I have found little use for teaching as it’s depicted on t.v. or in film. I decided long ago that teaching is just too weird a profession for the literal screen treatment, something like chasing a rhino with a butterfly net. My practice has been enriched far more often by t.v. shows and movies which have nothing directly to do with teaching.
Tomorrow’s episode excerpts the t.v. show which has done more for my classroom management than any other.
Motivating Questions
- From my experience, new teachers hear one maxim for classroom management at the expense of all others, one which is as irrelevant as it is prevalent. Any guesses?
- If you had to put a new teacher’s fate in the satisfaction of a single maxim (“Never wear green,” for one hypothetical example.) what would it be?
Recommended Reading
- Unfit For The Grind, concerning Chalk, possibly the best teacher movie I have ever seen. Which, of course, is as faint as praise comes around here.
- Career Crisis #2 (of 2), concerning Freedom Writers, which I didn’t care for one little bit.
- The Truest Stuff I’ve Ever Watched or Written, concerning a scene from The Wire which has nothing directly to do with teaching but which has somehow formed the core of my interactions with deeply confrontational students.
- David Foster Wallace’s 2005 Commencement Address, my favorite author in a walk, to whom this next episode owes a debt.
