SPEAKING ACTIVITY TERM 3

Watch the clips and answer the following questions:

CLASSROOM SCENE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAhDs0T3XYo

TOAST FOR CHANGE SCENE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84iTxSpAv1o

SCENE 3: CANNOT TEACH JUNIORS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXC1S7UP4Cc

SCENE 4: THAT DON’T FLY MA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qM_VslE4Ijc&t=27s

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

1. Who is your favourite character and give a detailed explanation why you favour this character?

My favourite character is Eva. I like this character because of her character and character development throughout the
course of the narrative. She starts off very closed off from her peers, and the teacher, and like the rest of the class, only
really engages with her tribe. She finally reacts to Erins teaching methods when Erin inadvertently downplays the gang
situation of many of the students, including her, and asserts a level of superiority. She snaps and rants on the immorality of
the white people in her life, treating her like trash. This small scene demonstrates her entire character, showing how
confined she is to her own, and the hardships she has faced and how she has grown up to this point to face and counter
them.

However, she does slowly develop throughout the story, when she is forced to a court hearing as a witness and plans to lie
to defend the accused (and guilty) killer just because they are of the same race. This immediately establishes just how
(justifiably) prejudiced she is at the start. However, as Erin makes a large effort to connect to each of her students, Eva’s
stance on her prejudice starts to shift, as she becomes more accepting of others as Erin brings them together. This started
an internal conflict on whether Eva should side with her race or with her morals, and the outcome of this internal conflict
was expressed in the external conflict of the court case. She still stumbles in her growth for a few moments, such as when
she becomes enraged that Anne Frank dies, but still managed to overcome her prejudice and do the right thing in the court,
which is a great payoff for her character and many scenes relating to the case. This is especially significant because it
ostracizes her from the rest of her people, showing that she has fully accepted doing the right thing despite isolating herself
from one of her only real true connections, a complete turn-over from her original self.

2. Compare the different characters and discuss how they changed.

Erin changed to understand her students on a more personal level, which allows her to teach and interact with her
students more meaningfully. This is pretty much the catalyst for all the student’s growth.

Eva changed to do the correct thing, and judge her acquaintance not based on their shared skin and connections
but based on the merit of their actions.

Marcus changed to wanting to correct his course and find a way to graduate, through opening himself up more
and reconnecting with people he though abandoned him. He specifically sought after his mother since

The rest of the class also opened up, both to Erin as their teacher, but also towards each other, creating a web of
interconnected interracial friendships across the class, allowing them to gain a better understanding and
connection from others.

3. What motivated them to change? Give examples from the text.

 Erin is motivated to change after witnessing the opinion other teachers have of them, and being curious about
their story, and after realising that they have not had a proper education due to how others treat them. She
specifically changed because she saw the injustice they faced through their comments about being in a war, and
Eva’s comments on injustices dealt out by white people, as well as one of the students bringing to her attention
that none of them knew what the holocaust was. She was able to look at them deeper than any other teacher and
was extremely dedicated to helping them.

Eva is motivated after learning about the story of Miep Gies, and how Miep hid the Jewish families, even if it could
hurt her, because it was the right thing to do. This made Eva reflect on if it is right to let a murderer go free, just to
save herself pain and because they share race.

The rest of the students are motivated to change after Erin treats them like real students that
deserve a proper education by buying them new books, taking them on trips when they
haven’t left Long Beach, and really understanding their stories and situations, when no-one
else would. They also bonded with each other when Erin showed them that, aside from
colour, they are all very similar. They also grew closer after Erin mixed them all up to
encourage them to step out of their social comfort zone.

4. Explain how the director shows the changes in the characters (This refers to techniques).

During the first day scene, the camera only really focuses on one character at a time, aside from showing when
they all enter the room, whereas in the later toast for change scene, each the camera involves more of the
background characters, making more than one character the focus for any given shot. Additionally, the camera
seemed more zoomed in during the earlier scene, though this could be the trick of focusing on a singular character
per shot in action. In any case, this symbolises how, in the beginning, the class was very distant to Erin, and Erin
was distant to the class. Additionally, it shows the imbalances in relationships in between students of varying race.
As the film goes on, in later scenes, the class is more interconnected with each other, shown by the multi-character
focused scenes and also with how the camera is zoomed out a bit more. This zoom gives the impression that each
character was more enclosed and isolated in the earlier parts of the film than they were in the later parts,
involving things and people more in their lives.

