The First to Worst Movie - You Can See it on YouTube

Part 1 is here - the other parts are shown on the right of the screen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTtAdJi1AjQ&feature=related

Background on First to Worst

• First to Worst, by John Merrow/Learning Matters. First to Worst explores the roots of California’s current education crisis.
• Summary of the film's arguments produced by the Stanford Report   
• A presentation that supports the arguments in First to Worst by The California School Employees Association
• American Youth Policy Forum brief that comments on key aspects of the movie: http://www.aypf.org/forumbriefs/2004/fb010804.htm
• California Schools America’s Future "traces the roots of the current crisisand gives context to how it all happened. This documentary is an update of our 2004 documentary, First to Worst, about the history of California public schools. Four years later, is it possible that the largest school system in the country—educating one of every eight schoolchildren—is worse off than ever?"

   

Teaching Materials 

• Summary of sections of First to Worst, plus claims and strategies
• Introduction to Rhetorical Strategies: 
• Intro to Strategies/Ways of Approaching the Teaching of Strategies (Powerpoint)
• Powerpoint file on visual rhetoric and argument. Contains terms for analyzing visual texts, plus examples and lecture notes. Likely to be far more than you'll need for teaching First to Worst, but may contain some useful materials. Large file (4 mgb). Also this.
• Rhetorical Strategies - big collection of teaching materials, examples, discussion ideas. Needs some editing. 
• More on introducing rhetorical strategies
• Intro to rhetorical strategies in verbal and visual texts
• Visual texts to introduce rhetorical strategies:
• Photos of student election campaign signs - can be used to consider strategies and effectiveness
• Print texts to introduce rhetorical strategies:
• Parry's "The Art of Branding a Condition." Short text written by a medical marketer revealing some of the strategies used in drug advertising and marketing. Can be used to introduce rhetorical strategies
• Discussion ideas, exercises, homework and group work that uses the Parry text.
• More activities and exercises that use Parry, and some class activities or homework
• Mixture of print and visual texts to introduce rhetorical strategies:
• A collection of different kinds of print and visual texts can be useful to emphasize how authors use different kinds of strategies, even when the argument is the same. The following texts all make a similar argument about the Texas Board of Education's decisions to change their textbooks.
• "Texas Should Not Define Education." An editorial from SDSU's student newspaper, The Daily Aztec (March 22, 2010).
• "Don't Mess with Texas....Textbooks," by Chuck Norris. Human Events, March 16, 2010.
• Episode of The Daily Show. (The segment on the Texas Board of Education begins at 9:13 and ends at 14:15.)
• Segment from The Colbert Report, "I's On Edjukashun." (From March 16, 2010 episode). Features historian Eric Foner
• "Twisting History in Texas," by Eric Foner, The Nation, March 18, 2010.  Could be used to compare strategies - Foner on Colbert, Foner in the Nation.
• Cartoon: "Texas Schoolboard Bookburning." By Monte Wolverton, March 14, 2010. http://blog.cagle.com/2010/03/14/texas-schoolboard-bookburning
• Cartoon: On the Texas School Board of Education vote. March 17, 2010 cartoon published in the Atlantis Journal-Constitution by Mike Luckovich.
• Lesson Plans:
• Possible sequence of class plans/activites for unit 3
• Handout and lesson plan for teaching ethos, pathos and logos
• Drafting - template sentences for asignment 3
• Using Swales CARS model to discuss strategies identifiable in academic research writing (see also this article by Sutton, "Swales’s “Moves” and the Research Paper Assignment" that introduces Swales and connects to undergrad writing).
• Past Prompts:
• Teaching Enron: The Rhetoric and Ethics of Whistle-Blowing" RICHARD HOUSE, ANNELIESE WATT, AND JULIA M. WILLIAMS, http://faculty.washington.edu/tfreel/courses/tc401/assignments/Enron.pdf
• Prompt, the draft of which I passed out in our meeting. This approaches P3 in two parts: a short analytical paper and a creative project. I may, and you are more than welcome to, continue to tinker/add to it. Share your ideas! (Alicia)
• Long essay prompt (Rose)

Teaching the Crisis - Related Texts to Use for the Strategies Paper

• Segment of Oprah show comparing poor and wealthy schools that covers some of the same ground the First to Worst does, but uses different strategies.
• Short videos that could be used to discuss strategies or model student projects

