fwriction

Thanks to an invite from Citizen Schools (an organization I believe strongly in and had the pleasure of teaching for last year), I had the chance to see Waiting for “Superman” at a screening this week. 

The film, written and directed by Davis Guggenheim (of An Inconvenient Truth fame), really takes a hardline look at all that’s f***ed up in our educational system (most notably bureaucrats, lousy teachers, and teachers unions). As a highly-qualified and deeply-passionate teacher who has been unable to procure full-time teaching work, I found the dissection of the NYC school system particularly painful. Incompetence, it seems, can still be rewarded on every level.

Ultimately, I left the film with a conflicted view on teaching, and my desire to continue on this road fraught with disappointment and failure. However, the film does a fantastic job of spotlighting all that has gone wrong in our educational system, all that we’ve done to let down our children. Now, if we could only stop encouraging and funding failure, and instead reward those who truly care and are willing to devote their lives to our children’s education.

“No matter who we are or what neighborhood we live in, each morning, wanting to believe in our schools, we take a leap of faith…” -Davis Guggenheim