Chalk - Why We Need to Be Human

For a change of pace, our class watched an interesting video today entitled "Chalk". The video comically portrayed the experiences of fictional novice high school teachers. Of course, the movie chose to portray the archetypes of educators. We've all had them before. They included, but were not limited to, the inanimate and uninteresting history teacher, an over-enthusiastic female gym teacher, the teacher who was always trying to be your "buddy", and an administrator who didn't know how to handle authority. The typical situations that these characters dealt always ended up mishandled, and at times served as a sort of "how not to teach" 'mock'umentary. From the movie, I expected to be floored at how ineffective these comical novices were, and that I would have no trouble responding to their gross inadequacies. There were a few instances where I got what I expected. However, for most of the movie, I was thrilled at how wonderfully imperfect these everyday people were.

This satisfaction got me thinking about my own teachers. Did I ever have a perfect teacher, who was always prepared, always cheerful, and always interesting? Never. There is no such thing as a perfect human being, and there is no such thing as a perfect teacher. However, we can turn our human faults into wonderful tools for effective education. That is, if a person is truly dedicated to education for education's sake, they can transform their entire selves into a beacon of educational passion, faults and all. The real life moral of Chalk's story is that things in the real world, especially in education, do not turn out the way we expect them to. A good educator is a person that can take a bumpy road and transform it into a journey.

Life and education are extremely similar in this way. If everything turns out for the best, then we are missing half of the human experience. In a classroom, if nothing emotionally charged (or, for a lack of a better descriptor, "human") happens, nobody learns a thing. The teacher's skills remain stagnant, and the students are bored to tears. The teachers in Chalk were not the most effective educators that they could have been, but that was mostly because a lampoon was exactly what they were after. In real life, every teacher (yes, even the egotistical "in it to win it" history teacher) would find positive aspects of their own personalities and employ them effectively in the classroom.