The First Year

This was an EXCELLENT video because it showed the real world events of a teacher's first year. A new teacher could learn a lot from the video and it would be interesting to watch.

I don't own this product (yet), but it was shown in one of my teacher certification classes. I was really inspired by how much the teachers were willing to sacrifice to make sure their students had at least the opportunity to succeed. However, I was saddened that they HAD to give so much because often the district/administration wasn't doing its part. The documentary showed teaching in a very realistic light rather than the "oh, well they get weekends and summers off" light that many people think of it as. This video was shown in a class of 23 potential teachers and I really think it strengthened our resolve to become teachers.Update===I now own this DVD and have been teaching for almost five years and can say that this film does a great job of depicting the frustrations of rookie teachers and the obstacles teachers have to overcome just to do their jobs. If you're considering becoming a teacher, I would definitely recommend buying this movie to get a realistic idea of what you're getting into.[...]

Material is dated! Teachers do experience the samefrustrations. I guess when I purcahsed the productI didn't realize that it was already ten years + old.

I used this for my introduction to teaching class. Excellent view into the first year of a teacher.

The First Year (2001) directed by Davis Guggenheim seems like a very realistic documentary. This movie overviewed the difficulties teachers can have during their first year of teaching. It addressed problems such as ill-behaved students and under budgeted programs. The documentary follows the lives of five teachers beginning their careers in California at inner city schools. They all taught elementary grades except for one who taught ESL to older kids, perhaps Junior High. One thing that they all had in common though was their passion to be invested in each child’s life. They were all extremely devoted to their class, especially the students who had behavior issues.Two teachers, the male teachers, stood out to me the most. One of them, Mr. Rabb, a kindergarten teacher, was particularly dedicated to Tyquan, a student who needed speech therapy. Mr. Rabb did everything he could to get Tyquan the help he needed. He constantly tried connecting with the school speech therapist (which never turned into a regular thing). He called different hospitals to figure out where Tyquan could go for therapy that was covered by Medicaid. In the end, since the parents were uninvolved, Mr. Rabb began tutoring Tyquan after school himself.Like Mr. Rabb, I found it inspiring how willing the teachers were to do home visits if necessary. Many parents were not interested in showing up for appointments or coming to conferences, so these teachers went to their students’ homes when it was necessary to get the parents in the loop.This movie was lacking in a main focus though. I felt like the struggles demonstrated in the film, could’ve been struggles of any teacher with experience. The struggles were not unique to a first-year. The film also focused on one single student in each class, which took away from all the good that was probably happening in the classrooms. The movie didn’t address how the teachers dealt with advanced students at all.Overall, this movie was very realistic and showed some struggles teachers may have, but it didn’t focus in deep enough. It was too much to try and cover an entire year, with 5 different teachers, and multiple struggles.

This documentary showed some troubles that a few teachers encountered in their first years teaching. Some of these problems included students disrupting class, parents not coming in for meetings, and inadequate school resources. The documentary showed how each scenario was handled by the teachers and sometimes the teachers talked about what was happening.When one teacher faced the problem of a student’s parents not coming to conferences, the principal told him to call and say he was coming over to their home. I thought this seemed a bit extreme. It seems unprofessional for a teacher to just come over to a student’s home uninvited. Other teachers had students who were disruptive or disrespectful; they responded by making their students write reflections on their behavior. Some students had to take these reflections home and read them to their parents and have them sign them. Other teachers had to work through inadequate sources. One example was a speech teacher who didn’t come in often enough and so a child did not receive the help that was deserved. Another example was teachers not having their own classrooms.I think it’s a decent movie that shows the realities of teaching and the variety of problems that teachers encounter every day. The movie also showed that the teachers found that it is worth it.