On today’s podcast, we will be taking a deeper look into how teachers become influential to their students based on what they say and how they say it from specific films and personal experiences. The three points of view that will be discussed will be from Makayla’s, from a strict catholic, all girls background, Thuy’s, from a suburban, public school background, and Aaron Guggenheim’s, from his experiences as both a teacher and a student.

In the films Freedom Writers, To Sir with Love, and School of Rock, the teachers have made significant impacts on their students.They scrapped the traditional curriculum and taught their students what they believed was important. From Erin focusing on the students’ emotions and backgrounds, Sir teaching real life lessons, like how to dress and behave properly, to Dewey disregarding the curriculum in order to teach his students rock and roll, all three instructors emphasized varying parts of their lessons in accordance with what they believed was important.

We also dive into our own experiences in the academic world. Makayla’s experience in school was a lot stricter than Thuy’s. She had more negativity stem from her teachers because of the specific lessons they were trying to teach. On the other hand, Thuy’s experience in public education was completely different. Teachers avoided controversial topics in order to prevent conflict. Guggenheim, though, believes that it is difficult to completely disregard his own opinions from his teachings, but he also notes that there is value to infusing his opinions in certain lessons. His method of teaching has drastically changed from how he was taught because he did not necessarily agree with all his previous instructors’ approaches to teaching.

From this, we can conclude that it is difficult to completely remove opinion from teaching because we are all human. Teachers all have their own experiences and backgrounds that shape them into who they are, impacting how and what they teach. However, there is a line to be drawn when it comes to fact and opinion, and where the line stands is still up to debate.