I continue my quest to find a good movie about teachers or teaching. This break I watched "The Emperor's Club" with Kevin Kline which was somewhat interesting (mostly the part with Emile Hirsch as a young screw-up) and "Chalk," the supposed mockumentary executive produced by Morgan Spurlock. I could not figure that one out. It felt very realistic and horrifying and sad and depressing. Then there was a fantasty sequence that made me realize that it was all fiction. But it wasn't that funny. The situations the new teachers found themselves in all felt way too real and scary and demoralizing. Class after class of high school kids whose only real reason for being there was to be entertained by the buffoonery of misguided, overzealous young teachers who want to win Teacher of the Year or just get through a day with a shred of dignity intact.

Kevin Kline stars in the first movie about a history teacher (why is it always history teachers?) who runs this super-annoying contest where students out-do each other in Julius Caesar trivia. The winner gets to wear a laurel crown and a toga. Of course Emile Hirsch is a cheater and he grows up to continue to be a cheater, and that's the point, that humans have primary characteristics that never change and what you were in high school is what you'll be as an adult.

It was shot at a beautiful old school somewhere on the East coast. The credits said something like the Emma Something School. I don't remember, but it was gorgeous.

I also watched "Frost/Nixon" on my son's XBox (the dvd player wouldn't work, but now I know how to set up for Grand Theft Auto IV should I ever feel the desire). Now that was a good movie. Incredible to see the difference in the attitude about Nixon and any apologizing or confessing he might have been expected to do versus our own recently departed President Bush. What a huge difference. I recommend that movie to everyone.

School starts again on Tuesday. Here we are in April. We have a poetry event coming up for the middle school at the very end of this month, then a four-day camping trip north toward Kernville in the western Sierras. Then the last of May and the first week in June, and then graduation. Many changes afoot. The year has quite whipped by, and yet when I think of specific issues that came up, I realize somewhat painfully the outstanding moments of challenge and compromise that marked each week. It was a tough one. Has been a tough one. Ain't over yet, either.