To Sir with Love

“ To Sir With Love”

In the film, “To Sir With Love,” various human characteristics are brought to light, of these, the idea or notion that humans are able to adapt and change their way of thinking, seems to be portrayed well throughout the movie. The movie highlights the experiences of an African teacher working in a London school. The lead actor, Mack Thackeray, struggles to win the respect and affection of his rebellious working class senior students in a run down east side London School. The film depicts the challenges seen by both the teacher and his students that ultimately result in their collaboration to change their ways of thinking about each other and establish that cordial relationship between a leader and his students.
To start off, Mark Thackeray also known as “Sir” does not really want to be a teacher; he sees the job as a temporary placement that puts food on the his table and clothes on his back, while he searches for a more lucrative position within the Engineering field for which he has been trained. The film emphasis not only some of the challenges Thackeray faces as a black man in a racist environment, but some of the obstacles that he has to overcome at North Quay Secondary. While teaching at North Quay Secondary…IT is seen only at the end of the film he finally is offered a job in an Engineering company located outside of London.
Having put forth all of his time and energy into getting an education, he begins teaching at North Quay Secondary. He finds his students rather rude, defiant, and disinterested. Despite his ongoing efforts and attempts to communicate with his class, the students are quite resilient and want no part in what he has to offer. While Thackeray’s method of teaching was strictly student centered at a surface level, he began to change his ideologies, his actions both initially and later implies that he was more concerned about solving the problems he is experiencing with his class, rather than the problems being faced by his students.
Model The Way

Thackeray establishes principles concerning the way his students should be treated and how their goals should be pursued. He attempts to create standards of excellence and set examples for others to follow suit. We see this in the very first lesson, in which Thackeray attempts to analyze the credentials of his students. He sought to assess his students’ level of proficiency in reading and arithmetic. Their results varied significantly, this prompted remarks of sarcasm “It is encouraging that you have a sense of humor: it seems you know so little and are so easily amused that I can look forward to a very happy time.” He then went on and instructed his students to “now copy down the following tables” (To Sir with Love 1967). This clearly shows that he is trying to set goals so that his students can achieve small wins as they work towards a larger goal. Kouzes & Posner (2002) suggest that two attributes are required for leaders to “Model the Way.” Leaders have to find their own voice by stating their personal values and then you must set the example by aligning actions and shared values. From analyzing Mark’s character, it seems that he values a sense of community, a positive environment, he likes to make contributions; he values people and their success; and he values their opinions and ideas.
Inspire A Shared Vision

In the movie “To Sir With Love,” Mark Thackeray is portrayed as being an effective leader. As he makes a career switch from being an engineer into a rookie teacher, he enters the profession with no background or previous experience, only to find he is dealing with a classroom full of ill-mannered and irresponsible adolescents. Although, the students are labeled as worthless, low-life individuals from other schools which were made clear by the principle as well as other staff members. Thackeray enters the classroom full of hope and, with a different perspective. Instantly, when he walks in he notices what his co-workers were saying was quite accurate and finds himself struggling to capture the attention of his students. However, it is at this pivotal point, when Mr. Thackeray realizes the student’s lack of interest in learning the course materials, and decides to throw out the textbooks and develops his own lesson plan. This is seen as an attempt made by Thackeray to gain the attention of his students, he implements a lesson plan that applies directly to his students being more focused on skills that students will need to attain, to help them in everyday real-life situations. With his ability to recognize his students’ needs and skill levels he shows one of the most important characteristics of being an effective leader. As soon as he makes his decision to throw out the textbooks and incorporate a new lesson plan he is directly influencing the student’s socialization skills and work ethics.
As we can see from the movie, Mr. Thackeray faces many challenges; nevertheless he never gave up and carries out his role as an educator. What makes a good leader relies heavily on many factors. Consequently, an effective leader must possess the ability to communicate thoroughly and effectively, by modeling good communication skills will ensure success in one’s life, especially since in order to function in today’s society you need to be an excellent communicator. Another characteristic of a good teacher is his willingness to know and understand the strengths and weaknesses of his students. This is very important in order to help the students learn and help with their comprehension of assignments.
Moreover, teachers should display some nurturing as some students lack this in their home life, as we see in Mr. Thackeray’s class most students come from broken homes. A good teacher should put forth some ground rules where students have a say as to how they should be implemented. If students feel their opinions have value, it fosters a culture of respect towards the teacher as well as the other classmates. An effective leader teaches patience, good decision making skills, positive behavior, and alternative measures.
Mark Thackeray displayed these factors numerous times throughout the movie, especially when he unwillingly agreed to a boxing match with Denham. In spite of being subjected to many blows Thackeray punches Denham once in the stomach, which brings the fight to an end. At this point Denham realizes that Thackeray could have injured him pretty good, but instead Thackeray chose to use an alternative route and show that positive behavior can be equally rewarding in a situation like this, without violent means to stop a fight. Mr. Thackeray’s actions were relatively passive but proved a point amongst his students that violence is not the answer as seen towards the end of the film.
Challenge the Process

