49 Fun Facts About Teacher

Anne Sullivan, herself partly blind, is remembered as the lifelong teacher of which deaf-blind author, first reached at a water pump?

Helen Keller, who was six when Sullivan spelled W-A-T-E-R into one hand while pumping water over the other, the breakthrough dramatised in The Miracle Worker. Keller went on to Radcliffe and a writing career; Sullivan stayed 49 years.

NASA's Teacher in Space taught which subject at Concord High School in New Hampshire?

Social studies: Christa McAuliffe taught American history, law and economics at Concord High and planned two lessons from orbit before Challenger broke apart on 28 January 1986.

Jaime Escalante, the Bolivian-born teacher behind Stand and Deliver, taught which subject at Garfield High, where his students were accused of cheating?

Calculus: in 1982 the Educational Testing Service made 14 of his students retake the AP Calculus exam on suspicion of cheating, and the 12 who sat it passed again. Escalante had taught in Bolivia for 12 years first.

Which actor was Oscar-nominated for playing Escalante in Stand and Deliver (1988)?

Edward James Olmos earned a Best Actor nomination at the 1989 Academy Awards for playing Escalante; the film was added to the National Film Registry in 2011.

Erin Gruwell's students at Wilson High in Long Beach turned their journals into which 1999 book, later filmed with Hilary Swank?

The Freedom Writers Diary, named in a nod to the Freedom Riders, and Gruwell was a first-year teacher in 1994 handed the lowest-performing class. Reading The Diary of Anne Frank with them was the turning point.

Before creating her educational method, Maria Montessori qualified as what?

A physician: Montessori graduated in medicine from the University of Rome in 1896, among Italy's first women doctors, after attending an all-boys technical school hoping to become an engineer.

Which philosopher was hired by Philip II of Macedon around 343 BC to tutor his 13-year-old son, the future Alexander the Great?

Aristotle, who had been Plato's student for twenty years, and taught the boy at Mieza for about three years. Alexander reputedly slept with a copy of the Iliad annotated by his tutor, who went on to found the Lyceum in Athens.

The name 'Confucius' is a Latinisation roughly meaning what?

Wise Teacher Kong: Confucius Latinises Kong Fuzi, 'Master Kong', fuzi being an honorific for a learned teacher. Jesuit missionaries coined the form in the late 16th century; the man was born Kong Qiu.

Horace Mann, 'The Father of American Education', built the public school system of which state?

Massachusetts: as the first secretary of its Board of Education from 1837, Mann pushed universal, non-sectarian public schooling and teacher training, and most states copied the model.

Founded in 1635, which is the oldest existing public educational establishment in the United States?

Boston Latin School, founded 23 April 1635 and modelled on the grammar school of Boston, England, held its first classes in schoolmaster Philemon Pormort's home, a year before Harvard.

Which German educator coined the word 'kindergarten' in 1840?

Friedrich Fröbel coined 'Kindergarten', literally 'garden of children', in 1840 for the Play and Activity Institute he had opened at Bad Blankenburg in 1837.

World Teachers' Day is celebrated annually on which date?

5 October: UNESCO established World Teachers' Day in 1994 to mark the date in 1966 when an international Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers was adopted in Paris.

Which 1939 conference organiser is known as the father of the yellow school bus?

Frank W. Cyr, a Teachers College, Columbia professor of rural education, ran the week-long April 1939 conference that set 44 national bus standards, including the colour now called National School Bus Glossy Yellow.

The 'lead' in a pencil is actually a mix of clay and which mineral?

Graphite: the huge pure deposit found at Borrowdale, Cumbria, in the 1560s launched the pencil, and from 1795 Nicolas-Jacques Conté fired ground graphite with clay to vary hardness. Hexagonal casings stop pencils rolling.

Early blackboards were made of thin sheets of what?

Slate: pupils had long written on hand-held slate tablets, and from about 1801, when Edinburgh headmaster James Pillans hung a large one for geography lessons, thin sheets of the dark stone covered classroom walls.

In 1880 which city's school board was persuaded to ban teachers from setting maths homework?

Boston: in 1880 economist Francis Amasa Walker persuaded its School Committee to forbid arithmetic homework, and in 1900 Ladies' Home Journal editor Edward Bok campaigned against any homework before age 15.

