Classroom Movie Mayhem
How do you pick movies to show in your classroom, and do parents get a say in the feature presentation?
Here's a great question from a parent about how teachers select movies to show in the classroom.
"A new teacher at our small school wanted to show the Stormbreaker movie. The class is made up of 9 and 10 year olds. I did not feel comfortable having my kid watch this at this age given the movie reviews rating it as having violence and recommending only 11+ to see it. When emailing with the teacher, we didn't feel the teacher's stated learning objectives required this movie. We only had one day notice to object, and we were the only parents to raise a concern. Then our kid was excluded from the class during the movie.
What would other parents and teachers suggest to help this situation work better the next time?"
So what do you think? How do you pick titles to show in your classroom, and do parents get an opportunity to weigh in? How would you like a parent to handle this situation if you were in the teacher's shoes?
It is an issue, and sadly in this 'modern era' we are expected to get with the times and let things go. Personally, I strongly dislike it, and that was not a good thing to show kids. Every movie shown in schools should be rated G or have to have all parents sign a permission slip.
Even G rated movies aren't good. I saw High School Musical 3 for my friends birthday party and that was rated G. Ashley Tisdale wore an innapropriate outfit, and there was kissing. Kissing is not bad, but the movie definitely had things that aren't for a child of any age.
Maybe because kids learn more when their actually interested in what they see? Sure some movies are more about the violence and action then education, but that doesn't mean they can do both. If your showing kids boring slides of seashells while a monotone voice narrates the scene, then showing another set the movie "Finding Nemo" (we used it in our 11th grade biology class, and still learned a lot from it when working on a paper for sealife) your going to get a much more positive attitude from the kids watching the interesting movie. Parents seem to think kids have to be taught in the old, boring ways of their own. Learning doesn't have to be boring, school policies, depressing school conditions, and boring learning activities just make it that way. New, interactive, and fun ways of learning could be implemented, but schools seem to lazy to change their ways.
I think it is totally inappropriate the number of commercial movies shown in classroom under the guise of additional "educational material". In my day, seldom were we treated to a movie and then again it was mostly slides of sea shells, geologic formations, current events or news reels. This trend has reached kindergarten and to me simply implies that we have a lazy teacher who is looking for 2 and 1/2 hour break.