Guest homeschoolfilm Posted September 21, 2014 Share Posted September 21, 2014 I just wanted to inform the Well Trained Mind community that the movie Class Dismissed is being released in October and the Well Trained Mind is one of the primary homeschool options explored in the movie. Class Dismissed is the world's first feature-length film about homeschooling. We're starting off with a West Coast tour of private screenings in theaters. If you live near Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Portland or Seattle, you can get your tickets here: http://classdismissedmovie.com/see-the-film/private-screenings/ If you don't live in those areas, we'll be coming to the East Coast, then a few cities in between, then opening it up for smaller screenings hosted by groups or volunteers. More background on the movie can be found on our production site: http://www.homeschoolfilm.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted September 21, 2014 Share Posted September 21, 2014 CONGRATULATIONS!!!!!! I don't live near a major city, but I'm excited for those who do. Thank you for sharing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest homeschoolfilm Posted September 21, 2014 Share Posted September 21, 2014 Iron Ethel Flint: Thanks! We've been working on it for 4 years and are quite satisfied with how it turned out. In 2015 we'll have online on-demand and DVDs versions available. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dolphin Posted September 21, 2014 Share Posted September 21, 2014 I am hoping to go in Portland, have to see what my schedule looks like. Any other PDX area homeschoolers want to meet up? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted September 21, 2014 Share Posted September 21, 2014 We'll be grabbing a DVD and perhaps hosting a screening if nobody else with a better venue steps up first, which they probably will. ;) I thought it was about four years, but didn't know until you posted that WTM was mentioned. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reefgazer Posted September 21, 2014 Share Posted September 21, 2014 Keep us updated as to east coast dates! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SemiSweet Posted September 21, 2014 Share Posted September 21, 2014 I am hoping to go in Portland, have to see what my schedule looks like. Any other PDX area homeschoolers want to meet up? Such a bummer, I'll be in Portland for two weeks right before the showing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AmyontheFarm Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 The board is going to be inundated with newbies! LOL! Someone should make a "Welcome Manual" for the newbies explaining cupcakes, kilts, teA and books. Although, that just might make them wonder if they are actually on a homeschool site! LOL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ElizabethB Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 That looks like a nice, positive movie. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
idnib Posted September 23, 2014 Share Posted September 23, 2014 Sounds great! I'll do my best to get to one of the bay area ones, hopefully Oakland. Anything in the film that would controversial for children ages 6 and 10? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IsabelC Posted September 25, 2014 Share Posted September 25, 2014 Sounds interesting. When will it be for sale as a download? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kubiac Posted September 25, 2014 Share Posted September 25, 2014 Thanks for the reminder to buy my tickets! I already told my husband I need him to watch the kids that night so I can run off to see this. I think I need to invite my dad to join me as he has expressed some serious skepticism about our cockamamie plan to homeschool the DC. :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TianXiaXueXiao Posted September 25, 2014 Share Posted September 25, 2014 Dolphin, I'm in PDX and plan to go! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest sarahwsaunders Posted September 25, 2014 Share Posted September 25, 2014 Would love to see this in Chicago!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Angie in VA Posted September 25, 2014 Share Posted September 25, 2014 The board is going to be inundated with newbies! LOL! Someone should make a "Welcome Manual" for the newbies explaining cupcakes, kilts, teA and books. Although, that just might make them wonder if they are actually on a homeschool site! LOL And not to post photos or texts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest homeschoolfilm Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 Chicago is looking like a real possibility. Planning underway for a potential screening there. The movie is appropriate for kids as well & bringing non-homeschoolers to the movie is a good idea as it is a rare opportunity to see why we do it & how "normal" we all are ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeaConquest Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 Come to San Diego! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nature girl Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 I'm not in a major city either, but can you please post here once the movie is released onto DVD or available on Netflix/Amazon? What a wonderful project. Congratulations! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nature girl Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 Dug around and found the trailer for those who are interested. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Farrar Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 I've been hearing about this off and on for awhile and I'm definitely curious to see it. I'm in DC, so hopefully when you guys bring it to the east coast, we'll have a chance. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RootAnn Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 Totally off-topic comment: Am I the only one who noticed the interesting way the girl in the trailer gripped her pencil? It looks painful... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
