Chalk

I'm a big Christopher Guest fan and honestly went into this film expecting to be disappointed, but wound up being pleasantly surprised. Chalk was very entertaining, often hilarious, at times touching, and even managed to pull everything together to actually tell a story pretty well. The development of the Mr. Lowery character from start to finish was great. There were only a handful of actors in the film (the rest were real students, principals, teachers, etc.) and they were great. Troy Schremmer was excellent. Anyhow, I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys finding comedy in the ridiculousness of life or basically anyone who enjoys good mockumentaries. Or, people who are teachers or are related to teachers and know that world. Two thumbs up.

I saw this at the LA Film Festival, and it's a funny peek at the lives of teachers, from a point of view you don't often see.

According to the festival literature, it was written and directed by actual former teachers, so as you can imagine there is a lot of inside stuff that we may not have seen before, that is both sad and funny.

The plot, such as it is, follows four new teachers at a high school in Texas during their first year, and all the trials and tribulations they encounter. I didn't recognize any of the cast, I think the kids may have been real students, but that didn't matter to me. Like 'The Office', it shows the ineptitude and struggle to make sense of ridiculous things, like school policy, and people desperate to win 'teacher of the year'. It's funny and heartfelt, and reminded me of a Christopher Guest film in that it felt ad-libbed more than scripted.

I ended up feeling great affection for these people, and thought the film was very good.

Why do we assume that people can walk in off of the street and take charge of a group of young people? Part of the answer is a public perception that teaching is easy and doesn't require much special training; part of it may be that teachers spend years actually believing those things. The best learning environments in schools evolve to a meeting place for ideas and strategies to enhance interests in those ideas. If teachers lack ideas (concepts, facts, interpretations, etc.) and, additionally, a panoply of methods or strategies to encourage students and their various learning styles it should not come as a surprise that the Mr. Lowreys of the teaching profession as in deep water. Imagine yourself or your children in his classroom. Solutions: Begin with what you don't know and work hard to expand; visit other classroom and look for things that may work; and begin each new grading period with new ideas, filling in at the end with lessons that had worked well in the past. One can always tell if a teacher is stuck in the concrete of old lessons and ideas when an unannounced assembly or program breaks up the usual routine: "We can't do that; my third period students will be one day behind the other students." Did CHALK do a good job of communicating education's shortfalls? No. Why? Because there were too few students in the classes. Think in terms of more than thirty students to get an accurate picture, not twelve to fifteen. Yes. Why? Because the film captured the petty interruptions and bickering disagreements outside of the classroom that detract from the basic mission.

While this is, I think, an excellent film, the way the teachers are portrayed, and the culture within the school is hard to believe.

If this is accurate in terms of the skills the teachers have and the hostile culture within the administration, it is overwhelmingly disturbing. It makes me sad for our future.

Perhaps it is a tribute to how good a movie this is that is stirred up this strong of a response... nothing about it makes me excited or hopeful for the institution or the process. Many teachers I know do evoke these feelings in me, and I hope, in the classroom. So this creates a sort of cloud of conflicted emotions for me.

More than worth watching, just curious if anyone has the same sense.

I rented the DVD because I come from a family of teachers, and one of them recommended that I watch the film in order to gain a better understanding of their jobs. I found it to be entertaining, but I obviously didn't appreciate it as much as teachers seem to, just as they probably don't appreciate all of the humor I find in "Office Space".

The teachers who call this "true to life" must mean this in the same sense that a Korean War veteran once told me that M*A*S*H was true to life-- as a good caricature of some of the more extreme people and situations, intermixed with some reminders of what daily life was like, not as anything close to a realistic snapshot.

I don't want to believe that there are really very many high school teachers like that. I wouldn't expect students to feel much respect for any of them.

Time for me to get back to my TPS reports.