Which English school, founded in 1552, is believed to be the first to require a uniform?

Its long blue coats gave rise to the term 'bluecoat school'.

As late as 1930, roughly what share of US school buildings were one-room schoolhouses?

Roughly 65%: 149,282 one-teacher schools were still open in 1929-30, more than six in ten public elementary buildings, before consolidation and bus routes closed most of them within two decades.

Which Nordic country's schools, which start children at seven and set little homework, topped the PISA rankings in the early 2000s?

Finland, where teachers need a master's degree, topped the first PISA results published in 2001 and stayed near the top through 2006, setting off a wave of 'education tourism' to its schools.

The US National Teacher of the Year program began in which year?

1952: the first National Teacher of the Year, Santa Barbara first-grade teacher Geraldine Jones, was received by President Truman. The Council of Chief State School Officers runs the programme and winners are traditionally honoured at the White House.

In Dead Poets Society, John Keating teaches his students which Latin phrase?

Carpe diem, 'seize the day', from the Roman poet Horace, and the boys learn it while looking at photographs of long-dead students. The film grossed $235 million on a $16 million budget and won an Oscar for its screenplay.

In School of Rock, Jack Black's Dewey Finn poses as a substitute teacher at which school?

Horace Green, a prep school where Dewey takes a call meant for his flatmate Ned Schneebly; Richard Linklater's 2003 comedy was the highest-grossing music-themed comedy until Pitch Perfect 2 in 2015.

Which actor plays music teacher Glenn Holland in Mr. Holland's Opus (1995)?

Richard Dreyfuss earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination as Glenn Holland, who takes the Kennedy High job in 1965 to buy time to write a symphony and stays thirty years.

Abbott Elementary is set in an underfunded public school in which city?

Philadelphia, Quinta Brunson's home city; she named the show after Joyce Abbott, her own sixth-grade teacher, and based Barbara Howard on her mother, a Philadelphia teacher.

Which grade does Janine Teagues teach when Abbott Elementary begins?

Second grade: Janine teaches second grade at Abbott when the series opens. Brunson won the 2022 Emmy for writing the pilot and the Lead Actress in a Comedy award at the following ceremony.

Which author and illustrator team created The Magic School Bus books?

Joanna Cole wrote and Bruce Degen illustrated the series from 1986, after Scholastic asked for books combining science with story; the pair later made Ms. Frizzle's Adventures to teach social studies.

In Roald Dahl's Matilda, what is the name of Matilda's kind teacher?

Miss Honey, Jennifer Honey, who turns out to be the Trunchbull's niece, cheated of her inheritance, and Matilda's telekinesis sets that right. In the musical she gets the show's loveliest song, 'My House'.

Which subject does Minerva McGonagall teach at Hogwarts?

Transfiguration: McGonagall teaches it while serving as head of Gryffindor and deputy headmistress, and she gives Hermione a Time-Turner in the third book.

Which actor plays George Feeny, the teacher and neighbour of Cory Matthews on Boy Meets World?

William Daniels, earlier the voice of KITT in Knight Rider, played Mr. Feeny for all seven seasons on ABC's TGIF block from 1993 and returned for Disney Channel's Girl Meets World.

Before becoming Heisenberg, Breaking Bad's Walter White taught which subject?

Chemistry, which is why his meth is 99.1% pure and blue, and why creator Vince Gilligan could describe the show as turning 'Mr. Chips into Scarface'. He had co-founded a company worth billions and sold his share for $5,000.

Sidney Poitier plays a teacher in London's East End in which 1967 film?

To Sir, with Love: Poitier plays engineer-turned-teacher Mark Thackeray taming an East End class; Lulu's title song topped the Billboard Hot 100 for five weeks and was Billboard's top single of 1967.

Which 1934 James Hilton novella follows a gentle Latin master through decades at Brookfield School?

Goodbye, Mr. Chips, written in four days for a magazine supplement and a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic. Robert Donat won the 1939 Best Actor Oscar for playing Chips, beating Clark Gable's Rhett Butler.

Which fictional Ohio institution is home to the glee club New Directions?

