Just out of their own schooling, the Enthusiastic Newbie Teacher is a 20-something year old first year who has idealistic, sometimes even naive, viewpoints on education. They're eager to teach students but have little-to-no experience with the teaching career.
This type of teacher contrasts with, or given time becomes the Apathetic Teacher or Jaded Professional who has become jaded over the years and the Stern Teacher who has learned to act tough towards their students. As a result, in Save Our Students works this teacher will be the one doing the "saving" while their less enthusiastic counterparts serve as their foil.
New teachers are also the most likely to end up Cool Teachers and their closeness in age and friendliness to their students can lead to them being a Psychologist Teacher. Also, due to their youth and approachability, Enthusiastic Newbie Teachers are most likely to be Hot Teachers who are fawned over by students and their parents.
Contrast with Apathetic Teacher, Fired Teacher, and Stern Teacher. Compare to Hippie Teacher, Misplaced Kindergarten Teacher, Sensei-chan, and Naïve Newcomer.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Anime & Manga
- In Danganronpa 3, Chisa Yukizome becomes the homeroom teacher of 77-B soon after her own graduation from Hope Peak's Academy. Yukizome's enthusiasm contrasts with the lack thereof of her students and she tries her best to encourage them and play part in class activities. They eventually warm up to her. Notably, Yukizome's own talent isn't being a teacher, but a housekeeper, so she often wears an apron over her suit.
- Negi Springfield of Negima! Magister Negi Magi is an interesting case in that he was assigned by his Magic Academy in Wales to be a teacher in Japan, and of a junior high all-girls class at that. Considering he's ten years old, he naturally has a boatload of enthusiasm to teach girls who are actually older than him (some of which are several times older than him). Thanks to being an Adorably Precocious Child, most of the class warms up to him immediately though it takes some time before they start taking him seriously.
- Megumi Sakura, or Megu-nee as she's called, from School-Live! is one of these designed to resemble the Sensei-chan archetype. She only recently began teaching high school. Her mother thought that she wasn't fit to be a teacher and her vice principal admonished her for being too close to her students, however Megu-nee's enthusiastic and caring nature turns out to be handy. After the Zombie Apocalypse hits she becomes the sole guardian and Cool Big Sis of three of her students. She also commits a Heroic Sacrifice prior to the manga and saves them from zombies.
Films — Animation
- In Frankenweenie, Victor's class gets a new science teacher named Mr. Ryzkruzki after their old one gets struck by lightning (it's never said if he died or not). Mr. Ryzkruski is very excitable, loud, and poetic.
Literature
- In Anne of Avonlea, Anne started her teaching career (one-room schoolhouse schoolmarm) with lots of enthusiasm and noble ideas. She would encourage every child to learn, make every child love learning, and of course never ever whip her students to punish them (19th century Canada, FYI, and by "whip" they mean whacking away at the bottom or wrists with a stick, not a literal whip. This would be a common school punishment well into the 20th century.) Of course there was one student who refused to behave or obey her because he was raised by a misogynist father. Eventually she snapped and whipped him. Of course, this made him respect her.
- Mr. Benedict from Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. is a first-year sixth grade teacher. He's a well-meaning but inexperienced teacher who struggles to get his students' approval.
- In Bridge of Clay Claudia is a new literature teacher who was also assigned the role of the school counsellor. While we don't see her much in her lessons, she takes the role of the counsellor (which nobody else wanted) very earnestly and really wants to help Rudy and Clay cope with their mother's death and their father's disappearance. With Rudy she is helpless, as the only thing he wants is to drop out of school and get some serious job—but Clay appreciates her very much.
- In One Hundred Years Ahead, the math teacher Nelya is The Fashionista, very young, friendly and easy-going, and at the same time, she really loves her subject and is extremely well-liked among her pupils. However, her lack of experience shows: when she discovers that Alice, a new student at the school, knows advanced mathematics, she forgets about the lesson and spends the remainder of it discussing a difficult equation with her.
- Ms. Marino from Parrotfish is a first year Spanish teacher. Grady notes that she's anxious to have her students' approval, so she takes to his transgender-related name change with more ease than most of his other teachers.
- Reign of the Seven Spellblades: Most Kimberly Magic Academy teachers are some combination of sadistic, neglectful, or crazy. After the first class with the new alchemy teacher, Ted Williams, in volume 4, the Sword Roses and their second-year classmates are collectively amazed that he actually taught a normal class—so much so that it makes Oliver suspicious that he's a Wolf in Sheep's Clothing. Meanwhile, Williams confesses to his old friend Luther Garland (the swordmaster) that he was scared to death he'd disappoint the kids.
- Up the Down Staircase stars such a teacher. Sylvia is an idealistic new English teacher who begins working af an Inner City School. She's young enough to pass as a student and isn't respected due to her youth. Despite the odds, she tries to make her students into good pupils.
- In Warrior Cats, sometimes characters become mentors shortly after becoming warriors themselves.
