Deb­bie Ja­cob

With on­ly eight months to cov­er the CXC Eng­lish lan­guage syl­labus, I had to make the most of every minute with my stu­dents at YTC. That's why I de­cid­ed to show some movies. I had mod­el stu­dents with in­cred­i­ble dis­ci­pline, but I knew their heads had to be swim­ming af­ter two hours of class, so I de­cid­ed we'd watch movies dur­ing the third hour. The first es­say I re­ceived from a stu­dent was on the movie Cool Run­nings about the 1988 Ja­maican Olympic bob­sled team. This is what he wrote:

Cool Run­nings

by Sher­win Bap­tiste.

To me, Cool Run­nings sim­ply showed as long as you are de­ter­mined and you have the will pow­er to go for­ward, you can al­ways suc­ceed. Look at De­rice, who was the dri­ver for the Ja­maican bob­sled team. His main goal was to go to the Olympics. He tried run­ning, but was set back. When one of the sprint­ers fell and tripped him in a race, it might have seemed that his life in sports was over, but it wasn't. Then there was De­rice's best friend who showed pas­sion for an­oth­er form of bob­sled­ding, which was dri­ving carts. To­geth­er, with a two-time gold medal­ist at the Olympic lev­el who fell from glo­ry when he put weights on the bob­sled, they formed a team and set out to reach the Olympics in a win­ter sport not made for trop­i­cal coun­tries.

Each in­di­vid­ual on the team dis­played strength and de­ter­mi­na­tion. San­ka, the ras­ta, had to over­come his fear of cold weath­er. One of the young men had prob­lems co-op­er­at­ing with oth­ers. He had to put that aside for the bob­sled team. The third guy came from a rich fam­i­ly. His fa­ther want­ed the best for him. He had to go against his fa­ther's wish­es and stand up to the man who made him what he was. The coach had to put aside his past, for­get all the crit­i­cism and get the young men on the right track. What I liked the most was that in the end, the bob­sled, that wasn't very whole­some in the first place, gave up and over­turned. The team had enough pride in their coun­try to get up, lift the bob­sled and walk to the fin­ish line.

So, to close, you must over­come all ob­sta­cles, put dif­fer­ences aside, set your eyes on your goals and work for them. Al­so, you should nev­er for­get where you came from. A cou­ple of months in­to teach­ing, we watched Clint East­wood's movie Gran Tori­no about an an­gry Ko­re­an War vet­er­an and wid­ow­er who lived in a neigh­bour­hood over­run by gangs. Much to my sur­prise, Olton wrote, "The main theme of the movie is car­ing; then love, friend­ship and sac­ri­fice."

Kheelon list­ed the themes as love, hate, for­give­ness and un­der­stand­ing. Sher­win said ac­cep­tance was the main theme. At the top of his es­say he wrote this:

1. Mr Kowal­s­ki had to ac­cept the peo­ple around him.

2. He had to ac­cept he was get­ting old.

3. He had to ac­cept he wasn't in the mil­i­tary any­more.

Sher­win wrote this es­say:

Mr Kowal­s­ki was an old man who, on the sur­face, seemed to car­ry a lot of ha­tred: ha­tred for his sons, ha­tred for his fam­i­ly and most preva­lent, ha­tred for his neigh­bours. He hat­ed the fact that he was sick and might be dy­ing soon. He sur­vived the Ko­re­an War and killed 13 en­e­my sol­diers, and now the neigh­bour­hood in which he was liv­ing all his life was swamped by Asians-even his doc­tor was re­placed by an Asian. He had to ac­cept the fact that he couldn't kill any of these peo­ple be­cause he was no longer at war so he would have to live and cope with them all. Mr Kowal­s­ki had to ac­cept the fact that he was get­ting old. We see this when he couldn't move the freez­er and had to call Tao to help him. (He was sick and cough­ing blood and he knew he was go­ing to die soon).

He over­came every­thing he was in de­nial about. He be­gan co-op­er­at­ing with all of his neigh­bours and be­came a hero, sav­ing them and pulling them out of sit­u­a­tions. When the Hmong gang mem­bers struck, Mr Kowal­s­ki ac­cept­ed that every­one-even the Catholic priest-was look­ing up to him to re­tal­i­ate. He did it in a way that was con­trary to what every­one was think­ing. When they ex­pect­ed him to shoot at gang mem­bers, he en­sured that they shot him and they would all be con­vict­ed of mur­der so he ac­cept­ed that he was go­ing to die and chose to do it in a way that would ben­e­fit his whole neigh­bour­hood.

In the end, my stu­dents said, "Mr Kowal­s­ki was hurt and an­gry be­cause he had no one to love him. He wasn't an­gry and dis­tant be­cause he was haunt­ed by mem­o­ries of the Ko­re­an War. War was the on­ly place he ever func­tioned. He felt an­gry and frus­trat­ed be­cause he was liv­ing in the mid­dle of a war zone and he couldn't op­er­ate like it was a war." I didn't see those an­swers com­ing. For me, movie time with my stu­dents at YTC end­ed up giv­ing lan­guage, lit­er­a­ture and life a whole new mean­ing.

• Next week: Stephen Doobal's big screen, out­side movie night leads to an un­ex­pect­ed gift for my stu­dents from Wen­dell Man­war­ren.