The Old Guard: The Teacher Movie for the 2020-2021 School Year

This one is for the teachers. 

We’re a STEM-based outfit, so yeah, mostly the STEM teachers, but for all teachers. 

If you’ve been in this job for more than, say, five years, you’ve seen, or been shown, or been gifted virtually all the teacher movies there are. You’ve cried at Mr. Holland’s Opus, cried at Stand and Deliver, felt weird about the muddy messages of Dangerous Minds and other movies that get a touch white savior-y, cried at Dead Poets Society, felt solidarity with the teachers of Chalk, maybe had a really bad day and identified a little too much with The Substitute (we won’t tell), and shook your head in amazement when you realized that the Nick Nolte-starring Teachers was made 36 years ago, but feels like it was telling stories from last year. I felt like I had achieved a dubious career milestone when I realized that virtually every story in Teachers had happened in my school… 

But there’s a new one out there, and it’s not a conventional “teacher” movie. I’m going to need you to go with me here. 

The teacher movie that you need to watch – especially this year – is The Old Guard on Netflix. 

The movie, which debuted on Netflix on July 10th, is based on the graphic novel by Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernández, and of course – the movie’s great, but – even though Rucka wrote the screenplay for the movie – the comic’s a little bit better. Oh, and the sequel to the original graphic novel is already out in comic form…

Two things from here on: 1) please understand that the movie (and the comic) is a hard R. There’s lot of violence in the movie, and perhaps even more violence with a fair amount of sex sprinkled on top in the graphic novel. Be aware of that if you want to have a viewing party – virtual or with people in your quarantine bubble – with some teacher friends before the school year starts. It’s not everyone’s cuppa; and 2) major spoilers are going to flow freely from here on. If you want to be surprised by the story’s twists and turns, stop reading now and come back after you’ve watched it. This article will still be here. 

So – as we do…

Spoilers…

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That should be enough room. 

Okay – so, the long and the short of it – the main characters: Andy, Nicky, Joe, Booker, and new recruit Nile, are effectively immortal. At least to us, normal humans. They can die, but their lifespans, for unknown reasons, reach into the hundreds and thousands of years. When they’re mortally wounded, they “pause” for a moment while appearing dead, then their wounds begin to heal, they sputter and cough and then get up. Kind of Deadpool-y, but without a lot of the wisecracks and fifth-grade humor. 

I’m skipping a lot – a lot – of the story. You need to watch it, seriously. But as a teacher, here’s what I felt the most connection with – Andy’s world-weariness. Played by Charlize Theron, Andy (short for Andromache of Scythia) is approximately 6,000 years old. She’s seen and done everything there is to do. And as she laments to her team, despite all that they have done over hundreds of years – working for the “good,” the world is getting worse, not better. She’s capital “d” Done with it all. 

One of the major changes between the graphic novel and the movie version of the story is the plotline of the former CIA agent, Copley (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor). Again, not going to go too deeply into his story, but Copley plays a pivotal role in making this particular story happen…with his own reasons for the actions he takes. The thing is, for as careful as Andy and her team have been in covering their tracks through the decades, Copley’s sniffed them out. One of the major reveals in Copley’s house is a massive display of clippings and photos where he’s identified the members of the team through the years, despite their efforts to hide and never appear on film. 

Copley’s search for the members of the team only reaches back about 150 years, he explains, “When you think about how old you are – the good you’ve done for humanity becomes exponential.” 

Copley’s board shows the team’s actions throughout the past century, but Copley traces their actions forward as well. Andy or another member of the team saved a man or a woman, for example, Copley followed that man or woman’s story to see what they did in their life, as well as what their children did – who was touched by the good they did or the life they saved – the ripples that spread from that point. 

And in that discussion, Andy says something that resonates: “We don’t have all the answers, but we do have purpose.” 

After just a little more dialogue, the final line of the movie (not the credits scene…) comes from a reinvigorated Andy, with a clear mission ahead: “Then let’s go to work.” 

The first minutes of the credits show the footprints of the team through time, highlighting the good that resulted because of their actions, such as a little girl saved in France, later becoming the youngest person to win the Nobel Prize in Medicine. As the fictional newspaper clipping reads, the prize will inspire her to “continue my efforts in the great cause of ending the pain and suffering that diseases such as polio cause in children.”

