When it comes to stage presence, it’s hard to top the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. She keeps the crowd entertained, and the action moving. She’s always coming up with new and creative ways to get her point across and she’s never at a loss for words. Kinda sounds like us teachers doesn’t it? So what if Midge and the rest of her friends ended up in a classroom. What would it look like?

1. When someone asks you what the date is during a school break…

Tuesday? Thursday? It doesn’t matter! The only thing that matters is your ability to sleep in.

2. When you get home exhausted and your partner asks how your day was…

Usually, the messy hair and the tear streaks through our makeup is a dead giveaway.

3. When a parent tries to tell you how to run your classroom…

And no, the fact that you’re a taxpayer doesn’t make you my boss either.

4. When a student asks to repeat the instructions for the fifth time, and another student answers for you!

Thank you sweet student of mine for helping me not lose it within the first 10 minutes of the day.

5. When administration pops their head in to your room and sees absolute chaos.

Isn’t this always the way? Things are going swimmingly, everyone is getting along, then without warning your class becomes a living, breathing tornado. Then somehow, as if on cue, that’s when the door opens. It’s your friendly, neighborhood administrator peeking in to see what you’re doing, followed by them slowly backing out of the room and closing the door behind them.

6. Explaining to new teachers that it’s completely normal to cry in the parking lot…

Sometimes all we can do is hold it together long enough to make it into our car at the end of the day before having a complete meltdown.

7. When a student continues to talk after you’ve asked them several times to stop…

And they always seem amazed when you finally have to raise your voice. 

8. When you’re trying to teach and no one is listening to you…

There are definitely days when you could do everything short of setting off-road flares and it wouldn’t matter.

9. When students go to the bathroom and don’t return until the end of class…

Where do they go? Is it the same alternate dimension that their pencils disappear to?

10. When you get moved into an even smaller classroom than the year before…

Of course, it never means our class size gets smaller, just the room.

11. When a student says you’re their favorite teacher

Best. Feeling. Ever.

12. When you lose it in front of your students and you hope they don’t tell their parents about it.

As teachers, we spend all day trying to fill our student’s heads with information and positive experiences. What actually gets retained inside those heads of theirs, however, is anyone’s guess. Maybe they’ll remember how to reduce fractions? Maybe they’ll recall the four states of matter? Or maybe they’ll tell Mom and Dad about how red your face got earlier today.

13. When there’s a snow day and you can go back to bed

14. How parents talk to teachers these days if their child isn’t doing well in their class…

Because it’s clearly our fault when a child is failing our class right?

15. When admin asks if you read their email before the meeting…

OK so maybe we didn’t read every single line but we at least perused a line or two.

16. Walking into school the day after you get a haircut…

There’s nothing like a new hairstyle to instantly grab your students attention.

17. When your students refuse to study for the test

You can beg, you can plead, you can do whatever you want but there are some students that will walk into your room on the day of the test completely unprepared. And while most of us can accept that fact, what drives us nuts is when those students have the nerve to look surprised when they don’t understand anything on that test.

18. When a student has a witty comeback for something you said

A lot of teachers use humor to teach (mostly because a lot of us fancy ourselves as stand-up comedians of a sort), so we can’t really get too upset when students use humor back at us. Just remember, they are still learning the rules of comedy. So when one of your kids drops just the right line and just the right time… acknowledge the burgeoning comic genius… they deserve it.

19. When admin asks you why you were late to your 3rd-period class…

And if you drink coffee during your 3rd-period break, don’t forget that means you’ll have to pee during your 4th-period break.

20. When you send a student to the principal’s office and you know their parents are going to lose it when they find out.

No one likes being the disciplinarian, but sometimes all teachers have to do what they have to do. That’s when you find out what students have strict parents. Every teacher knows that feeling in the pit of their stomach when you send a kid out of your room and their eyes get super big and you realize you may have just sealed their doom.


21. Experienced teachers giving a motivational pep talk to a new teacher…

Basically, if you can survive an entire year of teaching, you can survive anything.

22. When a student asks a question and you’re not quite sure what the answer is.

Students like to think we have all the answers, and in a perfect world we would but let’s be honest, there are some subjects that are out of our reach. Sure we may know the basics of the animal kingdom, but we might not be able to confirm whether or not there are purple lizards who lick their eyeballs that live in the jungle somewhere.  

23. When you’re in a staff meeting and the lecturer is reading off the PowerPoint slides…

Yet another meeting that should have been an email.

24. When you’re super close to a breakdown and a fellow teacher asks you what’s wrong.

We all need to vent, usually on a daily basis, but there are those times when things have been so rough in your classroom you think you might explode. So you spend the rest of the day trying to keep it together because you know if you start unloading it’s going to get ugly in a hurry. So you do what any self-respecting teacher does: bottle it up and wait until you’re in your car to burst into tears.

25. When you’re trying to enjoy a quiet planning period but keep getting interrupted

It’s like the minute your planning period starts there’s a homing beacon that goes off throughout the school alerting everyone that you have some free time. Of course we know that couldn’t be further from the truth, a teacher’s time is never “free” but it is at least a theoretical opportunity to cross a few things off your list. 

26. Teachers talking to their first cup of coffee of the day

If there’s one thing teachers can’t live without, it is coffee.

27. When you’ve run out of creative ways to get your class to focus

We rhythmically clap, we have cute little callback sayings (1, 2,3, eyes on me!), and yet sometimes that just won’t work. When the tricks and strategies don’t work, and the kids are crawling up the walls, sometimes the direct approach is the best approach.

28. When your alarm goes off on a Monday morning and you contemplate whether or not to get up…

Yeah, sometimes it takes a few whacks of the snooze button before we finally leave that bed for good.

29. How we feel on pretty much a daily basis

Sure students and parents believe that we teachers have all the answers, but believe me, we don’t. We’re all just holding on for dear life and doing the best we can. Some days we go out there and knock ‘em dead in the aisles. Other days we get tomatoes thrown at us. It’s the life of a teacher, or a stand up comic. Or a little bit of both.

Also Read:

The Life of a Teacher as Told by the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel