Teaching Tuesdays Film Series

Teaching Tuesdays Film Series

The new Teaching Tuesdays film series gives us a chance to enjoy a good movie about teaching and then discuss the issues it raises in an informal atmosphere. Faculty can earn .1 PIU for attending each film and discussion, and can earn 1.0 PIU for attending five or more and completing a small capstone paper in any given quarter. All screenings for Winter 2017 are from 3 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. in Room D-121. The series will continue in Spring 2017 and beyond. Roll ’em!

January 17:Whiplash. Dir. Damien Chazelle, U.S.A., 2014. Screenplay by Damien Chazelle. With Melissa Benoist, Paul Reiser, J. K. Simmons, and Miles Teller. 107 minutes.

“There are no two words in the English language more harmful than ‘good job,’” says music teacher Terence Fletcher, defending his harsh methods for pushing students to their limits—and to greatness. Do you agree? J. K. Simmons, whom you will recognize from Farmers insurance commercials, won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of an uncompromising music conservatory teacher. The film received four other Oscar nominations. Director and screenwriter Damien Chazelle’s latest film, La La Land, has already won many critics’ awards for 2016. The riveting Whiplash features intense performances and a premise that challenges our fundamental assumptions about pedagogy.

January 24: The Class (Entre les murs—literally “Between the Walls”).Dir. Laurence Cantet, France, 2008. 130 minutes.

This film chronicles an intense year in the life of a teacher in a tough, interracial neighborhood in Paris, as he struggles to reach common ground with his students. Judge for yourself its relevance to our own multicultural classes. It won the highest award, the Palme d’Or, at the Cannes Film Festival.

January 31:Horse Feathers.Dir. Norman McLeod, U.S.A., 1932. With Thelma Todd and The Marx Brothers—Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo.68 minutes.

Ready for a little comic relief at mid-term? This Marx Brothers film skewers higher education with the story of a professor who becomes Huxley University’s new president and recruits two players to help Huxley win the big football game against rival Darwin University. Inside the hilarity is a critique of higher education and college athletics that might still have relevance today.

February 7: The Wave (Die Welle.) Dir. Dennis Gansel, Germany, 2008. 107 minutes.

Set in contemporary Germany, this timely film traces what happens when an unorthodox high school teacher tries to stir up his lethargic students by having them conduct an experiment designed to teach them how totalitarianism works. What begins with harmless notions about discipline and community soon builds into a real movement: The Wave. Sensing danger, the teacher tries to cut off the experiment as he discovers (and we do too) how easily the seeds of fascism can be sown.

February 14:Eye of the Storm.Documentary. Dir. William Peters, U.S.A., 1970. With ABC reporter Bill Beutel, teacher Jane Elliott, and sixteen Iowa elementary school students. 25 minutes.

Our Teaching Tuesdays film series will contain at least one documentary each quarter, and since we observe Martin Luther King Day in Winter, it seems like the right time to watch this classic ABC News television documentary. In 1968, Iowa elementary school teacher Jane Elliott was so distressed over King’s assassination that she decided she had to do something to teach her third-graders how prejudice arises—and how to resist its pernicious persistence. She divided her students into blue-eyed and brown-eyed groups, briefly socialized them about the superiority of blue-eyeds, and then observed the impact on performance and behavior… We will watch the original ABC television program and then a 1985 PBS Frontline follow-up, A Class Divided, which found the former students and asked them what they had learned about discrimination and how being part of the experiment still affected them seventeen years later.

February 21: Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Dir. Sam Wood, UK, 1939. Based on the novel by James Hilton. With Robert Donat and Greer Garson. 115 minutes.

We’ll close out the inaugural quarter of our teaching film series with the 1939 version starring Greer Garson and Robert Donat. The film received seven Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Garson for Best Actress, and Donat who won for Best Actor. That’s not bad considering that many people consider 1939 the greatest year in film history, and they were going up against Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable in Gone With the Wind, Bette Davis in Dark Victory, Greta Garbo in Ninotchka, Laurence Olivier in Wuthering Heights, James Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and other great performances in John Ford’s Stagecoachand Young Mr. Lincoln, The Wizard of Oz, and Of Mice and Men.

Come back next quarter for the 1969 version with Sir Michael Redgrave, Peter O’Toole, and Petula Clark.