Back to School!

by Joss Ware

Pardon me while I do a little dance of glee...for today's the day my children go back to school. (Yes, I know we start late. It's a Michigan thing.)

As I was settling to sleep last night (probably more excited than they were), I found myself thinking about some of my favorite "school-movies"--flicks that revolve around being in school. High school, generally (because that's when most of the fun stuff happens...right?), and with much of the activity tied into school.

There are quite a few of my favorites that have to do with back to school, maybe because starting school is probably more of a New Year than hanging up a new calendar on January 1. It's exciting and frightening and each year is the start of something new and different.

Grease of course comes to mind as one of the classic "back to school" movies, along with Fast Times at Ridgemont High. And The 10 Things I Hate About You. And though it's set in college, there's Legally Blonde for a great girl-power movie.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the TV show moreso than the movie) of course, and Veronica Mars (all right, so now I'm moving on to the smaller screen. But you get my point.) are two of my other favorites that revolve around the school structure and don't really have much plot outside of the school year.

And who can forget Friday Night Lights? (Tim Riggins, anyone?)

(You know I had to have an excuse to post a picture.)

All of these shows do an excellent job of using a school and classmates as its own segregated world and building its characters and plot around it. Schools are simple and familiar settings, but when creating a story, we (novelists, film makers, TV writers) have to identify the "world" in which it's set--regardless of whether it's a historical one, with steam-powered zeppelins or vampire hunters, a futuristic one with voice-powered showers and automatic chefs, or our own vast environment...but honed down into something small and manageable.

It's been a long time since I've been in school, but watching these shows gives me a sense of what it's like to be back in school--the dynamics, the relationships, the coming of age: it's all timeless.

So...what are some of your favorite "school" movies or shows? And what about you--is September a time for New Year's Resolutions, or do you wait until January when that brand-spanking new calendar gets hung up?