We didn't really get a chance to discuss the "Nice White Lady" skit from MadTV last week in class, so I thought that might be a good way to kick off the blog. What did you think? As a parody of urban teacher films, was it on target? And more broadly, how do such films contribute to the
conception of city schools and city kids in the public imagination? (This question is discussed in the intro to City Kids, City Schools, which you'll be reading for this week's class.)When the "average American" thinks about urban schools, what does she/he envision? Or better yet, what do you envision? Where do these ideas come from? And how anchored do you think they are in reality?
13 comments:
After seeing that clip of the "nice white lady" it made me think how that is the way that people view inner city schools. If someone who is white comes in to teach they assume that their role is to make the students better, and automatically assume that it will happen. While the students feel inferior and distanced from the teacher because they mostlikely don't have very many things in common. I think its movies like this that have had me hesitant whether or not I would like to teach at an inner city school. Seeing these videos and movies makes me afraid that I wont be able to make a difference in the lives of the students I may teach. The stories they use in these movies can happen, but mostlikely for a teacher to create that much of a difference it takes a lot of time(a lot longer than the movies make it seem)and a lot of perserverance.
This clip interested me on many levels. If you get past being upset about the stereotypes being portrayed, the parody is actually funny. The use of the "nice white lady" stereotype is really odd to me because I have only seen it in movies. Yes, I have had white teachers, but none of them were even close to the one on MadTv. I went to an Urban school, and it is not like what the stereotypes portray. Many students from all over the Chicago area came to my high school and elementary school which were both in wealthy city areas. Teachers and students of many races taught me lessons that I still use today. I do not know where the fictional "nice white lady" saves the kids came from. Just because you went to an urban school does not mean you are from the "hood".My parents have their degrees, and are doing very well.There should be a story about the urban schools that are flourishing in the cities....but I guess that is not as funny as impoverished minorities being "saved".
First of all I have to say that I am a huge fan of MadTV and I have never seen that skit before. Though I found it funny I got the point that the white teacher coming into an urban school and making it all better seems a bit unrealistic. I know that there are true stories about this stuff but I tend to notice that it is the stereotype that only the white teacher can make a difference. To me it gives me the perception that all urban schools are filled with minority students that are rough and mean and don't have a future and don't care and that the only person that can help them or get them to change their mind is some random white teacher. There are plenty of teachers no matter what their race is that can make a difference. Also I noticed that a lot of these movies are taking place in high schools. What about elementary schools or even middle schools? Is high school the only place to show that teachers are important to these kids lives? Unfortunately these types of movies and parodies are where I get my view of urban schools. Even when I go and visit Chicago and I get to an area that I start to feel uncomfortable I immediately think about all of these movies and shows on TV that perceive these urban areas as a scary and unsafe place to be.
I truly loved the skit from MadTV. I think that Hollywood is trying to send a great motivational message, but sometimes, it gets lost in the way. Such comedies like High School High with John Lovitz jab at how crazy some of these plots are. These movies work off of too many stereotypes at times. I do love these movies for the message it tries to send, but it has to go father then just saying a teacher is here to change everything. There should be movies on how teachers try to affect kids at a younger age such as in elementary school. They should be reinforcing good life skills at the beginning of their schooling, not just the end. Overall, it has a great message, but they need to work on these movies plots, themes, and character development.
I can see how any film which resembles the plotline of the “Nice White Lady” skit from MADtv could indeed be a dangerous one, establishing new stereotypes and furthering existing ones. Any film studio which embellishes or inaccurately displays an issue such as race relations has to be aware that many people are influenced by what they see on the screen. When dealing with serious issues, an accurate reproduction is a respectful one.
I sat back and laughed through the skit during class. Thinking on it later, I found a touch of irony. It was ironic that I was laughing at a parody of a white teacher going into a city school and achieving success by stressing peace over violence, pens over guns. Isn’t that who I am trying to become? Of course, the skit was made to be funny. But the humor I found later on was in the realization that I identified more with Dan Dunne, the crack-addicted teacher in “Half Nelson”, than I did with the nice white lady. In “Half Nelson”, Dan is an effective teacher but he is no savior. He is flawed, but he is trying to do right by his students. I believe I relate more to him because he seems real. This, to me, is an example of a movie that actually gets it right. I think Hollywood bears a responsibility when it’s painting a picture about city schools (and city kids) in America. I think that picture should reflect reality, not illusion.
