Front Matter -- Copyright page -- Dedication -- Preface -- Acknowledgements -- List of Figures -- Notes on Contributors -- A Loyalty Test for the American Educator / Steve Benton -- Schooling the State / Stephanie Schroeder -- Rethinking Student-Teacher Relationship Intimacy as Attachment / Andrew Wirth -- Mr. Miller Goes to War / Jeff Spanke -- In Loco Parentis Redux / Elizabeth Currin -- What’s a Nice White Lady to Do? / Jill Ewing Flynn -- The Dis-Education of Rock ‘n’ Roll / Gary Kenton -- Promoted to Control? / Chad E. Harris -- The Insecure Teacher / Naeemah Clark -- Contrasting the Archetypal Sage with the Mentor Coach in Young Adult Literature / Ian Parker Renga and Mark A. Lewis -- Saved by the Belles / Elizabeth Currin and Stephanie Schroeder -- “Good” Teacher on Her Own Terms / Chad E. Harris -- Liberatory Pedagogy in Action / Kristy Liles Crawley -- Q the Teacher—TV Lessons from the 24th Century / Roslin Smith -- Speechless to Speechless / Mary M. Dalton -- Back Matter -- Film Sources -- Television Sources -- Index.

Popular representations of teachers and teaching are easy to take for granted precisely because they are so accessible and pervasive. Our lives are intertextual in the way lived experiences overlap with the stories of others presented to us through mass media. It is this set of connected narratives that we bring into classrooms and into discussions of educational policy. In this day and time—with public education under siege by forces eager to deprofessionalize teaching and transfer public funds to benefit private enterprises—we ignore the dominant discourse about education and the patterns of representation that typify educator characters at our peril. This edited volume offers a fresh take on educator characters in popular culture and also includes important essays about media texts that have not been addressed adequately in the literature previously. The 15 chapters cover diverse forms from literary classics to iconic teacher movies to popular television to rock ‘n’ roll. Topics explored include pedagogy through the lenses of gender, sexuality, race, disability, politics, narrative archetypes, curriculum, teaching strategies, and liberatory praxis. The various perspectives represented in this volume come from scholars and practitioners of education at all levels of schooling. This book is especially timely in an era when public education in the United States is under assault from conservative political forces and undervalued by the general public. Contributors are: Steve Benton, Naeemah Clark, Kristy Liles Crawley, Elizabeth Currin, Mary M. Dalton, Jill Ewing Flynn, Chad E. Harris, Gary Kenton, Mark A. Lewis, Ian Parker Renga, Stephanie Schroeder, Roslin Smith, Jeff Spanke, and Andrew Wirth.