  - Megan Fox, Brian Austin Green In 'Hot For Teachers.” Megan Fox and Brian Austin Green speak out about the budget cuts affecting teachers and kids in California. http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/7d5ec0278e/megan-fox-is-hot-for-teachers (see alsohttp://saynotocuts.com/)

  - Billionaires for Fee Hikes attack UCSD. Video by UCSD students protesting fee increases and arguing that equity and access is being undermined. Heavy use of satire and parody.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrKcgMep1TM

  - University of California: Priceless. Short (1 minute) video by students at UCSD protesting fee increases. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OQtp1UJpOo&feature=related

  - UC Crisis: Education is a right. Not a privilege. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U1nZA9KO40&feature=related

  - Hitler Finds Out About the California Budget Crisis http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMDUMVCZbcQThe funniest advocacy ad ever

• Newsweek article on education and the need to fire poor teachers. Cover: http://www.newsweek.com/id/234599 Stories:http://www.newsweek.com/id/234590  and  http://www.newsweek.com/id/234592
• NPR debate about the role of teacher's unions in the crisis facing K-12 education in California. Part of the "intelligence squared" debate series.
• NPR debate "Is California the First Failed State?" Part of the "intelligence squared" debate series. PDF Transcript
• Social class and education - video produced by students explaining/satirizing theories about disproportionate school failure by poor and minorities SDSU only able to admit 10% of applicants this year - record low.
• http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2010/01/05/america_and_california_decline

  http://letters.salon.com/tech/htww/2010/01/05/america_and_california_decline/view/?show=all

• Huge list of texts related to the budget crisis, education in California, and related topics. By Christian Fosen at CSU Chico.
• "California's higher-education debacle: Watching the decline of the California State University system from within its boardroom mirrors the erosion of the California dream." By Jeff Bleich. LA Times. See also a list of LA Times reader comments that respond to the op-ed by Bleich

• Hamid Shirvani, Will a Culture of Entitlement Bankrupt Higher Education?  Chronicle article by Hamid Shirvani, president of CSU-Stanislaus. (CSU-Stanislaus faculty responded to Shirvani's article angrily, with 92% subsequently voting no confidence in him).

• California Faculty Association White paper criticising what it argues is the restructuring of the CSU: http://restructuringcsu.wordpress.com/ 

• Joseph Palermo Fiddling While Rome Burns Jim Miller, English professor at San Diego City College

• "California: Killing the Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs." Huffington Post, December 1, 2009.

• OPRAH segment on differences in the quality of schools in rich and poor neighborhoods. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEczvyM3Boc&feature=related

• California School Finance in Plain English http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wsu2L5jfIFA&feature=related

• Understanding California's School Funding Crisis  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHWqTMwZMiw&NR=1 
• Jonathan Kozol on the politics of education youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VS9XHbEaFY&feature=related

•  Scott Jaschik, "The Big Admissions Shift." Inside Higher Ed, December 1, 2009. "Here's the big story in admissions this year: The nation's largest higher education system (and its most diverse) is shifting from being de facto a non-competitive admissions university to a competitive one. Getting into the California State University System's 23 campuses (which educate 450,000 students) has just become iffy for many -- especially for those attracted to certain campuses and certain majors."

• "U.S. schools chief: State longshot for stimulus." http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/05/22/BAR617PKQK.DTL  "Honestly, California has lost its way," Duncan told dozens of the state's mayors and education officials who packed into San Francisco City Hall on Friday morning. He was even more blunt in admonishing a lunch crowd of educators and executives at the Palace Hotel on Market Street: "Your state once had the best education system in the country. From cradle to career, you took care of your children. You made sure they were ready to enter your universities or be productive participants in the workforce. "I ask you, is California going to lead the race to the top, or are you going to lead the retreat?"

• Misc Related Links

  http://calfac.org/allpdf/frontpage/CFA_White_Paper-Restructuring%20Winter_09_10.pdf

  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/13/BADC1AJG4C.DTL

  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/29/IN2H1ALA7P.DTL

• "Students Face a Class Struggle at State Colleges," a  Jan. 2010 New York Times article about the CSU system, focusing on a student at SFSU: "Welcome to state-run higher education in California. Mr. Macias is just one of more than 26,000 students at San Francisco State, and now educational opportunities cost more and are harder to grasp and even harder to hold onto than ever before."

•  California Budget Woes Hurt University System - 13 minute NPR story describing what has happened to CSU and UC system, and problems facing students

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