The Ron Clark Story on TNT Sunday, August 13
A Review by Wanda Sabir

Still photograph of "The Ron Clark Story", Matthew Perry (L)

Ron Clark is a teacher who cares about students. In the recent TNT film airing Sunday, August 13, 8/7c p.m., actor Matthew Perry portrays a man who believes in a child’s ability to learn, score higher than expected and lead a fulfilling life as an adult. He does not buy into the negative stereotypical forecasts and teaches his students to turn off the TV and use their own eyes. The saying “when much is expected, much is achieved,” is correct. Children respond to encouragement especially if this is followed by practical information about how to achieve one’s goals. This is something Ron Clark has in huge supply(http://www.tnt.tv/title/?oid=633246).

One of the first things “Carter” sees when he walks into the rural North Carolina school as a long term substitute is a kid standing in the trash. When asked why, the child says his teacher told him he couldn’t learn so he might as well get tossed out with the trash.

Mr. Clark told him his name, then asked the child, “What is my name?”

“Mr. Clark,” the child answers.

“There, you learned something,” he tells the bewildered child as he lifts him from the trash can.

“Are you going to be out new teacher?” the child asks.

Four years later, Clark decides he should leave his current assignment after he has raised his class’ state exam scores for consecutive years placing them in the top percentile of all schools, not just public ones. Clark tells his parents he is looking for a more challenging position and heads for Harlem and looks for work. A lot of doors are slammed in his face before he lands the job at PS-83. He literally – if the film is to be believed, stumbles into a position as a clearly exasperated teacher roughs up a child in front of an astonished principal and with the threat of termination looming over his head, plus child abuse charges, quits.

At PS-83 test scores are down and the administrators and kids are tired. The kids Clarks tells the principal he wants haven’t had a regular teacher all year. Clark promises them that he is staying. He also tells the skittish 12 year olds that they can catch up and at the end if the year they have, (http://www.oprah.com/rys/omag/rys_omag_200111_phenom.jhtml).

Still photograph of "The Ron Clark Story", Matthew Perry

Eager and excited, Clark visits all his children’s homes before he starts work to introduce himself to the families so they can work together, he says to help the children succeed. The teacher home visits are met with mixed response; most parents shown in the film are too busy with their lives to see how important their role is in their children’s success in school. The film doesn’t show the families which support their children. I found it hard to believe Clark had a classroom full of children where not one parent believed in her or his kid. Subtle omissions like this make the film border on propaganda. Well it is propaganda, but all propaganda isn’t bad, just the stuff that furthers the empire – a white supremacist empire where African people need saviors like Clark. [My community has the tools to save itself, and I would like to see more films that show this too.]

Catching up is one thing, passing the state test is another. No one, except Clark believes his students can pass. They don’t even believe it, but they believe him and go into the classroom to take the state exam at the end of the year prepared to do their best.

Clark works during the daytime at the school, and moonlights at a restaurant where the waiters dress as Shakespearean characters. He takes the gig while he is searching for work then keeps the position. Is this a subtle statement on the inadequacy of a teacher salary to meet the costs of living in New York?

At the theme restaurant he meets “Marissa Vega” as “Cleopatra,” (actress Melissa De Sousa) an actress who has settled into a role with “Antony” also an actor and waiter at the restaurant, and forgotten her dreams of stardom. Early on when Clark gives the children an assignment to keep a journal to record their dreams, after a week all except one child, Badriyyah, return with their tablets empty. More then anything else, Clark helps the children think beyond the limitations of ethnicity, class, gender, delete circumstances beyond their control like the families they were born into. He teaches them to dream.

The North Carolina native’s attitude toward the children is what ultimately wins them over. He doesn’t believe they are bad or stupid and constantly advocates for them with the principal who thinks he is eccentric, but Clark is clearly having an impact, so he tolerates his whims. Now whether Carter's kids will produce the results promised on the state test remains to be seen.

When Clark steps into the classroom the first time he does so with three rules, the first one is “we are a family,” the second, “we treat each other with respect.” He also has the children address him as sir, and they have to line-up to go to lunch and proceed as a group, rather than run down the hall.

