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Nancy Flanagan considers the best teacher movies of all time. One way you know they don't reflect reality in schools, she notes, is that their lead characters are seldom women. Even so, gender aside, she admits her favorite is Mr. Holland's Opus—in part, it seems, because it's all too realistic:

You have to love any movie where a teacher plans to cut and run for a real career, ends up staying in the classroom and impacting lives, then gets the boot as irrelevant after thirty years of masterful work. That’s entertainment.