Misplaced Kindergarten Teacher/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A teacher who speaks and teaches in a manner geared towards kindergarteners or first-graders, but actually teaches at a much higher grade level.

  • Played Straight: Ms. Smith teaches her 3rd-grade class that blue + yellow = green.
  • Exaggerated: Dr. Smith teaches her college or grad students that blue + yellow = green.
  • Downplayed: Ms. Smith teaches her 1st-grade class that blue + yellow = green.
  • Inverted: Ms. Smith teaches her 3rd-grade class quantum physics.
  • Justified: The class is a remedial class that needs to go at a much slower pace than the other classes.
    • Ms. Smith is an art teacher, and this bit of review is a segway into something a little more advanced, such as how to change the shade of the green paint.
    • The school relies on standardized testing to get funding and so forth, and apparently "blue+yuellow=green" is something important to the test. In other words, Ms. Smith is The Dumbledore; she doesn't appear to know what she's doing, but in fact she does.
    • Ms. Smith is a new teacher at a staunch Assimilation Academy, and her teaching style is her way of defying authority. (YMMV as to whether she's going about it the right way.)
    • Ms. Smith only has experience teaching in preschool and/or kindergarten and has no prior experience with teaching older children.
  • Subverted: Ms. Smith teaches her 3rd-grade class something appropriate to that grade level.
  • Double Subverted: But she sings a song, does a puppet show, etc. to do so.
  • Zig-Zagged: Ms. Smith's high, girlish voice has the class dreading that they'll be treated like kindergarteners, but then she teaches something appropriate to their grade level with a song. Then she gives a comprehensive test on the subject and is not afraid to tell you where you went wrong. But if you've shown all your work but still got an answer wrong, you get a gold star just for trying!
  • Deconstructed: Talking down to students makes them lose interest; it's something they already know, and their intelligence is being insulted. If they lose interest, they won't learn anything. If standardized tests are important, the students won't know how to answer the questions, and the school could lose funding, or the students won't get into the high school or college they want.
  • Reconstructed: Ms. Smith notices her students losing interest, and reevaluates her teaching style, so that she's teaching lessons appropriate to the grade level of her students.
    • Alternatively, Ms. Smith decides that if she can't do that, she's going to take a new job teaching kindergarten, preschool, or first grade. The students then learn something appropriate to their level, and she gets to teach her way.
  • Parodied: Every class at Trope State University is like this!
  • Lampshaded: "Maybe I should teach kindergarten next year."
  • Averted: Ms. Smith teaches at an appropriate level.
    • Ms. Smith challenges her students by giving more advanced lessons.
  • Enforced: Rule of Funny
  • Invoked: Ms. Smith, a kindergarten teacher, got laid off. She is desperate for work, and a nearby high school needs a teacher. Since she only knows how to teach kindergarten, well...old habits die hard.
  • Defied: Ms. Smith takes the job at the high school, but she adapts to teach high schoolers appropriately.
  • Discussed: "I think Ms. Smith would be happier teaching kindergarten."
  • Conversed: "Certainly her students would."
  • Played For Laughs: Almost always is.
  • Played For Drama: The school and students suffer.

Back to Misplaced Kindergarten Teacher

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Misplaced_Kindergarten_Teacher/Playing_With?oldid=139412"