Lions For Lambs

What makes a good teacher? There are many traits and characteristics that when combined in one person make a great educator. What is the public schools role in our society? Is it a place to educate our children and prepare them for real life, a place to fill their minds with facts and data, a place to send them to keep them off the streets? Lions for Lambs really illuminated for me the importance of shaping and preparing our children to contribute to our society; we must equip students with the skills to think for themselves, to improve our future and most importantly to instill our hopes in them. Their choices can and will change policies, customs, rules, practices, and much more in the world. I think the most compelling scenes in the movie were the dialogues between professor and student. Is the professor a salesman and what is he selling...the student to the student, or the person to themselves. It is our job to find the potential in every person and convince them that they are worth something. Sometimes as students we become so caught up with seeing things from other peoples perspectives and learning about the next and greatest things we forget to reflect on our own views. As a teacher I want to have morals and philosophies to live by, that way I won't wake up one day and ask myself what I have been doing the last 20 years.