Chucking Chalk

I'm a pretty unicorn!

Mr. Ushimaru: You! Pay attention! Is that how you listen when someone's talking to you!?
Joker: [thinking] I feel a murderous intent...!

— Persona 5

A teacher or other instructor throws chalk pieces (or other small objects) at their distracted pupils. Often the scene will first focus on one or two students not following the class before an unidentified object flies toward them and gets their attention back to an irritated teacher.

This is usually Played for Laughs and the chalk will be thrown with uncanny accuracy at the kids' heads, showing that the teacher has a long "experience" in this domain. The Badass Teacher and Sadist Teacher will often use this technique as a way to quell troublemakers; the Stern Teacher also occasionally gets in on it.

Chalk chucking is a Discredited Trope in Real Life Western education systems; a teacher throwing things at their pupils is likely to find themselves out of a job in short order.

See also School Teachers. Nothing to do with the series ChalkZone.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Tommy Lee Jones has appeared in commercials for a Boss Coffee where he's an alien teaching Japanese students. Since the students are pranksters, he incinerates a booby-trapped eraser with his laser eyes, destroys his desk, and slings a piece of chalk back at a rude student so hard it shaves part of his hair and leaves a crater in the wall.
• Meanwhile, in Japan...

Animation

• In episode 6 of Mole's World, during his fantasy sequence in his wish hat, Lele is interrupted as the other moles are thanking him for his heroic efforts when Uncle Bodhi throws chalk at him. Lele catches the chalk, saying that trick doesn't work anymore.

Anime & Manga

• Yukari-sensei of Azumanga Daioh once managed a chalk double shot upside Osaka and Kagura's heads.
• In Chobits Hideki gets chalk thrown at him when he falls asleep in class and cries out when a nightmare wakes him.
• In the anime adaptation of the video game Gate Keepers, there was a particularly Jerkass teacher who often threw chalk at students. Said teacher also happened to be an Invader sleeper agent who got convinced that he was really a human by his own disguise.
• In KanColle, the Heavy Cruiser Ashigara throws chalk at a whispering Kisaragi at such a velocity that she flies out of her chair. This was because, of course, Kisaragi was mentioning how Ashigara failed to hook up with any men at her last mixer.
• In Keijo!!!!!!!!, Nozomi isn't paying attention in class and is duly hit with flying chalk... except instead of throwing it, the teacher flicks it in the air before launching it with her butt, at such high velocity that it knocks Nozomi backwards off her chair. It's that kind of series.
• Yurine's introduction in Kiss and White Lily for My Dearest Girl has her sleeping on her desk with the teacher yelling at her. She wakes her up with a precise chalk shot on the head and makes her solve a very hard math problem at the blackboard. Yurine wakes up, solves the problem effortlessly, and goes back to sleep.
• Late into Negima! Magister Negi Magi, the protagonist Negi's temporary replacement, former Big Bad Fate Averruncus, throws chalk at Chisame and Yuuna when they won't stop talking. He orders them to stand in the hall, however because he's very strong in his own right, Yue dryly remarks they should probably go to the infirmary instead.
• In Nintama Rantarou, Doi-sensei is a master chalk-thrower thanks to years of trying to control his students' antics. His aiming skill with chalk has gone up to such a godly level that he can even hit several students with only one chalk stick. In one arc in which Doi had a nervous breakdown from having to throw a kunai at a target board for the teacher test, Rantarou goaded his teacher into throwing a kunai painted white at him by pretending to run away while standing right in front of the target, Doi not only hit it right in the middle but the "chalk" impaled through the thick layers to the other side.
• Miss Seki from Ojamajo Doremi throws chalk in Doremi's direction very often. Sometimes when she throws it, Aiko ends up catching it, impressing the rest of the students.
• Shinichi's teacher throws chalk at him early on in Parasyte; the first time, Migi instinctively catches and crushes it without Shinichi even noticing but the second time, the chalk hits him because Migi had fallen asleep.
• Parodied in Petit Eva. Shinji is sleeping in Misato's class, prompting her to throw chalk at him. He dodges it. She tries again, and he dodges again. She starts throwing more and more chalk (escalating to firing them off a machine gun), and he dodges every single one of them. While asleep.
• In Place to Place, Kikue-sensei throws a piece of chalk at Io's head for twirling his pen at high speeds. Somehow, it curves to hit Mayoi instead.
• One chapter of Rosario + Vampire has Kagome-sensei throwing an entire protractor into a sleeping Kurumu's head. Pointy end first. Good thing it was just a gag scene...
• In Spriggan, Yu Ominae's delinquent status in his high school is known publicly to the point that his teacher throws chalk at his head to make him pay attention. Yu is able to catch the chalk with his fingers even when he dozes off. The manga suggests that it wasn't his first time getting into this kind of trouble.
• Tenchi Muyo!: Washu. If people interrupt her when she's lecturing, she throws bricks.
• Exaggerated, like every trope, in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, when Yoko, having gotten a job as a teacher during the Time Skip, gets some distracted students' attention by throwing chalk so hard it gets embedded in the wall.

