Paper #2

Casey Jones

Formal Paper #2

Ms. Gruwell and Ms. Watson

            When it comes to good teachers, Ms. Gruwell and Ms. Watson seem to both be the epitome of a great teacher. Three qualities that these two teachers seem to weave into their teaching would be dedication, ability to influence, and their pressing attitude in and out of the classroom.

            Both teachers from the movies, portrayed dedication in the way they taught in multiple cases.  Ms. Gruwell showed this characteristic when she first came to her class full of children coming from low-income families and seemed to exemplify lack of motivation or resources. Rather then taking the easy way out and allowing the kids to fail as most other teachers expected, she tried multiple times to unify the class, even after failing time and time again, she steadily made her way to bringing the class to a that of a family unit. Ms. Watson shows this same characteristic of dedication when she was overwhelmed with the fact that her class had already read and studied the class book till nearly having the imaged imprinted in their brains. Rather then to allow her students to plateau with their knowledge right then, she pushed her students into areas where they hadn’t felt comfortable, confronting each of them with new pieces of art that they hadn’t been exposed to and making them make a judgment on their own rather then reciting the words they’d read from the text.

            Two more similar characteristics that both Gruwell and Watson seemed to identify with was their ability to influence. Gruwell showed this amazing trait again and again throughout the movie. She was able to influence her students to not only go to class, but to pass their sophomore year, a grade level that most other teachers thought was out of reach for that particular group of students. On an individual level, she helped Eva break through from the unsustainable and dangerous life she’d been living, and even to speak up and tell the truth about the murder she’d witnessed. Ms. Watson also had a unique ability to help influence her students for the better. Being the strongly independent women that Watson was, she was able to help many of the female students from Wellesley see that jumping into being a wedding gown and being whisked away to a life of a stay at home mom is only one of the many options they had after college. This was shown most prominently with Watson’s student, Betty.

             

            Betty was only able to gain the information Watson presented to her because of Watson’s pressing attitude. Gruwell and Watsons were able to help their students learn and become what we can only assume is successful with their demanding attitudes towards their students learning. Coming to a very low budget school with a class of less then ambitious students, Gruwell seemed to demand the most from her students. When one of her students, Jamal, turned in a lack luster paper, rather let it slide, Gruwell pulled Jamal from class and held his feet to the fire. This effort strongly portrayed the concept that this teacher wouldn’t allow anything from her students that was less then what she thought they were capable of.

Watson also showed this same behavior. With one of her students, Joan, she sees that she has an interest in continuing on with a law degree. Instead of allowing Joan to let the opportunity pass, Watson presented her with an application to Yale. Although after multiple follow ups, Watson comes to see that Joan decides against Yale, it was only after she’d been pressed and forced to really look at both path ways is she able to see that getting married is what she really wanted to do, this would not have been possible without Watsons demanding attitude for Joan to truly confront her situation.

            Ms. Gruwell and Ms. Watson were picture perfect examples of two teachers that went well above what was expected from them although they came from almost completely opposite circumstances. While they can be seen for utilizing three important qualities to be a successful teacher they went about them in different ways. While Ms. Gruwell had to show dedication to get her students interested in the lessons she wanted to express, Ms. Watson had to bring her students down to earth and help them realize knowledge is far from being able to understand underlined points in their textbooks.