Intro to Film Studies Pacing Guide Week 1

It's back to school time! I'm in an interesting place as I try to transition back to the classroom. After a competitive hiring cycle this spring/summer in a new-to-me teaching state, unfortunately I didn't quite make the cut for the few full time positions I was hoping for (I've been home since late 2021!), so I'm looking at subbing for the upcoming year to get my foot in the door locally.

While I know the teacher shortage is real, I am grateful to have worked in a competitive district that didn't have many teachers leaving, and apparently we moved to one too 🙃.

In the meantime, I find myself imagining/reflecting on what I would be doing with students at this time.

Week 1 in Film Studies: Bingo, Box Office, and the Self/Us/Now Protocol

Why I’m starting here (this year)

I’ve opened Film Studies with everything from a tiny filmmaking sprint to Do the Right Thing. I still love the Spike Lee start—but in 2025’s climate (and after interviewing in a district navigating school board level book bans), I’m easing in. I want a classroom that can handle courageous film conversations, and I want to build trust first. So my Week 1 mix is light, earnest/honest, and skills-forward:

• Opening Night Questionnaire for tech check + interests.
• Film Studies Bingo to meet each other without the cringe.
• Box Office Trivia to foreground evidence, data, and “claims w/ receipts.”
• Self / Us / Now so students author the values and norms we’ll rely on all year.

TL;DR: Fun + data + identity → a student-written class charter that makes hard conversations possible later.

If you want to make a copy of the Opening Night Questionnaire yourself, I'm attaching a copy link at the bottom of this post for Planning Room members :).

(And if you want to fill it out in order to see what part 2 looks like... and for fun – feel free!)

The plan at a glance (1x45 min + 2x90 min blocks)

Jump to:...

• Block 1
• Block 2
• Block 3

Block 1 — Film Studies Opening Night (45 minutes)

The first day of school is always a rush.

It's about enough time to greet students, hand out the course overview/syllabus, and give them a quick homework assignment.

Homework on the first night? For me, yes. I try to keep it light.

Where I used to teach, I would literally just ask students to login to all of the relevant portals/LMS for our class and complete the Opening Night Questionnaire. But we also only had 20 minutes together. So for me, because I'm typically fighting against this pre-judgment that "film studies is easy/a joke class," if we have those couple of minutes to assign a meaningful ELA activity (that isn't just busy work), I will.

So with 45 minutes? I'll introduce the Self/Us/Now assignment, and also assign the "Self" writing on the first night.

Community Building through Community Narrative with Self/Us/Now

This protocol comes from the Leading Change Network, but in short, it's a way to approach community building through personal and community narratives.

It's a meaningful way to establish and build community and norms in the ELA classroom because, well, students reflect on their identities and personal stories and then work on making connections with each other and developing values and norms as a class.

While I used to hide my personal details / withhold them from the classroom as much as possible, having children shifted things for me a bit. Two reasons for this

1. I think modeling an appropriate level of vulnerability, identity, and being HUMAN is necessary for community building in the classroom.
2. Teenagers seem to love infants and toddlers, so they like seeing or hearing about my littles from time to time.

I'm also open and honest with my students – I like to dive right into content, so this is how I introduce Self/Us/Now:

While the Leading Change Network has come up with their protocol, for me this whole process reminds me of the notion of "forming, storming, norming, performing" for team building in the business world. So, beyond the ELA and SEL objectives, this protocol also helps students get familiar with something they may come across if they go into business!

This is essentially the 3-step process as described to students:

And then since I'm assigning part 1, "Self," for homework on night one (with a heads up that students will have an additional 15 minutes to finalize/polish their piece so they're comfortable sharing some part of it in the next class)... Well, I have to go over it to make sure my students are clear on what I want them to do:

The "Self" part of the process really asks students to reflect on their own identities. Depending on the vibe and level of the class, I think free writing in response to these questions is enough. But if I'm working with only CP instead of CP + Honors students, then I might start with identity wheels on day one, and then introduce and allow for work time for "Self" on day 2.

