Warm and fuzzy, “Teach” offers more sentiment than insight
SEPTEMBER 8, 2013
Thanks to the technology of the DVR, I was able to watch “Teach” a day later than most viewers, and by the time I finished it, I’d already seen other people’s reactions online, and even in my Facebook feed. Nancy Flanagan’s post at EdWeek was online pretty quickly too. I think Nancy was a bit crankier than I was (her word, not mine), but I can’t offer more than a half-hearted endorsement of the film.
First reaction: relief. I went into the viewing of “Teach” with some doubts; what could we expect in a Davis Guggenheim film, supported by the Gates Foundation and with ties to Khan Academy and the charter school-promoting J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation? It could have been worse, but the film really steered clear of the hot-button issues – not a single mention of evaluation, unions, seniority, performance pay, charter schools, vouchers, etc. Maybe to a fault, as I felt a retort rising within me when host/narrator Queen Latifah told viewers that great teachers do whatever it takes for their students to learn; meanwhile, thousands of teachers are having their judgment and initiative systemically undercut by scripted curriculum and highly constraining evaluation checklists (see: IMPACT).
Sal Khan at Sequoia HS, Redwood City, CA (2012) – photo by the author.
The only moderately overt agenda in the film was to promote Khan Academy (KA). Math teacher Shelby Harris used KA with her students, and thanks the Khan training, even had access to someone who advised her that students working in groups mig