What’s important to remember in all of this is just how absent the film is of any forced dramatics. There are no big doings, no phony plot twists. The biggest conflict comes when Mr. Lowrey curses at a kid and calls him “a horrible student,” a very real incident that winds up haunting the rookie teacher. Other plot points that could be taken as key turning points involve the aforementioned Teacher of the Year contest (in which Mr. Stroope goes overboard in self-promotion) and a cute spelling bee in which teachers must tackle student-approved slang terms (hilariously presented here as a brief, keen parody of such documentaries as “Spellbound”). Such moments have roots deeply planted in what appears to be a drab ordinariness, but remember, in such ordinariness is where we often find the most important parts of our everyday lives.
Those two plot points also serve as a contrast between the male leads. As Mr. Stroope pushes further to win his prize, his attempts at being “the cool teacher” grow more and more obvious in their shallowness. Mr. Lowrey, meanwhile, uses the spelling bee as a way to finally connect to his students, and damn it if by the end we’re not rooting for this nervous fella to win big with the kids.
In fact, Mr. Lowrey is the glue of the film. While the others’ problems offer honest portraits of life as a public school employee, be it through biting comedy or painful personal conflict, it’s the potential rise of Mr. Lowrey that keeps us going. An opening title card informs us that half of all new teachers quit by their third year, and we wonder if Mr. Lowrey will be one of them. His first day of school (cleverly captured on the first day of filming, to help cement the awkward tone between teacher and students on the set) is a train wreck, and he often confesses that he’s not cut out for the job. But will he return for a second year? The journey to that answer is one of the most involving character paths to hit the screen in recent memory.
