed teaching must now take on a different hue. Friere’s philosophy was more geared toward the socially and economically marginalized adults of a society and not so much toward children, so I had to remix his philosophy to fit my lived reality. Now I’m working with a group of students from largely middle class means and adequate educational backgrounds. I don’t encounter behavior problems, major social issues, or anything out of the ordinary. They’re good kids who genuinely excited about coming to school and learning every day. Essentially, I’m working with the students that Harry Wong, Marilyn Burns, and Robert Marzano often write about.
That isn’t to say that I’m not faced with difficulties. My students are all female and I am not. Frierien philosophy, as far as I know, doesn’t really speak to the experiences of middle class females living in a male dominated world. I’m sure there is plenty of womanist/feminist literature out there to assist me with my new set of pedagogical needs; however, I don’t know where to begin.
I can say that I’m enjoying my experiencing so far and I’m learning just as much from them as they are from me. So far I’ve learned that my girls appreciate me knowing who they are much more so than what I know. They appreciate a firm but caring demeanor, and they respond well to challenges.
Something inside me tells me that this school in particular deserves to be studied. I’m really looking forward to what this year holds in store for me and the girls.
I’m reading Walter Isaacson’s Einstein biography and I was struck by how hard Einstein worked to become the man we all know him to be. He was granted with a God given ability to perform thought experiments, essentially an innate ability to “see” the theoretical concepts that he so loved in his own mind. He did not need to conduct experiments in the physical universe to change physics.
I imagine that the Lebron James’ and Michael Jordans of the world were also naturally athletic children who always had an edge up on the rest of us on the playground. However, we all know that those men spent countless hours honing and perfecting their God given talents.
Unfortunately, too many of the rest of us (myself included) rest on those talents that God has given us, rather than working at what we’re naturally good at. We all know those people; the guy or girl who always got pretty decent grades without studying in school…the guy or girl who always managed to be MVP of the game without really breaking a sweat in practice, etc. The list goes on.
The people who don’t work at what they’re good at end up in the middle of the pack in their late 20′s and 30′s. They’re still pretty good at whatever it is they do…just not great. They lack passion, drive, and sometimes a sense of urgency.
I’m there right now. 30 is approaching fast and I’m ready to break away from the pack. So how do I do that ? I work harder and longer than I the best person around me…and when I’ve surpassed that person…I move on to a new arena to find the next number one to topple. I keep doing this until my only competition is myself.
I’m starting today. When will you start ?
I’ve worked in public schools and I’ve worked in charter schools and I definitely notice a major difference in the way leaders encourage teachers to generate positive results ( passing scores on standardized test ).
I’m lucky to have had the opportunity to work with a friend of over 15 years at both my last public school post and my current charter school post. When we worked together at the public school we were fierce, but friendly, competitors. We worked to outdo one another and to push our respective students to higher levels of achievement; not out of a desire to truly teach the children more, but rather a desire to make ourselves look good. Our old public school administration encouraged this atmosphere of competition by posting graphs of pass rates of teachers on the same grade level. No one wanted to be the low man on the totem pole. I used to enjoy this atmosphere of competition and it encouraged me to seek my own professional development, write my own curriculum, and to always be looking for new information. It also poisoned my collaborative spirit. I shared with my colleagues and we planned together, but I always saved my “A” lessons for myself and my students. I always wanted to be a few steps ahead of the curve. That was then.
Fast forward to my current post at a charter school and things are different. The leadership encourages collaboration for the benefit of the whole group. Graphs of pass rates are no longer posted in the “data room” or on bulletin boards to shame teachers into pulling out the stop to push kids to perform. We work together to help our students pass. A failure in one class is unacceptable. We work together for the good of all students. In this way, we operate much like a hive mind. The emphasis is on collaboration rather than competition. I believe that this is the future of our schools.
Imagine educators that adopted a communal educational doctrine rather than an individualistic doctrine. There would be no more “your students” or “my students”. All students would belong to the school and as a result the school would work to ensure student success. Sounds a bit like socialism doesn’t it ?
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