40 Times Teachers Proved They Have Next-Level Resourcefulness

If you want to, you can view this sign as positive reinforcement for the kids in this teacher’s elementary school. It’s a great message for life, right? On the other hand, though, perhaps the fact that the letters aren’t fully colored means there’s an amusingly nihilistic undertone to the message. Whichever way you want to read it sounds like fair game to us!

Invoking the image of Lord Eddard “Ned” Stark is an interesting thing for a teacher — in this case, a “Miss Horton” — to do. It’s probably just a fun way to let your class know, “Hey, I’m cool, I watch Game of Thrones too!” But we reckon it likely led to a lot of kids imagining poor Ned being beheaded under Prince Joffrey’s order every time they looked at the poster!

Teaching kids how to apologize if they’ve done something wrong is super-important. In an innovative move, this teacher has decided to visualize their ideal “saying sorry” process on a hand-drawn sign and posted it in their classroom. It does make us think, though — how many workplaces could also benefit from this? After all, there are a ton of adults out there who could do with a brush-up on how to apologize!

This took serious resourcefulness — and, we’d imagine, the permission of the school headmaster — to pull off. You see, this chemistry teacher hasn’t simply put up a poster of the periodic table — they’ve covered the entire ceiling in it! It’s enough to make you imagine the students would look up… periodically. Yes, that joke was shamelessly stolen from Reddit!

Speaking of chemistry teachers, this classroom in India plastered the face of Walter White on its wall. That’s right, Breaking Bad’s educator-turned-crime lord took pride of place in a row of portraits of famous scientists. Why? Well, in the show his villainous alter-ego was known as “Heisenberg,” a nod to the German theoretical physicist whose face should really have been on the wall!

When the “F” falls off the “Speciality Food Lab” sign at school, what should you do? If you answered, “Replace it,” we’re sorry to tell you that you’re wrong. In this situation, the teacher at this school knew exactly what to do — attach a picture of the classic Doctor Who alien species the Ood and label it “The Ood Room!” Perfect. 

According to this hilarious SpongeBob meme hand-drawn by a language teacher, there are actually three levels of difficulty in understanding languages. If you speak fluent German, that’s cool — but it’s more impressive if you speak fluent Russian. What’s even more astonishing than both of those, though, is if you can understand a Scotsman speaking quickly! Those guys claim they’re speaking English, but we’re not so sure!

Music teachers are an interesting bunch. Take this one, for example, who has posted an amusingly menacing message on the side of their piano. Just look at that scary font! To be fair, we’re sure the teacher isn’t actually a psychopathic music teacher like J.K. Simmons in the movie Whiplash, but we definitely appreciate their commitment. 

“Single Ladies” by Beyoncé has got to be one of the most beloved pop songs of the last few decades. It permeated the culture so much that even physics teachers were appropriating the “If you like it, then you should’ve put a ring on it” refrain! Hilariously, this picture isn’t even from the music video — it’s from the SNL sketch Queen B did with Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg!

We’re not sure fielding suggestions from elementary students for the name of your child is a great idea. This teacher, known as Miss Julie, obviously had more faith in her charges than us, though, and she created this display to collect everyone’s ideas. We’re not sure which name we like best, so we’ll go with a three-way tie between “Racecar,” “Potato,” and “Dog.” Good job, kids.

We love a bit of wordplay, and this sign — created by a music teacher — is a great example of it. It’s funny, obviously, and will be sure to make any Star Wars fan smile. But it does also neatly illustrate how to define the numbers involved in each style of singing. We’d love to see a Han Quartet or a Han Duet! 

We’re pretty sure this sign, posted outside a science class, is from a U.S. school. It therefore makes the teacher in question a true renegade who is rebelling against the Imperial system! While many Americans feel there’s no need for the country to switch over to metric, this teacher clearly disagrees. Thankfully, they’ve let their students know — in comical fashion!

We love this poster, which was found outside an art room in a South Korean academy. When it comes to art, too often people are afraid to experiment with their style or push the boundaries of their work. But as smiling Joy of Painting host Bob Ross lets you know, in this classroom there are no mistakes — only happy accidents. Wonderful.