William McKinley High, where Spanish teacher Will Schuester takes over the club after the previous director is fired for inappropriate conduct. The same school name was used in Freaks and Geeks, also set in the Midwest.

On Welcome Back, Kotter, what were Gabe Kotter's remedial students nicknamed?

The Sweathogs: Kotter returns to teach the remedial class he once belonged to at James Buchanan High, modelled on Gabe Kaplan's own New Utrecht High in Brooklyn; the show launched John Travolta as Vinnie Barbarino.

Which actress plays Elizabeth Halsey, the gold-digging, hungover middle-school teacher of Bad Teacher (2011)?

Cameron Diaz, opposite her ex Justin Timberlake as the substitute she wants to marry for his money, with Jason Segel as the gym teacher. It grossed $216 million despite mixed reviews.

Ted Lasso is an American coach of which sport before he is hired, with no soccer experience, to run AFC Richmond?

College football, at Wichita State in Kansas, which had just won a Division II title under him. The character began in 2013 NBC Sports promos for its Premier League coverage, seven years before the Apple TV series.

Sesame Street was created by Lloyd Morrisett and which television producer?

Joan Ganz Cooney, a public-television producer, hatched the idea with Morrisett at a 1966 dinner party: use the addictive techniques of commercial TV to teach preschoolers. She went on to run the Children's Television Workshop.

Which philosopher, teacher of Plato, wrote nothing down and is known only through his pupils?

The Socratic method of teaching by questioning takes his name; Plato and Xenophon are the main sources.

Which institute did Booker T. Washington work his way through before founding Tuskegee?

Hampton Institute in Virginia: born into slavery in 1856, Washington walked most of the way there at 16 in 1872, paid his way as a janitor, and later taught there before Tuskegee opened in 1881.

Muriel Spark's schoolmistress Jean Brodie teaches her 'set' of girls in which city?

Edinburgh: Jean Brodie teaches at the fictional Marcia Blaine School for Girls in the 1930s, and Maggie Smith won the Best Actress Oscar for playing her in the 1969 film.

Chalk used on blackboards is a soft form of which rock?

Limestone: chalk is a soft, porous limestone built from the calcite plates of microscopic plankton on ancient sea floors, though modern 'chalk' sticks are often gypsum.

World Teachers' Day marks a 1966 recommendation on teachers issued by UNESCO and which body?

The International Labour Organization: the ILO/UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers was adopted in Paris on 5 October 1966, and UNESCO chose that date for the day in 1994.

India celebrates Teachers' Day on 5 September, the birthday of which former president?

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, philosopher and India's second president, born 5 September 1888; the tradition began in 1962, his first year in office. Argentina's Teachers' Day instead marks Domingo Sarmiento's death on 11 September.

Why do Australian states mark World Teachers' Day on the last Friday of October?

The date usually falls in school holidays: 5 October lands in the spring break of most Australian states, so Australia celebrates on the last Friday of October, when classrooms are full.

A 1977 US Supreme Court decision held that which school punishment did not violate the Constitution?

Paddling: in Ingraham v. Wright (1977) the Court ruled 5-4 that paddling Florida junior-high pupils breached neither the Eighth Amendment nor due process; most states have since banned corporal punishment in schools.

What was the ancient Indian education system called in which pupils lived with their teacher?

Gurukula, from guru and kula, 'family': pupils lived in the teacher's household learning the Vedas and paid only a voluntary guru dakshina at the end; the Arya Samaj revived the model at Gurukul Kangri in 1902.

In which two European countries are teachers mainly civil servants chosen by examination?

France and Germany: French teachers pass national competitive exams such as the CAPES and agrégation to become state employees, and most German teachers hold Beamte civil-servant status after two state examinations.

A 2000 study found what share of UK teachers had occupational stress, double the average job?

42%: the Bristol Stress and Health at Work study reported in 2000 that 41.5% of teachers called their job very or extremely stressful, against about 20% of British workers overall.

Anyone wishing to teach north of the English border must register with which body?

The General Teaching Council for Scotland, set up in 1965 and independent of government since 2012, keeps the register every teacher in a Scottish school must be on; teaching there is an all-graduate profession.