Like many kids growing up in the 60’s and 70’s, I watched movies on Saturday afternoon. I was usually finished with my chores or riding horses by the time the matinee came on. Some of my favorite movies were about schools and teachers, go figure, and I saw some great movies over the years. Some of the films that inspired me to seek out teaching as a career were ones I just came across by accident, usually on Saturday afternoon because I was bored. Boredom is good for kids, btw. Let them be bored.

Here are a few movies about teaching that I still love just as I think of them:

Conrack–This 1974 movie starring Jon Voight is based on The Water is Wide, the autobiography of writer Pat Conroy (The Great Santini, Prince of Tides, Beach Music, among others) who taught on remote Daufuskie Island off the coast of South Carolina. Conroy was a rebel whose non-traditional methods teaching poor black kids were effective but not socially accepted. Hummmm, guess anyone who reads my blog knows how this movie influenced me.

Good Morning, Miss Dove–1955, starring Jennifer Jones–Miss Dove is a very different type of teacher from Conroy. Very strict and traditional, she nevertheless realizes the dramatic impact she has had on her students as during her convalescence from a serious illness, she is visited by some of her former students and reflects on the personal sacrifices and quiet successes she has had over the course of her career as a geography teacher in a small town. It was good for me to see that different kinds of teachers meet the needs of students in different ways. Most students need and want discipline.

To Sir, with Love — 1967, starring Sidney Poitier – I had an immediate love of Sidney Poitier when I watched the handsome actor star in this film, based on the autobiographical novel of E. R. Brithwaite, about an immigrant from British Guyana taking on the trials and tribulations of teaching in an inner-city school in London. What inspired me was the power a passionate teacher had to change the lives of people the rest of the world had counted as lost and abandoned, the same thing that drew me to the movie Conrack. Frankly, I don’t care about the criticism that has been leveled towards the movie in modern times. To me, as a child growing up in the Deep South, it crossed racial lines and showed a black man as a hero teacher, winning the admiration of mostly white students. I wanted to be a teacher who, despite his flaws, stood up for what was right.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips–1939, Robert Donat and Greer Garson and musical version 1969 starring Peter O’Toole and Petula Clark–I remember watching both versions as a child. Based on the novella by British author James Hilton, both films showed me that teaching doesn’t just change students’ lives, it also changes teachers for the better. In the beginning Mr. Chips is a stiff, awkward pedant with little ability to relate to his students, but then he falls in love and marries a woman with less education but considerably more charm than himself. While their marriage is short-lived, his wife’s influence lasts a lifetime and softens Mr. Chips. He never marries again, pouring all his energies into his teaching. Robert Donat won an Oscar for his performance as Mr. Chips. Years later, O’Toole was nominated for an Oscar and won the Golden Globe for Best Actor in a musical or comedy. Both films showed me that teaching is more than a profession. It gives life meaning and purpose even when a teacher is faced with great tragedy and personal loss.

The Blackboard Jungle, 1955, Glenn Ford and Sidney Portier. I saw the Blackboard Jungle after To Sir with Love. Because I had such a huge schoolgirl crush on Portier, I would watch any film with him in any role. I had no idea who Glenn Ford was, but I quickly became a fan because of this movie. Ford plays the role of the teacher in an inner-city school and Portier, ironically, is one of his students. This movie, that talks about the difficulties of teaching, including low pay, classroom management when the room is full of troublemakers (understatement), the lack of respect from students and little to no support from administrators. But, despite the difficulties, Ford’s character, Mr. Dadier, persists and students learn. I found out through bitter experience that The Blackboard Jungle told the truth about teaching, only exaggerating a little. It helped me go into teaching with my eyes wide open and partly because of it, I was able to keep going even after some of the worst times.

The Miracle Worker, 1962, Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke–Of all the movies about teachers I saw growing up, the movie about how Annie Sullivan wouldn’t give up on her blind and deaf student, Helen Keller, was a prime influence on my decision to become a teacher. I will always remember that moment when Helen Keller finally understood connected the word being signed into her hand with the meaning–Water. The look on the young actor’s face as the meaning dawned on her. It so moved me that I watched the film, and the stage play by William Gibson based on Helen Keller’s autobiography, The Story of My Life, on which the play and film are based. I have read it many times, always returning to that scene at the water pump:

We walked down the path to the well-house, attracted by the fragrance of the honeysuckle with which it was covered. Some one was drawing water and my teacher placed my hand under the spout. As the cool stream gushed over one hand she spelled into the other the word water, first slowly, then rapidly. I stood still, my whole attention fixed upon the motions of her fingers. Suddenly I felt a misty consciousness as of something forgotten—a thrill of returning thought; and somehow the mystery of language was revealed to me. I knew then that “w-a-t-e-r” meant the wonderful cool something that was flowing over my hand. That living word awakened my soul, gave it light, hope, joy, set it free!

The joy of Annie Sullivan, played brilliantly by Anne Bancroft, as she shared word after word with her student, now hungry for more and more now that the floodgates were open–that was the joy I wanted to experience and for almost forty years have been able to, despite some of the hardships encountered by those movie stars from long ago. I will always remember how they inspired me.