Scenes from a school year paint a refreshingly nuanced portrait of rural America

The feature-length documentary North Putnam follows a year at a public school district in rural Indiana, chronicling the many ways in which community and education intersect in this small slice of the American Midwest. This excerpt from the documentary, exclusive to Aeon, features a series of interconnected moments from the titular North Putnam School Corporation and the region it serves. This includes frank discussions between students and teachers about the challenges the school district faces; moments from a contentious school board meeting; the ritual of a high-school football game; depictions of the region’s deep ties to agriculture and faith; and scenes from the Putnam County criminal justice system, where some parents of students make their living, and others are incarcerated.

In his depiction, the US director Joel Fendelman eschews the sensationalisation that so often consumes coverage of the issues depicted on screen. Rather, with an unobtrusive style, he provides a refreshingly honest view of one small slice of the United States where many live below the poverty line – and especially the challenges educators face. The film is a project by the North Putnam Putnam County-based nonprofit organisation The Castle, which, ‘in the midst of increasing assessment pressures, increasing class sizes, reduced funding in the arts and diminished resources overall’ aims to ‘inject a sense of play and joy back into the classroom for teachers and their students’.