What We Can Learn About Teaching from Dangerous Minds

How real are portrayals of teachers in film?  In this clip from Dangerous Minds, we see a white female teacher attempt to teach a class of unruly students of color.  What is most worth considering is this: notice the actual pedagogy of the teacher in the clip.  Her teaching style is precisely the kind of chalk-and-talk approach so often criticized by education reform advocates (and with good reason).  Even though sage-on-the-stage models of teaching are ridiculed, we still see them as the default mode of pedagogy in film and pop culture.  If we wish to see different approaches in our classrooms, we might want to start by showing innovative pedagogies on the screen.