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Films in the classroom: effective?
River O'Blood
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Remember watching those interminable history films whose only contribution to your education was letting you sleep in class?
The stereotypical representation of films in the classroom - especially the history classroom - is a negative one. And yet, there must be a reason why teachers continue to supplement the curriculum with films, beyond wanting a day off from teaching.
Most students have positive and negative examples of movies they saw for class. For every documentary with poor narration and "sleepy music," there is a movie that simply illuminates the topic for the students in the class.
When I was in junior high, my teacher showed us "Schindler's List" during our unit on WWII. She stopped the movie frequently to discuss what we were seeing and to help us process the film. Reflecting back on the experience, I would say that one reason the film was effective was our teacher's dissection of what was going on as it was happening, rather than waiting until the end and expecting us to have absorbed everything.
Now that I've started teaching, I've had to consider whether I should use movies in my own classroom, what movies should be used, and how to go about teaching said movies.
What has been your experience with movies in the classroom? (And not just in history classes - any subject and grade level!)
The stereotypical representation of films in the classroom - especially the history classroom - is a negative one. And yet, there must be a reason why teachers continue to supplement the curriculum with films, beyond wanting a day off from teaching.
Most students have positive and negative examples of movies they saw for class. For every documentary with poor narration and "sleepy music," there is a movie that simply illuminates the topic for the students in the class.
When I was in junior high, my teacher showed us "Schindler's List" during our unit on WWII. She stopped the movie frequently to discuss what we were seeing and to help us process the film. Reflecting back on the experience, I would say that one reason the film was effective was our teacher's dissection of what was going on as it was happening, rather than waiting until the end and expecting us to have absorbed everything.
Now that I've started teaching, I've had to consider whether I should use movies in my own classroom, what movies should be used, and how to go about teaching said movies.
What has been your experience with movies in the classroom? (And not just in history classes - any subject and grade level!)
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My pet peeve is when teachers show a movie instead of reading the book in class. I remember, sophomore year, we started reading Huck Finn and The Great Gatsby, and then halfway through each one our teacher just showed us the movie and we moved on. What the hell.
Wow. The film versions of both those movies are terrible.
Films can definitely be an effective classroom tool, though. Any lit class that covers drama should show film versions if a live performance isn't available, since drama is meant to be seen and not read. In fact, I think teaching Shakespeare to a typical high school classroom without using films would be a pointless exercise.
So you should probably play movies every now and again. For the kids who learn well that way if not just for 'yay teevee day'.
Did your class discuss the videos? Did the professor lecture on them? Or did you just watch video after video?
It sounds like you're refering to mainstream movies rather than documentaries. Do you think it's enough to show snippets of a film (like the flushing toilet in Psycho) or is it more important to watch all or most of a movie?
I agree that a film version of a drama is an important supplement to a class: but which version should you use? Take Romeo and Juliet for example. The two most commonly used film versions are the 1968 version, which follows Shakespeare closely, and the "updated" 1998 version with Leonardo di Caprio.
Both have merits and drawbacks, but how do you go about choosing one?
I whole heartedly agree. Movies can never replace books, though I might argue for using a movie to supplement a book.
Well, highschool and uni classes are two very different beasts - but I'd imagine that you could do something like look at the McCarthy trials through film - showing clips from High Noon and On the Waterfront, and reading bits from the crucible perhaps. However, I have no idea what you're teaching, or at what level...
But on the whole, you can use films in the same way you can use books or plays or poems - to show how people living through historical events reacted to them, and expressed their views.
I can't remember if there was a point, but I sure as hell didn't get one.
In sophomore English we watched an episode of Fawlty Towers. (Different teacher.) He said something about it relating to British literature, but I think he really just wanted an excuse to watch it again. :P
You know, I think I watched the same thing in the same year.
Were graphic holocaust films part of the freshmen curriculum for a time? Or did our teachers just decide independently to supplement The Diary of Anne Frank
On the black screen
I recall several teahcers using specific parts of films to illustrate a point when I was growing up. Unfortunately, the only one I can vaguely remember was one of my teachers showing usa certain scene in To Kill A Mockingbird.
Full films were used more often. When I read Alas, Babylon in 11th grade for my English class, my teacher decided to show us The Day After since it also covered nuclear war. I think it was mostly effective in helping the students understand the impact of nuclear war.
