Teaching the Class With The Class

• In Event: 73.038 - Creative Instructional Practices in Teacher Education

Abstract

Movies can provide a useful and provocative means of engaging teacher candidates in reflection about teaching, especially working with diverse students. This paper describes the use of the 2008 French film The Class as a resource for considering questions of classroom climate, teacher style, and cultural competence. White candidates from relatively homogenous backgrounds sometimes feel “unrealistic optimism” about their abilities to connect with future students, encouraged by popular films like Freedom Writers and their teacher “heroes.” The Class’s realistic portrayal of the frustrations and challenges in a multiethnic urban school staffed by white teachers does not have a happy ending, but does provide fertile ground for identifying and examining candidates’ beliefs and fantasies about how teachers and students “should” be.

Author

• Debra A. Miretzky, Western Illinois University