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