Teaching movies suffer just like all movies do from weak actors, murky cinematography, and didactic, lazy writing. I’d argue that teaching movies hold a lower batting average than most, but you’d call me fussy, so I’ll note, instead, two extremely specific, substantive ways teaching movies fail me:

1. Wrongheaded pedagogy. In The Wire we’re meant to smile when Prez cancels literature review (boring!) for another lesson loosely connecting gambling to math (fun!).

   Or in another episode, when Bunny Colvin creates a separate class for a group of unruly kids, the sole purpose of which is socialization, because, paraphrased, “they can’t learn.”

   Or Chalk, which propagates the philosophy that students oughtta do the teacher’s job.

   Or Freedom Writers, whose failings are notorious around here.

   When these films and programs speak truth to the reality of teaching in America, it’s often accidental. More often than not, they do us some terrible PR, depicting this job for bystanders and prospective teachers as something it isn’t.

2. Noxious pandering. Call it the “Oh Captain, My Captain” moment, endemic to the genre, which pits an unctuous, narrowminded dean …
   

   … against a beneficent but unconventional teacher …

   

   … with a bunch of disadvantaged doe-eyed students between them. And it’s like, how do you think a situation that contrived is gonna turn out?

   

   Every time this sequence shows up (usually within the last reel) I feel like a stranger has started massaging my back. I don’t need that.

Mr. K

My question, then, is whether there are any depictions of teaching you find worthwhile, or whether you’d relegate everything to the same trashheap as Kindergarden Cop?

I have found the most interesting depictions of teaching in movies and tv wholly unconcerned with teaching.

As in The Wire, which depicts Carver’s transformation from an overbearing, self-important cop to a community police who knows where the kids hang out, who motivates, talks to, and looks after young offenders instead of writing up their every humble misdemeanorIf TMAO doesn’t watch The Wire, he oughtta., who believes, paraphrased, that “until the bracelets fit, there’s still room for talking.”

Or in The Office, which on a weekly basis speaks more truth to the exigencies of befriending, interacting with, and motivating your subordinates than any teaching movie I’ve ever watched.

None of this is to say I hated Chalk. I don’t know if its wisdom was entirely intentional but one short scene involving a stolen box of chalk warrants an entire graduate seminar of its ownEducation deans & conference organizers: you know where to find me..

I’m certain, though, that teaching lends itself poorly to dramatization. Our triumphs are often ephemeral – here and gone again – and sometimes exist only in the hindsight of an appreciative former student. The work isn’t cinematic – we aren’t piloting X-Wings into the Death Star here – and it’s often an interior, intellectual pursuit.

Why, then, do we insist on dramatizing a profession which defies dramatization?

This whole year I’ve been focusing on these kids who have these discipline issues and these kids who don’t care and I realize now it’s the kids who do care that really matter to me … and that I really miss a lot.

confessed to the camera without irony by teacher-cum-assistant-principal, Mrs. Redell, in Chalk, a movie which is to teaching what Major League is to baseball.

In the same Classroom 2.0 thread entitled “Top 3 Blogs to Read?” in which a member asks for the network’s three favorite edublogs:

1. Mathew Needleman
recommends his own blog, Creating Lifelong Learners, without qualification.
2. Nick Pernisco recommends his own blog, Understand Media, without qualification.

I mean, c’mon, fellas. I spend several hours a day reading my own archives just like anyone else, but calling myself my own favorite edublogger? Not with a straight face. Not in a Ning forum. I mean, if this sorta thing slides by in our social networks, how much longer ’til our classrooms fall?

Plus, as if that weren’t enough fun:

3. Nancy Bosch qualifies a dy/dan recommendation with: “he irritates the heck out of me.”

Does the edublogosphere need a Gawker? I just registered a few domains, in any case.

I want to know: what in your life correlates to job satisfaction?

It wasn’t always this way for me but once blogging became a daily fix, it fed my job satisfaction, which then fed my blogging. It isn’t coincidence, then, that a brief hiatus here corresponds to another of my miserable on-the-ledge moments out thereA moment which, uncharacteristically, I handled outside this forum. You’re welcome..

For better or worse, this dy/dan thing here has become a pretty accurate barometer for how much I enjoy teaching, a realization which leaves me wondering, what correlates for you?

Polls are open.

A little sadism for your Sunday. Benjamin Baxter puts forward two math teachers:

1. The competent geometry teacher who knows not much more than first-semester calculus, one who has quite a lot of charisma.
2. The resident whiz who knows his math stuff – whatever that entails – but lacks so much charisma. Think Steven Hawking.

And says, for budgetary reasons, you’ve gotta fire one of them. Any thoughts, toss ’em his way.

For my part, I think it’s obvious. You fire the shorter teacher. Always.

[Update: My response to this somewhat absurd hypothetical will come as a surprise to no one.]