Outside of school, he makes himself available to the children to help them with homework on weekends. He keeps his word and stays, the first teacher the children can rely on, the first teacher who relies on them to keep their end of the bargain.

He is funny and hip, yet the separation between child and adult, teacher and student responsibilities is clear in a way the feature film Half-Nelson blurs, which is thematically what that film opening at Landmark Opera Plaza in San Francisco is about – a teacher who gets sucked into the dysfunction and the little girl who keeps him sane.

[Most of the kids’ families have just one hardworking mom; other parents are new immigrants. Many parents have carried into their children’s generation their insecurities, beliefs and values antithetical to those their child is trying to negotiate away from home. To actress Bren Eatcott’s Badriyah, (first generation Indian, Clark tells her she can be cool and smart too. To Hannah Hodson’s Shameika Wallace’s mother, a girl who seems to stir up trouble the way scientists solicit chemical reactions, he tells this parent that her daughter is perhaps one of the brightest kids in his class. To Brandon Mychal Smith as Tayshawn, whose foster parents have given up on him, Clark advocates for keeping the child in school. Brandon is a standout in his role, as is Hannah.

All the young actors in the film are superb, especially the ones already mentioned plus Micah Williams as Julio Vasquez. Clark’s children are navigating treacherous terrain on the playground, on the streets, and at home. It’s amazing they can concentrate, which goes to show one how powerful the role a good teacher can have in a child’s life.

Clark has two books published: The Essential 55 and The Excellent 11, both met with critical acclaim by his peers. All of his kids are doing well. Clark founded The Ron Clark Academy, serving 5-8th grade students in a low wealth area of Atlanta. It opens this fall (http://www.ronclarkacademy.com/ron_clark_academy/).

The problem with The Ron Clark Story and all the other stories like it is the subtle message, which is “the world needs a superman.” In some cases it’s a superwoman, like Michelle Pfeiffer in “Dangerous Minds,” as ex-Marine Louanne Johnson at a Palo Alto high school or the alias could be a coach or a classroom teacher. In these stories, if the vehicle does not reflect whiteness, no matter how compelling, the film disappears from circulation fast or gets no commercial distribution at all. I’m speaking of films like “Coach Carter,” based on the life of Ken Carter, at Richmond High in California basketball coach portrayed Samuel L. Jackson and “Accidental Hero,” a POV documentary about Tommie Lindsey, the forensics teacher in Newark, California.

These are all films based on true stories.

Clark didn’t invent the rules he shares with his kids or his methodology; there are many great teachers doing similar work with kids in the Bay Area like Oral Lee Brown, a woman who adopted a Brookfield Elementary School kindergarten class and promised all of them she’d put them through college if they graduated from high school and she has. Her recent book, “The Promise” tells the story. Dr. Joe Marshall, Omega Boys and Girls Club in San Francisco was a math teacher in the public school system and decided what the children needed was bigger than his role as a classroom teacher could address, just as Clark and Brown did.

The Ron Clark Story is am important film; it gives one hope in the public school system; it is an important film for administrators to see to note the mistake they make when education is sacrificed in favor of test scores, which is what is happening in California.

It is also interesting how, the black administrators – black principals in particular, are portrayed as not believing in their children’s potential for academic success. Principal Turner (actor Ernie Hudson) at PS-83 believes his kids are losers. So far no one has sued for libel; does this mean that the majority African American principals and other public education managers feel black children, poor children should be thrown out with the trash?

I know there are heroes and heroines in one of Oakland’s poorest performing schools, McClymond’s High School, also at many of the schools which just closed in San Francisco due to budget constraints. Clark did not teach to a test, he just educated the kids. He taught them how to master the material and with this the nonacademic challenges they faced outside of school seemed that much easier to master. He taught his students to think, to think critically and to believe in themselves…which happens when one has achieved success in a certain area of one’s life…the lessons transfer.

This is what education is all about.

(The film rebroadcasts after the Sunday screening at different times during the week).