The question What makes a good teacher? does not procure a simple answer. Like in mathematics, there is more than one way to reach the same conclusion. If we look at it formulaically, it could look like this: Good + Teacher = Enlightened + Empowered Students. Like in 2+7 = 5+2x2, the combinations are numerous. In this essay, we will explore this equation by comparing two teachers: Erin Gruwell, the real life teacher whose story inspired the 2007 film Freedom Writers and John Keating, a fictional character from the 1989 movie Dead Poets Society. Gruwell and Keating are as different as 2 and 7, but in the end, they can both be considered effectual in having enlightened and empowered their students.
For starters, John Keating is a fictional character, but for the purpose of this essay, we will assume he is a representation of a teacher (or teachers) we all might have once had. He is loud, funny and a little bit odd. Unlike Erin Gruwell, Keating taught at his alma mater, a preparatory school by the name of Welton Academy. On the first day of the new school year, we see short clips of how the classrooms are run by various - and assumably all - teachers at Welton; students are well dressed, prepared, respectful and respond on cue and in unison. We see Keating nonchalantly enter his classroom through a front door, walk across the length of the room and walk out the door in the rear, whistling aloofly. After a beat, he then pops his head back into the room of now confused students and says, "Well, come on." This really helps set the tone of his personal teaching style and personality. In the hall in front of the school's collection of trophies and old team photographs, Keating begins by asking who among the group knows the reference of "O Captain! My Captain!" (Walt Whitman's 1865 poem about Abraham Lincoln's death). He says, "Now in this class you can call me Mr. Keating. Or, if you're slightly more daring, Oh Captain, My Captain." He relates to his students right away by sharing that he too "attended Hell-ton and survived". From day one, the main lesson Keating is trying to instill in them is to be free-thinking individuals and to "seize the day", carpe diem. He leads by example, teaching passionately and in unorthodox ways, such as instructing his students to rip out whole introductions from their schoolbooks where Poetry is described as a mathematical equation and encouraging them stand atop his desk in order to practice challenging themselves to constantly look at things in a different way. Because of Keating's ideas and methods he becomes an outcast among the faculty and some of the parents. After a tragedy, school politics come into play and he is forced to resign. One student, who has taken to heart his teacher's lesson to find and fearlessly use his Voice, is expelled for refusing to play a part in Keating's removal - and it didn't help that he admitted to being part of the Dead Poets Society, pulled pranks and punched a fellow student (and turncoat member of the Society). Keating also inadvertently teaches his students one of life's most important lessons: it's never too late to try and right a wrong. At the end of this movie, all the remaining members of the Dead Poets Society are coerced into signing a statement incriminating their teacher. In the closing scene, while class is in session and Keating is leaving his classroom for the last time, the remaining Society members defiantly stand on top of their desks as a sign of respect for him or maybe in solidarity, maybe both.
Now, Erin Gruwell had quite different circumstances. She came to Woodrow Wilson High School full of giddy optimism, eager to mold the minds of the next generation and make a difference - nothing like Keating's quiet, cool confidence. She is greeted by ignorant and power-thirsty faculty who have already become desensitized to the joys of teaching. Gruwell was assigned a freshman class of at risk students, most presumably from low-income, broken or otherwise dysfunctional households, apathetic to academic life and many are members of gangs. They have already been given up on by the school system and are not expected to achieve much of anything, much less attend school. On the first day of class, in her very nice skirt suit and pearls, her students are escorted in by a security guard after the second bell. She cheerily greets them with "hellos" and they respond with indifference, although one student is kind enough to give her a cold, disgusted stare that only young teenagers can give. Very obviously unsure of herself, it's painful to watch her fidget in front of the classroom as her students proceed to move their desks in accordance to their cliques (in this case, ethnic groups) and talk amongst themselves as if at a social gathering instead of in a classroom. Gruwell begins roll call and in less than a minute, a fight breaks out. After a few feeble attempts to get everything under control, she has to ask the security guard for assistance. Her second day of class is interrupted by a fight in the schoolyard. Despite this terrible introduction to her first year of teaching, Gruwell doesn't give up. On her third day, the topic she chooses to focus on is Poetry. She tries to engage the class by playing a little bit of Tupac, a modern artist, and it seems to be working, but it quickly turns into an Us versus You, "The Man" situation and they blatantly call her out on her inability to ever connect with them. In this scene, Gruwell seems to have reached her personal limit of disrespect and decides it's time to change the seating assignments, mixing "the borders". Some time after, Gruwell intercepts a racist picture being passed around the classroom. She relates this to what happened during the Holocaust. This begins a real dialog between her and her students. By the end of class, she realizes that 99 percent of them don't even know what the Holocaust is, but have been shot at at least once. This reignites her passion and she attempts to get books for them like The Diary of Anne Frank and Romeo & Juliet, but she is refused by the head of her department and is basically told again to not waste her time trying to teach these unteachable students. During her next class, she has her students do an exercise called "Step Up, Step Back"; she says a statement and they step up if it's true for them and then they step back. The students realize that although they might be different they also have similarities and the barriers between them come down just a little bit. At the end of class, she gives them journals. Bad guy doesn't always go to jail.
Both teachers were considered unorthodox not only in their methods but in their ideas as well. The staff members in (Gruwell's school) did not understand why she would even try to teach her students who were obviously unteachable. And the idea that students at (Keating's school) capable of free thinking was, ridiculous, blasphemous even!
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