For the past eight months, I have been working with a group of secondary Literacy Coaches here in Sarasota County to build a professional development course called CAR-PD, (Content Area Reading Professional Development). One section of this course deals with helping students become motivated learners. The teachers who developed that portion of our training used this film as a motivational tool.
While I watched the film, I could not help thinking about how teachers view their students. We have sorted them by their FCAT scores and created classes just for "gifted" students and placed our "low achievers" in their own ghettos. What are we doing? What are we thinking? I do not believe any test, or battery of tests, can accurately predict human potential. We do not have a crystal ball or the Sorting Hat from Hogwarts. If you view this film, I hope you see that none of the children we teach are ordinary. In fact, they all have the potential to be extraordinary.
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