Sweet Stories for Teacher Appreciation Week

Starring Robin Williams in one of his most famous roles and a number of young actors who would go on to prominence in their own right, Dead Poets Society is about a literature teacher in the 1950s, teaching the students of an all-boys boarding school how to break from the norm. The film is a classic example of the impact a good teacher can have on students, regardless of background, and the negative impacts of discouraging young learners from thinking for themselves.

Mr. Kermit was once a promising teacher whose career was derailed by a cheating scandal. Now, he's been assigned Room 117, a class full of students who have been quarantined from the rest of the school for being troublemakers, misfits, and academically derailed. Mr. Kermit wants to retire; the students don't want to be here. Told in alternating perspectives, strong personalities come together to learn how, just maybe, they have something new yet to learn.

Jack Black's own personal favorite film from his body of work, School of Rock follows an unsuccessful musician who cons his way into a teaching job to get some quick cash. What starts as a scheme turns into a passion project as the would-be teacher finds that his love of rock can bring something new to his class of private school students.

Better known for his starring roles in film and television, this memoir by Tony Danza explores the year he spent trying a new career: teaching 10th grade English at Philadelphia's largest high school. Humorous and insightful, Tony Danza struggles with being on the teacher's side of the teacher-student divide, and all the lessons he has yet to learn about his own time as a public school student.

This hit movie based on the true story found in The Freedom Writers' Diary by the Freedom Writers and Erin Gruwell, follows an optimistic new teacher who finds herself teaching combative high school students, divided over differences in neighborhood, class, and race. After assigning the students to write diaries about their lives, Gruwell works with her students to find their connections and a new way forward.

A series of humorous personal essays from a longtime public school teacher, Shannon Reed lets readers view the highs and lows of teaching young people.

Ed Boland was inspired, like many others, to leave a long career and attempt to teach high schoolers in New York City; he met setbacks, tragedy, and despair. A necessary contrast to more straightforward inspirational stories like The Freedom Writers, Boland chronicles a year of struggles without any easy answer or neat happy ending, exploring what it means to inspire and teach in the modern public school system.

In this moving film based on the novel Push by Sapphire, 16-year-old Precious can't read or write, a symptom of the overwhelming abuse she receives at home. Moved to an alternative school, a sympathetic teacher and a social worker help Precious find hope.

Noah, Nadia, Ethan, and Julian, are good at answering questions; they're a successful Academic Bowl team, after all. But there are some questions they can't answer. Like how, exactly, they all found themselves inexplicably connected, and why their teacher, Mrs. Olinski, chose four outcasts for her Academic Bowl team in the first place. But, perhaps, as they compete to answer questions, they'll find the solutions to the harder questions underneath.

This middle-grade book is notable for a frank depiction of a teacher's struggle with a newly-acquired disability.