Amanda shares a wonderful op-ed piece on the many problems with teacher movies.
What would happen if someone made a real teacher TV show or movie? Is it that society can't handle this reality? Is it too complicated to show a realistic day and develop a story arc? Or does anyone really care what it's like?
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8 comments:
NBC tried a sitcom last year called Teachers. It was just plain horrible.
More horrible? I watched an episode like I had learned nothing from Boston Public.
Teacher movies and shows rarely show what's really going on. Probably because no one wants to really know.
I think it's because everyone THINKS they know what being a teacher is like, since they've been a student. Hello, people! Different sides of a coin!
I LOATHED Boston Public. The portrayal of teachers on that thing made me cringe.
You've given me an idea for a new post...
Being a teacher for real is too complicated and yet, too boring, to fit into the formula television and movies demand. Sure, they can document the crazy moments (kid trying to hide in podium) and the scary moments (kid with knife), but how do they dramatize the forms to be filled out, the grades to enter, the calls to parents to beg them to come to P/T conferences, the copying furtively, the collecting and counting money for t-shirts or field trips, the filing....
I usually disdain teacher movies, but I am a sucker for the "educational romance" type of book on which many of them are based. It takes that whole Romantic (yes, with a capital "R") attitude and makes a hero of the iconoclast who steps in and saves some kids. But it's notable that most of those people celebrated (or celebrating themselves) in books don't stay classroom teachers.
Some of us are just ordinary teachers in unremarkable schools and we get some kids that need more help than we can possibly give and we get kids that don't need us at all and we get some in between. Sometimes there's a brief, shining moment when we are on our game as teachers, and we can feel it happening...the learning, the transfer, the experience and even the acquisition of knowledge. And sometimes it is like being a comedian with serious flop sweat in a comedy club in the hinterlands where the jokes just aren't working.
So, what, you're saying you teach more than one class a day?
Hard to believe, isn't it? Yeah, I have more than one class and the Sweathogs don't visit my house.
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