The movie "Paper Clips" detailed a very touching story for me. For anyone who may not know what "Paper Clips" is about, it is the story of students from Whitwall Tennessee who start learning about the Holocaust. These students eventually decide to collect 6 million paper clips to illustrate the 6 million Jewish people who suffered and died in the Holocaust.
I thought this movie was a great representation of a way teachers can have an impact in the students' learning. Because the teachers were interested in learning about diversity and what happened to these people, the students became interested as well. As our class textbook describes, this is a constructivist approach to learning. The teachers are not simply directing the students what to learn nor are they telling the students information so they can pass a test. The teachers were learning along with the students, this was an amazing example for me. I think as a teacher I hope to be able to implement something like this into my classroom. I think that having the students involved in the learning experience helps them to receive more from education.
Should some form of assessment be used to determine if these students actually learned anything? I don't think a test is necessary for these children. Personally I think I would fight with E.L. Thorndike for insisting that assessment and measurement were necessary tools for education. Today there are so many tests students have to take, that they aren't even being taught for self improvement anymore. There are countless numbers of hoops to jump through just to pass high school or college. I do not think these tests actually help make someone a good or better person. These are not skills they will need in the real world. So in the case of the students of Whitwall, I think the best way to see if this project was successful would be to have them partake in an ethnographic study. This type of study would place them within a group of diversity. Within this group of diversity did the students who learned about prejudice act differently towards people of different cultures? I think this study would be very interesting to see the results. I hope that the students would treat everyone in that group equally.
Overall, "Paper Clips" was a great movie to show how one small group of teachers can make a difference and encourage learning. I think it is important for all teachers to try new things and new ways of keeping students interested so that they want to learn.
If you want to see the movie "Paper Clips" you can view it at http://www.snagfilms.com/
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