This video is of a Charter School in Chula Vista that I made. The school, for 7th and 8th took place in a recreation center. I am honestly not writing this for effect but to demonstrate how powerless some students are in their educational environments. Teachers get either attuned to it of become frustrated, and they should, at the lack of support. In some circumstances, it just is what it is. In this clip you will see 7th grade students enacting a play about something in their daily lives. The reason I included it is to highlight the actual room and their supplies as best I can. To begin with, the board and projector in the back ground do not work. If you notice, there are no books or supplies in the room. It is, in fact, a multi-use room in a recreation center. After classes are done, a Yoga class starts. As you can see from the clip, as well, there is no chalk board (the tech- white board does not function) and everything is done by poster board. Sadly, poster board, where we wrote, was hard to come by. The idea was that students would purchase computers for a few hundred dollars, helped by the school. It would be a tech mostly school. This never happened...and, spawned many of my early blogs on technology. Most work was supposed to be done through edmodo. What really happened is that we did lessons on white board. As a practicum teacher I brought a short book for the student to read for my lesson but needed to copy it at Kinko's. I have no doubt teachers are doing this type of thing every day. I also show a video where a teacher shows how to benefit from a smart trip to the dollar store.
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