How does Hollywood treat the classroom? Your planning chair has collected over 80 Hollywood films which tells the stories of teachers and coaches in the classroom. For eight years your 207th chair has made presentations at the International Conference on Teaching and Learning, plus many presentations at other conferences (Such as League of Innovations) and public / college faculty in-service days. When asked what I teach, it is a show stopper: "Chemistry".
Then comes the next question, you didn't show us clips of a chemistry teacher or chemistry classroom/lab. There are very few films Hollywood has made depicting chemistry teachers as heroes to the students or "super" teachers or great one-on-one tutors.
The truth is "we are kind-of boring to the public" and the few films that exist are either comedies, like "It Happens Every Spring*" (1949) or have us manufacturing illegal drugs, such as the very popular AMC TV Seies "Breaking Bad" (2009-2013).
Now Professor Mike Reynolds (our Banquet Speaker and former teacher-in-space astronaut) and myself have had fun presenting on our favorite classic science fiction movies: "Forbidden Planet" is Mike's and the original "The Day the Earth Stood Still" is mine.
The original 1971 movie, "The Andromeda Strain*" is reviewed as a good film, but too much time is spent on the "Scientific Method" which is one of our learning outcomes for all our chemistry courses. Many times we at North Campus show this film in lab, especially during weeks which have a school holiday.
If you have not seen the film, it will be shown at 5:30-7:38 pm in D Building D207 on Thursday October 9, followed by my classic Hollywood pick for the conference "No Highway in the Sky" at 7:45pm (98 minutes).
If we had kept strictly to the conference theme a very speacial film depects a true story which occured in 1957: October Sky. Also there was a 70's film called Soet Green which deal with our 22nd centry problems about food and energy.As far as TV there is the classic 60s "Star Trek", followed four more tv series in the 80s and 90s and 10 Hollywood movies through last year. Colleges have courses 'the physics of Star Trek' and even textbooks written. Of course this 207th Chair is a Trekie. But they have a "Science Officer" from Spock to Data who we like to identify with.
Since 2000, chemist are deem " lab rats" by Hollywood, and have advanced to being cops with guns by the six CSI series solving brutal murders through chemistry and science. There is more lab time (myths and parallels) to what a forensic scientists does in the lab through 15 seasons of CSI-Las Vegas, 11 seasons of NCSI, 10 seasons of CSI-Miami, nine seasons of CSI-New York and five seasons of NCSI-Los Angles.