Teacher Tropes

Today in PreCalculus I started writing this blog instead of doing my homework. This is not because I'm slacking; rather, it's because the teacher who normally has the assignment on the board since the beginning of class decided to wait to give it at the end. Math is fairly intuitive to me and I always try to finish the assigned homework before class ends so when I get home, I can work on more difficult or time-consuming activities. Naturally, I'm a little annoyed at this (hopefully temporary) change, but at the same time, I understand her motives. She rarely gets engaged by the students in the class. Then again, that's part of the difficulty in being a teacher -- dealing with students who don't care about the lesson, or at least seem not to care due to not paying attention while the teacher is talking (even if they're doing something productive like homework). I don't blame her decision, even if I detest the feeling of idleness that overtakes me when I can't complete a task in the time I feel obligated to complete it in.

This incident made me think of teacher tropes. If a show centers around a kid between five and eighteen years of age, chances are some (if not all) episodes will take place at the school, and there will certainly be at least one occasion where the student and teacher characters interact. The principal and lunch ladies (who, for some reason, are always female) can appear as characters as well, but they certainly appear less often than the teachers do.

I've found surprisingly few examples of teachers with one-dimensional personalities in media. Still, you can divide teachers in shows into a few categories.

1. The Sadist. Who isn't familiar with this character, especially from school-centered comedies? They give F's and tons of homework and generally abuse their power over the students. Occasionally their behavior crosses the border from jerkish to downright antagonistic.
   
2. The Bore. I'm sure that at some point in your school experience, you've had at least one of these. Their voice is an endless and relentless monotone so that it takes intense amounts of willpower to not fall asleep while listening to them.
   
3. The Cuckoo. Something in their manner or logic is weird or wild and you just have to wonder what the principal was thinking in hiring them. This can be mixed to some degree with other teacher tropes.
   
4. The Parental. These are the teachers a character can tell just about anything to. Oftentimes they're smart and kind and would maybe even go out of their way to help a student.
   
5. The Shy One. While their proficiency as a teacher can vary, the shy ones are often kind and want the best for their students. They are often pushovers and may take student abuse in the form of spitballs or insults.
   
6. The Tough Lover. These teachers can be sarcastic and tend to believe that lessons are sometimes best learned the hard way. They'll give a student motivation when they're down, but always lets the student find their own way through their problems in the hope that they become stronger.

While I believe teachers in media are often played way over the top, I can't complain about their lack of development because many of them do, actually, get real motivations or reasons behind their character. Anyone who's ever watched Fairly OddParents has seen Mr. Crocker, a sadist teacher type who always tries to catch the main character's fairies -- but he's turned out so badly due to said main character messing with his childhood and ruining his life in a time machine. Mrs. Jewels from Sideways Stories from Wayside School was raised by circus performers, justifying her wild behavior and questionable logic.

If you want more examples of two- or even three-dimensional teacher characters, I highly recommend you check out Ned's Declassified. Not only is the show hysterical and helpful, but the teachers are among the most colorful I've ever seen. They managed to justify the bore teacher type. That takes talent.

Teachers can make fascinating characters. You deal with them for a solid first third or so of your lifetime, so naturally they have a large impact on the way your life can be directed. Can they be exaggerated in media? Most definitely. But if you give them the proper motivation, your teacher characters can be just as awesomely eccentric and interesting as those that set good examples today.

~ Dreamnorn

Happy Birthday... in Comedy!

The other day, I received an invitation to a friend's sweet sixteen. It was a grand invite, giving its recipients the tiniest tentative peek at the larger than life festivities to come. When I then remembered I had a blog post to write, I spent a long time attempting to think of material, but my thoughts were preoccupied on parties with grandeur beyond my imagination.

It then occurred to me to write about birthdays in comedy -- or, more accurately, the lack thereof. Stories that are comedic in nature rarely address birthdays, and even if they do, you never "see" a character age. For example, Garfield is a few decades old, but he literally doesn't appear or behave any differently (even if Jim Davis' art style has evolved since the beginning). Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes literally goes through ten summers and school years while never growing an inch and always ending up back in first grade with Susie Derkins. Does that make their universe inhabited by midgets who never improve past first grade to the point where re-taking it indefinitely is their only option? Of course not. What it means is that the writer is sticking to the concept that status quo is God and that nothing about the setup must ever be changed. Ever. Forever.

While I understand their motives for this, I don't understand why there's practically never a scenario in long-running comedic series that involves a birthday party. In find that depressing because there is so much comedic fodder to be found. Funny stuff happens at birthday parties all the time -- things the host expects, things no one expects, but things that are most assuredly hilarious when played right. It doesn't even have to be a main character's birthday -- it could be any.

Here are a few ideas, all stemming from the key concept that something must go wrong!

1. Chaos with the cake!
2. Swinging from streamers!
3. Bombarding balloons!
4. Dancing disaster!
5. Gift-giving goof-ups!

Seriously, though, you could go nuts.

Playing Sick

So, the reason this post is late is because I've been sick this past week, specifically with this head cold that's been going around Southern California lately. This has made accomplishing anything besides mindlessly leveling up Pokemon extremely difficult. On the bright side, it did give me a creative idea for a nice short blog so I can keep up to my weekly updating schedule -- the trope of playing sick.

Anyone who's ever read Calvin and Hobbes must have seen this scenario, but this is fairly common. A character, usually in elementary school, wants to take a break from it all. They decide to fake exaggerated symptoms in an effort for their parent(s) or guardian(s) to realize that they would much rather stay home and rest. This is inevitably doomed to fail in comedy -- and why wouldn't it? If a kid were to try it in real life, the typical parental response would be to check the child's symptoms for themselves. Upon discovering that they aren't serious (or completely nonexistent), they'll tell their kid that they're fine and should go anyway.

Of course, when you're a kid and trying this, it probably isn't so funny for you -- but when it's a fictional character, the situation becomes amusing. Still, sometimes I find it tiring seeing a rehash of the same situation over and over again. As much as I love Calvin and Hobbes, I personally think this situation gets old after a while.

If you're inclined to throw in a "playing sick" scenario, sticking to the play-by-play isn't so bad, but I might want to shake things up a little. Here are a few ideas:

1. Make the character legitimately sick. Have their parent(s) or guardian(s) not believe them and send them to school. This could work well in both drama and in comedy and can be played to either effect.
   
2. Have the character fake symptoms with effort. I remember seeing an episode of a show once where, in an attempt to play sick, the character drinks hot faucet water to fool the thermometer and pinches her cheeks to make her appear flushed, and sprays decongestant up her nose to have it run. Naturally, she gets caught in the act, but it was entertaining to watch her go to such extremes to stay home from school.
   
3. Let the character succeed. Either the adult is successfully fooled or decides to play along with their intentions. Should this happen, the adult should endeavor to make their child treat it like a real sick day -- feed them nothing but soup, force them to stay in bed for hours, etc.
   
4. Should the character succeed, let the class do something fun. When the character returns to school in the next day or so, they'll discover that the class did something they would have loved to do while he or she was out. Nothing like karma to spice up a comedic scenario!

~ Dreamnorn