Waiting for Superman thoughts and review

I finally watched the documentary, "Waiting for Superman." I always gauge documentaries for what they get you to do afterwards. Did you spend nights searching through the internet for answers, like "Paradise Lost"? Or did they bring you into a world you previously avoided, like the achingly tough "Stevie," or "Capturing the Freidmans"? Some like, "Hoop Dreams," or the strangely funny "Crumb" stay with you for years afterwards. "Superman" falls into the category of recent docs, like "Super Size Me" wherein the stamp of their maker is keenly evident, but one that will still provoke thought, anger and stunned silence in equal doses.

The doc isn't so much anti-teacher as many make it out to be (although, maybe conspiratorially, it doesn't feature one voice of current teachers in the business). The film dartboards some big ideas, and as a teacher myself, I know that treating the film's ideas as bullets pretty much makes me one of the stiff upper-lipped, voiceless people in the crowd of angry teachers.

While featuring the lives of a handful of students and parents as they make their decision to get into prestigious charter schools (all by lottery), the film tackles widely known truths and devises some clues into where it may go. One major theme outlined in the movie is the need for reform, from teacher incentive-based pay to longer school hours. Much of the reform is brazenly being harassed by teacher's unions, which come across as out-of-the-times lobbyist. There's a scene midway showing a disciplinary sequence from New York, where teachers are sent to the "rubber room" where they sit, nap, and read newspapers for hours while waiting on their cases. Others show hidden cameras teachers reading while their high school class plays craps and naps. Scenes like this don't necessarily make me mad because it picks on teachers, but it makes me mad that we allow those teachers to teach along side us. Watch the scene about the "lemon dance" and tell me that not one teacher would relate to the feeling of that particular administrator's failed attempts to remove a pimple from the face of their school.

Other ideas fly under the radar but hit home nonetheless, like longer school days and boarding schools. In those cases, the film doesn't portray the parents as losing their rights as parents, as authority figures, but makes them a blameless cog if a broken system. And what of teachers who would work these longer hours or live in a boarding school? Is the film saying that teachers with families would benefit from having less time with their own families to raise kids not their own? Still, the movie makes you want to ask the person next to you and have that hour long conversation with a pot of coffee.

In other ways, I wish the film spent more time with Geoffrey Canada's Harlem Children's Zone. The film doesn't talk about the per-pupil spending of its charter, or the social services that are part of their groundbreaking model. I also found that comparing American test scores to foreign countries is a mute point, considering foreign students flock to our colleges and that most countries feature one culture, as we are an amalgamation of several cultures, religions and people.

Still, the film has its detractors and followers. I simply love the conversation, and know that if I continue to do what I'm supposed to do in the classroom then everything will take care of itself. One lesson from the film, it seems when the superintendent, chancellor or school founder is in the room, you teach your ass off.