The Teacher Documentary: Chalk

In my opinion, I think that it is less dramatic and more real compared to movies. Movies are fiction while documentary is more realistic. This documentary showed three teachers’ journey in improving themselves as teachers and educating their students. Mr. Lowrey was an introverted history teacher who assigned for the teaching profession because his friends encouraged him, so, he switched profession from a computer engineer to a teacher. This is something common where people that did not understand the difficulties of being a teacher would think that teaching is a walk in the park. Mr. Lowrey was struggling as he was new to the profession. His students made fun of him as I believe students can smell fear and would have a field day with him. But he did overcome it by reading on class management and as time goes by his students started to respect him and enjoyed his lessons.

Another teacher called Mr. Stroope who I find can be aggressive especially when campaigning for teacher of the year. I feel that he was more to wanting to win that award than properly educate his students. He even asked one of his students to act less smart as he felt threatened by her intelligence. I guess I understand his problem because that student thought that she’s better than him and stepped over his head and being disrespectful. But, Mr. Stroope’s approach in solving the matter was not appropriate. Instead of being professional he sort of gave me an impression that he was egoistic. After losing the election, he lost his temper and took it out on the students which I feel is unprofessional and immature. His ego and competitiveness had caused him to become irrational and those were his flaws. But, he did grow up a bit and changed his ways. We as teachers should not let pride and ego get in the way of our teaching as we are going to shape the minds of the future and as a role model as well.

The third teacher is Coach Webb who tried very hard for the students to take her lesson seriously. What I like about her method is she used other means like yoga to gain the students’ interest in PE. This is something new and unlike other gym teacher who would ask students to run laps and give them a ball to run around with. If our PJK teachers would do that than most students would not dread to go for PJK and would actually enjoy it. But, like other teachers she had some flaws which were overly aggressive and too rigid in terms of certain school policies. Her abrasiveness had caused some fall outs with the other teachers and they would complain to the assistant principal, Mrs. Reddell. Coach Webb’s attitude made some of the staff uncomfortable and she had a hard time adjusting to the situation. However, with much encouragement from Mrs. Reddell and learning from her mistakes she was able to change her ways. I think when being a teacher it doesn’t mean you only teach but you learn along the way either from your colleagues, friends and even from the students. You’ll be surprise of what you can learn from students.