Teacher (2023) – Lesson Learned

Teacher is available as part of the Melbourne Documentary Film Festival

There is no job that’s more thankless than that of a school teacher, this is a universal truth that has only become more accurate as time goes on. Not only is it a job that requires incredible time, knowledge and passion but in dealing with kids there’s the requirement of almost saintly patience and ability to deal with just about anything that comes up, all while being obscenely underpaid and working with limited resources because for some reason society has decided to make this job as hard as possible. This was all true BEFORE a global pandemic but when that happened and teaching had to be done online it got exponentially harder. In Teacher, we get a glimpse into just how much harder.

While Teacher is very generally about what teachers have to go through, specifically in America (but let’s be honest, it translates to pretty much anywhere because treating teachers like crap is not a cottage industry that only exists in America) it centers that discussion on the first few years of a brand new teacher’s career. In this case the teacher, Nkanga Nsa, is going through her year of training Ito be a teacher, before actually starting to be a teacher on her own. During this process the intensity of the job is laid bare, made even harder by the fact that Nkanga is a mother trying to raise her own child while also trying to help in the growth of a couple of dozen more children. The more time we spend with her (and talk to other teachers along the way) the more it’s clear just how truly difficult this job can be.

What’s perhaps most heartbreaking about Teacher is that most of what’s being talked about is stuff that we already know. Everyone knows on some level that being a teacher is insanely hard, not only because of the work that needs to be done during class but the work to prepare for class, the work to help your students when they need it and the ability to adjust to the different states of learning that they have to deal with. Showing how that became almost impossible with Covid and then with people attacking teachers for daring to not want to get Covid is heartbreaking because you can see these teachers just want to do what’s right and get attacked from all sides because of it. By the way, do you remember that? Remember when we said teachers should go back into schools and teach during a pandemic where they were at high risk of catching a fatal illness before we had vaccines? God we should be glad that teachers just want respect and not to crack open skulls to drink the gooey inside… sorry, tangent.

Over the course of an hour we can see the toll all of this takes on our main teacher, seeing Nkanga dealing with the students and the intensity of the workload while being a parent makes you wonder just what kind of superhuman can do all this. When a single card brings up that she might be getting burnout at 8 months, it feels like a miracle she made it to 8 months before that point. Even getting a glimpse of the emotional strain that being a teacher involves will make anyone feel bad and the film doesn’t shy away from the reality that this kind of stress is forcing people to leave the profession, something that will have huge impacts in the long term when we just run out of good teachers.

Teacher also touches on the cultural climate, at least what the climate was at the time of filming. Back then the big talk was about teachers needing to get back in the classroom post-Covid and how them not doing that meant they didn’t care about kids (why yes this is presented via a Fox News clip, how did you guess?) and hearing how that impacted the teachers in this documentary is heartbreaking. They clearly love these kids and want to do everything they can to help them but they were asked to basically risk their lives when it wasn’t essential and the insanity of that is certainly touched on… but only touched.

Teacher’s only problem is one that’s due entirely to the length of time they have. With under an hour to talk about this topic we only get to skim the surface of the issue, point to what’s wrong and say “That’s bad” before having to move on. Now, that can absolutely do some good in getting people to notice the problem that’s emerging but a lot of this is stuff most people already know, we need to go deeper to make it sink in for those who are refusing to get it (aka those people who see the Fox News clip about how teachers are evil and agree with it). 

It also doesn’t really get a chance to really expand on just how truly bad some of these pressures are, pressures that have only gotten worse thanks to fascists people like Ron Desantis making laws prohibiting them from doing their jobs correctly. Hell, it barely even touches on the issue of how little they’re paid which is another on the long list of things that needs to be seriously addressed. Obviously, with a little more time, it feels like this documentary could’ve talked about that and probably would’ve done a spectacular job because the things it does dive into it does better than just about anything else, but it would be lovely to see the extended version if one exists.

Teacher is still drastically important because it’s doing something that we frankly don’t do enough of in society… it humanizes teachers. It lets us into their world to know just how much stress is being put on them. Sure we might know it happens but you don’t really know the full extent of it until you see it and this film lets that happen. Its subjects are incredibly easy to empathise with and by the end, you will be hoping your kids have a teacher who is half as dedicated as Nkanga Nsa… and that they hopefully will actually be able to do their job without a bunch of absolute morons making their lives harder.