The chapter by the associate professor of health and human performance is included in "Exploring Teachers in Fiction and Film: Saviors, Scapegoats and Schoolmarms," which was published in April.
“Exploring Teachers in Fiction and Film: Saviors, Scapegoats and Schoolmarms,” published in April 2016 by Routledge Press, includes the chapter “I teach Jim and Jane: I don’t teach gym” written by Carol A Smith of the Department of Health & Human Performance.
The book discusses teachers as characters in popular media and examines what can be learned from fictional teachers to help educate actual teachers. By exploring the teacher construct, readers are able to consider how fiction and film have influenced society’s understandings and views of classroom teachers.
Written to four themes to help educate the preservice teacher—identifying with the teacher image; constructing the teacher with content; imaging the teacher as savior; the teacher construct as commentary—the book investigates the complex combination of truth, typecast and distortion of the teacher in the public eye and presents popular culture as curriculum. Through text about fictional teachers, preservice as well as current teachers can investigate various representations of self (positive or negative) for areas of professional development.