Depending on your age, the sights and sounds of movie day in class varied. If you were in school in the 60s or 70s, maybe you heard frustrated sighs from your teacher as they struggled to thread the reel-to-reel projector. Or maybe you can still hear the click of a film strip as the machine advanced the slides while a record or cassette tape played the narration. 

If you’re more of an 80s or 90s student, you probably rejoiced at seeing your teacher push the big TV cart with a squeaky wheel down the hall and laughed when they discovered Mr. McGuire forgot to rewind the VHS tape again. Perhaps your school even invested in the short-lived LaserDisc player! 

You early 2000s kids mostly watched DVDs, and your teacher probably had a dedicated player that got to stay in the room. But there was still that one old school teacher who insisted on showing an ancient VHS from a now-defunct educational media company. These days, students likely still watch DVDs, but a teacher might even pull up a streaming service in the classroom to show a film.

What never changes, though, is the excitement both students and teachers feel at the prospect of showing a movie in class. Students look forward to a low-key hour where notetaking is minimal and the story is engrossing. Behind the desk, teachers are glad someone else is doing the talking for the day while they knock out some report card comments or tackle an overflowing email inbox.

But today, film in the classroom is more than just an easy lesson plan. 21st-century students are adept at reading the messages behind a moving image, and most teachers recognize that movies and even YouTube videos are key texts for understanding the world around us. Plus, many of our students have far exceeded their teachers’ ability to create video—it’s their native language and can be used effectively as an assessment tool.

In this issue, we hope you’re reminded of the power of film in the classroom. Colin Ward, Jennifer Shoniker, and Adam Rasmussen offer suggestions for specific movies and genres that can foster deep analysis and conversation in the classroom while Heather Birch and her coauthors outline a critical analysis process that can help those conversations flourish. On the assessment side, Priscilla Meeuwenberg offers an assignment suggestion for getting students to think outside the box—the screenplay. 

At the close of the issue, Murray Stiller tackles a question Christians have been debating for centuries: how do we approach films or other media that contain strong language, violence, or sex? It’s a question I often ask myself on the first few days of school when I’m getting to know my students. I open the floor for them to ask me any questions about myself, and they often want to know what my favorite movie is. I always have to pause.

I pause first because I’m a huge film buff and this is such a hard question. But I usually answer that my favorite is the 1987 classic Dirty Dancing starring Jennifer Grey plus Patrick Swayze’s dreamy dance moves. I assume many students haven’t seen this film, and it gives me pause again because the title always generates a few giggles in the room. I sometimes worry they’ll start a rumor that Ms. Zwart watches saucy movies. And sure—the film has a sex scene and some dancing that might have shocked 1980s audiences (but looks pretty tame in 2025).

But then I think about the transformative power the movie had on me when I watched it as a teenager, and I feel confident I could defend recommending it to any high schooler. Abby, you might be thinking, it’s just a sappy romantic drama with the most predictable ending of all time and the problematic issues of most 1980s movies. But Dirty Dancing mattered when I was fifteen. It was the first piece of media I remember that talked about abortion in a nuanced and empathetic way. It was a story of class inequality. The main character made a gray area moral choice in order to defend someone powerless. The sexual relationship between the characters felt respectful and earned.

I hope you have a film in mind that mattered when you were young. It may not have aged well, or maybe your kids think it’s corny, or maybe your tastes have changed. But movies have a certain magic, a power to transport us and teach us and make us fuller, more empathetic people. I hope that in this issue, you’re reminded of some of your favorites and inspired to pass on great cinematic stories to your students.