I highly recommend to all homeroom teachers out there, to film a video of some sort with their class.
I did so myself in an effort to foster teamwork in my homeroom. In a glorious burst of what I now know to be asinine misunderstanding of seventh-grade social norms, I decided (spur of the moment, while allowing them to watch music videos on YouTube) that I would try to bridge the canyon-like rift between the sexes by forcing them to work together on a common project in which all had a stake of some sort.
I thought it would be fun.
Yes, my initial goal may have been incredibly misguided (what ended up happening was a deepening of the initial rift due to the various melodramas that occur when insecurity rears its ugly, 13-year-old head) and I was glad when other end-of-year projects relieved it from its spotlight in the classroom. Not only this, but towards the end I had no choice but to acknowledge that the few workable scenes in the footage I did manage to film were no doubt lost beneath such an avalanche of shouting-arguments, mid-scene interruptions, and general horseplay, that I would never finish editing the damned thing before the end of the year. Thus, during my final homeroom meeting I was forced to declare the endeavor a failure before the eyes of God and the Israeli school system.
'I will try to edit it over the summer, but I can't promise we have enough good footage,' I told their skeptical faces. Many of them said 'good riddance', having themselves become aware - due not only to their insecurity upon facing the camera lens but also to my, often exasperated, tone - that the video would certainly win no distinctions, and may even come out objectively 'bad'.
This, of course, was my failure far more than it was theirs. But I had already given them so much of myself over the course of the year, that I felt unequipped to waste any more life-energy on regret over this particular enterprise, chalking it up to an unsuccessful project to be archived among its counterparts in a mental folder called 'Never Again'.
And now that I have no doubt caused all teachers heretofore considering taking up my recommendation to regard it with adequate suspicion, I will tell you why it is that I still recommend it (though not to the faint of heart, or, for that matter, those with actual lives).
You see, the fell swoop of summer, which descends upon one with the swiftness of the guillotine, alters the life of a teacher with the speed in which newly released students race headily through the school gates to freedom. One is used to waking every day with the weight of eighty-some children on one's shoulders. Atlas-type responsibilities - to them, to their parents, to other teachers, to the school system as a whole - trouble the mind at every waking moment, and often continue to do so in sleep. Then, in the split second it takes to uncuff a prisoner, all of this is gone.
And although there is, of course, an overwhelming sense of liberty infusing both mind and body, the immediacy with which it occurs is somewhat unsettling. One must have some sense of continuity in order to narrate one's past, otherwise it slips away as does a nightmare upon waking.
The editing of the video has provided me with this necessary sense of continuity. Not only do I now chuckle at all of the hijinks that so aggravated me at the time of their performance ('Look how cute they are,' I gushed as two students performed a cat-and-mouse chase through the scene I was filming, causing the participants to bellow curses and halting filming for a full ten minutes) but I also, thanks to the fact that I was the only one filming, get to glimpse the POV of a frustrated but still hopeful first-year teacher trying relentlessly to tack a positive ending onto a very trying year. That the viewpoint is my own is at times vindicating and at times edifying (though it's true that hindsight is always 20/20, we can still attempt to learn from our mistakes), but what I found most exhilarating was simply to watch without passing judgement, to laugh at what is funny only in retrospect (like the fact that every 5-second scene took at least twenty minutes to film), and to appreciate the incredible talents of the skater to whom I dedicated endless hours of tutoring and mentoring, the rollerblader who talked and sang ceaselessly in class, the dancing ability of a girl whose mouth I would have paid grand sums to clamp shut, and the choreography skills of two girls whose sense of maturity and responsibility well surpasses their years.
I realize that these are some very rosy glasses I have donned, but I also think the activity I rather naively selected is precisely what allows me to do so. In editing a film we choose only the best shots, the ones in which the camera captures utter perfection, that which adheres to the script. The shots in which the actors have been filmed at their very best angle, these are the only ones that participate in the final product. All the rest are disregarded, wiped clean from the public eye and therefore forgotten.
It may not be the best take on life, but it certainly makes a teacher feel that it was not all for naught.
