According to Plato there should be no such thing as family. Instead we should all be men born of the earth. Everyone according to Plato should think themselves to be everyone else's brother or sister. He thinks that children should be removed from the mother upon birth so no attachment is made between mother and child. In speaking of peoples "education and rearing" Plato writes: "If by being well educated they become sensible men, they'll easily see to all this and everything else we are now leaving out-that the possession of women, marriage, and procreation of children must as far as possible be arranged according to the proverb that friends have all things in common." (423e) Again he reiterates the idea of having all things in common when he writes: "All these women are to belong to all these men in common, an

I found the person who best displayed the qualities necessary in being a good teacher at Weston middle school to be Ms. Nellas. She taught American history and has been a teacher for over twenty years, which may be one reason why she is better than the other teacher at Weston. Unlike the other teachers she is liked by her students, you can see this by how she is shown respect in the classroom. Like Envie says: "She makes you want to strive to be better." (pg. 28) She instills in her students the confidence necessary for them to actively participate in class. This is something that doesn't seem to exist in the majority of classes at Weston, particularly not for the girls. Not only does she have posters with sayings like "Dumb questions lead to learning. Don't be afraid to ask" that encourage students to be active participants but she herself encourages them to speak. (pg.29) She not only recognizes the gender problem at Weston but goes a step further in trying to change it within her classroom. She seems to try to call on girls and boys the same although she admits it is a struggle with boys always demanding her attention. Instead of just sending the problems in her classroom elsewhere (i.e. the principles office), she will stop her class and wait till the students calm down. Ms. Nellas is a strong lady and she tries her best not to give into the boys shout outs for attention. By doing this she hopes to "make it a little more equal". I do not think she gave herself enough credit for being a good teacher, one who actively tried to change the problems that many teachers choose to ignore. According to Orenstein, it was one the only classroom where the girls seemed to be confident, and actually wanted to work hard.

At Audubon middle school teaching the students seemed like a challenge on more levels than just gender; a challenge that most teachers seemed afraid to take on. Like Ms. Peck's idea of the three legged stool, they blamed student's unwillingness to learn, on their parents. Instead of trying to work with the children they deemed it as not being their problem. But what they did not realize was that they were the children's only hope, and their job as teacher is to make the children want to succeed. I recognize that the teaching experience at Audubon is more challenging because there is not only the gender issue, but also race and poverty. In any case there are two teachers worth mentioning as deviating from the norm of Audubon's typical noncaring teachers, them being Mr. Muriera and Ms. Leland, I will focus on the latter. Although Mr. Muriera was an excellent teacher who hated to see students fall through the cracks, like many did, I particularly liked Ms. Leland. I think what made me admire Ms. Leyland was the fact that she was a fairly young white woman, at a predominately black school. In some ways I feel this made her accomplishments at Audubon more spectacular. She taught math to all the eight graders, which being a woman again is a notable accomplishment. She recognized the gender and ethnicity problems at Audubon and did her best to correct them in her classroom. Through her actions the students knew how much she cared about their success so they showed her the respect of being attentive in her class. Even though this respect was well deserved it is a particular accomplishment at Audubon where in most of the other classes, the students would t

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Approximate Word count = 2281
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page double spaced)