The Third Friday film for February is American Teacher, a documentary from Academy Award-winning filmmaker Vanessa Roth (Freeheld).  It will be followed by discussion about the teaching profession in Salina.  The film will be at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, 901 Beatrice, Friday, Feb. 17, at 7:00 p.m.

The film was created in part as a response to the blockbuster Waiting for Superman, which many found flawed in its embrace of charter schools and summary teacher firings as educational solutions.   The creative direction and narration supplied by actor Matt Damon and novelist Dave Eggers provides a powerful view of another unmet problem—high-demand/low-pay teacher work conditions.

Bright young public school teachers from a cross-section of communities ranging from rural to urban to suburban are people you would want your kids to spend their days with. Yet long hours, low pay, and scant respect undermine their career paths.

“We can’t ask teachers to take a vow of poverty and then expect miraculous results,” Ninive Calegari, one of the producers of American Teacher, remarks. “If we want a different future for our kids and grandkids, we’ll need to give this priority the time, attention and money that it deserves.”

American Teacher was inspired by Teachers Have It Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of America’s Teachers, a book co-authored by Calegari, Daniel Moulthrop and Dave Eggers, in which teachers reflect on the pros and cons of their jobs. Teachers Have It Easy was on The New York Times Best Seller List, but the authors wanted to reach a larger audience with the film.

Eggers, an award-winning novelist whose mother was a teacher, co-founded 826 Valencia, a nonprofit tutoring, writing and publishing organization now active in eight cities across the US. The organization galvanizes volunteers to support teachers and work with students, and has been duplicated in 30 satellites internationally.

Filmmaker Roth felt very strongly about the importance of teaching, pointing out that kids spend as much time with teachers as with parents. “Teachers not only affect what our kids learn in books, what they retain or how they score on tests, but how they look at the world, and who they become.”

The film follows four teachers over the course of a school year, while weaving in observations from students, parents, colleagues and education experts. Each of the teachers faces personal quandaries that impact their perspectives on their profession.

As Eggers and Calegari wrote in a New York Times editorial, “When we don’t get what we want in our military endeavors, we don’t blame the soldiers. ..If the results are not there, we blame the generals, the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No one contemplates blaming the men and women fighting every day in the trenches for little pay and scant recognition. And yet in education we do just that.”

Discussion following will examine the current state of the teaching profession in Salina.   Sharing his personal perspective and those of other District teachers will be Scott Bley, President of KNEA-Salina.  Teachers, educators, and any others interested in education are invited to attend.