Freedom Writers ~ 1.5.07
 

I love teacher movies and this one looks good, reminiscent of Dangerous Minds.

http://www.freedomwriters.com/

http://www.myspace.com/freedomwriters

A dedicated California teacher finds a way to unify her disadvantaged, racially divided students, and to improve their grasp of academics, partly by having them keep journals about their violent, troubled lives.

i'm hoping it's better than dangerous minds. the story is real and happened in long beach where i'm from. Erin Gruel taught at Wilson Classical HS, the rival school of Long Beach Poly where I taught. Although both schools are magnet schools, we both saw the same violence in and out of the classroom. The movie is drawn from the book her students wrote which is chock full of raw emotion and true grit. Oh that sounds so Siskel and Ebert hunh?

Though the story needs to be told, I am really tired of movies like this, "white" teacher goes into a "bad" school and changes the students. It's been done over and over again. Just my opinion.

Cosign Treblk. It's like saying in order for "bad" schools to change, they need a great white hope to come in and help. I say nothing can compare to "Lean on Me". "The used to call me crazy Joe, now they call me BatMan". Priceless...

oh trust me soror, i feel you on that one. i don't want to give away the movie since i don't know how much they tell of what really happened. but i will say this..... after old girl got acclaim in california, she left the classroom for politics. hmm, perhaps for change, perhaps for???????

meanwhile, i'm still grinding in my classroom eerry day. where's my movie???? i know who i want to play me too. ME!

I TOTALLY feel you on this soror!

I feel like I should write a book. But my book won't be all sunshine--it'll be REAL gritty and will include many of the teachers of the "white hope" type and how they figure out by their second year that it isn't what they want to do anymore...among other things.

after a decade in the classroom i noticed that some of the white hope teachers use a certain weapon to get them over. they cry. about everything.
we may nag, whine, shout, threaten to go postal but they cry and depending on who's listening, sometimes get results.

so i started using this acronym:
When in dispair get Buffy First Year teacher to use the PCWW
Power of a Crying White Woman

LOL--Imma hafta use that one soror!

HUGE CO-SIGN! its definitely a movie you can play a drinking game to cause its so over the top cliche. i mean i can do two shots off the movie description alone. but these kinds of movies have the same layout and makes me not even wanna wait for the DVD... ill wait a few years til it comes on TNT or TBS.

• sincere, well-to-do white teacher
• troubled inner-city youth (ALWAYS LA, NYC or Chicago, not realizing there are troubled kids EVERYWHERE!)
• many over-the-top climaxes, including a student who tells her off and in the end becomes the star student, a shootout where said student gets shot or killed, a parent who tells the teacher "we were better off before you got here"
• the faceoff between administrators and said teachers
• the moment where said teacher breaks down, either in a bathroom stall or when she gets home
• an ending where the teacher makes it through their first year and cant wait to do it again, or they move on to another school, where the students tell her "i cant believe youre leaving us like this! you all do this!"
• cameo music performance for the movie's soundtrack
• and of course, whatever subject it takes to get the message across that the student is somebody and that they dont have to live "like this" (this time it's through journals, but as we have seen, it can be dance, art, singing, even math)

i've been in this scenario in real-life. i was slated to work as a teacher's aide in a high school where the teacher was this mid-30s white guy who had worked in the finance sector for a few years and wanted to teach math to "give back and help the kids." i mean, damn, teaching is not like a community service project, its an actual job and career like anyone else's. i only lasted there a couple weeks cause that man didnt know what he was doing in the classroom with the material OR with the kids.

Then I was placed in a special ed class where another guy (white guy from Nebraska, went to UPenn for COMPUTER SCIENCE) was in the teaching fellows. another guy who wanted to "help the kids" but how? you arent trained in any way more than i am to help kids who need more than a good teacher who knows their stuff. again, only lasted there a week (that may be stretching it even) and i had to give him pep talks at lunch cause he didn't think he'd be able to last (if youre not familiar with teaching fellows, its like a 3 year commitment, but it was STILL SEPTEMBER! he was a 2005 graduate, we were the SAME AGE!)

long story short, echoing what everyone else is saying.

I feel you on this one. Are there no black teachers who have had a positive influence and changed the lives of black kids? This topic is just played if you ask me.

And it's an opinion I share. Even though the longer trailer shows that the performances of some of the students demand close attention, the whole white savior teaching the "uncivilized brown masses" trope is SO. TIRED. That a movie like this can be greenlit in this day and age leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Ha! I'm sure we can come up with a script that would blow the socks off execs in Hollyweird. :rolleyes: I don't believe they would be ready for our real life storyline(s). :D :p :rolleyes:

I need to find a new gig. :(

I think they should do a reality show about teaching I mean we have ones for vets, chefs, lifeguards, doctors, mecanics, tatoo artist, real estate agents, plastic surgeons, rich white teenagers who live in Laguana Beach, sixteen year old party girls, preachers kids, people with dirty jobs....I mean surely there is enough drama in the schools I have been in to make a show!

I was saying the exact same thing. I watched Stand and Deliver today about a "brown" man saving "brown" children. Minority teachers who teach at "bad" schools are not movie worthy because we do so many exceptional things everyday that we make it seem easy.

I think that's a bit of an overreaction in this particular movie's case - it's based on a true story, and the real teacher was a white woman (she was on the View today).

Personally, I think it looks like a good movie; I like inspirational stories and everything.