I did so myself in an effort to foster teamwork in my homeroom. In a glorious burst of what I now know to be asinine misunderstanding of seventh-grade social norms, I decided (spur of the moment, while allowing them to watch music videos on YouTube) that I would try to bridge the canyon-like rift between the sexes by forcing them to work together on a common project in which all had a stake of some sort.
I thought it would be fun.
Yes, my initial goal may have been incredibly misguided (what ended up happening was a deepening of the initial rift due to the various melodramas that occur when insecurity rears its ugly, 13-year-old head) and I was glad when other end-of-year projects relieved it from its spotlight in the classroom. Not only this, but towards the end I had no choice but to acknowledge that the few workable scenes in the footage I did manage to film were no doubt lost beneath such an avalanche of shouting-arguments, mid-scene interruptions, and general horseplay, that I would never finish editing the damned thing before the end of the year. Thus, during my final homeroom meeting I was forced to declare the endeavor a failure before the eyes of God and the Israeli school system.
'I will try to edit it over the summer, but I can't promise we have enough good footage,' I told their skeptical faces. Many of them said 'good riddance', having themselves become aware - due not only to their insecurity upon facing the camera lens but also to my, often exasperated, tone - that the video would certainly win no distinctions, and may even come out objectively 'bad'.
This, of course, was my failure far more than it was theirs. But I had already given them so much of myself over the course of the year, that I felt unequipped to waste any more life-energy on regret over this particular enterprise, chalking it up to an unsuccessful project to be archived among its counterparts in a mental folder called 'Never Again'.
And now that I have no doubt caused all teachers heretofore considering taking up my recommendation to regard it with adequate suspicion, I will tell you why it is that I still recommend it (though not to the faint of heart, or, for that matter, those with actual lives).
You see, the fell swoop of summer, which descends upon one with the swiftness of the guillotine, alters the life of a teacher with the speed in which newly released students race headily through the school gates to freedom. One is used to waking every day with the weight of eighty-some children on one's shoulders. Atlas-type responsibilities - to them, to their parents, to other teachers, to the school system as a whole - trouble the mind at every waking moment, and often continue to do so in sleep. Then, in the split second it takes to uncuff a prisoner, all of this is gone.
And although there is, of course, an overwhelming sense of liberty infusing both mind and body, the immediacy with which it occurs is somewhat unsettling. One must have some sense of continuity in order to narrate one's past, otherwise it slips away as does a nightmare upon waking.
The editing of the video has provided me with this necessary sense of continuity. Not only do I now chuckle at all of the hijinks that so aggravated me at the time of their performance ('Look how cute they are,' I gushed as two students performed a cat-and-mouse chase through the scene I was filming, causing the participants to bellow curses and halting filming for a full ten minutes) but I also, thanks to the fact that I was the only one filming, get to glimpse the POV of a frustrated but still hopeful first-year teacher trying relentlessly to tack a positive ending onto a very trying year. That the viewpoint is my own is at times vindicating and at times edifying (though it's true that hindsight is always 20/20, we can still attempt to learn from our mistakes), but what I found most exhilarating was simply to watch without passing judgement, to laugh at what is funny only in retrospect (like the fact that every 5-second scene took at least twenty minutes to film), and to appreciate the incredible talents of the skater to whom I dedicated endless hours of tutoring and mentoring, the rollerblader who talked and sang ceaselessly in class, the dancing ability of a girl whose mouth I would have paid grand sums to clamp shut, and the choreography skills of two girls whose sense of maturity and responsibility well surpasses their years.
I realize that these are some very rosy glasses I have donned, but I also think the activity I rather naively selected is precisely what allows me to do so. In editing a film we choose only the best shots, the ones in which the camera captures utter perfection, that which adheres to the script. The shots in which the actors have been filmed at their very best angle, these are the only ones that participate in the final product. All the rest are disregarded, wiped clean from the public eye and therefore forgotten.
It may not be the best take on life, but it certainly makes a teacher feel that it was not all for naught.
 |
| 'Thrift Shop' is the song my students chose for their video |
No comments:
Post a Comment