Reel It In

As an educator, I fully acknowledge the ongoing debate around screen time. 

How much is too much? 

Of course, in a COVID world, I thank the technology gods for this vehicle by which I am able to reach my students, share materials, and provide opportunities for them to grow in knowledge and wisdom.

I have been an elementary school principal since 2016, so it has been a few years since I was a classroom teacher. And, to be honest, the allegiance that students now have to the screen has certainly evolved since that time. But, reflecting back to my days in the classroom, there was one screen that I fully embraced, and it was not that of an iPad or a Chromebook or even a cell phone. In my classroom the penultimate screen of screens was that of the silver screen. 

I have never taught  drama or theater. And no one, either then or now, ever wanted to hear me sing (oh my!). Still, in my little domain of Middle School Language Arts, I embraced films as a means of conveying literary concepts, life lessons, social justice ideology, and educational entertainment. I didn’t use movies as a babysitter or a way to take the afternoon off. They were shown with intention—with purpose. My students were very accustomed to me pausing them intermittently to talk about whatever was happening in the script at the moment.

Anything, even the dreaded screen,  can be a catalyst for learning.

As we head into a new school year, whether your kiddos are learning at home remotely or learning at school in a hybrid capacity, you can use films to help add curricular girth to their day; as a foundation for family conversations and to gain a better understanding of where your children’s thoughts, opinions, and personal values reside; or to reinforce the character building framework of empathy, compassion, advocacy, and determination.

So consider this my own version of the Academy Awards—The Overly Honest Teacher’s comprehensive list of categories, and the films within them, that carry my gold seal of approval in transforming your student’s academic, social, and emotional development.

• Documentaries:

  • I love to show documentaries to my students. I have found that most kids need some coaxing at first as this genre is often new to them, but documentaries are a great medium for emphasizing life outside of their own unique bubbles. They serve the same function as volunteerism, a hallmark of my classroom expectations, as they push students beyond their comfort zones and allow them to walk in the shoes of another. 

Some have subtitles. Great! They are used to reading subtitles on most of their Instagram feeds, so they are pros. Others are in languages unfamiliar to them. Terrific! This gives them a chance to increase their appreciation for the human voice and our connection beyond words. Some are very stark and show the grittiness of poverty, discrimination, and global conflicts. These are extremely important vehicles for important discussions..

• YouTube clips:

  • This is nothing groundbreaking—YouTube remains an incredible cache of clips to emphasize so many learning themes. I would use Fusion videos to talk about homelessness and domestic poverty, or Schoolhouse Rock to add some fun to an otherwise dry grammar lesson—remember “Conjunction, junction, what’s your function?”

My all-time favorite YouTube clip was one from I Love Lucy. In this clip, Lucy and Ricky explore a bedtime story together as Ricky attempts to read a variety of English words all with the same ending (-ough). Each has a different pronunciation. Now, while Lucy and Ricky make a comedic performance around Ricky’s challenges, there are incredible lessons to be learned from their humor. I always used this clip as an extension of either my reading or writing curriculum to talk about how difficult a language English is to get right. From there, we would turn this clip into a conversation around empathy for those who are new to the English language, our country, and the perils that come with an immigrant’s journey to a foreign place. A collision of social-emotional learning and Language Arts all rolled into one lesson.

• Blockbusters

  • Yes, even Jerry Bruckheimer can find room in a classroom’s curriculum. Blockbuster films are a great way to showcase themes of historical fiction or serve as a means of comparing and contrasting a novel that has been read in class.  Conversations around the transference of details from a book to a movie are great vehicles in extending a student’s analysis of character development, plot, setting, conflict and resolution. Often my class came to the realization that the movie-version of a story wasn’t nearly as good as the book (a teacher’s dream!), or that they disagreed with how either the director or actors interpreted parts of the book that were their favorites. 

These conversations are among my most treasured when teaching. These encapsulated those “aha!” moments that we teachers live for. While your child is learning at home, you too can experience the wonder of these scholastic breakthroughs.

So, fire up the Jiffy Pop, schedule a family movie night, and tune into the transformative teaching that comes through your television.