Movie Night

Movie Night will be February 24, 2011 at 8:30 PM - Location is still TBA.

Here's the choices: 

• Freedom Writers
• Assigned the thankless task of teaching freshman English at a gang-infested Long Beach, Calif., high school, a 23-year-old teacher resorts to unconventional means of breaking through to her hardened students in director Richard LaGravenese's adaptation of Erin Gruwell's best-seller The Freedom Writer's Diaries: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them. Her students had been written off, and her chances of succeeding scoffed at, but Erin Gruwell (Hilary Swank) wasn't about to go down without a fight. In using the writings of Anne Frank and Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Sarajevo, Gruwell was able to teach her students not only the basis of the English language, but compassion and tolerance as well. 
• Stand and Deliver
• Based on a true story, Stand and Deliver depicts a rebellious math teacher who transforms his seemingly hopeless, apathetic students into the top-scorers in the state. Their achievement is so remarkable that the school board accused the Latino students of cheating. Just imagine this story in our test-obsessed age of NCLB.
• Mr. Holland's Opus
• Classical musician Glenn Holland assumes that teaching will leave him plenty free time to compose his classical masterpiece. Instead, he finds his life’s passion in musical education. Mr. Holland’s Opus reminds us that, even when it seems frustrating and futile, teaching will can change lives – both your students and your own.
• Lean On Me
• Morgan Freeman has played a limo driver, a U.S. president, a prison inmate and even God, but he takes on his most challenging role in Lean on Me. Freeman’s radical principal wanders the halls with a baseball bat, locks troublemakers out of school and refuses to accept any excuses. His extreme approach shocked teachers, students and the school board, but ultimately changes the lives and learning of his students. (Trivia: Freeman also had a small role in 1984’s Teachers)
• Dangerous Minds
• Despite the Coolio connection (or maybe because of it), Dangerous Minds has become an iconic movie for the fish-out-of-water teacher. Ex-marine Louanne Johnson wins over her rebellious students with candy bars, karate and Bob Dylan. It may be trite, Hollywood and a cliché of “the great white hope,” but it is also shows compelling connections between a teacher and her students. Either way, no list of teacher movies would be complete without it.
  
  
  They say I gotta learn, But nobody's here to teach me.
  If they can't understand it, how can they reach me?
  I guess they can't,
  I guess they won't,
  I guess they front,
  That's why I know my life is out of luck, foo!
• To Sir With Love
• Sidney Poitier, who in 1955 played a student in a tough inner-city high school, portrays a teacher assigned to a similar institution in To Sir, With Love. Unable to find work as an engineer, Poitier accepts a teaching post in London's East End slums. To reach his sullen, rebellious students, Poitier throws away his textbooks and endeavors to reach them as human beings--and as the adults they're going to become. It's an uphill climb, but gradually the students are won over. They begin referring to Poitier as "Sir," not out of blind obedience but as a gesture of genuine affection. Not that there aren't obstacles to overcome: in addition to trying to get through to hardcase student Christian Roberts, Poitier must face down the resistance and hostility of his fellow teachers. The sweetly sentimental finale amply displays the vocal talents of Lulu, who trills the title song. Based on the novel by E. R. Brainwaite, To Sir, With Love was one of the biggest moneyspinners of 1967 (with this film, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner and In the Heat of the Night, Sidney Poitier had quite a year). In 1996, a belated made-for-TV sequel was produced, briefly reuniting To Sir with Love co-stars Sidney Poiter, Lulu and Judy Geason, none of whom looked a day older. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
• Dead Poet's Society
• Robin Williams gives a shockingly understated, touching portrayal of a teacher who brings inspiration to the lives of his straight-laced prep school students. A little saccharine but mostly sincere, Dead Poets Society is guaranteed to infuse poetry into the most prosaic days.

STAND AND DELIVER IS THE CHOICE!

PLEASE COMMENT IF YOU ARE BRINGING A SNACK OR DRINK!