There are a LOT of misconceptions when it comes to teaching, especially the DO’s and DON’T’s of the profession. Movies are meant to instill drama, comedy, conflict, and so on and so forth. But when it comes to certain professions they kind of miss the mark a bit on certain things. The passion of the teacher is usually seen to be great and even overwhelmingly positive, but the means they use to get the attention of the kids and make things better usually seems like it would become a matter for the police to sort out. Yeah, that’s how bad things tend to get. But somehow, thanks to movie magic and the supreme power of understanding and acceptance, things always work out.
Here are just a few things that movies get wrong about teachers.
5. Teachers teach more than one class a day.
In the film Dangerous Minds you never see Michelle Pfeifer setting up for more than one class. The average teacher, even a substitute, will have multiple classes per day and will not interact with just one group of students. It’s possible they might see one or more students multiple times a day, but it will typically not be for the same class. If teacher’s only taught one class a day it would have be in an auditorium.
4. The teacher knows the bell is going to ring eventually.
Unless a teacher is new to a school they will understand that at some point the bell to change classes is going to ring. They don’t sit around in breathless anticipation wondering when it will ring and most of them aren’t surprised at the fact that it does ring. The only time this really happens to many teachers is if they are so invested in their lesson that they lose track of time.
3. The teacher does not always arrive last.
Most teachers, and the best teachers, are already in the classroom when their students arrive. It is necessary to plan ahead and make certain that everything they need is present and that they are there to greet the students. In college some schools have even included a rule that if the teacher is more than fifteen minutes late to a class then the students have every right to walk out. They do anyway, but if the teacher is that late then much of the time needed for the lesson has been wasted.
2. Teachers don’t always work all night.
Teacher’s do have lives. They aren’t grading papers by the kitchen light all night and they aren’t necessarily up every night worrying over the future of their students. If they were this neurotic then many of them wouldn’t make it past their first year in the classroom. The idea that teachers are up constantly trying to sort out papers and grade assignments is an old school image.
1. Impromptu field trips are not okay.
There are reasons that permission slips are handed out before kids can go on field trips. They’re to indicate that their parents know where they’re going, to tell the teachers that some kids might have medical needs that need to be accounted for, and to keep all parties in the loop when it comes to anything at all happening to the kids. It’s a safety issue for the kids and the teachers.
Movies like to make things look good, but not always realistic.
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