Film Studies ELA Block #2 (90 min):

On Day 2 I try to get a bit more interactive, and there are a variety of ways to do this.

For this block, I'm prioritizing movement and something lighter and more low-stakes upfront, because sharing out the "self" can feel like a bit more of a lift, since I'm asking students to share about themselves personally in a new class.

Ways to get up and moving:

• I typically lead with a this or that attendance question, just so I can put names to faces and start hearing student voices. In Film Studies, I'll ask something like "Do you prefer the Marvel or DC universe?" Or if I'm feeling daring, "Disney or Nickelodeon?" (do kids still watch Nickelodeon? 😩). Sometimes it gives me a quick vibe.
• Film Studies Bingo to get ourselves sharing and moving around:

After 20 minutes of Film Studies Bingo, I'll give students 15 minutes to finalize their "Self" pieces. I typically find myself telling seniors they have 20 minutes to finish up, and they can take a 5 minute break at some point in there - so we'll come back together at X time. Then I'll circulate/check-in to make sure everyone will have something to share from their "Self".

Some options for the "Self" share-out:

• Story Circles: groups of 4; 2 minutes each; listeners can only clarify.
• Postcard Gallery: students write a 3–4 sentence excerpt on a half-sheet; we gallery walk; peers leave a note/comment naming a value they see or a kind note.
  • A variation of this: Silent Share: we sit in a big circle, read our peer stories + write a positive comment; pass and read the next.
• Opt-In Mic: volunteers read; snaps to support; passes always okay.

After we spend ~30 minutes sharing from our "Self" stories, I'll ask students to note one value they or their peers' noticed from their "Self," and I'll have them submit those values. Either by Google Form/Question, sticky note, or to a Padlet.

Shifting from "Self" to "Us" in community building steps

I'll go over the "Us" assignment. This is the essence of it:

The "Us" portion of the "Self/Us/Now" protocol essentially shifts students away from reflecting on themselves towards outward noticing and reflecting. Students are asked to take a look at our community around us and to acknowledge differences – and to say the least, bias. Because these questions can be uncomfortable, students are given choice - so they can choose what they want to work with.

Students will finish the "Us" writing on their own, and they will not be graded on or asked to share their written responses. This is essentially a safe space for them to spend time thinking and sitting with their thoughts and feelings.

Film Studies ELA Block #3 (90 min):

As in the previous block, I'm sticking to my routines.

So that means:

1. Welcome/attendance question
2. We go over our objective, agenda + HW for the day
3. I'm working in some get to know each other + low stakes movement

The low stakes getting to know each other + movement for this block will come in the form of Box Office Trivia :). I can't take credit for this idea in general, a former colleague used to do this every... Monday? I think. It was a cool way to engage students with possibly seeing movies in theaters over the weekend, or at least taking a look at the box office. I'm not sure I personally would give that much class time regularly, but I think it IS a fun way to start the year and see how engaged students are with Hollywood, theaters, and box office numbers. Here's a preview of a Box Office Trivia that works for this week:

Moving from "Self" to "Us": Gathering Values --> Affinity Map

Ideally, I'd have had students submit their one personal value to a Padlet at the end of the previous class, and I'd open that back up again now.

I'd ask students to take a look at the Padlet and describe if we notice any patterns. Then, I'd have students review their "Us" writing, and once again choose one value to add to the Padlet.

If all is going well, this is a great time to give students a 5 minute break so I can pause and add to the Padlet:

• In a column layout, I can pre-title some starter categories/buckets: "Respectful Dialogue, Evidence-First Thinking, Creative Risk-Taking"
• Silent Sort (Padlet --> Columns): When students come back, I'll ask them to drag their own value into the appropriate column, and if it doesn't fit, to see if they can group the floating values into unnamed categories
• Name & Prioritize: After that, we can debrief and discuss how we would name those unnamed groups --> we'll be defining our shared values together

At this point, I'll go over the "Now" assignment students will do for homework (ideally over the weekend).

