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How many do you recognise?
Nobody wants to deal in stereotypes but sometimes stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason. With Fist Fight about to hit the cinema, we starting thinking about the teachers we all remembered from school and a few classic types soon came to mind.
The inspirational teacher
Think Robin Williams in Dead Poet’s Society. Or Mr Bergstrom in The Simpsons.
These teachers are the chosen few – men and women who can convince you that you can be anything you want to be. They’ll have you believing that you can be president of the USA, even if you were born and reared in Sligo.
The talker
Students quickly learn that if they can shave 20 minutes off a class if they can get this teacher talking. The teacher’s passion may be football, fishing or Greco-Roman wrestling but their smarter students will find a way of bringing it up at the start of every class.
The Danny Glover
This teacher is just one step away from retirement but they’re stuck teaching kids they don’t like in a job they hate.
They’re ill-equipped to deal with modern teaching methods, confused by today’s youth, and counting down the seconds until they can leave it all behind.
The substitute
The substitute teacher is here for a good time, not a long time. They know they’re only passing through so they don’t waste time with details like teaching plans or social niceties like remembering students’ names.
The one who thinks they’re still in college
This party animal rocks up to school just after 9am, blocks the school gate with their car, then guzzles three litres of coffee to get them through to break time.
They’re normally a newly-qualified teacher who thinks they’re a rock’n’roll star but their students think they’re a borderline alcoholic.
The one who hates kids
Nobody can work out why anyone who dislikes kids would take a job in a school. Yet this teacher prowls the corridors with a barely-concealed antipathy towards anything in a uniform.
These miserable sods are fuelled entirely by hate and dreams of the summer holidays.
The principal’s wife
This is like the school equivalent of the House of Cards, an educational power couple who shore up each others’ positions. The principal’s wife carries more authority than your average teacher as the students and the teachers all know that she could destroy them if she really wanted.
The cool teacher
There’s always one teacher who wants to be down with the kids. They know which bands are trending, they’re all about their social media and they just want to be, like, someone their students can talk to. They’re well-intentioned but they’re still the butt of the joke at break time.
The hot teacher
Schools are full of hormonal teenagers whose sexual frustration is reaching nuclear levels. Throwing a hot teacher into the mix is like dropping napalm on a forest fire.
Some students have been known to do subjects they don’t even like just to sit in the hot teacher’s presence for an hour a day.
The teacher who can’t teach
There’s always one teacher who’s an expert in their field but utterly incapable of sharing their knowledge with their students.
It’s not that they’re not trying. They just can’t do it. Knowledge may be power but this teacher’s power never escapes the confines of their own skull.
The budding politician
This teacher is counting down the days until they can ditch their students and start running the country. Still, the teaching gig is a handy number and they can easily nip out of classes to take a phone call about a troublesome pothole.
The disgusting one
There’s always one teacher that nobody wants to be around. They might have a nose-picking obsession, sweat profusely even in the heart of winter, or look at showers as a monthly treat.
The one thing for sure is that this teacher repels the entire student body with their disgusting habits.
With all this talk of teachers, it seems like a good time to mention that Fist Fight is in cinemas now. Starring Ice Cube and Charlie Day, it’s a comedy about two teachers who end up on a collision course on the last day of school.
Clip via Warner Bros. Pictures
Brought to you by Warner Bros.
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