Lessons from the Air

The first film of the 'Ikuska' series, on the situation of schools in Basque language.

A year of making friends and building connections is over.

Twelve years after they went to school together, six children from Berlin with and without disabilities are interviewed on the topic of inclusion in the German school system.

The documentary's title translates as "to be and to have", the two auxiliary verbs in the French language. It is about a primary school in the commune of Saint-Étienne-sur-Usson, Puy-de-Dôme, France, the population of which is just over 200. The school has one small class of mixed ages (from four to twelve years), with a dedicated teacher, Georges Lopez, who shows patience and respect for the children as we follow their story through a single school year.

Pour de vrai, pour de faux

In the vast expanse of desert East of Atlas Mountains in Morocco, seasonal rain and snow once supported livestock, but now the drought seems to never end. Hardly a blade of grass can be seen, and families travel miles on foot to get water from a muddy hole in the ground. Yet the children willingly ride donkeys and bicycles or walk for miles across rocks to a "school of hope" built of clay. Following both the students and the teachers in the Oulad Boukais Tribe's community school for over three years, SCHOOL OF HOPE shows students Mohamed, Miloud, Fatima, and their classmates, responding with childish glee to the school's altruistic young teacher, Mohamed. Each child faces individual obstacles - supporting their aging parents; avoiding restrictions from relatives based on traditional gender roles - while their young teacher makes do in a house with no electricity or water.

Acabou a Paz: Isto Aqui Vai Virar o Chile

Short documentary about an archetypal library concept for kids in Clamart.

La langue est donc une histoire d'amour

The purpose of Rise Above the Mark, narrated by Peter Coyote, is to educate the general public about the “corporate takeover” of Indiana public schools and what parents, community members and educators can do to protect their local public schools. Legislators are calling the shots and putting public schools in an ever-shrinking box. WLCSC Board of School Trustees and Superintendent of Schools, Rocky Killion, want to secure resources and legislative relief necessary to achieve the school district’s mission of creating a world-class educational system for all children. The school district’s strategic plan will introduce a model of education that puts decision making back into the hands of local communities and public school teachers, rather than leaving it in the hands of legislators and ultimately lining the pockets of corporations.

Esmalts

A look at one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the United States, professional wrestling.

Gripping, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful, Waiting for Superman is an impassioned indictment of the American school system from An Inconvenient Truth director Davis Guggenheim.

The joys of 1960s modern education - as seen at a not-exactly-typical local comp.

Le Retour de l'école à l'ancienne

Explores school vandalism by re-creating a true incident involving four youths. Discusses motives and consequence of vandalism.

Michael Morgan, winner of the San Francisco Foundation 2006 Community Leadership Awards for making symphonic music essential to the culture of the East Bay community. He is dedicated to minority access to the arts and arts education, visiting 100 schools every year. More than 20,000 public school students received hands-on music education because of Michael's leadership.

In this first project of Kim Longinotto while she was a student at Englands National School of Television and Film she filmed the daily life in a girls boarding school situated in an old isolated castle in Buckinghamshire. Until she was 17, Longinotto lived in this boarding school, finaly she run away from there. In this dark and expressive black and white documentary, Longinotto exposes the repressive school from the students perspective. It seems to be a kind of miniature state with bizzare rules, idigestibel food and absurd punishments. The documentary begins with an graduation ceremony. The director blows her own trumpet, afterwards the film describes the daily routine of schoollife. The film ends up with the students leaving for holidays. As a result of this documentary, the boarding school was closed down one year after the release of the film.

This video reinforces the importance of safe crossing and loading/unloading behaviors for primary age students. In the story, the main character goes on an adventure with his pet dinosaur “EGG” to stress the dangers of the loading zone.

Wired for What? visits four very different elementary schools grappling with computerization to find out if technology is helping to change our schools for the better or if it is dulling students’ creativity and draining precious resources from other crucial educational needs.