Sydney Mitchell
Chances are you had a favorite teacher when you were in grade school. That one class you looked forward to going to, where you felt empowered and capable. The teacher whose mere voice captured your attention because you knew something magnificent and profound was bound to escape their mouth and you could not bear to miss it. What was it that made that teacher so memorable? It was most likely the way they inspired you. The defining role of a teacher is to inspire; whether it be through acting as an ally, an enemy, or perhaps a parental figure, what sets some teachers apart from the rest is their unique ability to light a fire of desire for knowledge in their students. The question is, how do they do it? Let us examine Mr. Keating and Mr. Escalante, two teachers who live and breathe inspiration.
Keating strolls into the room on the first day of class, whistling a tune that displaces the stern air of silence at Welton Academy. In this scene in Dead Poets Society, the first tenant of inspiration becomes evident; the element of surprise. Keating managed to catch his students off-guard on the very first day of class by taking the lesson out of the classroom. Throughout the year he persists to come up with effective, albeit unconventional, ways of getting his students’ attention. In particular, Keating makes his subject exciting by animating poems using character voices, literally ripping apart the traditional curriculum and introducing new styles of interpretation. Keating also combines physical activity with learning, which according to study done by the Department of Exercise Science at the University of Georgia “facilitates information processing and memory functions.” Not only was Keating giving his students a good workout, he was increasing their capacity for new information.
When examining Escalante’s means of capturing his students’ attention in Stand and Deliver, we see that he also possesses an indescribable tone of ingenuity in his teaching style. On his second day of class, after witnessing the raucous riot of students the previous day and coming to realize that this was no traditional classroom, Escalante strolls in wearing a butchers cap and wielding a thick German accent as he proceeds to slice an apple in half, silencing the class with a loud bang! In the following weeks, Escalante gives each student the same material in different ways, enabling them to learn in a way they understand. This ingenuity that both Keating and Escalante possess is what began kindling their students’ curiosity for knowledge.
Towards the middle of Dead Poets Society in what can only be described as a moment of righteous anger and indignant if not crazed honesty, Keating clamps his hands over the eyes of a student struggling to invent a poem, and the student responds by being confused and angry at first, but soon shouting out a string of brilliant verse. This is perhaps the most astounding example of the second factor in true inspiration; getting students riled up, angry, and imaginative. By allowing his students to use class time as an opportunity to be unabashedly creative, Keating creates a subconscious thirst for further freedom, a break from the monotony of Welton, and true individuality. In his essay, The Banking Concept of Education, Paulo Freire argues that traditional, dictatorial education “anesthetizes and inhibits creative power.” This is exactly what Welton was doing by having such rigid curriculum. However through encouraging the otherwise insane ambitions in his student’s minds, Keating was breaking free from this tradition and instead fueling their passion and inspiring students to achieve levels of greatness beyond imagination.
In a parallel, although the setting may be different at Garfield and the students are not aching for freedom, Escalante addresses the fact that they are indeed aching for discipline. Just as in physical combat it is sometimes possible to use the opponents increased weight and strength to your advantage, Escalante used the school board’s doubt and the student’s own insecurities to push them to desire success. By using what is best described as reverse psychology and employing the notion that his students couldn’t succeed, Escalante’s students subconsciously desired to prove people wrong and show the world that they could rise above their stereotypes and flourish. In her essay A New Spelling of My Name, Audre Lorde describes herself as being “black and nearly blind…different.” However, throughout her schooling, Audre learned to use her disability instead as an opportunity to thrive. Similarly, both Keating and Escalante utilized their students’ disabilities, discrimination, subconscious anger and rebellion to their advantage. These teachers used their students’ desire to spite their family, friends, and other teachers to instead cultivate a personal desire to thrive.
Wit, surprise, ingenuity, fiery passion; they crescendo to bring us the third and perhaps most important component of inspiration, relentless pursuit. Even as hope seems lost as Keating’s star student Neil is ridiculed by his father for pursuing his love of acting, and even as despair and seemingly inevitable defeat begin to settle in, Keating remains invested and dedicated to his students, encouraging them stay strong.
Comparatively, even with doubt, racial stereotyping, blatant lack of support, and unfair mistrust clouding the intellectual sky, Escalante and his students remain steadfast and persistent. We see that these two teachers, and their students as well, possess a candor and unfaltering persistence that gives them a truly admirable quality. Throughout Stand and Deliver we watch as Escalante devotes more and more time to his students. Studying weekends, coming early and working late, resolving to stay and study until his students understand the curriculum, even going so far as to invite them into his own home. All in the name of dedication. In The Banking Concept of Education Freire also addresses the notion that often, traditional education “turns students into ‘receptacles’ to be ‘filled’ by the teacher…education becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor.” That is to say, often in education teachers not only devote as little time as possible to their students, but there is no give-and-take, no pursuit of a relationship between the student and teachers themselves. This dedication is the marrow of inspiration, which in turn is the foundation of success. When this pursuit and relationship are present, there is no stopping a student.
So what is it that makes a teacher memorable? Their wit, their dedication, their ingenuity, their “wow-factor”? It is all of these qualities lumped together which produce a priceless product; inspiration. Inspiration comes in many forms, but when it is delivered from teacher to student, and this bond is as rare as it is to find orchids growing in the arctic, it is to be treasured. In Mike Rose’s essay I Just Wanna Be Average, he describes the way in which a single teacher by the name of Jack MacFarland had managed to turn his entire educational experience around. Rose sates that he had “logged up too many years of scholastic indifference.” Yet all it takes is one great teacher willing to go the distance to change everything you thought you knew. Escalante and Keating, are not the perfect teachers, for there is no such thing as a perfect teacher. However they are two of the most resonating examples of inspiring educators I have ever been presented with, and I believe they should forever stand as models for inspiration.
Works Cited
"Result Filters." National Center for Biotechnology Information.
U.S. National Library of Medicine, n.d. Web. 20 Nov. 2012. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12595152>
Freire, Paulo. “The Banking Concept of Education” from Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1970 Chapter 2
Lorde Audre. “From Zami: A New Spelling of My Name.” p. 65-73
Random House Digital, Inc.. Jan 1,1982
Rose, Mike. “I Just Wanna Be Average” Parts I & II, p. 6 (quote; ‘logged up too many years of scholastic indifference’)
I love this, Sydney! The way you added your source material was flawless! Fantastic job!!
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