Somewhere along the way, teacher movies stopped being about “kids behaving badly” and started being about everything else—identity, confidence, ambition, class, race, grief, hope, and that one teacher who makes you feel like you’re not doomed. These films didn’t just show classrooms. They made school look like the place where your whole future gets decided in a single speech, a single lesson, or a single moment when someone finally says, “I see you”.