Three Movies to Remind You of What a Great Teacher Can Do

In many countries, now is the season when students return to the classroom. Teachers fight to educate children despite few materials, little supervision, and an array of other challenging working conditions. Yet it’s hard to overstate the value of a great teacher. When most of us look back on pivotal moments in our educational experiences, at least some of those moments are associated with a teacher who helped us learn an essential skill or helped us see something greater about ourselves or the world around us. In the spirit of the back-to-school season, here are three movies that highlight principles about great educators in low- and middle-income countries.

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1. In Radical (2023), sixth-grade teacher Sergio arrives at an urban school with little leadership and fewer resources in northeastern Mexico and immediately starts teaching his students to think independently, using a variety of creative (and sometimes funny) teaching methods. He encounters obstacles: he finds corruption in educational procurement, not all administrators and parents are supportive of his approach, and his students face violence in the community daily. But ultimately, you see the profound change that an effective teacher can make: indeed, great teachers put students on a new path. The movie is loosely inspired by a true story, and it’s a cryer. (Fun fact: the actor who plays Sergio, Eugenio Derbez, also plays an inspiring choir teacher in the Oscar-winning film CODA.)
2. I love how Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom (2019) shows a reluctant teacher who ultimately falls in love with the work. A young man in urban Bhutan, Ugyen, doesn’t like his teaching work, but he has just one year left in his government commitment. He accepts an assignment to the village of Lunana: it takes him six days to travel there! The school lacks even a blackboard or writing paper. With support from the community, Ugyen gradually improves the classroom and draws on his talents to help the students master new schools. Teaching is a passion for some people, but for others, it isn’t their first choice of profession. Education systems need to help even those reluctant teachers to be the best teachers they can. Likewise, countries at every level of income face the enormous challenge of getting teachers to remote schools. But those students deserve the same shot as their urban counterparts.
3. Rule Breakers (2025) shows how after-school activities can help youth see the potential value of education. In the movie, a woman and her brother—Roya and Alireza—found the Afghan Girls Robotics Team (aka the Afghan Dreamers) as an after-school club. While you can predict the broad outlines of the film, my kids and I still got completely caught up in watching these young women passionately working to learn engineering skills and watching their adult sponsors (true educators) fight for their team. Many children drop out of school because they don’t see the return: great educators help them see what education can do. This movie is also based on a true story; for the more documentary-minded, there was a 2022 movie.

We depend on teachers to deliver the best education for our children. Even as new technologies make their way into the educational process, our best evidence shows that teachers remain central. This means that even as we demand a lot from teachers, we need to make sure that our systems provide them with the tools, support, and supervision they need to succeed.