Movies for Motivation and Inspiration

Is there any teacher that has not felt that their students were sad or with no energy? Have you felt that your students do not want to work, do not want to write or learn, because they think that those things are worthless? If you have tried a motivational speech under those circumstances, my dear teacher here you have a new option. If you want to show your students how great learning can be, how many wonderful things they can achieve as students or you just want to cheer them up in the middle of a depressing day by showing how important is not to give up, a movie might be an interesting and attractive way to do this.

We have already talked about how children and teenagers (and adults of course) love stories. Consequently, sharing a motivational and inspirational story with your students can help them see new perspectives and open their eyes to new ways of seeing their lives. In order to illustrate how magical a movie can be I would like to share a personal experience. It was my first year in High School, and our Language teacher tried to explain how necessary and important writing was for us as students. I have to admit that for us, writing was not an activity that we loved (at all! ). The worst thing of all at that moment was that our teacher warned us that throughout that year we would have to write A LOT (Imagine our faces when he said that).

In our next class, after this speech, our teacher came back with something new: a movie. All of us felt very enthusiastic about it, and we silently watched the movie. It was a very inspirational story about a teacher that was just starting to give classes in a school were students had very serious problems at home and with their lives. Thus, they did not care about learning and they were very disrespectful with this new teacher. In despite of this, the teacher kept trying, and in the end she was able to gain their students' confidence in a very special way: she showed them Ana Frank's story and she invited them to start writing a diary just like she did. At first, the students were not very interested, but after a few days, they starting writing every single day! Through this diary, the new teacher knew all the problems her students had, and everything change from that moment on.

The movie I am talking about is called "Freedom Writers" (2007), it was based on a real story, and our teacher made us write a diary too after watching this movie. Amazingly, our teacher had the same effect on us that the new teacher in the movie had, and we wrote in our diaries every single day. In the end, we ended up writing better and facing this task with more energy and love.

"Freedom Writers" (2007) is just one of many inspirational movies we can find out there. Just to give you a couple of them, here you have a list of the TOP 10 INSPIRATIONAL TEACHER MOVIES according to AboutEntertainment
Additionally, here you have one of most touching scenes from this movie. Enjoy! and start believing in the power of stories.