Dangerous Minds

Recently, I was looking at my high school annual and noticed that the favorite movie of my class was "Dangerous Minds". This was interesting to me because I have not yet seen it. If I remember right, Coolio sings the main theme for that song, played all the time that year, Gangsta's Paradise. This song was the favorite song for that class. Now, one might assume that, because I am a teacher, that would be on my list of "surely seen movies". Nope. In the 90's it was popular to be a gang member and I think any movie that portrayed such as either fantastic or showed a white girl succeed as an urban school teacher was likely to do well. Where was Bill Cosby at that point? Those Cosby kids went to college and became something, all of them.
The Cosby Show was good and giving us an example of what ALL kids are capable of if they are surrounded by a good family. Black, white, hispanic, any sort of diversity. The parents were both extremely successful African-Americans who reared a large family while teaching them how to be successful people who do good for society. But still, this is television.
It seems as though I have to create a new point because I have gotten lost a bit. What I am trying to get at is the fact that so often teachers think that because a parent is a dead beat or the family is "crazy" or "wild" that they are free of responsibility. Sometimes I hear, "Well she comes from a bad family." As if this is an excuse for the child not to be successful or for the teacher to give up. We have kids of all types and we need to do our very best with them. That is our job. That is our moral responsibility. Anybody who claims that child circumstances prevent us from teaching as well as we can is full of it. Whether a kid is too energetic, sleepy, dirty or dresses too nice, there is never an excuse. The parent and teachers need to work together in order to make things work for the child. And if the parent does not want to be involved, do more to help the kid learn or go work for the union.
Do I have more? Maybe I do.
Another peve of mine is that teachers complain about not having the resources to cover a given unit, especially in science and social studies. You make what you can with what you have. It is disgusting to me to hear people say, "If the district is not going to supply me with the materials to teach it, I won't teach it." It is important for a district to give teachers as much as they can so that all children are taught to the state standards (I say state because they are more rigorous and have more depth than national standards), however as teachers we should have learned how to create or build our own lessons in order to accomodate the kids. A worksheet is not going to teach. We need to present children with ideas and concepts and help them to understand these. We should not be reliant on what we are "given" or "supplied". We should be reliant upon ourselves and reliable to our pupils.
That should be it for the night. The school year approaches.