Journal - The Miracle Worker

The story of Helen Keller's life has deeply touched me. This inspiring movie definitely awakens our appreciation of dedicated teachers or miracle workers. The illness that hits Helen at infancy left her blind before she could speak. As she grew from infancy into childhood she was wild, frustrated and unable to communicate effectively. She relied on her senses, of touching and smelling everything. It wasn' t until she was motivated and challenged by a young teacher, named Anne Sullivan that her new life began.

Throughout the movie, a variety of language learning theories are detected. For instance, in the beginning of the movie, Miss Sullivan immediately begins to trigger Helen's knowledge by communicating with her through sign language. I believe that creativity was the key to Helen Keller's life story? According to Piaget's Cognitive Theory , the principal goal of education is to create men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done but men and women who are creative, inventive and discoverers. She also follows Stephen Krashen's Theory when she ensures that Helen does not become anxious in language learning. She establishes from the very beginning a friendly relationship with her and strives at building a close one.

Eventually, Miss Sullivan began her task with a doll that the children at Perkins had made for her to take to Helen. By spelling "d-o-l-l" into the child's hand, she hoped to teach her to connect objects with letters. Helen quickly learned to form the letters correctly and in the correct order, but did not know she was spelling a word, or even that words existed. In the days that followed she learned to spell a great many words in this uncomprehending way. Anne based her instruction on a system of touch teaching rather than attempting to explain the properties of an object, she would allow her student to experience it directly. This scene of the movie takes us to another theory; the communicative language theory where the learner interacts and learns by doing. (John Dewey)

Nevertheless, it wasn't until Miss Sullivan was able to gain full control of Helen's discipline that she began to learn or comprehend to the fullest. At this point, B.F. Skinner's theory of behaviorism appears as Anne tries to constantly modify Helen's behavior by rewarding with positive reinforcements and punishing with negative reinforcements. Skinner further insists that all learning is a process of habit formation in which a stimulus creates a response and is reinforced to become a habit. After this, Miss Sullivan led Helen to the water-pump and pumped water onto her hand spelling out the word "water" on her other hand. After many repetitions of the word, Helen realized that the individual signs represented the letters that made up a word that was the name for the thing water, and that other things must also have a name. She proceeded quickly after this to master the alphabet. The movie ends when Helen finally understands symbolic language. To this day, Helen Keller and her teacher remain an inspiration to people thoughout the world.

In conclusion, as educators we need to observe and interact more with our students. They are natural artists because they allow their creativity to run free. Their imagination knows no boundaries and nobody should make them believe they "can't" do something. Ideas are limited only by the boudaries we have set with our adult imaginations. In most cases, children come to school in full possession of their "creative spirits". It is in our hands to create children who are capable of doing new things and believe in themselves.