The Movies that Made Me Want to Get into Education: Lean on Me

I can remember first watching this movie in our Marlboro house when I was around twelve years old. The concept of the film was quite engaging: One no nonsense principal attempts to clean up one of the toughest inner city high schools before they are taken over by the state. He is up against tardy students who hang out in the hallways blaring out their ghetto blasters while smoking cigarettes, apathetic teachers, a community that is trying to get him fired for kicking out a lot of the bad kids without due process and even the fire marshal because "Crazy Joe" has to put chains around the doors during the school day to prevent gang members and drug dealers from sneaking back into his school.

Near the end of my first year as an art teacher, I kept drawing back to this film and another classic, The Principal, and how both of them were guys who had the passion to change their school around the way that they wanted. I began to think about going into administration myself, feeling that if certain things couldn't be met my way, I would try to rise to a seat of power so that I could be able to make those important decisions for the benefit of all. I also felt that it could be quite "ground breaking" that someone from the fine arts / discovery facet of education would be able to enter the arena of administration, so that we could put our own twist on the world of education. I also saw that it was possible, after meeting a few other fine arts people that had also made that change.

I dreamt of that power over that summer while I continued going through my certification process in PACE. I thought about all of the things that I couldn't stand, and how Crazy Joe fixed what he wanted and changed his school around as well. He got rid of the bad kids and spent as much time helping out everyone else to make sure that they were studying and concentrating on their scores before they were taken over by the state. He even cut down on the crimes and gangs by threatening to throw a chunky gang member named Sams off of the school roof, "You smoke crack don't ya?!" (Imagine saying that nowadays). He even creates an overall new found spirit for Eastside High, by getting the chorus teacher to rewrite the school anthem and playing the occasional game of Double Dutch.

But even someone as passionate of Joe Clark is not untouchable from the negative consequences of making decisions in public education. He gets jailed for going against fire codes, and was even set up to fail by the leader of a parent's group, Leonna Barrett, who wants pay back after her thug of a son was kicked out of school without due process. I thought about this on the first day of my second year as an art teacher. I was braving around to ask the other members of administration for their input that I would like to become one of them someday, but I wasn't feeling too much the, "hey yeah, that is a great idea!" But I also knew all of the negative crap that administration had to go through, especially living in such a litigious society where schools are constantly getting sued or threatened. I even walked into one member of administration's office who was getting screamed at because their child didn't get on the right bus.

Seeing how members of administration were sometimes treated and were at the forefront of battle lines between the teachers and the public, they would be the ones must susceptible to taking a bullet for us or most likely to be sued. All of the laws, procedures and policies that members of administration have to know about also really intimidated me from wanting to get into administration. What if I forgot to sign off on a referral within a certain amount of days, falsely accused a student, or split up a fight that I was accused of hitting the kid? Not to mention that you are always in the eyes of the public and representing your school, so you can forget saying such things as, "they used to call me Crazy Joe, now they call me Batman," or "I am the H-N-I-C" like Principal Clark says in his film.

But overall, this film is very inspirational on how Joe Clark can turn his school around by pouring in all of that care and attention that makes us teachers. You may see some similarities of this film with others around the same time period, including James Belushi taking over a principal position with Lou Gosset Junior as his security guard in The Principal or the other very touching film of Stand and Deliver where Edward James Olmos turns lazy Hispanic high school seniors into AP Calculus whizzes. I think it is also a testament to how at risk some of our schools are around this country, and what we have to do every day to prove our worth so that we aren't taking over by the state or replaced by a charter school.