On teacher films

A lot of “teacher” movies have come out in the past couple of years. As a rule, I don’t watch them, for the same reason that doctors don’t watch “medical” shows, and lawyers don’t watch “legal” dramas; I know I would only be bemused (at best), disappointed (more likely), or possibly outraged.

Although there are some good movies out there about teachers, that capture some of what it means to have this calling, even the best ones fail to fully convey what this profession is about. Most don’t even come close to hitting the mark. Most paint the educational landscape with a broad brush and tend to perpetuate stereotypes about teachers and students. Watching some of these movies, you get the impression that anyone could walk in off the street and teach. Or that teachers are saintlike people who have no life outside of their job (unsustainable).

What you don’t see in these movies is what life in a classroom is really like, what students are really like, or how amazing/difficult/rewarding/frustrating/demanding being a teacher of real people is. You don’t see the reality of what it’s like to work in a dilapidated building with no supplies or materials. You don’t see the million individual moments of heartache, triumph, and small personal victories. You don’t get to know any of the key players as people. Instead you usually get stereotypes of students, and stereotypes of the adults who choose to work with them.

I also think that these films socialize the public to continue to require teachers to be “self-sacrificing heroes in their schools [who] arrive early, stay late and reserve little time for themselves or their own families. They pay for supplies out of their own pockets and barely survive on measly salaries.” The perpetual lack of political will to fund education and make it a real priority in this nation, no doubt depends, at least in some part, on this fairytale mythology of who teachers are and what they do. (The other piece of the puzzle, no doubt, is that as much noise as you hear about “family values”, the welfare of children and families really isn’t a priority in this society. Teachers don’t make a product, they play an important role in directly molding the futures of human beings. Kathleen Melville says, “One expert featured in American Teacher described educators’ work in a way that really resonated with me: ‘Teachers make thousands of decisions a day, and they don’t do it about an abstract idea. They do it about the life of a child. You can’t imagine anything harder.’ “

Amen.

Teaching, if it is about anything, is about growth. As Kathleen Melville puts it, “In their brilliance, their frustration, their apathy and their curiosity, my students demand that I become better every day. I must become better at thinking, relating, performing, deciding, planning and responding. And so every day, I try to listen and learn, experiment and explore. I engage, regularly, in an intense and exhausting process of getting better.”

Quoted material from: Making a ‘Thousand Decisions a Day', Kathleen Melville, Teaching Tolerance, December 20, 2011