Later clippings show members of the team being instrumental in rescuing kids that went on to win science awards or, in one case, a young hip-hop activist that’s changing the DRC, as well as helping in Operation Babylift in Asia – allowing Copley to connect one of the young children as growing up to become an angel investor who would go on to help amputee children in Asia.

Every action – which Andy had become a little too calloused to see had further actions down the line.  

Watching The Old Guard, I had that moment. That time when you’re reading something or watching something, and the world opens just a crack wider. And it was a better moment that I’ve ever had with any other “teacher movie” while hitting all the same notes. 

Coming into this year, a lot of us are Andy. We’ve seen it, we’ve done it. We’ve been hailed as heroes, and for far too many of us, we’ve been vilified as enemies of…everything when we dared to put our health and the health of our students in front of actual physically returning, in-person to schools. If you had to watch, or are currently waiting to see how a group of people who won’t meet in person is deciding whether or not you’ll be meeting in person with students and other adults…each day of deliberation or waiting can feel like a year. And no matter the decision that’s made, there’s anxiety, and in some cases a low-level dread or fear of the unknown, because that should be the motto of the upcoming 2020-2021 school year: The Year of the Unknown. 

Okay, yes, there are many teachers that meet every new year with near-unbridled joy and bubbling-over enthusiasm. I get you. But again – go with me. I just think there are less of our bubbly, excited teachers this year than there have been in years past. 

We’re Andy. 

But, if we’re all going to allow ourselves to be Andy for a minute, allow me to be your Copley. 

Who’s in your class this year, either online or in-person? 

What are they going to do? 

Who’s lives are they going to touch? 

Who will they marry? 

What will they teach their kids, and what will their kids do? 

And on and on and on. 

Even during a regular year, it’s easy to lose sight of our bigger picture as teachers. But especially in these days where the future may not always look as bright as it may have at times in the past, remember the bumper-sticker aphorism that through overuse can probably inspire a brief wave of nausea: “I touch the future. I teach.” 

We’re Andy. We’re the Old Guard, complete. We’re our own tribe. We’re regularly beaten up and beaten down. Occasionally extolled as experts and heroes but then, when convenient, accused of knowing nothing of our profession, of “indoctrinating” our students, of being the source of everything wrong in the world. For every small victory, we have much larger failures. Two steps forward, one step back. And to paraphrase Andy, it can sure seem like that for all we do – the sacrifice, the blood, the sweat, the tears, and sometimes, our very lives, the world’s getting worse, not better. 

But that’s the thing, isn’t it? We’re not working for today. We’re working for tomorrow. And the tomorrow after that. Yeah, I want my students to understand and demonstrate that they know the material and get good grades and move on, but I want more than that. I want them to make better tomorrows. 

Like Andy, Nicky, Booker, and Joe we need to take a moment to look at Copley’s wall, whatever form that wall takes for each of us. If you’ve been in this game long enough, you can’t go anywhere around your city without being greeted by name. Your students have had kids…and maybe those kids have had kids. It’s the most profound challenge of being a teacher – what we do in our virtual and physical classrooms has to echo forward through time. It does already. Think about what we can do when we work with the intention of changing the future for the better.  

And I’m not going to wrap this up by challenging you, or doing the guilt trip and asking, “Does it?” It does. You’re a teacher. I’m a teacher. We know that it does. You know that, like the Old Guard, what we do today and every day in that classroom, whatever form that classroom takes, affects the future. 

By the end of the movie, of course, Andy is changed. She’s looking at the world differently, thanks to what happened in the story as well as what Copley shared with them. Being Andy, as we first meet her in The Old Guard, right now, before this year starts…that’s not wrong or unexpected. This was a rough spring and summer for a lot of us, and many of us are staring down a year of more unknowns than knowns. 

But sometime between now and when you greet that class with masks on, that hybrid class, those faces in little boxes on Zoom, take a minute and think about your “Copley wall.” What’s on it? Smile. Now – what do you want to be on it? 

“We don’t have all the answers, but we do have purpose.”