I find it fascinating to see how classrooms and schools are represented on the screen. Too often they look little like my own reality — the desks are in rows (I have them in table groups), the teacher sits at her desk at the front of the room (I’ve a rug and rocking chair at the center of my room), and the walls are full of commercial stuff (mine are full of children’s work). As for the interactions between children and teacher — they tend to be pretty limited.
And so may I just mentioned the kick I’m getting out of how my professional life is represented in the new Amazon Prime series, Catastrophe. A rom-com about two different people meeting (Rob’s from Boston and Sharon is Irish), getting to know each other, and falling in love, the conceit is that it all happens after they get together — when she gets pregnant after a brief affair and they decide, for the child’s sake, to marry and live in London (where Sharon lives and works). This is a witty series, loads of fun to watch for many reasons, but one for me is that Sharon is a teacher of what looks like kids the age of the ones I teach. And so the bits in the classroom and school are totally hilarious. Sharon is clearly a terrific teacher, well respected and no doubt loved by her students, but she also is a strong and complicated person and ….things happen…in school. Just teeny bits among the larger scenes of the real story, but fun nonetheless. Highly recommended for teachers and non-teachers alike.
There’s a brief bit at 1:16 in this trailer:
And a pretty over-the-top one at 37 in this one. (I remember thinking — no, she isn’t! And she does. The kids’ reactions — need to see the full episode for them — are fabulous.)
educating alice 