Similarly, I had another teacher in 7th grade who showed us Threads. The class itself was a sort of multi-topic thing. I know that for one quarter it was basically a home economics class. I guess we were covering nuclear war one week and she decided to show us that absolutely terrifying movie. As I mentioned in the documentary thread, it had a profound impact on me. Several other kids had to leave the room during the hospital scenes with all the screaming and blood. I remember my teacher also periodically stopping the film and explaining what was happening, which helped a lot.
My Mass Media classes in high school involved watching a lot of documentaries. We watched one about the Beatles because my teacher wanted us to learn about recording methods. Afterwards we had to break into groups and record songs.
I know that certain math teachers in my old high school showed Stand and Deliver to help drum up interest in the subject. I was never in one of those classes, so I don't know how effective that was.
In at least two history classes we got to see film versions of All Quiet on the Western Front when we covered World War I. One teacher showed the 1930s version, while another one showed the 1979 made-for-TV version. Both were pretty effective in giving us an understanding of WWI.
On the other hand, I had a teacher in 9th grade Earth Science who decided to show us Better Off Dead. I'm not sure what it had to do with the subject, but we all enjoyed it.
Of course, there were plenty of sleep-inducing films too. Hell, the first 30-45 minutes of Threads was like that for me because I didn't care to understand the whole global politics stuff.
My brother teaches English overseas. When he was in Poland, he'd occasionally show clips from Simpsons episodes to illustrate different meanings of words, and apparently that worked out well. I imagine it might work even better with native English speakers.
My Backloggery
I think that its the right video for the right class. All of the videos are done brilliantly, we talk about the video beforehand, we skip some of the specific "this is what happened" part (we don't need to go over exactly how many Native Americans died at the Massacre at Mystic), and we have a worksheet on which we're forced to put down questions that relate both to specific facts (what Indian tribe was being wiped out?), and broader ideas (How did the massacre effect US policy towards the tribes for the next 300 years?)
Clearly this has all been well thought out, but thats sort of the point. It doesn't have to be something that would be a scene in Teen Movie X, but it can very easily fall into that.
English classes had viewings of both Much Ado About Nothing and Romeo and Juliet (Zeferelli > Luhrman, by the way), which was good because as Hatchface said, drama is to be seen and not read. It also helps students who are struggling with the language to understand what is taking place and the themes of the play.
One thing that will always stay with me is a film of a circumcision that I saw in Religious Education, I still remember the sound that the clip made, which haunts me to this very day.
He always applied them to his lectures, so I always thought it was effective, but I mostly just loved watching movies.
No coincedence that 'Religion Ethics and Society Through Film' was my favorite course in college.
I've had a history professor also use a lot of documentaries/television specials. Course was on terrorism and espionage, so it was useful to have stuff that was up to date.
We watch 60 Minutes all the time in Econ.
I think teachers have an instinctive dread of Gatsby or something. For years, they've listed it as part of the English curriculum at my school, but every year it's the same story: watch the movie, no questions about it--quizzes, tests, or The Final--and move on. What the hell, indeed.
Other movies I have watched in school:
--MUSH (Modern United States History): Schindler's List. We all came after school and watched it in one huge sitting. One of my friends who works at a pizza place brought in pizza. Terribly sad, but it was a heckuva lot better watching it in that one big sitting than sitting through it for a week in class.
--English: Lots of Kenneth Branagh Shakespeare, including Much Ado About Nothing, which was pretty awesome (including Keanu Reeves as the villain, under the category of "stupid-awesome"). Also, Scotland, PA, which was a neat slant on Macbeth.
--European History: Amazing Grace was really good, even if it was made by some crazy Christian studio or something. The Guns of August, however, bored me to tears.
--Civics: An Inconvenient Truth (not what you'd think--we watched it as part of the propaganda unit), Sicko (again, propaganda unit), and soon, the PAC unit with Thank You for Smoking. Hell yeah.
Were you in a public school or private? Mine was private and I've always wondered if public schools would be allowed to show the same thing, what with the nudity and graphic corpse pictures.
Well, anyway! We did a whole unit on the Holocaust while reading Night by Eli Wiesel. And that also happened to be the year Schindler's List came out, so the teacher took the class to the theater to see it.
One day we came in and he'd made corral "fences" out of double-stacked desks and hired some seniors to act as Nazis and terrorize us . . . Bastards made us sort out the marshmallow shapes from the Lucky Charms they'd dumped on the floor. Then they'd scream that we were being lazy and kick over the cups of marshmallows.
I've never eaten Lucky Charms since.
At the end of the semester, when all of my students are burned out, I'm going to show them American Beauty, and we'll have a class discussion about narrative techniques and point of view.
