Greg Whiteley’s documentary is a very encouraging ,and for the most part uplifting, film about the possibilities and new “trends” regarding our education system. I say our when really the film is addressing the American education system, although I’m confident that the two share some similarities. I appreciated that the movie showed an example of what it would look like when a child did not achieve what he set out to within the parameters of the teachers’ free range on course work. I liked how the instructors stressed that they were not interested in stamping out the young man’s curiosity, but rather were interested in his self-assessment regarding areas he could improve upon. I understand that the film has a necessary bias towards advocating for an alternative approach towards education, but I am interested to see what a classroom in which too much free range on curriculum did not work for the instructor. The examples the film used were of very competent and confident teachers who were able to collaborate well with each other and had enough mastery over their chosen subject that they were able to coherently structure a semester’s worth of instruction in a seamless manner (of course this is how the film portrayed the process, in reality there may very well have been some hiccups along the way). The end result as shown in the school’s year end gala further supported this teaching style but it left me with a selfish concern: what, if anything, is an area I’m an expert enough in to be able to construct my own semester around? English will be my teachable but I did not do a master’s in literature, I don’t have a particular period or movement in English literature that I love or am more familiar with than others. Really what I bring to the table is a love of reading – more specifically a love of buying books. With the switch over to literature circles as oppose to one classroom novel taught at a time, I’m left with some… considerations to take into account, and until I teach a class myself I won’t really know what the implications of this model are (as they concern me of course). None of this is to say that I do not support the education style from the film, but that I personally might very well benefit (at least for the first couple of years) from some guidelines as provided by a curriculum, or at the very least some advice as provided by a community of instructors.