Transcript: Ode to My Teacher

It's back to school, and Rob Long reflects on what you can and can't learn in the classroom

This is Rob Long with Martini Shot for The Ankler.

Where I am, right now, today, it’s a little chilly. Breezy. Back to school weather, is what we used to call it, even though summer goes until mid-September and you don’t really need to put a sweater on until at least then. But Labor Day rolls around and it’s hard to shake that pattern, that back to school expectation.

I have a friend who teaches acting. Part of his process is to put his students on camera and then show them their performances — monologues and that sort of thing — which helps, or is supposed to help, their on-camera work. He did this for a male student a few years ago who was performing a monologue from a David Mamet play — one of those tough-guy parts — and when they reviewed the tape he asked the student, So, what do you see? And the student sighed and said, ‘Honestly? When I look at that all I see is the gay.’

And then, because he’s a teacher and teachers are supposed to be encouraging and confidence-building, he tried to get the student to see past his own insecurities and beyond the reach of his always-running internal you’re-not-good-enough monologue to really see what was really there on the screen, to see how it could be improved with practice and technique, and to see potential rather than limitation.

Movies about teachers, in general, follow that familiar pattern. There's usually a misunderstood student struggling with something. A collection of evil students and administrators. And one thoughtful, encouraging, life-changing teacher who helps the student see and do and feel whatever it is that the student is supposed to see and do and feel in the third act.

In other words, movies about teachers are really movies about students, which is probably one of the reasons it's such a hard thing to be a teacher — you're never the star of the movie, you're the plot device getting the star to the big scene.