I re-watched School of Rock last night, for the first time as an actual teacher, and walked away with ten lessons for teachers, which you can read right here. This is the first lesson, unpacked.
[It’s been ten years, but I’ll go ahead and say there are a few spoilers coming. You’ve been warned!]
Let’s be honest. While many teachers go into education because they feel called to the field from an early age, many others fall into it backwards. It’s a means to an end, a way to pay the bills. They do it, and they enjoy it, and they love the students, but if they could rub the lamp and finagle three wishes from the genie, then they’d follow a different dream in a heartbeat.
This is written for those teachers.
You know who I’m talking about: the baseball coach who thought he would play in the majors; the math teacher who still tries to find time to write the Great American Novel; the drama teacher who imagined she would direct Shakespeare in New York; many teachers – deep down – feel like they’ve had to let go of their dreams. It doesn’t mean they’re bad teachers, but what it might mean is that they might drag their feet to work each day.
This letting go of dreams is a recurring theme in School of Rock, where Dewey’s brother has chosen to leave behind his dream of being a musician to pursue a more secure lifestyle as a teacher. Dewey finds himself in that same situation, fired from his rock band, and surreptitiously taking a substitute teaching job offered to his brother to make money to pay the rent.
To Dewey, the education system is “the man”. The enemy right from the start. His very presence in the school shows his lack of respect for the institution, with the job only being a falsely gained means to an end. He is even brazen enough to repeat the cliché that “those who can’t do, teach” while talking with the other teachers!
Dewey slowly shows a change of heart as he secretly teaches the students to play rock music, while seemingly not teaching them anything else (he definitely is teaching them more than rock music, but I’ll get to that later). Dewey’s turning point is at the Battle of the Bands, when the wildly popular prepubescent band blows away the audience, but loses the competition. Dewey is angry and disappointed until the students remind him what he said before, that they weren’t in the competition to win, but to rock.
In the process, something clicks, and we – along with Dewey – realize that the saying should actually be, “those who can do well, teach well“. This movie has been an exploration by Dewey to discover that he is actually good at the job he’d always hated before – teaching – and that through teaching he can actually live his dream while helping guide others to achieving that same dream.
And in the end, owning and operating his own private School of Rock studio, he’s finally living his dream.
He’s teaching, and he loves it.
Even if he might not be opening for Motörhead.
So, if you are a teacher who has dreams that seem to be just over the horizon, just out of reach, be encouraged! Don’t grow resentful that you aren’t achieving some certain dream for your life, rather let your dream fuel what you are achieving!
Let your dream ignite your passion, and in the process, you might just find that you are not only a better teacher, but that acceptance and embracing of teaching might be the thing that puts your dream within reach.
And a word to the wise. If your unfulfilled dreams involve achieving a certain level of fame or notoriety, just remember the countless teachers who might not be well known outside of their community, but within the community they have had lasting impacts on countless lives.
They – because they were teaching their passion and their dreams – left behind something far greater.
They left behind a legacy.
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Nate Fleming is living the dream, teaching at an international school in China, just across the bay from Hong Kong, and writing children’s books while teaching students how to write. He’s just published his first novel, Thimblerig’s Ark.
Thimblerig's Ark 