School Of Rock And The Reluctant Teacher

The portrayal of teachers in film generally falls into four distinct categories:

1. The downtrodden individual who failed at life and is scraping together a meagre living with teaching's notoriously low wages. Resting precariously above 'rock bottom', this archetype usually presents at the beginning of a character's story arc.
2. The martyr or Christ figure, reviled and persecuted by those in power, and an inspiration to his pupils due to his rebellious, non-conformist teaching methods.
3. The 'drill sergeant' or disciplinarian, instilling fear in students via daily torment and torture.
4. The reluctant teacher who, despite lacking appropriate qualifications and doing everything in his power to avoid actually teaching, builds relationships with his students and inevitably discovers teaching is his one true calling.

According to films starring a Reluctant Teacher, codes of conduct and school regulations are shackles designed to keep students subdued and powerless. The best teachers are the ones who have no formal training, have never had any desire to teach, and in many cases, have little respect for the system, their peers and the students themselves. Conversely, qualified teachers who follow the rules are terrible at their job, lacking the passion or creativity required to truly be a positive force in students' lives. They are frequently represented as either officious, ineffectual, or both.

One of the common factors of films starring reluctant teachers is that, although the protagonist eventually grows to love teaching, he's generally not particularly good at it. Films such as Summer School, Kindergarten Cop and more recently, the forgettable Hugh Grant rom-com The Rewrite spring to mind. Richard Linklater's School Of Rock is a prime example of the Reluctant Teacher stereotype, yet differs in this one key element. Dewey Finn's pedagogy is exemplary (and somewhat prescient of the direction many schools have taken their curriculum).

Jack Black's Dewey Finn is a failed rockstar. Short of cash, he impersonates his housemate to accept a job as a substitute teacher at prestigious Horace Green prep school. Upon discovering his students are musically gifted, he proceeds to exploit their talent in order to enter the Battle of the Bands. During this process, he begins to find joy in the shaping of young minds and by the time the credits roll is, spoiler alert, running his own 'School of Rock'.

In the film, Dewey tasks his students with becoming a rock n roll band, informing them of assignment expectations and an overall required outcome. Like good teachers do, he notes gaps in students' knowledge and fills them. To prepare them for the project, he explicitly teaches certain skills but allows the students to develop their own expertise, proving that the best learning is collaborative and made meaningful by the act of doing. For instance, he shows footage of live concerts but leaves it to the students to figure how to program and run a light show for their gig. Dewey's teaching style is fluid, opportunistic and integrated rather than scheduled and compartmentalised. His lessons are differentiated rather than streamed, via the use of an open-ended, reality-based curriculum. These are the tenets of inquiry-based learning, where the role of the teacher is more facilitator than educator, and students become responsible for their own learning.

Teachers have a tendency to automatically praise students for everything they produce, inadvertently creating praise addicts. These praise addicts will hound you incessantly for their fix, and praise soon becomes shorthand for "I've witnessed your work, now go away". Dewey instinctively understands this. When he praises the students, it is specific and earned.

He is flexible in his approach. Although he assigns roles to his students, he allows them to alter the parameters of the role or change it completely if desired. In doing so, he creates a sense of autonomy and community in the classroom where the students feel safe to experiment and make mistakes. Dewey also understands that teaching is a performance. He is engaging in his presentation, but never pandering or patronising. He doesn't waste time designing diagnostics, marking assignments, cross-checking assessment data or writing comprehensive reports that will never be read. His sole purpose (other than winning Battle of the Bands) is to inspire a love of learning in his students.

School of Rock may perpetuate the Reluctant Teacher stereotype, but in doing so, gives us a glimpse as to what the 21st Century classroom should look like.