education films
Movies inspired by and based on true stories.
View trailers, reviews, films, and facts about education films. Discover the facts vs. fiction, history vs. Hollywood.
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Most films included are highly rated on Rotten Tomatoes and the Internet Movie Database (IMDb). They have at least a 70% rating from critics and audiences alike, many with 80% or above. Enjoy the best true story films about education!
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Scene from Stand and Deliver (1988)
Educate comes from the Latin educare, meaning to draw out or lead out. To draw out or lead out what? Is there innate potential for learning, curiosity, creativity, and more that teachers draw out of students? What struggles and seemingly insurmountable obstacles do educators, students, administrators, and parents face? Explore the best films inspired by and based on true stories about education, schools, teachers, students, professors, etc. See also the sports genre for more true stories about coaches and coaching.
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Education films in alphabetical order:
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Beyond the Blackboard (2011 TV Movie)
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TV-PG | Biography, Drama, Education, Family | Stacey Bess is a 24-year-old, first-time teacher who teaches homeless children in a shelter.
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Unrated | Crime, Drama, Education | Richard Dadier, a World War II veteran, takes a job as an English teacher in a violent New York City school for boys, where he is determined to do his job in the face of resistance from students and faculty.
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PG | Drama, Education | Like the film The Water is Wide, this film tells the story of Pat Conroy, an idealistic young teacher who takes his first teaching job on an isolated island off the coast of South Carolina in 1969, where he faces an abusive teacher and strives to bring literacy to impoverished children in a two-room schoolhouse.
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The Water Is Wide: A Memoir by Pat Conroy on Amazon
PG-13 | Biography, Drama, Education, Sport | In 1999, Ken Carter introduces tough rules and higher academic standards for the high school basketball team in Richmond, California, shutting down a winning season when the players' grades drop below standards.
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Coach Carter Documentary-the real coach carter (1 of 2) on YouTube
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Coach Carter Documentary-the real coach carter (2 of 2) on YouTube
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Coach Carter True Story: How Much Is Real & What Happened Next by by Colin McCormick, Raven Monroe, and Tom Russell on Screen Rant
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R | Biography, Drama, Education | An ex-Marine turned teacher, Louanne Johnson, struggles to connect with her students in an inner city high school and turns to unconventional methods.
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Edge of America (2003 TV Movie)
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TV-PG | Drama, Education, Sport | A black educator begins a job teaching high school English to American Indian students at the Three Nations Reservation in rural Utah, where he reluctantly agrees to become a coach for the girls' basketball team.
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Teach with Movies - factual background, discussion questions, and more
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Belief in self gives 'Wings' article by Rosemary Zibart in USA TODAY
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Front of the Class (2008 TV Movie)
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PG | Biography, Drama, Education | Brad Cohen has Tourette's Syndrome but defies the odds and becomes a gifted teacher.
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Front of the Class: How Tourette Syndrome Made Me the Teacher I Never Had autobiography by Brad Cohen and Lisa Wysocky on Amazon
PG-13 | Biography, Crime, Drama, Education | A dedicated young teacher in a racially divided Los Angeles school strives to teach her class of at-risk students tolerance, an interest in learning, and journaling.
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The Freedom Writers Diary (Movie Tie-in Edition) book by Erin Gruwell on Amazon
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The Freedom Writers Diary (20th Anniversary Edition) book by The Freedom Writers and Erin Gruwell on Amazon
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Dear Freedom Writer: Stories of Hardship and Hope from the Next Generation book by The Freedom Writers and Erin Gruwell on Amazon
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The Freedom Writers Diary Teacher's Guide book by Erin Gruwell on Amazon
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Teach with Your Heart: Lessons I Learned from The Freedom Writers book by Erin Gruwell on Amazon
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Teaching Hope: Stories from the Freedom Writer Teachers and Erin Gruwell book by The Freedom Writers and Erin Gruwell on Amazon
TV-14 | Biography, Drama, Education | Liz Murray is a young girl with drug-addicted parents and who begins living on the streets at age 15, but after experiencing a tragedy, she returns to school to get her education.