Many of the students depicted in the movie To Sir with Love appeared to have challenging home lives and less than normal family structures. It appears they never had any positive role models or a nurturing environment that provided guidance from a very young age. The students in turn relied on their peers to help them cope with the changes of having a new teacher, with different set of rules and guidelines. The students were being continuously challenged to change their views and opinions to help become model citizens. Since peer groups play a vital part in human development and transformation of relationships to satisfy social needs. However, the students in the film seem to rely heavily on each other to form their own identities. This showed the viewers that they have not reached a level of cognitive development.
Furthermore, Cognitive development goes hand in hand with social development. The social development helps adolescents to exert their influences in various ways and times. It is also during this process, peer pressure is heavily influencing their decision-making skills. This was clearly evident many times in the movie as well by the students. For example when the class refused to deliver a wreath to Seale’s mothers’ funeral based solely upon Denham’s objection. As Seal being the only African American student, the group struggled with racial issues and Seal was the minority. Here we see Thackeray step up once again and teaches Denham right from wrong, he scolded Denham for his biased decision, he gained disapproval from the whole class with the exception of Pamela Dare.
Moreover, the students lacked moral values, as they never had seen good role models and didn’t receive any guidance from their parents to display proper behavior like instruction of moral reasoning, modeling good judgment, reinforcement and punishment. In the movie this example is highlighted in a scene when Pamela’s mother asked Mr. Thackeray to have a conversation with her daughter about her inappropriate behavior. Pamela responded in a negative way and accused her mother of not caring and being selfish. She told Mr. Thackeray that when she came home she would find her mother with other men and that’s why her actions should be excused. We see Mr. Thackeray listening carefully and telling Pamela that she should give her mother another chance “Everyone deserves a second Chance” (To Sir with Love 1967). Because Thackeray never gave up on his students, they reached a level of physical development as they transformed from childhood into young adulthood and became model citizens. Examples of their transformation was seen when they started using proper form of address both towards their-self and others. The students also started caring about their appearance and how they interact with others, which boosted their self-confidence.
Enable Others to Act

Encourage the Heart
Leaders recognize contributions; they celebrate accomplishments, these happen throughout the film as Thackeray helped his students succeed from the time he started in the classroom through the eventual transformation at the end. From his help the students became more aware, appreciative and in turn became adults in society. Several instances in the movie showed monumental changes of how eventually Thackeray recognized his students’ contributions and even celebrated them as they celebrated him. Throughout the movie we see plenty of examples of Thackeray encouraging the heart, whether it be through the smallest contribution to the biggest change, it all helped in the end.
Thackeray teaches his students about life, survival training, cooking, and history. Through this explained values and helped them understand fundamentals of learning. He encouraged they could be anything they wanted to be. He showed them of how adults should act; whether it is through announcing the girls in the class be called miss or how Potter should have handled the situation like an adult. He showed them to portray themselves better; image, hairstyle and clothing. Made Denim feel good about him-self after sparring with him and acknowledging that he is good at boxing and even offering a tutoring job to help younger students. Through all these things helped transform his students into decent people in society and made them realize their mistakes and look forward towards life. He acknowledges his students now, and they celebrate him as well. He reflects on the time they spent together and is genuine and thanks them all as they thank him.