Screen Lessons : What We Have Learned from Teachers on Television and in the Movies

This unprecedented volume includes 30 essays by teachers and students about the teacher characters who have inspired them. Drawing on film and television texts, the authors explore screen lessons from a variety of perspectives. Arranged in topical categories, the contributors examine the "good" teacher; the "bad" teacher; gender, sexuality, and teaching; race and ethnicity in the classroom; and lessons on social class. From such familiar texts as the Harry Potter series and School of Rock to classics like Blackboard Jungle and Golden Girls to unexpected narratives such as the Van Halen music video "Hot for Teacher" and Linda Ellerbee’s Nick News, the essays are both provocative and instructive.

Courses that could use this book include Education and Popular Culture, Cultural Foundations, Popular Culture Studies, other media studies and television genre classes.

MARY M. DALTON is Professor of Communication and Film and Media Studies at Wake Forest University. She is the co-editor of Screen Lessons: What We Have Learned From Teachers on Television and in the Movies and of The Sitcom Reader: American Re-viewed, Still Skewed with Laura R. Linder. In addition to her scholarly work in the area of critical media studies, she is a documentary filmmaker and a media critic.

LAURA R. LINDER is a semi-retired Media Studies professor. She is co-author of Teacher TV: Sixty Years of Teachers on Television with Mary M Dalton and co-editor of The Sitcom Reader: American Re-viewed, Still Skewed, both with Mary M. Dalton, and the author of Public Access Television: America’s Electronic Soapbox.