Hollywood representations of teachers (sample Box-logic analysis)

Hollywood often represents teachers in ways that dramatize the identities of teachers in ways that will be entertaining for audiences.  Audiences would probably not want to view the actual, everyday life of teachers, for example, sitting down to respond to a pile of students' papers.  There have actually been few if any authentic documentaries about teachers' actual practices. Frederick Wiseman's High School II, about Central Park East High School in New York does a good job capturing the everyday practices of high school life.  There have been some PBS NewsHour portrayals of teachers operating under NCLB mandates that construct the identity of the teacher authority continually pushing students to learn institutionally mandated skills, then you position students to take up identities of compliance or resistance (Smyth, 2007). 

    How you define your teacher identity depends on the extent to which you perceive your relationships with students.  If you assume that your identity is to make students learn according to external accountability dictates, then you may be setting yourself up for difficulty when students may not necessarily “succeed” according to these dictates. You are positioning the student to accept the school’s and your own generalized notion of what it means to “good student,” a notion that they either adopt or reject (Smyth, 2007).  As a result, they either comply to or resist your role a teacher, a role largely defined by external NCLB mandates that may bear little relationship to your own theory of literacy learning.

    A key theme in Hollywood movies are the nature of relationships with students.  Teachers can construct their identities

in ways that position students to either comply or resist to external mandates.  They can focus on building relationships with students based on shared interests in and concerns about certain issues, ideas, and topics.  By working with students based on shared interests, they shift your relationship with them from one of authority/compliance to one of joint collaborators mutually constructing knowledge to contribute to the classroom, school, or community.  Central to these teacher/student relationships is a sense of trust, respect, and care associated with valuing and learning from others’ perspectives.  Michael Fielding (2007) cites the instance of when student researchers present their work to staff or young people articulate their distinctive understandings of the world it is often the otherness of their standpoint that helps teachers not just to learn about the issues they are raising and the students they thought they knew but clearly did not, but also to learn about themselves as teachers and as persons. (p. 310)

Underlying the Hollywood dramatization of teachers is the romantic assumption that teachers are "boring" pedagoges so that what's needed is some dramatic, visual performance that will stir the students out of their stupor and "change their lives."  In some cases, there's additional assumptions about the nature of the student demographics relates to race, class, and gender.  The upper-middle-class students in the private schools of School of Rock or Dead Poet's Society are portrayed as actually too focused on traditional academic achievement and being "good students," requiring teachers who will loosen them up and challenge their sense of class privilege.  The urban students of color in Dangerous Minds and Freedom Writers are protrayed as the opposite: as not engaged academically and as lacking the cultural capital of the upper-middle class students, so that they need some outside teacher who will come in and quickly engage them so that they perceive the "value of school."

Based on my review of mostly movie trailers about teachers on YouTube, here's some prototypical portrayals of teachers.  These prototypes vary according to the methods they employ (unusual/creative versus status-quo), their own identities or personalities as "traditional" versus "deviant," and the nature of their relationships with students.

In School of Rock, the John Black character draws on his own engagement with rock to engage and loosen up his upper-middle class students.  A central aspect of his character is the relationships he establishes with them based on his sense of their particular abilities--they can then display competence to their peers--certainly a positive portrayal of a basic learning principle.  However, the fact that he's faking it as a sub--having had no preparation to teach--reifies the notion that "everyone can teach" if they just "know their subject"--in this case, rock music.  I wonder if just any rock musician who wandered into a classroom would be able to note and tap into individual students' own unique talents/abilities.

In Dead Poet's Society, the Robin Williams character reflects the odd-ball deviant who challenges traditional tranmissions methods of teaching literature by employed his own method in an exclusive boys school.  In doing so, he fosters students engagement with literature in ways that endear the students to him.

In the movie, Freedom Writers Diaries, based on a book about a teacher who works in an urban Long Beach, CA school, the teacher assumes the role of someone who fosters students' writing about the challenges of their everyday lives.  The diary entries in the book reveal students' achieving a sense of voice through their entries.  In the movie, the teacher emerges as someone who's willing to foster student expression about their lives; it also assumes that through this role, she can foster students' sense of agency.

In Dangerous Minds, also based on a book about an actual teacher, Michelle Pheiffer plays the role of an English teacher who goes to another urban school with the intent of "making a difference" in her students' lives.  She does so by establishing relationships with students, including going to the students' homes.  However, one of the assumptions in the film is that a white female teacher can assume the role of "savior" who will transform students who are coping with larger issues of poverty, crime, and a bleak future.

In History Boys, a gay history teacher is working in a private school with small group of largely working class students who want to go to Cambridge and Oxford.  He adopts highly performative techniques to involve the students in learning content that will help them do well on their exams.  However, he's continually monitored, as is the John Black character, by the school's administration.

In one of the most realistic portrayals of an urban school teacher (next to the HBO series, The Wire, the teacher, who is also a drug addict, befrieds a female student and helps her develop self-confidence through their relationship.  Played by Ross Gehrling (also of Lars and the Real Girl), the teacher effectively interacts with students in ways that serve to involve them, but his drug addiction ultimately overcomes his ability to be a teacher.

This YouTube spoof on rap music videos includes teachers rapping about their everyday lives as teachers. 

 Patterns:

One pattern in all of these films is the idea that a teacher's relationships with students may be just an important as the "content" they are teaching--that learning involves learning various social practices involves in relating to others.  By establishing a relationship with students, teachers can then foster shared learning with them.  However, the challenge remains as to drawing the line between these relationships becoming overly personal--a tension in some of these films.

Another pattern has to do with the fact that most of these employ unusual or innovative methods that go against the traditional practices valued in their schools.  Because the student are assumed to be bored with their school, these methods serve to involve them in activities that seem to allow them to display competence.

These teachers differ in terms of the films' larger stance towards whether they will "save" their student from their plight or whether they simply foster a context which leads to the students transformations.  This points to the problem with many teacher films--that if they have a larger thematic agenda to show that teachers are miraculous saviors, they then fail to focus on the larger insitutional forces that create underfunded urban schools--that the problem is not simply a matter of individual teachers, but also of larger systemic forces operating in society that serve to perpetuate class differences.