The “Nice White Lady” sketch touched on a lot of different issues that have plagued the screens of so-called urban-education movies from Lean on Me up to Take the Lead. There are a lot of stereotypes perpetuated on either end of the spectrum. In the films, the students are frequently caricatures of what actual students are like. The kids are often single dimensional and all of them are “troubled.” On the other side, the teacher is a confident well-to-do white person in the middle of their struggle to save the world. Then, he/she defies all odds when the students begin to express themselves and out-perform any expectations people had of them. Mad TV hit the nail pretty much right on the head.
Are these movies the end to modern civilization as we know it? I don’t think so. However they are pretty misleading. What some people would consider gritty and real, is simply cliché and played out to others.
As a potential teacher, I just try and take them with a grain of salt. Just like the other people commented I think the movies proved a good idea. I think that it is great that the movies portray someone’s story of trying to make a difference. What I don’t approve of, is that the message comes at the expense of marring the general public’s perception of the students, teachers, and city.
I think it's interesting that this is the topic of the blog, because as I was watching One Tree Hill this week, I was reminded of this clip from class. In the episode, Hailey (a nice white teacher) was encouraging her husband, a former basketball star, to reach out to a struggling black student of hers who lived and breathed basketball yet had dropped out of school. I immediately saw Hailey become the “nice white lady.” Now as a future hopeful CPS teacher, I think it’s discouraging that this stereotype exists. When I tell people that I want to teach in the city, are they going to look at me and say, oh what, so she can become like the teacher from Freedom Writers? I think it’s great that there are teachers who are out there making a difference with their students, I mean after all, isn’t that why we all want to be teachers in the first place? But I think that the emphasis needs to be taken off of race, and more on what a teacher has to offer. In the end, isn’t that what really matters.
The "Nice White Lady" skit from MadTV of course made me laugh, but also scared me quite a bit. Mainly for the fact that I, like the teacher in the parody, and Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds and Hilary Swank in Freedom Writers, am a white female. While I love these movies, I am also able to take them for what they are...movies. And like most things from the movies, not reality.
Unfortunately, the general public, with no education on urban setting schools may think that a "nice white lady" or even more money, as discussed in tonight's class, is what will "save" these urban students. However, in the two weeks in this course and some information gained from other courses, I know this is not true. I was thinking to myself tonight in class as we discussed the fairness and equality of money per school issue, the following: I wonder if you took the highest achieving students from a suburban school (with a high budget per student) and swapped places with the highest achieving student from an urban school (with a lower budget per student), what would happen?
I was asking myself this partly because I sometimes feel guilty for being educated through the school district I was. I’m certainly not looking for pity, I am fortunate and I do not take it for granted. However, I was able to go from kindergarden to my senior year of high school and every year I can think back on at least one teacher, if not more, who were invested in me as a learner. I was able to use new (or hardly used) textbooks. I was able to use everyday. I was able to participate in all the arts; physical education, music, and art. I was able to take part in after school teams and activities. I went to a high school where it wasn’t a question IF you were going to college, but WHERE.
I know I am speaking in generalized terms (mainly that, suburban schools are nicer than urban schools) and I don’t want to do that, but this is one of my biases coming into this course. I do know that, like the article by Kozol stated that different schools spend a very drastic, somewhat shocking, amount of money on different students. I can honestly say, I’m not sure I would be sitting where I am today, had I not had the teachers I had or the opportunities I had. I was questioning myself in class tonight, did I succeed in high school because I wanted to work hard and do it, or because I knew I had to? Did I go to college because everyone in my family has or because I wanted to further my own education?
I am a firm believer in everything happens for a reason, but I also know that my love for my teachers in elementary school is what has made me want to be a teacher for the rest of my life. I always felt my teachers cared about me, wanted me to succeed, and believed in me. So maybe, instead of sending in “nice white ladies” to help “save” urban schools, we can do exactly what we’re doing in this class - educating young future educators about how to teach in an urban setting school, because I don’t think many of these students need to be “saved” but I think they need to know that someone is invested in them as a learner, someone cares about them and their culture, someone wants them to succeed, and most importantly, that someone believes in them.
I know many of us are concerned about being the stereotypical Caucasian teacher with nothing in relation to his/her students. However, we have not yet discussed how to avoid this. How can we, regardless of skin color, stop trying to save those we teach. Maybe they are the ones that need to save us? I believe our students have the ability to transform us and teach us an alternative way to live from that which we may be used to. I do not want to be the hero teacher, however I do want to have a mutually beneficial relationship with my students. I do not want the stereotype of being the nice white lady to hold me back either. Just as with any other threat stereotype, I think some teachers may not preform as well because they do not want to been seen as that teacher. There are so many issues surrounding the hero teacher idea that it is hard to sort them all out.
