Dead Poets Society, etc.

If there is anything I love more than life itself it is a good movie. I have a large collection of movies that I add to whenever I possibly can. Every time I go on a trip, I bring at least five movies on the off chance that there will be a DVD player wherever I am staying. If I'm going anywhere for more than a week, I will bring most, if not all, of my collection. My roommate (also a huge movie buff) and I quote movies to each other at least three times each day. Needless to say, movies are my favorite.

One of the things I look forward to doing as a teacher is showing movies in my classroom. Obviously, I will show movies primarily when necessary, but, if I ever have some free time, I will show my students a movie as a reward or something.

Some of my favorite movies are, in fact, ones that depict a teacher/student scenario. Of this genre, my all-time favorite is Dead Poets Society. Apart from the fact that Robin Williams being one of my top five favorite actors, this movie has so many layers within it that make it an education-genre masterpiece. Mr. John Keating (Robin Williams) comes into an all-boys prep school as a first year teacher. As an English teacher, Mr. Keating develops a relationship with a select group of boys in one of his classes using his very unorthodox teaching styles. He introduces the group of boys to the idea that they can be and do anything they want. He gets them involved in a group he was in when he went to the school called the Dead Poets Society. One thing leads to another and the boys get in trouble. What they take from the Year of Keating, though, is more than they could ask for.

In my Practicum class last year, I taught a lesson about Walt Whitman, a central figure and idol to John Keating in DPS. For this lesson, I showed a clip from the movie in which Keating goes on and on about Whitman. Whitman is the primary motivation in Keating's "Be who you want" teaching style. This part of my lesson really pulled the students in because even a three minute clip from this movie can gain one's attention in an instant. After showing this clip (which revolved around a section of a Whitman poem I discussed that day), the lesson was so much easier to get through, as my students were eager to answer questions.

In the future, seeing as how we have more to do in the classroom than time allows us, I know that I will not be able to show movies often. There are certain movies, however, that will be a must-show, especially after reading the book that inspired the movie. One must-show is To Kill A Mockingbird, a great movie that gives a visual to one of the greatest books ever written. Over time, I hope to collect more movies that were books first, so I can have a greater variety of options to make into lesson units. I know that it's a long stretch, but I hope that someday there comes a standard that involves movies. I will then be in Heaven.