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From the Streets of New York to the Halls of Harvard | The Oprah Winfrey Show on YouTube
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TEDxYouth@SanDiego - Liz Murray on YouTube
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Homeless to Harvard Free Lessons: Teach with Movie educational materials for teachers, parents, and students from True Story Movies on Pinterest
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PG-13 | Drama, Education | Maverick ex-teacher Joe Clark is enlisted to take over as principal of New Jersey's struggling East Side High, where he is determined to rid the school of its gang and narcotics problems and improve the students' state exam scores.
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Former Eastside High Principal and The Inspiration Behind The 1989 Film “Lean on Me”, Joe Clark, Dead at 82. article by Ali Bouldin on the Chicago Defender website​​
TV-14 | Drama, Education | A struggling mother whose son attends a dangerous urban school sacrifices everything to give her son a good education and leads a movement for thousands of children.
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The Unbelievable Tale Behind ‘Miss Virginia’ by Shuvrajit Das Biswas on TheCinemaholic
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Biography of Virginia Walden Ford on the About page on the official film website
PG | Drama, Education, Music | Roberta Guaspari is abandoned by her husband and depressed, but she lands a job teaching violin to underprivileged children at Central Park East School in Harlem, New York, where she meets challenges from the principal, students, and budget cuts.
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PG | Biography, Drama, Education, Family | Homer Hickam is a coal miner's son who becomes fascinated with rocket science after seeing Sputnik 1 cross the sky. Despite his father's disapproval, Homer begins building rockets with support from his friends and teacher.
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Rocket Boys (The Coalwood Series #1) memoir by Homer Hickam that inspired the film
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Homer Hickam offical website
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October Sky Free Lessons: Teach with Movie educational materials for teachers, parents, and students from True Story Movies on Pinterest
TV-PG | Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Education, Family | At the age of six, Ruby Bridges is one of the first black children to attend an all-white school in the deep south in New Orleans.
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IMDb
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Ruby Bridges biography on National Women's History Museum, biography.com, and National Park Service.
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Let's Read About...Ruby Bridges autobiographical third person narrative children's book by Ruby Bridges and Grace Maccarone, part of Scholastic First Biographies, on Internet Archive, where eBooks are free to borrow with a free account
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Ruby Bridges Goes to School: My True Story autobiographical first person narrative children's book by Ruby Bridges, free eBook on FlipHTML5
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Ruby Bridges Free Lessons: Teach with Movie educational materials for teachers, parents, and students from True Story Movies on Pinterest
Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993)
PG | Biography, Drama, Education | Josh Waitzkin is a seven-year-old chess prodigy who learns speed chess at the park from a hustler named Vinnie, but his parents get him coaching from the renowned chess coach Bruce, whose methods are at odds with his earlier mentor, and Josh faces the stress of the game and the adults surrounding him.
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PG | Drama, Biography, Education | Los Angeles high school teacher Jaime Escalante successfully teaches calculus to his class of unruly students prone to drop out of school, facing unexpected challenges.
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Stand and Deliver Revisited article by Jerry Jesness on reason.com
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PG-13 | Biography, Drama, Sport | The story of Michael Oher, a homeless and traumatized boy who became an All-American football player and first-round NFL draft pick with the help of a caring woman and her family.
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The True Story of Michael Oher and 'The Blind Side' by Jordan Zakarin on Biography.com
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The Real Story Behind The Blind Side – Where Is Michael Oher Now? by Bianca Mercuri on Goalcast. Excerpts from the article:
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Oher’s 2014 memoir, I Beat the Odds, further addresses his views on The Blind Side.
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“I felt like it portrayed me as dumb,” Oher wrote, “instead of as a kid who had never had consistent academic instruction and ended up thriving once he got it.”
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One good deed can change the course of someone’s life. The way that Oher and the Tuohys’ lives merged fulfilled them both. “When I moved in with Leigh Anne and Sean, I felt loved, like part of a family,” wrote Oher, who went on to found the Oher Foundation, dedicated to providing underprivileged children with a pathway to success.
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PG-13 | Drama, Education | Teacher and novelist François Bégaudeau plays a version of himself as a French teacher in this semi-autobiographical film, where he teaches racially mixed students from a tough Parisian neighborhood for one school year.