idnib Posted September 29, 2014 Share Posted September 29, 2014 The movie is appropriate for kids as well Great, thanks! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheAutumnOak Posted September 30, 2014 Share Posted September 30, 2014 Looks great...Will wait for it to come on the East Coast :) ...Thanks for sharing this... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Runningmom80 Posted October 8, 2014 Share Posted October 8, 2014 I'd love to see this! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dramorellis Posted October 8, 2014 Share Posted October 8, 2014 I'm in Chicago, I hope it comes my way soon! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest homeschoolfilm Posted December 1, 2014 Share Posted December 1, 2014 Forgot to follow up with our new screenings until today. We played in Chicago a couple weeks ago and New York yesterday. We'll play in Boston (Arlington) tonight and fly down to do two NC screenings: Charlotte tomorrow, then Raleigh on Wednesday. You can keep an eye on the screenings here: http://classdismissedmovie.com/see-the-film/private-screenings/ We're hoping to add many more in January & February (Southern states like Arizona, Texas, and Alabama for sure). People can also host their own screenings: http://classdismissedmovie.com/see-the-film/guide-to-hosting-a-screening/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matryoshka Posted December 2, 2014 Share Posted December 2, 2014 I was at the Boston screening tonight. I thought it was well done. Has anyone else seen it yet? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LinaJ Posted December 2, 2014 Share Posted December 2, 2014 Going tonight! :) edited after the movie: it was great, I loved seeing family's process in decision making. Really enjoyed the movie. Will show to hubby once dvd is out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matryoshka Posted December 3, 2014 Share Posted December 3, 2014 I just wanted to inform the Well Trained Mind community that the movie Class Dismissed is being released in October and the Well Trained Mind is one of the primary homeschool options explored in the movie. Class Dismissed is the world's first feature-length film about homeschooling. We're starting off with a West Coast tour of private screenings in theaters. If you live near Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Portland or Seattle, you can get your tickets here: http://classdismissedmovie.com/see-the-film/private-screenings/ If you don't live in those areas, we'll be coming to the East Coast, then a few cities in between, then opening it up for smaller screenings hosted by groups or volunteers. More background on the movie can be found on our production site: http://www.homeschoolfilm.com Okay, since no one else has, I just have to make a persnickity comment on the bolded above. The only time WTM is mentioned or referred to in the movie is a two-second photo of the spine of the book. They do highlight a family that does Classical Conversations, but as boardies here well know, CC is not WTM in any way, shape, or form, even if they do share a "Classical" component. ;) There are pictures of kids singing Latin chants at a CC coop. The CC mom throws out the word 'dialectical'. SWB isn't mentioned at all - most of the 'homeschooling gurus' interviewed are unschoolers (Pat Farenga, Sandra Dodd; there's footage of John Holt and John Taylor Gatto) I did enjoy the movie and thought overall it did a decent job showing different styles of homeschooling (as you can only do so much in a two hour film!) The main family also tries out a public charter for a while and just through watching what they go through (they quit) it's really clear why that's 'public school at home' rather than homeschooling - even without a single word of commentary on the issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Susan Wise Bauer Posted December 4, 2014 Share Posted December 4, 2014 Yeah, saying that TWTM is "featured" seems to have been a way to publicize the movie to the good folks on this board, and not much more. Ah, well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ondreeuh Posted December 4, 2014 Share Posted December 4, 2014 Is it really heavy on the unschooling philosophy? When I first started to consider homeschooling, I went to an info night at a local library that was organized by a state homeschool group. There were I think 3 presenters who shared how homeschooling can work, and they were all unschoolers. So their advice was to not worry abut anything and trust that kids are learning even when it looks like they aren't. It wasn't really a message that inspired me or resonated with me then. Unschoolers don't speak for all homeschoolers so I wonder if the 4 prominent unschoolers are balanced out by other views? