I’m going to get a little serious with the column this week. While I typically like to keep things a little cultish and offbeat, this marks a pretty big week for me. As anyone who pays attention on our forums or listens to our podcast probably knows, I graduated earlier this year after returning to college to get my English degree. This week marks my return to school, but from the teaching side this time. So this week I’d like to present a double feature of two of my favorite movies about teaching and inspirational teachers.
I know movies have a way of idealizing everything. Putting rose-colored glasses on the world and making people believe that life can be black or white, good or evil; that we really are all good at heart or that one person can make a difference. I guess that’s part of why I like these two movies. While they are ideological, they aren’t candy coated. These teachers, despite affecting their students, do have bad things happen. Jobs are put in jeopardy, relationships are shattered, careers are ended. Sometimes the price you pay for changing lives can be tragic.
Despite the bad, these two movies have definitely shaped me as a teacher. Last year, while I was student teaching, I showed some of my students Dead Poets Society as part of a unit we were working on. I recognized the behavior from Robin William’s Mr. Keating that I have adopted as a teacher, and when the movie ended one of the students, on the way out of class, stopped by my desk to tell me they could completely see me have students standing on their desktops, just like in the movie.
I couldn’t think of a bigger compliment.
Dead Poets Society
If there has ever been a better teacher captured on film than Mr. Keating, I don’t know it. When Dead Poets Society came out, people didn’t know if they could take Robin Williams seriously. He quickly showed them how serious he was. Not only is his fictitious character performed flawlessly, but Williams wasn’t afraid to stand back and let the young actors take center stage, insisting they be just as active in promoting the film as he was. The result is an incredibly touching, deeply moving film that I would easily rank in my top ten favorites of all time. Maybe we didn’t all have teachers who made English come alive the way Mr. Keating does, who urged us to tear apart textbooks and seize the day, but maybe we should have. As I noted, however, not everything is rose-colored. Student suicides, rebellion, and even Mr. Keating’s termination definitely make this a movie that doesn’t promote teaching as a profession. If you think about it, the movie doesn’t even really end on a happy note, just one that shows the students got the point of the lesson. I guess that’s all a teacher really can ask.
Freedom Writers
Unlike Mr. Keating, Freedom Writers is based on real people, although some dramatic license was definitely taken with the material. I have a lot of respect for Erin Gruwell, who took a problematic classroom and taught them tolerance and respect. While I have yet to be in a classroom as racially diverse as Freedom Writers, the movie is a good reminder that good teachers don’t just teach a subject. We really aren’t just in school to make sure young Johnny knows how to add, read, or remember who discovered something on a specific date. Part of school is teaching about the world and how to exist in society and improve that society, such as teaching tolerance to people in a racial war. Again, things weren’t all positive for Gruwell, and the film doesn’t even get into the later years when she left/was forced out of public education. Instead we get a deteriorating marriage where Patrick Dempsey seems like the bad guy, and a closed-minded administrator who gets overruled. The world just isn’t that cut and dry and I’m sure Gruwell had her own shortcomings and failings that aren’t shown here, but she’s still a heck of a role-model.
Other classes worth attending: Mr. Holland’s Opus, Coach Carter, Dangerous Minds, The Emperor’s Club, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
Enjoy our Double Feature suggestions? and maybe we’ll use them in a future column.
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