Tag: movies

Nine Times

This morning was dreary: gray, rainy, and far too chilly for mid-May. On the drive to work, the spitting drizzle was too sporadic to merit even the slowest setting of the windshield wipers, but too persistent to be ignored. I rotated the on/off knob back and forth, back and forth. In the classroom, only dim light filtered through the high windows, making the space too dark for reading. I was forced to flick on the harsh fluorescent lights. Students groaned. Even inside the building, the air felt heavy. No one wanted to be at school.

Heads nodded towards desks during period 1. Half-lidded eyes flickered open, then closed. Students strove valiantly to pay attention, to fight off the malaise, but it was no use: several slept during work time. After a few half-hearted attempts to keep them on task, I let them rest. 

I had hope for period 2 – grade 9 – but they wandered in, half-dazed. I surveyed them as they read and realized that there was no way they were going to write an in-class essay today – or at least no way they would write a good one. We needed a change of plans. 

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. None of these ninth graders had ever seen it. Just what the day called for. On it went. 

80s movies can be tough for the students. They start more slowly and rely more heavily on dialogue than their modern counterparts. Worse, I wouldn’t let the students use cell phones – even though we were taking a break – so they were stuck actually watching. And then we got to this scene:

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off – Nine Times

“Why are they so worked up about him missing nine times?” asked a student.

I snorted.

“Well, there was a time when if you missed ten days, you had to repeat the class.”

The students close enough to overhear this discussion looked at me in disbelief. And no wonder: over a fifth of this class has already missed over nine times; another handful have already missed seven or eight. And we still have five weeks to go.

“Like, you failed just because you didn’t come?” 

“Exactly like that,” I said.

And we went back to watching the movie. I’d like to think that the students had a renewed respect for Ferris, but I suspect they were simply shaking their heads at the weird things we used to do in the olden days.

(In case you’re wondering, it’s still a good film.)

Up: Slice of Life 24/31 #SOL20

Thomas has been asking to watch Up for the better part of a week. For reasons he cannot explain – but which he assures us are not merely to torture his brother – Eric has been saying no. Because we are trying to establish some sort of family togetherness or, at a minimum, some basic negotiation skills, we’ve been choosing films that “everyone” wants to watch. Thomas says that means Eric usually “wins;” even I have to admit that Eric’s sheer stubbornness means we watch quite a few of his choices.

Last night, Eric relented. Surprised, Andre and I relented, too. It was a little too late to start, and no one believed that the boys would “go straight to bed” without at least a bit of a read aloud. Work from home has started in earnest and we really had too much to do: Andre needed to clean the kitchen; I needed to create a lesson. “Fine,” we conceded, “you can watch the first 45 minutes while we work. Then it’s straight to bed!” The boys agreed happily.

But then we only have Disney+ on the upstairs tv, and they wanted to watch in the living room. The Amazon dongle wasn’t working for reasons we couldn’t quite fathom. I’d been doing IT support for the boys all day long and was near the end of my tether. Andre offered his phone, assuring us that he could live without it for 45 minutes, but somehow I was on the hook for remembering another password and Andre chose the wrong HDMI port. Thomas kept trying to help; Andre kept saying no; Eric refused to take part. By the time we got everything set up, we were all four on the couch in the living room, but no one was particularly settled.

When the movie finally started I looked at Andre and said, “Stay for the first part. I know how much you love it.” The opening montage, ten minutes that shows Ellie and Carl’s whole life together, engulfs us, and by the end we are holding hands and Andre is crying – he always does. The boys snuggle closer, not quite understanding, but not quite not understanding, either. Our battered old brown leather couch, pushed too close to the television, surrounded by our life in semi-unpacked boxes, holds our family in its embrace, and no one gets up. We just watch. Together. We laugh and talk, colours animating our faces, love animating our faces: a whole life in one short montage.

 

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