We are happy to announce that our first three short films, TEACHED Vol. I, are now available for streaming on Vimeo-on-Demand! We made these films because we believe that more people need to understand how and why we still have a race-based "achievement gap" in the U.S. More people to understand the consequences of inaction especially for low-income urban youth who are hit hard by our failure to provide every student with an excellent educational experience.
Please watch the films, share them with friends and colleagues, and consider hosting a screening to get your community talking about these issues (learn how to host a screening here):
The TEACHED Vol. I films examine:
- The school-to-prison pipeline through the eyes of an incarcerated young man from South Central, L.A. in The Path to Prison
- The rules and policies around the teaching profession that make it more like a factory or manual-labor job than one that requires a four-year college degree...and the impact that has on teachers and students alike in The Blame Game
- What founders of highly-effective charter schools say matters the most in Unchartered Territory
Go HERE to stream the films on-demand.
And read this piece by Thomas Toch in the Atlantic describing some practical, lasting effect of the Obama Administration's work to bring commonsense to teacher evaluation. It seems to us that whenever someone proposes actually holding teachers accountable for teaching (e.g. allowing principals to walk into their classrooms more than once a year to evaluate them; having real consequences for ineffective teaching or egregious behavior; etc.) there is a tsunami of push-back and vitriol that is knee-jerk, sadly effective and incredibly depressing if you know the very real impact their "teacher protection at all costs" policies have on students, especially low-income students who get the worst of the worst in our "zip code"-based system.
In our country -- the wealthiest on earth -- we don't even have a system for ensuring teachers who have abused children are not able to simply cross a state line and get a new job (must-read in USAToday).
We do not believe it is "anti-teacher" to want the profession to do its job of uplifting and supporting its members who work hard while also ensuring that abusive, ineffective or no-show teachers lose their privilege to serve children. Every single day in school matters...for every student.
Please watch the films, pass them on and let us know what you think. Facebook: TEACHEDFilms, Twitter: TEACHED, LoudspkrFilms and KellyAmis (Director).
