My favorite thing is to hear from a teacher who's seen Waiting for "Superman". Teachers live it everyday so they get it -- the good and the bad. And I am moved by all the reactions: the emotion, the criticism, the longing to help the kids in my documentary. Hearing this means the movie is working: the conversation is getting wider, bigger, deeper.
We want even more people to join the conversation, and we especially want to hear from teachers, so this week, the film's distributor is announcing that theater owners are offering teachers who show their credentials at the box office the chance to buy tickets to Waiting for "Superman" at a reduced rate.
The roots of my passion for this for this comes from my love of great teachers -- that was the subject of my very first doc called The First Year. If you haven't seen it, it's about the heroic struggles of passionate teachers. It was the experience of meeting these amazing teachers, and being so inspired by their commitment that made me care so much about public education. I promised myself that if I ever got the chance to make another film about education, I'd talk as honestly as I could about a system that makes it so hard for teachers and the kids they are trying to serve.
At the heart of Waiting for "Superman" are five kids whose lives are at stake. For Anthony, Fransisco, Daisy, Emily and Bianca, they don't care what kind of public school they go to -- they just want it to be great. And they can't understand why we as a country can't deliver for them what every kid in America deserves -- a great education.
So please add your voice to the many others like me who believe every child in America deserves a great education. Send this note to all the teacher you know and tell them they can see Waiting for "Superman" this week at a reduced ticket price.
This film has sparked a lot of conversation, debate and even some disagreement. And that's exactly what we were hoping for. See the film for yourself and then tell me what you think -- leave me a note in the comments below or on our Facebook page.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Davis Guggenheim: Thank You, Teachers
I've seen both sides. Teachers in public schools do heroic things with remarkably little support. Make those private schools teach the hard to teach kids, too, those with learning disabilities, behavior issues, poverty, watch them confront the same struggles our public school teachers face every day, then we'll have something to compare. Dedicated teachers who taught my kids contended with disruptive students, some who often ate only school lunch all day. They used their own money for supplies, hung in there through long hours -- way after the final bell has rung they are still working -- and very few parents offered to lend a hand. But they did a fabulous job. I will be forever grateful to the amazing men and women who helped my children grow into the people they are today.
I went to private Catholic schools but escaped in 8th grade. I must say, when I got into our neighborhood public school, I was dumber than dirt compared to those kids. Ignorant about Science, History, Geography, Math, etc., but boy could I quote Catechism. Turns out I was a really smart kid. My private schools cheated me out of an early education. Took many years to begin to catch up and overcome those wasted years. "Private" does not mean "better."
The "achievement gap" in so-called low performing schools doesn't just magically appear because the system is full of bad teachers who can't teach reading and math. It starts much, much earlier and is far more complex than that, and we're doing the best we can with the kids who come to us. As other have stated, we need to deal with the disease - poverty.
My main concern, however, is that our current discussion ignores the responsibility that parents and the students themselves need to be taking for their own education. As a country, we believe that we should have all the advantages of a good education without actually working for it. Americans do not value education, they value football. We spend our weekends watching sports on TV or going shopping, not reading and going to museums. Our choices speak volumes, and those choices rub off on our kids. Those same kids with those same values come to school, and you expect the teachers to do the job of instilling the values and work ethic that you don't have as a parent? It's unfair. Asian and European students aren't kicking our butt in math because their schools are better, they're beating us because their VALUES are better.
"Waiting for Superman" hand-selects darling minority children as stars then stacks the deck against them in the narrative by slanting the data presented and suggesting that charter schools are the answer to "our nation's failing public schools." There is no demonstration of how "all" public schools are failing, no vignettes of instruction or interaction in actual schools (either public or charter). Just the assertion that charters (which serve 4% of our nation's kids) are where poor kids--who can't afford private schools--ought to be, and some cheesy cartoon clips and recycled footage of idiotic teenagers as "evidence."
"Superman" is documentary film-making of the worst kind: unbalanced, unsubstantiated, edited from a single perspective and forced to seek viewership by offering discounted tickets. Guggenheim's claim that unions have soured teachers on the film is specious.
I saw the film at full price, in a packed theater in Ann Arbor, Michigan--and heard people in the audience gasping and sniggering at some of the broad-brush claims made in the movie. If people aren't attending screenings, it may be because it's simply not a very good movie.
Sure, you have a different background than most Americans in this debate. You came at this issue motivated by your liberal guilt, aggravated daily by your drive past public schools to the private school that will save your children somehow. But, the people you worked with on this film have different motivations. Some are motivated by radical notions to completely dismantle public ed and eliminate any government-provided education. Some are plainly motivated by profit, hoping to take advantage of the vast resources America commits to its public education ideal and try to make some money off it with special business model "efficiencies" and reduced overhead (read teacher salaries).
If we are supposed to question the very idea of public education with this film, then we're not really dealing with issues of reform any more so your film becomes ineffective as a reform tool.
www.NOTwaitingforsuperman.org or "NOT Waiting for Superman" on Facebook....
Who's job was it to put the three Ds in place in a child's life to prepare them for learning? THEIR PARENTS. (OMG did she really say that out loud???) Yes - from birth, parents must model and teach their child right-thinking and right-living. I see children everyday who are D-less. Even worse, instead they have had modeled for them the Three Rs: Rudeness, Rage, and Revenge.
New teacher training programs on this or that technique are amazing, BRAVO! Better facilities, installing Smart Boards, giving computers to all students, YEAH! Free breakfast, extended learning days, YES! But these things are like having the Emporer (Public Education) march through the streets donning a fancy feathered hat; a velvet, hand-embroidered jacket; draped in scarves yet still wearing no pants.
When and where is the next teacher-training program on how to turn a child who comes to school D-less into a Student. Sign me up.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/anthony-cody/teachers-give-superman-directo.html
As a retiree having spent 40 years in education, I’m fairly knowledgeable of education issues. I must say, I could not have believed, without seeing for myself, that so much misinformation and distortion could have been packaged in an hour-and-45-minute presentation. I’ve never viewed a stronger propaganda piece.
Unfortunately, your movie is having a serious impact. I’ve never experienced such hostility toward teachers as I’ve read and seen during the past two months, and much of it is attributed to or associated with WFS.
What I like at the charter is the sense of accountability which is important to me as an educator. But even with that I still need to have a system of job security so I'm not suddenly thrown without any due process on the street trying to find a way to support my children. I'm all for accountability. But, the film promotes it as the answer without even exploring how this would work. Tenure is problematic, but so is a profesional at the mercy of capricious administrators. In this case, we should look at proven reforms and successful accountability without throwing out the whole system at once. Maybe even, instead of beating up teachers more, we can look at why administrators can't do their job to document, evaluate, and actually conduct the due process that exists already to deal with ineffective or unprofessional educators. It is possible even, that while there are very public illustrations of unbelievable incompetence and unprofessional behavior, there might be thousands of cases that are handled quietly and effectively by adminstrators. Wouldn't that be an interesting question to explore in this film.