Watch The First Year For Free

Please don't spend money on this.

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

Best movie ever!

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The documentary "The First Year" follows five first year teachers into five schools in the Los Angeles area during the 1999-2000 school year. The teachers are passionate, driven, and full of the idealism of an unjaded educator. These are clearly strong, loving individuals who want to make a difference. Watching what lengths they will go to for the benefit of the students is admirable.The film's overall presentation of them is less so. Clearly a full school year's worth of footage was shot for each of the five individuals and their classrooms. Documentarian Davis Guggenheim directed "The First Year" several years prior to his work on the academy award winning "The Inconvenient Truth". Unfortunately this earlier work does not benefit from the same clear, unmuddled, realistic perspective of that later work.Clearly the film uses these five individuals to recruit new teachers. With that overarching intention, it makes the picture of modern education that much more sanitized as the film quickly paints over noticeable administrative issues or the needs to form a better link between parents and teachers. Using first year teachers as a statement of "it's not so bad, you should do it too" is imbalanced at best.

I am a professor in a college of education. I saw this movie when it was broadcast on PBS and purchased a copy of it for my Intro to Education classes. It is a realistic portrayal, though snapshot, of what it is like to be a new teacher (did middle school myself for many years). Each of the 5 teachers confront the myriad of problems that all first year teachers face. Their struggles and frustrations are evident. The movie runs approximately 80 minutes but is done so as a series of 10-12 minute vignettes. This allows one to view the movie over a number of classes, which I do with my Intro students. It is an effective instructional resource, but also an engaging undocumentary-like movie simply for the viewing. One witnesses numerous issues as they arise and these make for great discussion topics in a class. I strongly recommend this movie.

Yes, the film is inspiring and evokes awe for the beautiful work depicted. But the film sets up classroom relationships based on care and love, opposed to expectations of learning, testing, and obedience. Little attention is given to the learning that is likely expected to be done. Further, from my experience inside CPS classrooms, as well as stories from other teachers, the behavioral issues depicted in the film are non-existent to mind-numbingly mild. If the classrooms in the film were intended to model how classrooms ought to be, I would fully agree. Unfortunately, the film ought to be watched as a piece of recruiting propaganda and public schooling fantasy.For a different perspective on youth and school-life, though not focused on teachers, check out 'Chain Camera'. Also filmed in LA in 2001, this film has students taking a camera with them for a week each to record their lives. The stories of several students are edited to comprise this interesting portrayal of youth culture.

I saw this documentary by chance on PBS last night. It chronicles the hardships of being an inter-city teacher in Los Angeles. Some segments are very emotional, such as when one teacher realizes how little his students have. The main thing that this documentary brings to mind, is that the teachers who are helping these kids out are heros. Heros that not many people in our country recognize.