I finished this book a few weeks ago, and so far it has been my favorite one. Not only is Pat Conroy’s account inspiring, it is also funny and completely honest. I'm posting a few of my answers to the pre-reading questions below. "What is this piece suggesting that is truly different from how education is usually done?"
Most teachers are not as actively involved as Conroy was in the education of their students. He lived in the school house, went door to door to meet their parents, and organized school trips that he was personally in charge of. For one year his whole life revolved around educating Yamacraw students. It takes a special kind of person to go through that much difficulty in order to be a good teacher.
"What does this piece have to say about what happens when we don’t expect much from learners vs. when we expect a lot? What does it say about how education might involve not just teaching academics but also going beyond just that to something more holistic?"
Pat always expected his students to learn, and because of his expectations they did learn. When we don’t expect much from learners, it is almost like we are giving up on them right from the start. We all want to prove ourselves but sometimes we need to be pushed to reach our true potential. As for as holistic methods, Conroy really tried to nurture the student’s artistic side. He let them listen to music, paint, and have fun. He controlled the children (for the most part) but he did it in an authoritative way. His demands were reasonable and his attitude was kind.
Like Neill’s book, Pat Conroy focused more on imparting general knowledge, aesthetic enrichment, career information, and practical advice about urban living to his students than learning from the textbook alone. In fact he never used textbooks with his students, which in his case would have been a dismal failure since most of his students had been ill-prepared by a broken scholastic system and could not read. Victims of a racist environment that delayed their intellectual growth his students would not have understood much of what was printed on the pages in front of them. Conroy jumped topics quickly in his classroom to keep the children engaged, used profanity, playfully threatened students, parents, and employees, created an in-class “zoo” full of specimens gathered from outside, and tried to teach his students basic geography, spelling, music, art, and primarily about the cities they would one day flock to for jobs. He took his students on field trips, explained road signs, sales catalogs, and tried to make their lives happier by exposing them to mainstream aesthetic joys like Halloween trick-or-treating, soccer, and films. Rather than teach to an academic standard with a textbook or a series of tests Conroy tried to provide his students with a safe environment where they were exposed to practical, emotionally fulfilling, and humane information on everything from proper dog-maintenance and how swim to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. In my learning institution I would use Conroy’s tactic of applying difficult or abstract concepts to daily concrete examples so the students could understand them. Repeatedly Mr. Conroy links broad concepts like humanitarianism to something concrete: taking good care of a dog. This is helpful because it gives the students a mental frame of reference, an example, and a good habit to imitate (whether or not they actually do is another matter). The point is that the large, abstract concept is no longer remote but concrete, understandable, and relevant to their immediate situation. I would like to be the kind of teacher that teaches despite the disadvantages of the school and the prejudices that surround the community. I want to use films, trips, and classroom discussions to help my students move past prejudices. I liked Conroy’s use of the classroom map to illustrate global interconnectedness while teaching geography—it gave the students a better idea of where they were, how similar and different other cultures were in relationship to their own, and a feeling of closeness to other human beings not only literally but ideologically.
I'm not sure if anyone is interested but there is a movie version of Conroy's book called "Conrack" released in 1974 and Directed by Martin Ritt. I don't know if it is available anywhere but from the few clips I salvaged from Youtube it looked like a fairly faithful representation of the book. (I was very little when I saw it last and don't remember much of the movie except that I liked it and didn't understand why Conroy's students couldn't go on field trips more often).
Conroy faces so many challenges in his year on the island from issues dealing with commuting to work to gaining support from the school board, but he never lets them get him down. He fights back when it is necessary and for what he believes is right. He fights harsh weather conditions and unbelieving parents to take his students on field trips while managing a family on the mainland as well. I think this kind of determination is something I would always like to strive for in my career. 4. His memoir focuses on the lack of support that is given to certain schools in districts that have the means to provide, but choose not to because of bullshit reasons. The administration proved to be some of Conroy’s biggest adversaries whereas he was thinking the children and parents might be tough. Granted, the children were tough because they lacked such a basic knowledge of information in every area, but they were not tough in the sense of fighting against him, like the people who were working on his same team, but failed to give support at every turn. I learned that even though you are all working at a school and in the school system that some people forget about the small problems and only focus on their bigger successes. The administration for the Bluffton schools took pride in their quality educations on the mainland by reveling in those and figured the Yamacraw School didn’t matter because it wasn’t something people saw every day. They could just act like it was not there and really no one was going to do a thing about it. I think the education system should make every school of equal importance and provide them all with the chance to receive a quality education, but I learned that is obviously not the way everyone will always feel.
My dad also recommended the movie. I'll have to check it out.
I had a hard time believing how little Conroy's students actually knew. There were so many different grades in each classroom that it seemed like some students should have known more than others, and the fact that there were only two teachers on the island was surprising. After reading this I couldn't help wondering if the island is still the same today. There were no phone lines and no roadway to it. Maybe those things have changed, but maybe not. If those things were different, would the education system be different as well? Are opinions of race different on the island now? The community's relationship with the school was almost non existent until Conroy was booted out of it. I found the community's level of commitment to Conroy inspiring. Conroy must have instilled within them the way education should be, and I admired his refusal to implement corporal punishment, a great example to set. The students learned from each other and from the teacher, too. The strong readers in the class influence the weak readers, and the clear speakers influence the stumbling ones.
Although I rooted for Conroy to win his position back at the end, I agree with him when he was upset to find out that the community began to put him on a pedestal and think only white people were qualified teachers. Leaving the island helped to cut off that frame of mind.