We love the abstract absurdity of this note posted on a high-school door. It was pretty resourceful of whichever teacher took the time to type it up, too. Every facility has a door or two that they’d rather stay shut, so rather than risk the students constantly opening it by mistake, why not stick a funny message on it that’ll make them think instead?

When attending an educational institution, one thing should be at the forefront of your mind — how many grizzly-bear attacks has the place endured? Praise be, then, to this school, which has a handy dandy sign on the wall letting students know it’s been 34,310 days since an attack! This means at the time of writing, the last one was on March 10, 1923. You know what? We like those odds.

This genuinely incredible piece of art — meticulously composed on a whiteboard in black marker — was created by a history teacher. Yes, they weren’t even an art teacher! We’re sure their students thought it was badass, and we hope no one tried to erase it, but we also can’t help wondering if the teacher kind of missed their true calling.

In a biology lab room in a school somewhere in the U.S. there are three of these hot pink signs posted. This tells us a few things. Firstly, that the teacher who put them up is a big Harry Potter fan. Secondly, that the teacher has had “all they can stands, and they can’t stands no more” when it comes to their students leaving the lab messy! 

This sign — posted on a mysterious box sitting outside a physics classroom — features a joke that only true science nerds will understand. Well, people who have seen The Big Bang Theory will also probably get it. And Silicon Valley. And Bones. And Person of Interest. And Futurama. Actually, you know what? Maybe TV nerds will get the Schrodinger’s Cat reference too!

We question how many high-school students will know the memorably grim visage of tall-haired character actor Christopher Walken. Maybe we’re doing them a disservice, though, and Walken’s fame transcends more generations than we thought! Either way, this poster — positioned outside a professor’s office — makes its point in a way that totally split our sides. 

We don’t know about you, but when we think of funny people, we don’t automatically think of math teachers. But more fool us, because the math teacher who put these posters on their classroom wall has a great sense of humor! “Ever looked at your X and wondered Y?” Ha! Anyone who can get us to laugh at algebra humor has to be doing something right!

Art teachers seem to be very positive people, at least if this list is anything to go by! Take this one, whose handcrafted flow chart tells students “How to be an artist.” It’s very simple advice, but exactly the kind any aspiring artist needs to hear. Basically, if you want to be an artist, you gotta make some art. Then do it again and again until you get better!

We’re not sure how many students in 2022 will know who Mr. T is, let alone know his iconic catchphrase “I pity the fool.” But you know what? We know who Mr. T is, and we know his iconic catchphrase. Therefore, this sign posted outside a classroom made us snort laugh like a little kid watching re-runs of The A-Team on weekday afternoons! 

Any parent of a young child in the last decade will have one song that haunts their dreams. A song they’ve heard blasting out of their television and stereo system on repeat since 2013. That song, of course, is “Let It Go” from animated hit Frozen, and at one point it seemed like every child in the world would sing it at the top of their lungs at all times. This teacher feels that particular pain! 

Look, there’s no getting around it — hurricanes are scary. Having to prepare for them in school is no picnic, either. So, we appreciate this teacher’s attempt to alleviate some of the fear their students might have been feeling. We like Rick and Morty as much as the next person, so it made us laugh! As Reddit pointed out, though, maybe the shape of Hurricane Rick was a bit…suspect…

This economics teacher must have a thing for astronomy, because this poster is on their wall. We reckon they also carry a torch for a certain dwarf planet which lost its full-planet designation in 2006. Yes, we are of course talking about Pluto, whose space on the poster has been plastered over with a handwritten “R.I.P.” Is there no justice for a tiny planet in this darn Solar System?

On the one hand, the graphics teacher who made this sign obviously got their point across to their class with ease — the Comic Sans font is bad. The thing is, though, that people have been saying that for years. Comic Sans is bad — we get it. It’s got to the point where it’s like flogging a dead horse.

Being a special needs teacher is a unique calling. It’s a demanding job that can sometimes seem too tough to handle, but it can also be extremely rewarding, especially when you form bonds with your students. That’s why we love this poster so much — it’s funny, obviously, but the affection is also clear to see. We can imagine the kids in the class getting a real kick out of it. 