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matryoshka Posted December 4, 2014 Share Posted December 4, 2014 Yeah, saying that TWTM is "featured" seems to have been a way to publicize the movie to the good folks on this board, and not much more. Ah, well. Well, FWIW, the filmmakers seem like well-meaning folk (they were both at the screening). They're both homeschool dads, and I think they said they started the film when their oldest kids were 6? So I think that would make them about 10 now...? I get the feeling they both fall more toward the unschooling end of things, or at least quite relaxed, and we all know it's much easier to be relaxed before your kids hit middle school! From conflating CC and WTM and some of the ways they describe things in the CC segment, I get the feeling they meant well but really didn't have a firm handle on what the Classical method is, or the breadth of materials and sometimes competing theories it entails. I have a feeling that they may honestly have no idea that CC is a kind of semi-pyramidical business model (from what I've read here, anyway...) rather than what everyone thinks of as the be-all end-all of Classical Ed, and that it has really nothing to do with WTM... Pretty much the main family visits the CC family to find out how they do things (as they're kind of floundering trying to figure out what to do after they pull their middle-school aged kids from ps), and then decide that's not for them. As far as other things available to homeschoolers, there's also some footage of drop-in centers where hs kids can take classes, or do their own thing. Now that I think of it, though, not much of anything about coops other than CC (which isn't really a coop). I guess any movie is going to reflect the biases/experiences of the filmmakers, and who they've met in their own homeschooling journey. It would have been quite a different film if the guys making it had been Evangelical Christians from the Bible Belt using Abeka or Apologia rather than the secular CA unschool-leaning guys that did. :) I don't think homeschooling for religious reasons came up at all in the film; if it did, it was a brief mention like "when homeschooling started, most were Christians or hippies, but it's much more diverse now..." or something along those lines. They mentioned that they'd seen Waiting for Superman and Race to Nowhere and wondered why there wasn't a film out there that talked about homeschooling - so they made one. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matryoshka Posted December 4, 2014 Share Posted December 4, 2014 Is it really heavy on the unschooling philosophy? When I first started to consider homeschooling, I went to an info night at a local library that was organized by a state homeschool group. There were I think 3 presenters who shared how homeschooling can work, and they were all unschoolers. So their advice was to not worry abut anything and trust that kids are learning even when it looks like they aren't. It wasn't really a message that inspired me or resonated with me then. Unschoolers don't speak for all homeschoolers so I wonder if the 4 prominent unschoolers are balanced out by other views? The main family followed I don't think considered themselves unschoolers. The dad worries out loud about accountability and expresses a bit of relief when they join the public charter. (there's actually three parents - mom, stepdad, and dad, all of whom are on board and help with the homeschooling). Then of course the public charter is all the busywork from school minus the building and they bail. One dd expresses nothing but relief, but the other does mention that she did like something to keep her on track. I'd say they end up somewhere eclectic and fairly child-interest-led (volunteering at a marine center, going to work with the dads and seeing what they do there), but not full-on radical homeschooling "don't worry if your kids play video games all day" style. They learn French, Teaching Textbooks is shown... The focus is more "public education is broken; homeschooling can be a great alternative and it doesn't have to look like school-at-home" rather than "let your kids do whatever they want and they'll be fine". The filmmaker shared an anecdote in the Q&A that was not in the film (and I'm rather relieved wasn't) - that old chestnut about the unschooled kid who applied to college for astrophysics but hadn't learned any math, so went to the library, got out some math books, and learned everything he needed to know from first grade to calculus in 3 months and aced the entrance exam. :glare: I'm really curious if that's actually a real person he had met, or he'd heard the apocryphal story and was passing it on... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
73349 Posted December 4, 2014 Share Posted December 4, 2014 I liked the movie overall. It was a little on the unschooly side--lots of the commentary is "Don't worry: your kids will learn everything and you don't really need to make it happen"--although that's not really what Ana and Lily really wound up doing. In some ways this is very true, and it's reassurance that will be helpful to the Modern Anxious Parent, but it takes a lot for granted that the film doesn't explore. I would've liked them to look a little longer at more of a variety of styles as well as at the resources that parents make available to the kids in order for the child-led learning to be successful, beyond the Village Home and going to work with a parent sometimes. Maybe someone should make a sequel. :) In no way does the film "feature" WTM; instead, it shows the spine of the book when mentioning classical education--not the friendly blue and yellow cover, but a black cloth spine with silvery letters, as though it's a Bible or a Harry Potter book. Not sure what was up with that. Anyway, the main family featured does not seem interested in a classical approach. Lots of parents brought their kids. I wonder how many were school-leavers versus never-enrollees, so to speak. Everyone seemed absorbed in the story. Lots of knowing laughs at certain points. The focus of the film is the way the homeschooling opens up possibilities--so much so that the lack of enforced structure is scary to parents and children alike. The older girl even considers going back for high school as a path of least resistance. Ultimately, though, homeschooling is paradigm-changing and empowering when the family persists. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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