Great movie teachers? Class is in session

As a teacher, I probably shouldn’t admit to this, but… this is absolutely my least favorite time of year.

Here come the 24-count boxes of crayons, the sensible fall shoes, the blue pens crisp in the package.  The first day of school is pending, and the death of fun is nigh.

I felt this way long before I was a teacher, banging my shopping cart thorough the automatic doors of the supermarket and striding right back out again whenever the big fat pencils at the ends of the aisles reared their graphite heads.  Those mimeographed class supply lists stacked high at Staples rang for me, it seemed, and I didn’t want to go back.

Elementary school was a great big lockbox located at the bottom of an enormous, dark pit, over which an unbreachable iron gate was positioned the second the first bell rang.  I felt kind of trapped there, is what I’m saying, and eight trembly years of phonics worksheets and drippy cafeteria walls did their damage. 

I teach college, which is a bit different; I am in control now, and if somebody doesn’t show up with the right backpack, I can assure him or her that it’s OK, nothing bad will happen, they just won’t get into med school or a doctorate program or even McDonald’s Hamburger University, ever.  It’s very freeing. 

From whence came the transformation from angry schoolgirl to smiley face sticker-wielding professor?  Not the expected places — it’s more “Animal House” than “Dangerous Minds.”  Most lists of Inspiring Movie Teachers for Actual Teachers are topped by John Keating of “Dead Poets Society” and Glenn Holland from “Mr. Holland’s Opus.”  They are not included here, because 1) if I see my students leaping onto their desks to quote Walt Whitman, I will freak out and 2) a 40-year-old teacher dedicates a piece of music to a 16-year-old?  Really?  That’s a thousand-word article in and of itself.  Get an electronic ankle bracelet, Mr. Holland.

P.S.  I did once rip a page out of a textbook for dramatic effect in the middle of a lecture, but I’m better now.

The best movie teachers, class:

Yoda, “Star Wars”:  Little.  Green.  Different.  He sends Luke Skywalker into the Tree Stump of Very Deep Thought in “The Empire Strikes Back,” which keeps him from whining within the audience’s hearing for at least 10 minutes.  For this alone, Yoda is the Teacher of the Millennium. 

Mean Dude From “The Paper Chase”: I speak here of Charles W. Kingsfield, who was portrayed by John Houseman and is one of a scant few movie teachers to haul home an Academy Award after class lets out.  Kingsfield is Lord Of All Movie Profs.  He rules by fear, makes the Harvard boys cry, and at the end of the semester, he gets a standing ovation. 

I just finished my lesson plan for tomorrow, and it involves Skittles.  Everybody gets some.  I do not think Kingsfield would approve.

Johnny Castle, “Dirty Dancing”:  I cannot count the number of ways in which I would be fired if I grabbed my students’ hands and placed them on my chest, announcing, “You gotta feel it.”  Then again, I teach English; Johnny (Patrick Swayze), he can get away with this. 

Mr. Garrison, “South Park:  Bigger, Longer, and Uncut”:  Mr. Hat notwithstanding, I would have retained far more from the third grade had my teacher insisted that we learn how to tell a prostitute from a police officer and reassured my young mind with such truths as:  “There are no stupid answers, just stupid people.”

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