Randomly updated and mostly about music videos, Florida, and anything involving sequins, spandex, or saxophone solos.
On occasion, I address something of relative importance.

25th August 2010

Post with 7 notes

Teachers

After posting my .38 Special retrospective, an anonymous angel referred me to another track by the group that somehow remained under my radar all this time. Anonymous’s recommendation seems almost a fortituous occurence as the song is entitled “Teacher, Teacher” from the 1984 film, Teachers starring Nick Nolte, Judd Hirsch, Laura Dern, Morgan Freeman, RALPH MACCHIO and CRISPIN GLOVER! Thanks to this tip, I’ve been doubly blessed with the future soundtrack to my life and a cinematic exemplar that I shall faithfully study and emulate. In a few weeks, I return to graduate school to finish up my education degree. Hopefully, by the time I graduate in spring, I will have a placement somewhere in NYC’s public school system. I am prepared for the ineptitude of the administration, the lack of resources, the general injustices that plague the education system. In my past teaching experiences, I have seen the infuriating inadequacies play themselves out in a myriad of ways. My idealism does not have me in the grips of delusion. I am fully aware that my first year out, my efforts to close the achievement gap and provide special needs students with not only life skills, but the confidence in their cognitive and creative abilities will be sufficient, at best.

However, I now have .38 Special and a drunken, maverick Nick Nolte on my side. How can I possibly go wrong? Although the movie is classified as a comedy, it apparently touches on the very real and desperate need for great teachers in the most impoverished of districts. If this is true, and shortly via Netflix I will find out, then Teachers is a pretty radical film. Most teacher movies focus on the integrity and fortitude of one awe-inspiring individual who makes a different in his/her students’ lives. The students are depicted in a condescending manner while the message is ham-fisted, maudlin, and does not require the audience’s participation in a larger conversation about social justice. We aren’t asked to do anything else but bear witness to the amazing change these humble heroes have engendered and allow them to “inspire” us in some nebulous way. The Michelle Pfeiffers, Hilary Swanks, and Edward James Almos are already taking care of the problem. Nothing left for us to do. Hopefully, this movie takes the perspective of the undervalued, doggedly resilient, iconoclastic breed of teacher and injects it with much-needed humor. Laughter is sometimes the only way a teacher can get through a particularly grueling day. 

With a soundtrack that features not only .38 Special, but also The Motels, Bob Seger and ZZ Top, I have very unrealistic expectations of Teachers. But then who doesn’t?

  1. foryourpleasure posted this