Beyond the Blackboard directed by Jeff Bleckner

(Based off of a memoir by Stacey Bess named “Nobody Don’t Love Nobody”)

Review by Caitlin Mcneil, 12

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In Beyond the Blackboard, a movie by Jeff Bleckner, the viewer is immersed into a world that many of us are too fortunate to ever come across. The movie starts out with the typical American household. A mom and a dad and two kids, a boy and a girl in elementary school. They live in the suburbs and play with their friends and go to school while their parents go to work. At the end of the day, the children tend to their homework and eat a family dinner.

One day, the children’s mother, is offered a promotion within her current teaching career to have her own school for work with. She is given the address and told that the children at this school need someone like her. She gets up, writes down the address and makes her way to the school only to find that the school isn’t even a school at all. It is a back room to a homeless shelter in the inner city. The children come from rough backgrounds and broken families and they do not see a positive outlook to their life. They have dirty home conditions and are exposed to drugs and alcohol very early in their lives. The teacher is tasked with being in charge of the children and helping them to learn the basics. She starts her first class off with her lesson plans only to find out that she can't even keep the children’s attention and realizes she must do something that she was never taught how to do during her time learning to be a teacher. Throughout the course of the story the main character grows in her teaching abilities, gains the children’s trust and puts their needs before her own in order to help them realize their full potential within their lives. She even goes so far as to foster one for a time being.

The reason I gave this story a 4 out of 5 stars is because the story focused a lot on each of the children separately as well as how strongly their teacher cared for them, but the aspect of the teachers personal life and the struggles she faced there while spending most of her time at the shelter could have been explored a little more. The story was based off of a memoir, so in the credits I would have also loved to see where the children ended up in their real lives as I am sure their teacher redirected them and their outlook on their future for the better. The way the story makes you want to get out of your seat and help the teacher yourself is so great and being able to see the children and the teacher grow and change throughout the story is also so wonderful and refreshing to encounter.