Cell-phones Killed the Video Star

 Well it has been a long and arduous term for me which is thankfully coming to its end.

8 more school days to go! Yay!

When I started planning this term's classes I cunningly scheduled 'fun' units for the bottom end of the term. This means Debating, Drama and Film studies as far as I'm concerned. Both my senior classes are currently studying films. This means I have had at least 2-3 cruisy lessons of watching videos in class. Fun and easy. The way I like things.

However, I had not counted on a couple of obstacles. The first being the other teachers have similar thoughts and the videos have been booked out solidly this week. The second obstacle was that some students struggle with the cognitive ability required to watch a video. This is a disturbing widespread problem. Brain Deficit Disorder (BDD) or as it is known in layman's "being too stupid to breathe and shut your mouth at the same time".

Thankfully being sent out into the cold to catch pneumonia seemed to counteract the noise created by students afflicted with BDD. There was still the problem of some students who were crafty enough not to talk loudly during the movie, getting distracted by their cellphones.

Why watch a movie when you can send inane and poorly spelt text messages to all your friends?

However for the most part my sixth form class impressed me once again. We have been watching The Shawshank Redemption - one of my favourite movies. They have all been completely immersed in it from the second it starts to the end of class. They appear to both enjoy and understand it. In fact, I nearly had a riot today when I turned the video off about 15 minutes from the end of the movie. It was the end of class but it is a pretty annoying place to have to stop watching.

Today I had to relieve another sixth form class. They were starting to watch Billy Elliot. They were appallingly juvenile and it seemed several of them suffered from BDD. Once again the allure of the cell-phone proved too much and many of them missed most of the movie.