Great Teachers in Film.
Unanimous: they break the mold of sitting in rows. Students in their classrooms do more than follow instructions. They create. There is a scene with administrators yelling at them. There is a student who doesn’t get it, and the teacher fights for him. There is a scene in which the students fail and it looks really dark. And then they succeed. And then they live lives worth making movies about.
- Mr. Holland’s Opus
- October Sky
- Dead Poets Society
- Dangerous Minds
- …
Buried in our collective psyche is the idea that school is supposed to be more than this. It’s time to embark on a journey of educational images. What do we want school to look like? Ask the movies.
Where are the elbow-padded professors, guiding students in lively debate in a wood-paneled office? Where are the students who spend time discussing what they read, because they love to learn, not because they were assigned to?
