Sunday, April 09, 2017

Kindergarten Cop: I've Got Questions

When I began my teaching career in 1994, Kindergarten Cop, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, had already been seen in theaters.  For whatever reason, I didn't watch the movie until after I had taught for two years, and like everyone else, I thought the most entertaining and hysterically charming scene was the one featuring a student sharing his prior schema about anatomy:



Over the next fourteen or fifteen years, I could watch maybe ten minutes of the movie at most when I'd stumble across it while channel-surfing, especially the comedic scenes of the first fire drill, and the awwwww Gettysburg address.  I had the predictable and appropriate visceral responses when Mr. Kimble hit the father who had a history of wife and child abuse, and when firearms were taken into the school and used by the father/grandmother villainous duo.  When introduced to someone unfamiliar with teaching, I'd occasionally be asked "Oh, so you're just like Kindergarten Cop, right?" to which I'd jokingly respond "Yep, only they don't give me a gun."  Laughter all around.

Then around five or six years ago, I couldn't bring myself to watch any of the movie at any time, anywhere, for any reason, thanks to the day-to-day routines of my profession evolving to include the real life possibility of school shootings, standardized test overkill posing as pedagogy, and kindergarten being turned into the new first grade.  There was no charm to be found in the movie any longer.  My husband even noticed that I wouldn't watch it, so we moved on to establishing a new list of ol' faithfuls and preferred standbys for our movie nights, none of them kindergarten or teaching-related.

Last weekend we were flipping through cable channels on a rare afternoon of not having a Netflix mini-series to watch, and there it was, Kindergarten Cop.

We didn't watch all of it, but we did see enough to generate some fresh questions, such as "Who gave Kimball a jeans day coupon on his first day of work?" and "How did the custodial staff refrain from hiring a hit man to off Mr. Kimble?"  Seriously, LOOK at the walls and floors.



If anyone needs PD on Teaching With Love and Logic or The Leader in Me, it's Kimball, am I right?




Where are the nut/food allergy warning signs?  Perhaps we'll find our answers in the straight-to-DVD Kindergarten Cop 2, yes, TWO.  And this time it's Dolph.

Is that peanut butter on his face?



Have you seen it?  Will I enjoy it?  Here's hoping.

1 comment:

  1. Here's a question: How did he get the entire class to sleep BEFORE he had even finished ONE storybook? Answer: Movie Magic😀

    ReplyDelete

As always, thank you for your comments, tips, suggestions and questions!