27 minutes, color
$25
Kay Toliver, a middle school mathematics teacher at East Harlem Tech, has found creative, student-centered techniques for engaging her students and improving their achievement. Good Morning Miss Toliver, at first glance, appears to be a pedagogical exploration, illustrating one teacher's strategies for interdisciplinary and interactive teaching and hands-on learning. But Miss Toliver's teaching and the film documenting it are much more complex and valuable than that.
Miss Toliver knows that every student can achieve and she communicates that to them individually and collectively. She encourages and rewards critical thinking and creative problem solving. She facilitates experiences in which students connect their classroom learning to their everyday lives, making lessons fun, and more importantly, relevant.Though her demonstrations are powerful, the most important voices in this film are those of her students. They recognize her expectations and express their appreciation for her encouragement.
Good Morning Miss Toliver is an excellent resource for connecting classroom practice and the expectations gap to the achievement gap. It is one of the few films I have reviewed that successfully illustrates multicultural classroom practice—the saturation of daily education with multicultural teaching and learning philosophy. Equally important is the fact that Miss Toliver teaches mathematics, a subject many argue is culture- and value-free.
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