Sage Advice From the Movies
Saturday, April 30, 2011 at 4:10PM Always reward correct answers with chocolate!
The next time anybody tells you what you want to hear, give them a candy bar. (Unless that somebody is a dog or an unfortunate human with allergies) Positive reinforcement, baby!
"The Great Lesson: Chocolate, the Ultimate Reward" -Nathaniel Rogers
This worked for Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds. Let that be a lesson to us all!
Any teachers reading? Have you tried this or do you do boring things like give them good grades when they answer well?
I did this drawing for Illustration Friday since the week's theme is "lesson" and the very first thing that came to mind was the ridiculous Dangerous Minds (1995) which I love, don't you? I love chocolate more than just about anything and if "White Bread" Michelle Pfeiffer was tossing it to me for being a good boy I'd probably love it even more.
Next up in the ridiculous teacher genre:
BAD TEACHER with Cameron Diaz. We didn't do a yes no maybe so on that trailer but are you excited for it?
Reader Comments (17)
Actually it's not so far from the truth. All real teachers of young children use some form of reward system. Gold Stars, etc. Recently did an internship and the teacher had a board where when the kids misbehaved they had to move their card to the right, when they got to the red box, it meant a note to the parents. If they moved from right to left it meant they had improved. When she thought they did good work, she gave out tickets. Kid with most tickets got a prize at the end of the week and so on. Good grades are a given when you have good students who really want to learn. It's the ones you need to motivate that are tough. Any kind of positive reinforcement would work wonders for some including chocolates. :)
Ha, I love DANGEROUS MINDS. Of course, that's because my older sister was a big fan of Pfeiffer back in the day - so I grew up on two Michelle movies, this and ONE FINE DAY. Both of which I still adore.
I wish I ever had a teacher like Pfeiffer. Instead, when I was learning how to write I had this teacher who was very fond of using a ruler every time you tried to use your left hand (it was devilish! Gotta love religious-related education, ha!).
It's a bid sad children might need positive reinforcement just like dogs who fulfill their tasks dutifully, but better than negative reinforcement any day. Although in the movie, wouldn't be having Pfeiffer as your teacher enough motivation to attend classes?
Funny drawing, btw. I've trying to find out what's written on the background of the blackboard for a while :)
iggy -- for a clue: if you save the photo it's bigger and you can read it better.
and there's there are 3 pfeiffer jokes in the drawing :)
I love the 'Batman Returns' hidden "messages" ;)
But I can only find two jokes... The 'Batman Returns' one and the 'Grease 2' one... What's the other? Any hints please?
well there are two separate batman returns references. one is on the chalkboard, one is elsewhere
Ah ok, I noticed the three then ;) And you could count for, I love how you transformed (fashioned?) the Catwoman costume into a coat.
Interesting fashion call, but that costume was amazing as it was :)
Nathaniel, I thank you for introducing me to Illustration Friday with your last IF entry (the Black Swan one), I followed the link and started doing those entries every weekend and they're awesome!!
Jenn -- glad to hear it. i just checked out your blog. i must try this odosketch thing.
The Shrek's department store cat pattern on Luann's top is genius.
Kurtis -- it was so hard to do. i couldn't find a photo without catwoman's face looking through it. painstaking!
I reward strong moments in high school theater rehearsals with a few minutes of unregulated gossip. That always gets the drama kids' blood flowing.
I reward high school math with pretty much the same thing, Robert G. A little bit of drama and then we can discuss exponential growth. Good ol' brain breaks, and then back on task.
To answer your other question, Nathaniel, everything about the Bad Teacher trailer made me want to throw up. I like my teachers like Tina Fey in Mean Girls (but that's probably because I, too, teach Calculus). I like the movies that show teachers loving their profession and caring how the students do, but also show them as flawed individuals (in other words, human).
LOL @ me barely noticing you do your own drawings. This one's fabulous.
She was so naturally sexbomb in that movie, I cannot even.
Nat, I'm embarrassed to confess that it took me several minutes to "get" the Catwoman reference on the blackboard - very cleverly done!