I finished this book a few weeks ago, and so far it has been my favorite one. Not only is Pat Conroy’s account inspiring, it is also funny and completely honest. I'm posting a few of my answers to the pre-reading questions below.
ReplyDelete"What is this piece suggesting that is truly different from how education is usually done?"
Most teachers are not as actively involved as Conroy was in the education of their students. He lived in the school house, went door to door to meet their parents, and organized school trips that he was personally in charge of. For one year his whole life revolved around educating Yamacraw students. It takes a special kind of person to go through that much difficulty in order to be a good teacher.
"What does this piece have to say about what happens when we don’t expect much from learners vs. when we expect a lot? What does it say about how education might involve not just teaching academics but also going beyond just that to something more holistic?"
Pat always expected his students to learn, and because of his expectations they did learn. When we don’t expect much from learners, it is almost like we are giving up on them right from the start. We all want to prove ourselves but sometimes we need to be pushed to reach our true potential.
As for as holistic methods, Conroy really tried to nurture the student’s artistic side. He let them listen to music, paint, and have fun. He controlled the children (for the most part) but he did it in an authoritative way. His demands were reasonable and his attitude was kind.
Like Neill’s book, Pat Conroy focused more on imparting general knowledge, aesthetic enrichment, career information, and practical advice about urban living to his students than learning from the textbook alone. In fact he never used textbooks with his students, which in his case would have been a dismal failure since most of his students had been ill-prepared by a broken scholastic system and could not read. Victims of a racist environment that delayed their intellectual growth his students would not have understood much of what was printed on the pages in front of them. Conroy jumped topics quickly in his classroom to keep the children engaged, used profanity, playfully threatened students, parents, and employees, created an in-class “zoo” full of specimens gathered from outside, and tried to teach his students basic geography, spelling, music, art, and primarily about the cities they would one day flock to for jobs. He took his students on field trips, explained road signs, sales catalogs, and tried to make their lives happier by exposing them to mainstream aesthetic joys like Halloween trick-or-treating, soccer, and films. Rather than teach to an academic standard with a textbook or a series of tests Conroy tried to provide his students with a safe environment where they were exposed to practical, emotionally fulfilling, and humane information on everything from proper dog-maintenance and how swim to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
ReplyDeleteIn my learning institution I would use Conroy’s tactic of applying difficult or abstract concepts to daily concrete examples so the students could understand them. Repeatedly Mr. Conroy links broad concepts like humanitarianism to something concrete: taking good care of a dog. This is helpful because it gives the students a mental frame of reference, an example, and a good habit to imitate (whether or not they actually do is another matter). The point is that the large, abstract concept is no longer remote but concrete, understandable, and relevant to their immediate situation.
I would like to be the kind of teacher that teaches despite the disadvantages of the school and the prejudices that surround the community. I want to use films, trips, and classroom discussions to help my students move past prejudices. I liked Conroy’s use of the classroom map to illustrate global interconnectedness while teaching geography—it gave the students a better idea of where they were, how similar and different other cultures were in relationship to their own, and a feeling of closeness to other human beings not only literally but ideologically.
I'm not sure if anyone is interested but there is a movie version of Conroy's book called "Conrack" released in 1974 and Directed by Martin Ritt. I don't know if it is available anywhere but from the few clips I salvaged from Youtube it looked like a fairly faithful representation of the book. (I was very little when I saw it last and don't remember much of the movie except that I liked it and didn't understand why Conroy's students couldn't go on field trips more often).
ReplyDeleteConroy faces so many challenges in his year on the island from issues dealing with commuting to work to gaining support from the school board, but he never lets them get him down. He fights back when it is necessary and for what he believes is right. He fights harsh weather conditions and unbelieving parents to take his students on field trips while managing a family on the mainland as well. I think this kind of determination is something I would always like to strive for in my career.
ReplyDelete4. His memoir focuses on the lack of support that is given to certain schools in districts that have the means to provide, but choose not to because of bullshit reasons. The administration proved to be some of Conroy’s biggest adversaries whereas he was thinking the children and parents might be tough. Granted, the children were tough because they lacked such a basic knowledge of information in every area, but they were not tough in the sense of fighting against him, like the people who were working on his same team, but failed to give support at every turn. I learned that even though you are all working at a school and in the school system that some people forget about the small problems and only focus on their bigger successes. The administration for the Bluffton schools took pride in their quality educations on the mainland by reveling in those and figured the Yamacraw School didn’t matter because it wasn’t something people saw every day. They could just act like it was not there and really no one was going to do a thing about it. I think the education system should make every school of equal importance and provide them all with the chance to receive a quality education, but I learned that is obviously not the way everyone will always feel.
My dad also recommended the movie. I'll have to check it out.
I had a hard time believing how little Conroy's students actually knew. There were so many different grades in each classroom that it seemed like some students should have known more than others, and the fact that there were only two teachers on the island was surprising. After reading this I couldn't help wondering if the island is still the same today. There were no phone lines and no roadway to it. Maybe those things have changed, but maybe not. If those things were different, would the education system be different as well? Are opinions of race different on the island now? The community's relationship with the school was almost non existent until Conroy was booted out of it. I found the community's level of commitment to Conroy inspiring. Conroy must have instilled within them the way education should be, and I admired his refusal to implement corporal punishment, a great example to set. The students learned from each other and from the teacher, too. The strong readers in the class influence the weak readers, and the clear speakers influence the stumbling ones.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I rooted for Conroy to win his position back at the end, I agree with him when he was upset to find out that the community began to put him on a pedestal and think only white people were qualified teachers. Leaving the island helped to cut off that frame of mind.