Teachers have the inordinate ability to incorporate positive changes in their students. Being a teacher myself, I almost naively endeavour to think that I can be of inspiration to my mischievous, playful but delightfully lovely young students.
As if to prove that teachers are a cut above, let me cite three movies where the teachers therein have proved to be par excellence. The first movie I can recall is Mona Lisa Smile where the teacher is played by Julia Roberts and at once one feels attracted to her for she puts her personal life on hold in order to be the quintessential teacher. She brings her Art History classes to life with interesting slide shows and visits to exhibitions.
The part I liked best in the movie was when Julia Roberts teachers her students about the artistic genius, Van Gogh, and his famous masterpiece, “The Lilies”, whereupon the next day, all the students come up with their own versions of paintings of lilies. Deeply overwhelmed and with tears stinging her eyes, Julia Roberts leaves the room, knowing that with this class, her teaching has struck home.
Similarly, the movie, Educating Rita, starring Julie Walters as the 26-year-old Rita who is so keen about getting an education that she relinquishes hold on her live-in boyfriend and her opportunity of starting a family. Rita’s teacher is a middle-aged drunkard who is nevertheless good at heart and on seeing her alacrity goes all out to see that he imparts apt lessons on education to her. For example, he tells her that in order for one to be educated, he or she must read voraciously, especially good classics and quality newspapers.
The last one is the movie that has won every heart since its release in 1974, To Sir, With Love, based on a true story of Braithwaithe’s experience as a black teacher in a school of predominantly white students. Meeting with initial stiff opposition, Mr Braithwaithe, played by the irrepressible Sidney Poiter, teaches these students with love and humanism, and he eventually wins them over. Finally, when it is time for him to leave the school, there is a universal outpouring of love when Lulu sings the title song, there being not one dry eye in the audience,
“Those school days of telling tales and biting nails are gone, but in my mind they live on and on…….To sir, with love.”