Lions for Lambs

I recently watched Lions for Lambs as a part of my Ed Psych class and it was one of those movies that stuck with me for a while even after it was finished. The parts that I found to be most relative and understandable to me were the scenes between the professor and his absentee student. The teacher was trying to get the student to see his own potential, something that was proving to be quite difficult. I had a hard time during parts of the movie deciding how I could make it relevant to my own future teaching experiences. I thought that since I am planning on being an elementary educator, that it will be very different for me, and that I probably wouldn't gain a lot from watching this movie. But after watching, and thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that as an educator, it will be my job as well to help students recognize their own potential. In fact, I'm almost positive that that was part of my high school's mission statement "educating students to reach their full potential!" I don't think it matters if you're teaching five year olds, or twenty-five year olds, it is still important to make sure that all students recognize their potential. As teachers, we need to make sure that we too recognize the potential in all students, and that we set high expectations for them to work up to. As the movie says, we need to be able to sell them, to them. That is what I will take from this movie, and I think that it will be a good thing to remind myself in the years to follow.