Hollywood’s Reductive Narratives About School

“These simplified stories distance teachers from their students, reinforcing the power imbalance created when a teacher arrives thinking she already knows who her students are and what miracles she should perform. The caricatures—so tempting and easy to create in the shadow of Hollywood's teacher-savior plot line—ultimately act as a barrier to meaningful classroom interaction. Both popular teaching narratives and inexperienced teachers give in to the temptation to simplify the roles of teacher and student. Effective teachers, though, begin to understand the complexity of their role, and its power, by remembering how complicated their students are. Only then can teachers see what their students lose in a classroom that reflects and reinforces the power structure that exists outside schoolhouse walls, and especially in popular culture.”