5 English Language Films that Truly Celebrate Teachers

October 5 marks World Teacher’s Day, an annual day that celebrates the important contributions of teachers. Celebrating teachers, however, should not be confined to just one day of the year.

In fact, there are many movies celebrating teachers that are well worth watching. Films about teachers make up an entire genre in themselves and are continuously inspiring for both teachers and students alike.

Here, we will take a look at some English language films that focus on celebrating teachers, sharing lessons, and imparting knowledge.

5 Highly Acclaimed Films About Teachers

1. Dead Poets Society 

You could easily argue that the critically acclaimed Dead Poets Society is one of the most popular movies about teachers of all time. The film won an Oscar and multiple international awards.

Produced in 1989, this film stars Ethan Hawke and the late Robin Williams. The premise is as follows: Robin Williams plays Professor Keating, who takes his unconventional teaching methods back to his alma mater, which is the fictional Welton Academy. To kick off the story, he tells his students to rip apart their syllabus, which is a metaphorical action for how his teaching style will progress.

Ethan Hawke plays Todd Anderson, whose brother was a valedictorian at the same school. He is paired as a roommate with Neil Perry, who is a popular and smart student with an overbearing father. The two boys, and other students, come under the wings of Professor Keating, who imparts valuable life lessons and encourages them to challenge the status quo rather than blindly accept what they are told.

2. Freedom Writers

Starring Hillary Swank as Erin Gruwell, Freedom Writers hit the theaters in 2007 and won awards internationally shortly thereafter.

The movie is based on the true story and book The Freedom Writers Diary: How a Teacher and 150 Teens Used Writing to Change Themselves and the World Around Them, written by Erin Gruwell and the Freedom Writers.

The movie tells the story of Gruwell, a teacher who started her first teaching job in Long Beach, California in 1994. She was the English teacher at Woodrow Wilson High School for freshman and sophomores just two years after the school initiated a voluntary integration program. The teachers who were already teaching at the high school had witnessed the dwindling academic success of the student population as students from all over joined the school and the rate of illiteracy grew.

Gruwell enters the classroom completely unprepared for what she is to be met with and has a naive and overly optimistic outlook. Her classroom is filled with many students who are in gangs and have witnessed loved ones die because of it. At first, all of the students dislike Ms. Gruwell intensely. However, she does not let up. Instead, she implements an assignment of daily journal writing for all of her students, which will remain ungraded and unread unless they decide they want her to read the journals.

Over time, students begin to open up and Ms. Gruwell fights harder and harder to gain access to the necessary resources that her students need to succeed. Ms. Gruwell never gives up, even though her educational endeavors are causing strain on her personal life, including her own finances and marriage.

Spoiler alert: the students’ journal entries get published in the end, which is what makes up the book by the same name.

3. Good Will Hunting 

Here’s yet another film celebrating teachers that has Robin Williams in the cast, except this time, Williams plays Sean Maguire, a therapist.

The plot is about Will Hunting, played by Matt Damon, who has a genius-level IQ, but is working as a janitor at MIT. When Professor Gerald Lambeau, played by Stellan Skarsgard, puts a highly complex, graduate-level math problem on the board in the hallway, Hunting solves it while he’s cleaning the hallways. It takes some time for the Professor to find out who solved the problem, and when he realizes that it was the janitor, he helps to guide him and fulfill his immense potential. After a run-in with the law, Professor Lambeau helps Hunting get out of trouble by connecting him with his long time friend, therapist Maguire. Throughout the film, Hunting and Maguire develop a deep relationship in which Hunting begins to finally open up to Maguire as Maguire reciprocates. Hunting solving the complex problem can be viewed as a symbol for how Maguire helps him to discover his own identity and even finds love in the process.

The film is critically acclaimed and has been the recipient of a long list of awards, including an Oscar and Screen Actors Guild Award.

4. Finding Forrester 

Finding Forrester is an American drama that was released in 2000 and stars Rob Brown as Jamal Wallace and Sean Connery as William Forrester.

In the film, Jamal Wallace is a black teenager who attends a prestigious private high school. Jamal is secretly a gifted student, but instead, he spends most of his time playing street basketball with friends. William Forrester is a recluse who spends all of his time in his apartment that overlooks the basketball court. Forrester is known to be an urban legend in the neighborhood, but no one really gets close enough to actually get to know him. That is, until Wallace and Forrester connect after Wallace sneaks into Forrester’s apartment as a dare. After he accidentally leaves his backpack, Forrester edits Wallace’s personal writings and leaves his backpack back on the street.

Through Wallace’s personal writings and the editing process, the two develop a close-knit bond after having a few aggressive encounters. The main message is all about finding friendship in surprising places and the impact that mentorship can have on both the mentor and mentee.

5. Precious 

Directed by Lee Daniels, Precious was released on November 6, 2009 and garnered many awards, including an Oscar.

The movie tells the story of a 16-year-old teenager, Claireece “Precious” Jones, played by Gabourey Sidibe, who is illiterate and constantly abused by her mother. She is also pregnant by her own father. Precious takes the opportunity to transfer to a new school, where she meets her teacher, Ms. Rain, played by Paula Patton. Ms. Rain teaches Precious how to read and write. With guidance from Ms. Rain and her own self-determination, Precious transforms from an oppressed young woman into a powerful female who plans to complete her GED and pave the path to a better life for herself and her two children.

Viewers leave the film feeling a sense of hope as the movie portrays the valuable difference that teachers make in students’ lives going beyond the classroom.

Final Thoughts

Teachers change the lives of students on a daily basis. These films represent just a subset of an entire genre that tells important stories celebrating teachers. The common denominator in each of these films involves teachers who go against the grain and make dramatic impacts in the lives of their students.

In most cases, these students come from underprivileged backgrounds and lack support from their home environment, in which case these teachers step in and provide guidance beyond the classroom walls. Their unwavering support is what totally changes the trajectory of these students’ lives for the better.