O Captain My Captain

I hereby announce a boycott on inspirational teacher movies. Just as the body-positive movement is calling on the masses to scorn unattainable, airbrushed images in advertising, so am I leading the fight to end heart-warming professor flicks. It’s for all our sakes.

When I was an English teaching assistant in St Nazaire for two years, I skated on by, learning the ropes alongside the full-time teachers. I only worked about fifteen hours a week, but it was enough to lead me to the Parisian private school district where I work now. I’ve been placed in 3 primary schools, as the professeure d’anglais, in control of my own syllabus from the equivalent of first through fifth grade. 

I hop in 28 different classes over the course of a week, with 700 or so students. If I’m optimistic, I’d say I know maybe half of their names. As opposed to when I was a TAPIF teaching assistant, control is not a question--I’ve got it. I no longer have to waffle between the English programs of twelve different teachers. The question, now, is how to be a teacher myself. Turns out it’s not the same as being an assistant.

Obviously my position comes with some limits that a typical teacher wouldn’t have--namely, I cannot get to know my students on a personal level when there are 700 of them. I’ve also made the choice to speak strictly in English during class, even with the little ones, which sacrifices communication for the sake of language immersion. Regardless, it’s bringing me face-to-face with the realities of teaching that you don’t notice when you’re distracted by Robin Williams’s students oh captain my captain’ing on top of their desks.

You meet your students. You’re going to be kind but firm, and definitely not the fun police. And yet, when little Pierre jumps up and does a little dance while you’re going through the vocabulary words, you have to scold him. If he does it again, you have to punish him, even if it was funny.

If you were, say, his babysitter, you’d laugh. But now the class has dissolved in giggles, and something has to be done to prevent the rest of the kids getting up and doing their own wiggling, whether or not a disco party of 30 second graders would be adorable. 

You want to introduce some out-of-the-box teaching methods, shake the kids awake and get them engaged. It has to be exciting, but not too exciting. There’s a magical sweet spot that incites interest but doesn’t end in chaos. After enough lessons in which your activity leaves them scattered around the room, laughing and screaming about anything but the topic at hand, you’re more inclined to pass out worksheets for the sake of some peace.

You’ve promised yourself never to yell at the kids, but on the days when the last straw has been trampled underfoot, you hear your voice rising. You’ve made an effort to get to the bottom of the ‘difficult’ students, and yet they’re still glaring at you from the back of the class. 

What can you say? You’re doing your best. 

But when Hillary Swank does her best, she’s breaking students out of gangs. The first half of Freedom Writers might have been tough, but by minute fifty-eight or so, she basically had a 100% graduation rate. To make matters worse, it was based on a true story. The teacher, Erin Gruell, exists. There’s a whole foundation based on her work. Successfully creating positive change in the world? How dare she. 

At least Dead Poet’s Society had the good sense to be fictional.

So let’s shake our respective canes at glossy blockbusters, for whichever unrealistic aspect needles you, personally. It doesn’t have to be the heroic teacher narrative if that’s not what gets under your skin. Over on Shut Up and Go, you can also find me wagging my finger at the film Eat, Pray, Love for its oversimplified travel narrative.

There are as many possibilities as there are inspiring films--Akeelah and the Bee gave your kids unfair expectations of their school spelling bee? Rudy made you think that you could be carried, triumphantly, out of a football stadium despite being an unskilled player? Get those movies out of our sights. I want to watch people fail without a minute-70 turnaround set to a swell of dramatic background music.

I refuse to be uplifted. My heart will not grow three sizes. I am, and always will be, crusty, tired, and uninspired. And don’t you forget it.