While flipping though the few TV channels that I actually have, I came across Music of the Heart. This movie is about Roberta Guaspari and her students in the East Harlem violin program. Having never seen this movie and vaguely remembering previews for it I thought it was going to be yet another classic hero teacher film. There was a scene that changed my opinion on this. It happens between Meryl Steep, who plays Roberta Guaspari, and a parent of one of her students. The parent made a comment along the lines of her being a white lady coming to save people who did not ask to be saved. The comeback to this comment was that she was not looking to save people she was a single mom who needed a job. This made me wonder how many teachers are there out there teaching because they all they really needed was a job. Looking back it seems like I may have had a few teachers like that. They were there because there was a teacher shortage or because they did not know what else to do. There is all this talk of how nobody wants to be the stereotypical hero teacher. Deep down I think that there is some type of desire to be a hero teacher. Not the hero teacher who goes in and changes policies and school districts in an incredibly small amount of time. There is the need to be the teacher who makes an impact, even a small one, on someone’s life. We all have those teachers, our heroes. They are the teachers who taught us to really understand how to do something, to want to make a difference, and maybe even to want to become teachers.
I am actually not surprised that Hollywood decided to portray Urban Schools that way. For the most part we really can't rely on Hollywood to tell the truth because they are too busy trying to give happy endings (pleasing people). They know that the truth is not always welcomed by their viewers. Even though it is upsetting to see such a lie about the savior "white" teacher, it really boils down to what we are willing to pay for. To believe it or not there are some movies out there that show the reality of some schools but those are the ones that didn't make it to the box office. One good example is an older movie called "Just Another Girl from the IRT". That movie really depicted some things that some teenagers may have to go through while living in lower income community. It also shows the process of the main character and how she excelled in spite of her situation. In other words, the movies that get the most ratings are usually a lie but there is still some out there that are just not noticed. So it is our job to educate ourselves and seek out the truth. Now that we have been confronted with the truth, what will we do about it?
Lot of perceptive comments in this thread. I want to echo or amplify a few things that have been said:
I can understand how, if you are a white female, the "nice white lady" stereotype might make you question the notion of teaching in urban schools. Will students and perhaps some parents and other teachers look at you with a skeptical eye, wondering if you see yourself as a savior? Perhaps. Students want to see that you genuinely respect who they are and are committed to them before they give you the benefit of the doubt. This takes dedication and perseverance on a teacher's part, but I believe (and have seen first-hand) that anyone, from any background, who is truly committed to learning about her/his students and their community and cultural background can be an excellent (and respected) teacher in city schools.
I agree that "hero teacher" films are not the end of the world, and that, even when deeply flawed, they can motivate and even inspire viewers. Still, I think it's important to critique the underlying assumptions they are built upon, because popular culture does impact the way many of us view the world -- especially when we have very little, if any, first-hand experience with the reality being depicted. For example, the idea that poor kids need to be "saved," is, I think, one we need to actively guard against. One way to do so, as Kirstin suggests earlier in this thread, is to view teaching as a reciprocal process, and to remember that, as teachers, we have the opportunity to be transformed by our students -- not just the other way around.
Finally, I think we all need to check one another if we fall into the tendency to over-generalize about either the city or the suburbs. As the intro to City Kids, City Schools states, certain areas of cities like Chicago are being redeveloped into pockets for the super-wealthy, and some suburbs, particularly those in the "inner ring" surrounding major cities, struggle with many of the same challenges that are present in poor neighborhoods in the city. Of course, there are differences as well, but we need to remember not to oversimplify the equation.
The Mad t.v. clip made me laugh and reminded me of Freedom Writers and other movies that stereotype the type of teacher that can save the students and maybe the school. I am annoyed with those movies because if you listen to those who aren't in the field of education at the end of the movie, there is someone who says, "I wish my son or daughter had a teacher like that." I want to ask them what makes them think their child's teacher isn't just as committed and hard working. They minimize the fact that, if as a teacher I can help at least one student succeed than that is a success to be celebrated. I would personally feel successful without needing a parade, documentary, or a made for t.v. movie on Lifetime.
The movie also distorts the view of the 'urban' school and what the environment and the students are truly like.
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