Films — Live-Action

• In Battle Royale, Kitano throws chalk at Yoshimi for whispering while he's explaining the upcoming Death Game. He eventually does this to Fujiyoshi for the same reason, except this time with a knife.
• In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Faux Moody throws a piece of chalk at Seamus after hearing him talk about his magical eye.
• The Knack... and How to Get It: Colin the math teacher zings his chalk at a boy who is being particularly blatant about gawking at the female students exercising outside. This is hypocritical, as the sexually frustrated Colin would like nothing better than to gawk himself.
• Monty Python's The Meaning of Life's "Sex Ed" scene exaggerates this.
  Headmaster: Well, as we all know about foreplay no doubt you can tell me what the purpose of foreplay is... Biggs.
  Biggs: Don't know, sorry sir.
  Headmaster: Carter.
  Carter: Er... was it taking your clothes off, sir?
  Headmaster: And after that?
  Wymer: Putting them on the lower peg sir?^* In reference to an earlier part of the scene where the headmaster gives some rather confusing directions involving putting your clothes on a lower peg, haircuts, and picking up brothers, if any, from school.
  [Headmaster throws a board duster at him and hits him]
• In the French movie Les Profs, throwing chalk is Gladys the English teacher's Signature Move. In one scene, she goes More Dakka on her students in a War Movies parody, with machine-gun sound effects and the students taking cover behind their desks. She does not especially do this in the original comic, where she is "just" an all-around Sadist Teacher.

Literature

• Chronicles of the Kencyrath. The strategy instructor of the Academy of Tentir has a wooden fist. He has a tendency to detach and throw it at dozing cadets. This is later exaggerated when he dismisses a class where half are mildly concussed for inattention.
• Discworld: This trope is mentioned is Pyramids — only, at the Assassins Guild school, if a student isn't paying attention in class, they're going to get something much worse than chalk thrown at them...
• In the Battle Royale novel, the teacher throws chalk at students who talk in "class". The first time. The second time, it's a knife.
• Mrs. Murphy does this in Freaky Friday. The principal and school psychologist don't seem to care.

Manhua

• Little Cherry: Xiao Yang furiously throws chalk pieces at her sleeping students. In one strip, Lazy remarks that she's becoming more accurate, and it concludes with her idea to make extra money throwing knives for the circus.

Video Games

• One of the minigames in Incredible Crisis has Ririka trying to sneak out of class, trying to avoid the wrath of her hot-headed, chalk-chucking teacher.
• The protagonist can be on the receiving end of a thrown piece of chalk from Mr. Ushimaru in Persona 5 if he slacks off in class, which is also seen in Persona 5: The Day Breakers. If he has enough Proficiency, he can dodge it, impressing his classmates and gaining a small Charm bonus.
• In Puyo Puyo Fever 2, throwing chalk is listed as Ms. Accord's special skill. We can see it in action as her third chain spell, too.
• Tales of Symphonia opens with The Hero being hit in the face by a flying eraser. It turns out that he had fallen asleep at his desk and was made to stand in the back of the room holding buckets of water. When he managed to fall asleep again, Raine opted to throw the eraser at him to wake him up. Played straight in The Anime of the Game.

Visual Novels

• In Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Dual Destinies, when Aristotle Means goes to psycho teacher mode during his testimony, he chucks chalk at those who "defied" him. At one point, he even applied his "The end justifies the means" motto by trying to chuck chalk at the defense lawyers in an attempt to distract them.

Webcomics

• Bad Machinery: When school-age leading character Sonny's father, Tom, was a child, there was a teacher named Blakey who used to throw chalk at students who talked in class. The trope is both Exaggerated, as Blakey would chuck the chalk into the students' mouths,^note Which is not to say that no Real Life old-style teacher ever claimed to have achieved this feat... and Deconstructed, as not only did this cause noticeable injuries to the victims, it also got Blakey banned from dealing with children.
• Brother Complex: During Rose's first day in school, the teacher throws chalk at her for asking too many questions to Jack during class (not to mention all the gossip from all the other students). This also has the side effect of bursting Rose's uniform buttons loose and requiring her to go to the teacher's office.

Real Life

• In his memoir Making It So, Patrick Stewart mentions that he had a teacher who was prone to doing this, but noted that the teacher was quick to praise any student who caught it.

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