This quote from legendary physicist and theologian Sir Isaac Newton is a perfect one to scrawl on a whiteboard in a classroom. Think about it — “If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” is a great metaphor for education as a whole? Any new knowledge we gain is always built from the knowledge of those who came before us, after all. It’s almost like this teacher knew what they were doing!

If you’re an elementary school teacher and you’re obsessed with football — specifically the Superbowl — you’re gonna want to talk about it in class. But first you need to find out which students are also football fans, right? Hence, you create this awesome chart! Now you’ve got 21 kids to yak it up with — and 15 you’ll now know want to avoid football talk at all costs!

This poster made us giggle like a schoolgirl for a good few minutes. Sometimes humor is better the sillier it is, you know? Lab attire… and it’s a Labrador dog wearing goggles… get it? Anyway, we hope this teacher’s students also have sufficiently juvenile senses of humor, because the thought of students just rolling their eyes at the poster makes us super-sad.

For most kids today, it’s impossible to imagine a time before the internet. On top of their normal day-to-day lives, for example, how often do they use the web for their schoolwork? As this poster states, though, all they need to get an insight into school in the pre-internet times is to ask their parents about it! Cue horror stories of — gasp — researching things in books from the library!

In our day, if any of our peers had found out that we read Marvel comics, we’d have been stuffed in a locker so fast it would’ve made our head spin! Nowadays, though, teachers can actually threaten their students with spoilers from the latest Avengers blockbuster movie — and they’ll heed the warnings! Excelsior, true believers! The nerd has truly inherited the Earth. 

The “two buttons” meme has got to be one of the most ubiquitous of the last few years. Seriously, it’s everywhere, in every context. Or, at least, we thought we’d seen it in every context until we saw this hilarious Bill Shakespeare edition, posted outside the classroom door of a particularly internet-culture-aware English teacher. To be, or not to be — that is, indeed, the question.

No teacher likes being interrupted by their students — but it takes a great teacher to put together a hilarious poster detailing when exactly it is okay to interrupt them. We’re not sure how high the odds are of Aquaman waltzing into class on a Tuesday morning, but if he does? Free rein, kids. This is the Momoa rule: interrupt away!

We wonder if this teacher is a big fan of The Simpsons — and specifically the early episodes in which Bart regularly prank-called Moe’s Tavern. “Helen Waite,” you see, is just the kind of ridiculous name that little scamp would’ve tricked Moe into broadcasting across the bar. Cue all the drunks laughing at him and Moe threatening a laughing Bart with something unspeakable!

When sitting an exam, we were always nervous wrecks. The only thing that could reassure you was the fact that you had done all the preparation you could. If we’d been in this classroom and had looked up to see this hysterically bleak message posted on the wall, then studying extra hard would have been the only thing on our minds. Sometimes you just need to focus, and this teacher hilariously gets that.

For some people, social media is a vital, worthwhile tool in both their professional and personal lives. For others, though, it can be a wretched hive of scum and villainy. The teacher who created this poster must have noticed some of their students struggling and decided to come up with a handy guide to being more thoughtful about what they post. We salute them!

The teacher who posted these beautifully designed posters on their classroom wall has got to be a sci-fi nerd. Either that, or they truly believe there’s a chance humanity will establish a colony on Mars in their student’s lifetime! In that case, there’ll be a lot of job opportunities on the Red Planet, and these kids need to know a better life might await them in the stars! 

We stared at this photograph for a long time, and it still never made sense — how is this a chalk drawing and not a diagram? The sheer amount of skill required for someone to render the human skeleton on a chalkboard in that kind of intricate detail boggles our mind. This teacher is more than just resourceful — they may be a genius!

Our only real beef with this teacher’s amusing scientific process meme poster is this — why is it printed in black-and-white? Come on, you gotta get some color on that thing! Then it’ll really pop. As it is now, it gets points for effort, but is lacking something in execution. Sorry, we don’t make the rules — we just enforce ’em.