ABSTRACT
Having been passionate about the movies, I have been able to observe the power of cinema to produce the unexpected—feelings and affects for which an account cannot easily be made. In retrospect, there is no doubt in my mind that those great teacher films of the late 1960s (To Sir with Love, Up the Down Staircase, Rachel, Rachel, and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) influenced my decision to become a teacher. I formed wishful attachments to screen teachers like Jean Brodie, investing in them utopian hopes about devotion, defiance, and heroic solutions to learning and its discontents. I recognize my stubborn old tendencies in the hurried optimism of the beginning teachers I teach. Not only my own fantasies of teaching, but also those of my students encourage me to examine what idealistic expressions mask: the hesitancy, for example, to reckon with the vulnerabilities, ambivalences, and uncertainties of classroom life. In fact, it is possible as a beginning teacher to form a philosophy of education without ever seriously considering the limitations of mastery that education opens up.