The "Now" asks students to utilize the shared values we were just coming up with together as they think through the variety of experiences that exist in our immediate communities, and particularly in America.

Sidebar: Language + Personal Reflection

As a side note, something that stood out to me when I was revising these assignments is the language. I grew up in a predominantly white community, and I was teaching in one. Since moving to California, I find myself in "majority minority" places more often than not, and this has given me more space to rest in POC community, in a way. So for me, what stood out here is there's a possibility to shift the language from "BIPOC" to "people of the global majority," as the latter de-centers whiteness.

I can't say I have entirely clear reflections or statements about that shift/change, but for me it DID feel like a big shift in how the questions are framed.

Oftentimes, when I would be explicitly teaching about bias, or race... in predominantly white settings, it would sometimes feel like I suddenly became under a microscope or was a spokesperson for Asian communities (which, no one person ever could be). For me, looking at these questions now, it feels like saying BIPOC instead of "people of the global majority" set me and other BIPOC students up to be under a microscope. Shifting it to "people of the global majority," for me, felt like acknowledging that there is an entire globe of diversity out there [and in America in the current climate, there can be a lot of white fragility, defensiveness, or hypersensitivity when topics of race come up with white folks involved]. Acknowledging that diversity exists outright with that statement shifted the focus for me. So, while in the questions I screenshotted and shared here, I continued to use BIPOC – I left the term in there because I know in the predominantly white environments I'm used to teaching in, it's most readily understood. But I think it's a meaningful, at least thought exercise, to consider how you feel if you replace every "BIPOC" mention to "people of the global majority."

Film & Literature as Playground and Safe Space to Discuss Uncomfortable Topics

The "Now" questions ask students to find a film/media clip that essentially expresses or captures something relatable to them about BIPOC representation in American media. This can bring in a range of experiences, hopefully. And by asking students to write about it, I'm giving them both the opportunity and chance to begin to explore in a private safe space with some of the norms we are already developing about supportive, affirming, and understanding dialogues.

Depending on how much I'm feeling my students can manage for weekend homework, I'll also ask them to pick any movie clip that they'd like to analyze with the class and share it with me or submit it in a forum setting. That way it's not all about uncomfortable conversations all the time.

Regardless, I've been listening to The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley, and today it really hit me again how the power of literature and being an ELA teacher is really that fiction offers us the opportunity to experience and explore some of the most uncomfortable parts of humanity, and if we can experience and process them both inside ourselves as we read – then we can also, hopefully, discuss these hard topics that might be triggering or relatable to us, but are technically "outside of us" in a book, or a movie, or a show. So rather than discussing our personal vulnerabilities and troubles, sometimes it's easier to talk about how Holden is so freaking annoying and judgmental because he can't get over the fact that his younger brother died and the world is moving on and doesn't seem to care than it is for someone personally to perhaps talk about how they're not focusing, not trying hard enough in school, putting their head down on a desk, making distracting and deflecting comments in class, and causing disruptions because they're going through something REAL outside of your classroom.

I'll write something up about The Girls Who Grew Big once I have more fully formed thoughts developed; but the TL;DR for now would be that:

I definitely romanticized teenage pregnancy when I was a teen. It's something I would have been embarrassed to admit.

The stories Mottley is juxtaposing in The Girls Who Grew Big though?

The way she's telling them has me reflecting on all kinds of biases that I have - and it made me realize, "why would I be embarrassed to admit that? How might things be different if I didn't have to hide that feeling and could have discussed/explored it?"

Because Mottley is now allowing me to explore it in full in this book.

So anyways – that's ALSO the beauty of Film Studies – there's ample opportunity to discuss all of life's messy pieces with cinema.

Anyways, if you are at all interested in grabbing my Intro to Film Studies Week 1 + 2 Pacing Guide... Planning Room members, you can access it below when you're logged in. The links to your pacing guide also share Film Studies Bingo and Box Office Trivia with you to use in your own classrooms.