In what ways can reel teachers—teachers in movies and television shows—serve as a resource for the real teachers like us who show up in our classrooms day after day for the hard work of teaching? The short answer to that question is that reel teachers can teach real teachers quite a bit. Teacher films reveal a lot about how teachers’ worldviews shape their views of curriculum, instruction, assessment, and relationships with students. Teacher films offer warnings about the importance of recognizing professional boundaries. And, sometimes to our disadvantage, they shape and may distort students’, the public’s, and even our own perceptions of what effective teachers look and act like.
For both better and worse, teacher films reveal how teachers’ worldviews shape how they frame the key component parts of teaching work.
Teachers’ Worldviews
For both better and worse, teacher films reveal how teachers’ worldviews shape how they frame the key component parts of teaching work. To refer to what is one of the best-known teacher films, Dead Poets Society (P. Weir, dir., 1989), think about some of the actions taken by Robin Williams’s character, Mr. Keating. He has his students tear some pages out of their textbook, making clear his own view that the curriculum is something other than what is prescribed in official documents and expressed in course textbooks. In challenging them to answer the question “What will your poem be?” he expresses a view of instruction where students’ ideas are foregrounded and the curriculum materials themselves are merely jumping-off points for existential wandering. The first scenes of Mona Lisa Smile (J. Newell, dir., 2003) show a college art professor making a similar move by asking her students the blunt question “What is art?” In the introductory minutes on the first day of class, she makes the curriculum problematic.
Other teacher films show teachers doing the opposite. In effect, such teachers make clear that the curriculum is set and only those students who follow it will succeed. For example, Pressure Cooker (M. Becker, dir., 2008) is a documentary film made in the culinary arts classroom of Wilma Stephenson, the no-nonsense Philadelphia high school teacher known because her graduates regularly won hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships to cooking schools. Like the worldviews of the characters in Dead Poets Society and Mona Lisa Smile, Wilma Stephenson’s worldview becomes clear to viewers of Pressure Cooker.
Professional Boundaries
Some reel teachers adhere carefully to what most teaching professionals consider appropriate boundaries. Others do not. We typically think of two such boundaries: in relationships between teachers and students, and in the balance of the teacher’s work and personal life. Many reel teachers fail at boundary maintenance. In Half Nelson (R. Fleck, dir., 2006), for example, Ryan Gosling plays Dan Dunne, a high school teacher whose drug habits become known to students. Boundary violations involving romantic relationships between teachers and students are almost a cliché; that category contains too many films to list.
Many reel teachers fail at boundary maintenance.
Fewer films attend to appropriate boundaries between teaching work and one’s personal life. Two such films come to mind, both based on the lives of real teachers. Recall from Freedom Writers (R. LaGravenese, dir., 2007) the lengths to which Erin Gruwell went to help her students, even taking on extra employment so she could purchase more classroom materials. In Stand and Deliver (R. Menéndez, dir., 1988) based on Jay Matthews’ 1986 book Escalante: Best Teacher in America, we see a teacher whose deep commitment to his students’ success leads him to make bigger personal sacrifices than most of us would comfortably make.
Shaping Images of Teaching and Teachers
Overall, teacher films have a mixed effect on students’ and teachers’ images of teachers and teaching. Naturally, Hollywood teacher films with major stars may leave viewers thinking that all teachers should be very attractive, or funny, or mysterious and charismatic, or rebellious, like Dewey Finn, Jack Black’s imposter character in School of Rock (R. Linklater, dir., 2003). One film may even send the false message that knowing karate is helpful for teachers of English (Dangerous Minds, J. Smith, dir., 1995). Viewers may infer from films such as the first two I mentioned in this article, Mona Lisa Smile and Dead Poets Society, that truly dedicated teachers lose their jobs after one year because some kind of educational establishment harbors a deep antipathy to creativity and honesty.
Hollywood teacher films with major stars may leave viewers thinking that all teachers should be very attractive, or funny, or mysterious and charismatic…
Some films offer a more accurate portrayal of real teachers and teaching. For example, the French film To Be and to Have (Être et avoir, N. Philibert, dir., 2002) documents life in a village classroom for an entire academic year. Teachers consistently find this film encouraging because it portrays the real success and challenges faced by George Lopez, the real teacher in that multigrade classroom. Chalk (M. Akel, dir., 2006), an American film that presents a similarly realistic picture of teaching, follows three teachers as they navigate their first year of teaching. Chalk was written and framed as a feature film, but all its actors are actual teachers, allowing teacher viewers to feel something like, “These people get it!”
Real Teachers Using Reel Teachers
Actual teachers—real teachers—can use reel teachers in several ways, two of which I will treat here. First, teachers can use clips from teacher films as conversation prompts for students to address their own understandings of such matters as curriculum, instruction, assessment, and classroom culture. To refer to a positive example that most teachers know, Matilda (D. DeVito, dir., 1996), teachers could show a three- to four-minute clip of Miss Honey interacting with her students and ask students what likeable qualities they see in her. This prompt could lead to an extended discussion of students’ conceptions of the good classroom. In upper grades, teachers could use the famous “Anyone? Anyone?” scene from the ancient film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (J. Hughes, dir., 1986) to prompt students to sketch out their conception of an engaging classroom. That recommendation comes with a warning: In several courses, I have found that from that conversation on, I could not try to elicit student responses to my own questions with the word “Anyone?” without generating several knowing smirks among my students.
“Anyone? Anyone?”
My second recommendation relates to our own professional development as teachers. I recommend that real teachers can benefit from seeing—and critically examining—the successes and failures of reel teachers with a group of colleagues, but in an out-of-school setting. That is, start a film group. This is an abridged version of this article. To read more, subscribe to Christian Educators Journal.
Ken Badley serves as Research Professor in Education at Tyndale University in Toronto, Ontario. He has taught at all levels, from ninth grade through doctoral. Ken has worked in both Canada and the United States and currently lives in Edmonton, Alberta.
