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I am not a teacher but I would like teachers' opinions of how they think their profession is portrayed in movies or on television and whether that or your experience as a student made you want to teach.
Teachers are either portrayed as idiots, or these fast-talking, witty, hipsters that come in like the Pied Piper. The only realistic "teacher" movie I've seen is called "Teachers". Check it out.
Well, there was Stand and Deliver and Mr. Holland's Opus and various other *inspirational* teacher movies. Unfortunately, these do not give a very realistic portrayal of teachers. As a math teacher, Jaime Escalante is interesting, but not every teacher can do what he did. He worked far too many hours and ended up having a heart attack from the stress. We need realistic solutions that do NOT require teachers to be superhuman.
No matter what you have ever done to a degree of competency, you will be dismayed seeing the way, laughably or infuriatingly, your art is portrayed in the movies.
Try to imagine what it like to be a doctor or lawyer, seeing your profession jerked around in the films.
Mr. Holland's Opus was actually pretty accurate, right down to the part where his fine arts job got cut at the end.
It may have been accurate for *that* teacher in *that* school. My problem is that not every teacher can work as hard as people like this and do wonders. If we all have to be exceptional, then there is something wrong. We have to be able to teach well with those who have families of their own and can't work all those extra hours. The teacher in this case wanted to be a composer, btw. How many teachers have ambitions to write novels, to research in science, etc.?
Front of the Class is about a young man who has tourette's syndrome and becomes a teacher in spite of his disability. He's real too and the story is based in reality.
Of course, then there is the movie Cheaters. I know about this one first hand because my friend was a math teacher at Steinmetz and knew Jerry Plecki well. Plecki while he was fired from teaching, still rationalizes his behavior in getting his team to cheat. And, his punishment is that he is now a businessman instead of a teacher. The kids too mostly got on with their lives without many consequences other than embarrassment. That's not to say that was a bad thing, but it shows where people's values were and are. I know this one was fairly true to life too.
There have been a lot of movies about teachers. Decades ago there was Goodbye Mr. Chips and The Browning Version (one of my favorites - the 1951 original version anyway), and there was Up The Down Staircase. I think a major theme of movies about teachers is that the teacher begins his or her career with hope, optimism and idealism, but this is replaced by frustration and disillusionment. I believe there is a lot of truth in this. On the other hand, there is some kind of redemption in the end, as in Mr. Holland's Opus.
It may have been accurate for *that* teacher in *that* school. My problem is that not every teacher can work as hard as people like this and do wonders. If we all have to be exceptional, then there is something wrong. We have to be able to teach well with those who have families of their own and can't work all those extra hours. The teacher in this case wanted to be a composer, btw. How many teachers have ambitions to write novels, to research in science, etc.?
Actually the music ed world (in general, there are always exceptions) was pretty happy with this film when it came out. I didn't see anything exceptional about Mr. Holland in terms of how he was portrayed. He worked the same extra hours every music ed teacher I know does. Many music ed teachers didn't start out music ed, but went into composition or performance, only coming back to music ed when they couldn't find a paying gig. He did well for the school he had and the kids loved him. His job was cut. In fact, this movie was complimented many times at music ed conventions for what a realistic job it did.
My high school band teacher was definitely a Mr. Holland type.
My favorite of the movie teachers is definitely Sidney Poitier in To Sir, With Love.
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