video recommendation

For any education related readers, my big recommendation from last year was to find and rent the movie CHALK

Today I just finished watching a french movie called Entre les murs, whose English title will be THE CLASS. I found it because I try to watch films that win awards at the various Independent film events, and this was a winner at one of them.

I'm guessing it close to 8th grade students (13-15) years age, just outside of Paris in the "hood" where the various immigrant communities from the various former French colonies have come to. So the students are African Black, Arab (Morocco), from Mali, the Caribbean and such. In a way similar to the various Hispanic mixes (Mexican, Nicaraguan, Dominican, Venezuelan...) I was seeing when I taught at Lee High School.

It realistic, I am supposing. Small school and they show some of the teacher to teacher stuff, before and after school, but mainly concentrates on a French class (so like an English class here [grammar and writing]), but the student dress, attitudes, priorities were very typical of things I have seen stateside.