Tenure: The Movie

I heard about this graduation speech where the speaker told the students that they would want to sue the college in a few month for not preparing them for the real world. I feel like that sometimes with my own degree. In English class I'm always trying to open my kids' minds to many unfamiliar themes and motifs. I try to get them past their first impression of Thoreau as being "a tree hugging psycho hippie" who, has most likely, "tuned in, dropped out, and... well... is just plain freaky weird." Or, from time to time, I want them to fight the feeling of calling Romeo gay for choosing death over a life without Juliet.

Well, why don't I just turn to my Instructional Strategies class from school. Oh yeah, that's that class were the professor did nothing, but show movies. Let's see, we watched Remember the Titans, Stand and Deliver and Lean on Me. All were helpful, that is if I was teaching a bunch of kids that spent a year at Julliard or had a box office percentage payoff in their contracts. Thanks Professor Ebert for all that help. At the very least he could have shown Top Gun. That movie rocks.

If you want a class that has some practical application, then there is so much that colleges could offer--like a Deciphering the Handwriting of a Semi-Awake Student class. To amp up the realness they could hold it from 11:00 pm to 2:00 am to recreate the insomnia that teachers eventually develop.