5. Discuss the different themes/ideas that you notice.

The plot had a main focus on the theme of racism and prejudice, specifically how others treat each other depending on
similarities or differences in race. While white teachers all treated the non-white students as filthy and thuggish, due to
their situations, the children all attack each other if they are of a difference race, and don’t cooperate with them at first
until they bond and connect more (against their will). Additionally, everyone serves to protect their own, such as the
teachers trying to protect the white children by being against the forced integration, and the social group around Eva
pressuring her to protect a killer by advent of him being of the same race.

Another theme or idea is the focus on doing the right thing in the film, specifically judging others not on their immediate
similarities or differences, but through how they act and their situation. This idea is first brought to attention by Miep Gies,
the woman who assisted in helping many Jews, including Anne Frank, hide during the Holocaust. Miep did not help the
Jews because they were the same as her, she was Austrian, but because of their situation. Fulfilling her state duty of ratting
out the Jews may have been easier, to side with her own kind, but since she knew her own kind were in the wrong, she
supported people not like her. Eva also shows this later in the film by properly admitting that a member of her race was a
killer, and not defending and lying about him. This is also shown well by Erin throughout the whole film, as she helps her
non-white, mixed class of children despite people of her same profession, race and of higher authority being against it, as
Erin knew they were in the wrong for indirectly prohibiting a proper education and support for its non-white and non-
successful students.

Another idea is the focus on the various challenges in the lives of the characters, and how they overcame them. This can be
most clearly seen in Erin and how she overcomes the challenges of the schools predatory teaching methods. She wants to
give her students proper novels, which isn’t allowed by the school since they believe that the students will just tear them all
up. Erin overcomes this minor challenge by working at a store part-time and getting employee bonuses to purchase fresh
novels for her students with her own pay-check, circumventing the need for approval from the school. Another challenge
Erin faces in her life is needing to understand her students so she can relate and guide them better. She overcomes this gap
in knowledge through allowing each student to write a diary about their life, and some might allow her to read them, so
she can learn what their life is like, becoming a more effective teacher and guide to her students by connecting with them
through their shared stories.

6. Find some real-life experiences that highlight these ideas.

I don’t have too much experience with prejudice or racism that I can remember, nor have I ever had such a huge obstacle in
my life. The most I could probably say on the theme of overcoming challenges are those boring everyday obstacles, like just
being sick or otherwise incapacitated and still needing to push yourself to finish some work or another commitment,
because you need to or feel obligated to do it. Similarly to overcoming challenges, I can’t really think of any significant
moments in my life where I have actively chose to do the right thing, it’s just a kind of mindset that you develop, which is
likely the mindset that the students develop.

7. What have you learned from this movie and how were you impacted?

I was impacted by the extreme discrimination and situation the non-white children of Long Beach faced, and their
stories that were explained in the story. This may be because, at least in my experience, I have not experienced any
prejudice or direct prejudice in my life. Therefore, seeing just the extents of how this problem is represented
within the film really spoke to me. The film really taught me how these people lived, and the immense trials they
have faced, which may have influenced me in being more open, and more in-depth of how I perceive someone. It
also taught me the power of human connection and experience in bringing people together, because it sort of
solved racism in the classroom when Erin made them open up about experiences they all shared, despite race,
bringing the class together and eliminating prejudice in the class.

8. Discuss prejudice and racism in our society today.

Racism, although very much decreased since the time of the film, still exists to a fairly sizable extent, where it is particularly
concentrated in specific areas. In 2020, there was the mass resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, a direct result
from racially motivated police brutality, primarily in America. There are also many areas in Eastern Asia that have a race-
oriented mindset, particularly to skin tone. On the other hand, prejudice still exists in various forms to a wider extent, as it
can be expressed through race, religion, sex and many other faucets. While it still is much lower than previous years, things
such as homophobia and such are still widespread ideas, much more so than specifically contained areas and over a much
wider demographic of different generations that grew up with different concepts. A modern example of racial prejudice is
the gender pay gap, a common term used to express the differences in wages for men and women, due to the long-
standing belief that women are less capable in work than men.