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The Class semi-autobiographical novel by François Bégaudeau on Amazon
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Unrated | Drama, Education | Lilly Moffat is a schoolteacher who opens a school in a Welsh coal-mining community, facing opposition. She is determined to educate illiterate children and becomes the mentor of a young miner.
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The Corn is Green by Emlyn Williams - the 1938 semi-autobiographical play on Amazon
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PG-13 | Biography, Drama, Education, Romance | An 84 year-old Kenyan villager fights for his right to go to school for the first time by joining a class of six-year-olds to get the education he could not previously afford.
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PG-13 | Biography, Drama, Education, Romance | In 1935, Melvin B. Tolson is a professor at Wiley College, Texas, where he inspired students to form the school's first debate team.
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The Great Debaters: Why wasn’t history good enough? by Paulette Brown-Hinds, the daughter of Hamilton Boswell, one of the debaters. Excerpts:
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". . . the Wiley debating team DID NOT debate at Harvard, it debated at the University of Southern California. The team traveled west, not north, to debate a university not used to debating with black schools and not used to losing."
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"Three of the four debaters were fictional. The film’s writers took half of the names of authentic debaters and changed their last names. . . . There was no woman on the team in 1935."
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No Animals Were Harmed on humanehollywood.org
The Man Who Knew Infinity (2015)
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PG-13 | Biography, Drama, Education | Intelligent, young Indian mathematician, Srinivasa Ramanujan, accepts an invitation by his future friend and mentor, Professor G.H. Hardy, to study mathematics at Cambridge University, leaving behind his young wife and his impoverished homeland.
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The Marva Collins Story (1981 TV Movie)
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Unrated | Biography, Drama, Education | Marva Collins is a dedicated teacher in an inner-city school with a lack of support from faculty and the public school system, but she bravely uses her own funds to create a school.
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Unrated | Biography, Drama, Education | Helen Keller is a blind and deaf girl, frustrated and sometimes violent as a result of being unable to communicate for years. As a last alternative to institutionalizing her, Helen's parents contact a school for the blind, which sends half-blind Annie Sullivan to teach her.
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Helen Keller's autobiography, The Story of My Life - free full text eBook on gutenberg.org
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The Miracle Worker (1979 TV Movie)
Unrated | Biography, Drama, Education | Helen Keller is a blind and deaf girl, frustrated and sometimes violent as a result of being unable to communicate for years. As a last alternative to institutionalizing her, Helen's parents contact a school for the blind, which sends half-blind Annie Sullivan to teach her.
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Helen Keller's autobiography, The Story of My Life - free full text eBook on gutenberg.org
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The Miracle Worker (2000 TV Movie)
Unrated | Biography, Drama, Education | The Wondnerful World of Disney brings a modern remake of the story of Helen Keller, a blind and deaf girl who is frustrated and sometimes violent as a result of being unable to communicate for years. As a last alternative to institutionalizing her, Helen's parents contact a school for the blind, which sends half-blind Annie Sullivan to teach her.
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Helen Keller's autobiography, The Story of My Life - free full text eBook on gutenberg.org
TV-PG | Biography, Drama, Education | Ron Clark is a small-town elementary school teacher in North Carolina who relocates to one of the country's toughest classrooms in New York City, following his calling to make a difference for disenfranchised youth.
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Our History on The Ron Clark Academy website
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Innovative educator Ron Clark inspires passion for learning news video from CBS Mornings on YouTube
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The Water Is Wide (2006 TV Movie)
TV-PG | Drama, Education | Like the film Conrack, this film tells the story of Pat Conroy, an idealistic young teacher who takes his first teaching job on an isolated island off the coast of South Carolina in 1969, where he faces an abusive teacher and strives to bring literacy to impoverished children in a two-room schoolhouse.
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The Water Is Wide: A Memoir by Pat Conroy on Amazon
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Unrated | Drama, Education | Mark Thackeray is an American who just received his degree is engineering, but unable to find work as an engineer, he takes a job as a teacher in a London slum with troublemaking students.
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More to Come!
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Are there any more films about education based on a true story to include here? Any more facts vs. fiction? Reach out and contact me. I am open to respectful questions, comments, positive feedback, and constructive feedback about this website. Thank you, and enjoy the movies!