Your teacher is hugely awesome and should probably be locked up.
I've seen a few terrible adaptions of Shakespeare and the Great Gatsby in my time, but we also read the texts. I've seen a version of The Last Samurai with the violence removed as part of a class on Japanese history. And I'm due to start a course called American History Through Film next week, so if this thread is still around then I'll come back and maek poast about it.
Yeah, he was one of my favorite teachers . . . Insanely creative guy and the head of the roleplaying club to boot, so of course a geek.
I had three great English teachers at that school. Sophomore year teacher wrote "FUCK" in huge letters on the board and had us stare at it for one minute, to illustrate that Holden's worries about kids being corrupted by graffiti swearwords (that they'd written themselves, though Holden thought "hobos" had written them) were unfounded*. :^:
* in Catcher in the Rye, thought I'd clarify that in case anyone hasn't read it.
Oh, I remembered another class we had films in . . . religion class! I can't remember the exact name of the class, and that bugs me. Something about ethics, maybe.
Well, anyway, it was taught by a Jesuit priest and he loved Star Wars. Loooved. In his office he had a cross on the wall next to a classic Star Wars poster, the painted one where none of the characters look like their movie-selves and Leia's showing off her leg.
So of course in religion class we watched The Empire Strikes Back, then discussed the light/dark themes in it. We read A Wizard of Earthsea in that class as well.
He was a pretty cool teacher. Looked exactly like Friar Tuck.
We were only allowed to watch real movies on video in our lunch breaks and only then during rainy winter days.
Though I do remember in earlier grades movies would be used as a reward as well, which was pretty cool. I also remember in a gifted education class watching those "Cable in the classroom" specials, which were also very interesting and informative. But then again the class by nature only let in nerds that would pay attention to that kind of thing anyway. General public school experience is different.
So in conclusion: Shakespeare yes, most science movies no. Occasional celebratory movie in elementary/middle school, sure.
Another subject would of course be history, and while I don't personally have anythign against watching an awesome History Channel special in a class like that, most people fall asleep, and again a creative teacher can do something much more engaging than that.
but if i show 10 minutes here, ten minutes there from the relevant parts of the movie, then it's easier for them to pick up on what i'm trying to get across. the final 15 minutes of that movie, for example, are perfect for showing students the absolute futility of trench warfare in WWI.
i also try and mix it up with some non-traditional things. i did a class about the effects of warfare on the soldiers in WWI, and i showed the class the music video for "One" by metallica. it obviously requires some explanation, and some of the kids still probably didn't understand what i was driving at, but i think it was a good, non-traditional way of illustrating what i wanted to say that would grab their attention.
of course, with any movie or clip, it is absolutely necessary that there is some sort of explanation of what is going on. something else that was suggested to me was to ask the students beforehand to "keep an eye out" for something specific in whatever you're showing to get them somewhat more involved in the material.
with that said, in grad school we get hammered with the idea of differentiated education. showing movies and whatnot is nice, but if you don't consantly change up the order of how you assess student knowledge, you really aren't getting a good picture of just how much your students know.
I wish all teachers were as cool as you. That's a great idea you got there!
I also had an absolutely terrible literature teacher who used films so she wouldn't have to teach. She would give us one lecture covering a book or a drama, and then the next four or five classes would be spent watching the movie. We watched both the Mel Gibson and Ethan Hawke versions of Hamlet (bleh), as well as Huck Finn. This woman barely taught, she would just turn on the movie and leave. I hated that class.
I think if you're going to show a film in a class, you need to find a way to incorporate it into your lesson, not have it stand in as a substitute. Don't waste my time in class by just showing me a movie, because I can watch a movie at home. The teacher should make commentary on the movie and explain how what is happening on the screen relates to what is on the text.
The most effective use of a film in class I've ever had was when my senior year English teacher had us watch the Branaugh version of Hamlet while reading along in the text, with occasional stops to talk about things. I gained such a better understanding of the drama, and Hamlet remains one of my favorite stories.
heh, my junior year of high school, my english teacher showed it to us for a unit about war literature. i even got the tape from her to use in my class.
decent teachers steal ideas, good teachers come up with their own, and great teachers do both
The actors in that movie were absolute machines. We did the same thing minus stopping to talk about it because the teacher was awful, but there would be many many pages of extremely difficult dialogue and they would knock it out without camera cuts or anything.
I seem to recall the To Be Or Not to Be speech was . . . really campy.