Educational Studies I

"The Class"

Today we watched the movie “The Class” for the course Educational Studies. I think it can be related to the topics culture and intercultural classroom, which we already worked on in class. The main character is a teacher of a multicultural classroom, who has to deal with many different kinds of problems regarding his pupils.

In the beginning it seems, as if the teacher is kind of racist himself. At least the pupils feel like this, because he always just mentions popular “white” persons and never “black” celebrities. I have the feeling, as if the students feel kind of attacked in their cultures and their appearance. As a counteraction one of the students asks the teacher if he is gay and it seems as if he tries to embarrass him in front of the class.
As a teacher of an intercultural classroom it is always important to get the student´s trust to be able to do a meaningful teaching and to make the students learn something. It is so important not being the one who students are afraid of, or who they are teasing. There should be a respectful atmosphere between the teacher and the pupils.
In the movie this actually is not the case. The students are after each other and trying everything for provocation.

Because of the good attitude of the teacher, the students actually improved in this year. He was able to open their minds for themselves and each other. They were talking about their lives and they are truly happy about their end products of their self-portraits in the end of the movie. Namely the teacher printed them out and bound them in a respectable way.

I think that the teacher should have tried more to get the respect of the students, because it would have eased the lessons in a significant way. Also the other teachers would have profited if the class was more respectful.

To my opinion it is a very realistic movie, which shows exactly the situation in a multicultural classroom, where not just students who are rich and who had the chance to grow up in a good society go to school, but also poor and desperate ones. As a teacher you should clearly think about what these pupils need and how you could impress them to get their trust and respect. You should try to get as much information about their surrounding that you can be an concerned and understanding teacher.

While watching this movie I used observation to get information about the situation in that class. I just wrote down facts I could see and did not interpret anything. Now, as I am writing this Blog Entry I am trying to interpret the “Data” and to relate it with our discussed topics.

Hopefully I can put this knowledge about intercultural classrooms into practice in my own teaching-career.