I walk into the classroom triumphant. I am, as (usually) usual, confident and prepared. But today, I have a little more swagger. For today, I have brought a film.
Oh man. Remember when the teacher showed a film? It was like getting an extra year of your life, finding an Oreo cookie, a snow day.
It was glorious.
So when I tell the students we’re watching a film, I’m surprised at the nods and eye rolls.
I gamble on a misunderstanding, so I reiterate that we’re watching a film in class.
No, we got it. Drawn out sighs. Polite smiles.
Oh, I get it. You think by “film” I mean a documentary on the history of the English language, don’t you?
Oh goodie, really!?
No! It’s a film called Scotland, PA. It’s a retelling of Macbeth.
Oh.
William Shakespeare’s Macbeth.
Stares.
William Shakespeare.
Stares into phones.
Come on! It’s a great movie. Here are some questions for you to think about while we watch.
I put on the film and sit at the back of the classroom.
And that’s when the terror begins.
There’s a lot of stress that comes with being a teacher. No doubt you could replace the word “teacher” with any other profession and that would remain an accurate sentiment, but this is my blog, so we’re talking teachers.
Stress involves planning creative lessons that will engage and educate, dealing with 20 unique personalities that all require something unique, lazy students who show up at the end of a semester and nonchalantly demand your time and energy, and bureaucratic shots called by bosses who have never stepped in the classroom. And many, many more.
These stresses, though overwhelming at times, don’t begin to hold a candle to the payoffs. Watching students enjoy a creative lesson that you have developed, reaching one of those unique personalities, telling a Johnny-latecomer to take a long walk off a short pier, and circumventing bureaucracy to do what’s best for your class are just a few of those payoffs.
Still, dealing with the stresses and worries often involves meeting other commiserating teachers at a pub and drinking until you either consider yourself a pedagogical genius or desire a burrito, whichever comes first.
One of the great ways to potentially accomplish all of the payoffs mentioned above is to introduce the students to something that you love. This can be a movie, a play, a story, a podcast, a song, a poem. It doesn’t matter. Thumb your nose at the syllabus and reach students. it’s awesome.
That is, of course, if you can get through the terror.
In the last semester I have shown the students one movie and played them one story on CD. The story was “Six to Eight Black Men” by David Sedaris and the movie was Scotland, PA. A writer and a movie I love. Sedaris’ classic essay about the differences in Christmas traditions is something I continue to laugh at and Scotland, PA is a retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth set around the ownership of a fast food restaurant in 1970s Pennsylvania.
Both brilliant.
In my estimation.
If you want to harshly judge something you love, show it to a group of students. I sit in the back of the room watching Scotland, PA, and sweat. For the first time, I notice every flaw in the film. I hear every curse at three times the volume. I close my eyes and pray to a god I haven’t believed in since I was 6 to end the (non) sex scene. I slap a palm to my face at each song, feel like crying as Lady Macbeth, played by Maura Tierney, descends into madness and ups her use of the word “fuck” to 7 or 8 times a sentence. By the end of the film, she is essentially using it as a comma.
And then there’s the students’ reactions. Or not. But if you’d like to obsess about every single action and movement by a group of students, by all means show them a film you love and sit behind them. Each neck roll becomes a shouted complaint, each slouch becomes embittered boredom, each murmured comment becomes a shrill groan of contempt for the fool who brought them this tripe. By the time the end of class arrives, I have promised to never veer from the safe confines of the syllabus ever again. I have never clinched my ass cheeks so tightly while not suffering dysentery.
When it’s all over a few of the students comment positively, others shrug, others say they enjoyed it as they scan their smart phones. One or two loved it and I breathe something like a sigh of relief. Slowly the clinch in my rear releases and I can walk normally again. And I do so as I run to the pub.
In the pub shortly thereafter, I relate my tale of sharing woe and am comforted by teachers. One of whom, shortly after putting on The Big Lebowski in a class, began counting one of the 3,000 “fucks” uttered in it. Another showed A Christmas Story before realizing that the students had zero cultural awareness of the period, and so he wished to shoot his eyes out while the students shifted uncomfortably in their seats for ninety minutes.
Right around the fourth Becherovka, as we begin to assure ourselves that we are pedagogical geniuses, I decide to get a burrito. Chicken Grande, with guacamole.
Teachers. Do you have a tale of sharing woe?