- In the second book, Fire and Ice, Tigerclaw questions Fireheart and Graystripe becoming mentors due to their youth and relative inexperience, and Fireheart himself isn't sure if he's ready since it can be hard to keep his excitable apprentice Cinderpaw in check. He even jokes to Graystripe after the first day that he kept forgetting that he was the mentor.
- In Crookedstar's Promise, Crookedjaw's new apprentice is excited to have someone so young and cool as a mentor.
- In The Raging Storm, Twigbranch has just been made a mentor after becoming a warrior in the previous book. Although excited at first, she finds herself struggling with what the best way to train her apprentice is, and both mentor and apprentice become discouraged and resentful of each other. By the end of the book, she comes to understand Flypaw better and plans their lessons in a way that works for them both.
Live-Action TV
- Much of the humor in Abbott Elementary is the contrast between idealistic and perky young 20-somethings Janine and Jacob, who have only been teaching at the titular underfunded public school for a year when the series starts, and the more cynical and experienced older teachers Melissa and Barbara, who know from years of disappointment that the public school system will do them no favors. However, all the teachers love their students and teaching, and do their best with the resources they have.
- Room 222: Karen Valentine's character of Alice Johnson, the English teacher, during the early seasons of this ABC comedy-drama from the early 1970s set at a Los Angeles high school. She went from doing her student teaching in the first season to a first-year teacher during the second year to eventually a seasoned teacher by the fifth and final season. She was a popular teacher because of her enthusiasm for teaching and learning, and her ability to connect with students, most of them not too much younger than she was (especially early in the run; Johnson was 21 when the show started, one year younger than Valentine was in real life in the fall of 1969 when the show debuted).
- Bad Education: Alfie Wickers is an enthusiastic young teacher and strives to be positive to varying degrees of success. While some students warm up to him (with one even trying to seduce him), others can't stand his high-energy personality and ludicrous schemes. Deconstructed in the final episode, as Alfie struggles to come to terms with the fact that his first class are all moving on and will be replaced with new students. He considers quitting teaching and bursts into tears at the end of the final day, but in the end stays on as a teacher.
- Cold Case: In "True Calling", the team reopens Laura McKinney's murder case. Laura was a young, idealistic inner-city schoolteacher who joined the Teach for America program right after college. She was talented and could have had any high-paying career, at least according to her father, but she saw teaching as her true passion and vocation. She wanted to make a difference, but she ended up finding resistance and problems at every turn. Her students and her fellow teachers were both extremely difficult. Sadly, she was murdered in her first year of being a teacher while trying to help one of her students whom she'd bonded with.
- Lainey Lewis in Schooled is forced back first to her hometown and then to take a junior teaching job at her old high school after her dreams of fame and fortune evaporate. To her surprise, she finds herself enjoying being a music teacher. Old hands in the teachers' lounge, many of whom remember trying to teach Lainey, are cynical about this and warn her the initial rush of enthusiasm does not last. And even Lainey finds her young colleague CB's enthusiasm for the job to be wearying. CB is a fairly new teacher who believes in relating to the kids and trying to make his lessons interesting, but the shine goes off his enthusiasm for the job when he is landed with the task of teaching sex-ed to a class full of teenage boys. In fact, a little weary cynicism starts to creep in...
- This trope is ruthlessly parodied in this
Saturday Night Live sketch featuring Lin-Manuel Miranda as a substitute teacher for some rowdy teens. He uses every single cliche in the book—saying that Shakespeare was "the greatest rapper of all time," repeatedly claiming that he's on the kids' side and doesn't like the administration, and assuming that a quiet girl is secretly struggling with illiteracy. It turns out that he's a failed actor trying to break into teaching. The problem? The teens know all of these tropes—apparently every substitute tries them—and repeatedly defuse his efforts to be cool, lamenting that they just want to learn for once. Oh, and the quiet girl isn't illiterate—she's just not talking because she's stunned by the substitute's total failure ("I'm ashamed and embarrassed for you").
- In Ultraman 80, Takeshi Yamato, the human form of the eponymous Ultraman, takes on the job of a grade-school teacher while in civilian disguise, and for the first few episodes of the series is like this trope. More often than not his unconventional teaching methods and unorthodox style makes him the butt of plenty of jokes, and on more than one occasion he gets pranked or trolled by students.
Podcasts
Video Games
- Hogwarts Legacy has Herbology professor Mirabel Garlick, a Hot Teacher hired right after graduation due to her extensive skill with magical plants and a cheerful Genki Girl.
- Lost Judgment has Yoko Sawa, an English teacher who's only been teaching at Seiryo High School for around four years. Since she's in her early 30s, she's considerably younger than most of the staff seen in the faculty office, and definitely more idealistic and proactive than most of her colleagues.
Western Animation
- Droopy: In "Blackboard Jumble," the newbie teacher takes over (after the old teacher ran away whooping like a lunatic) a class of young Droopies. He insists that "There's nothing wrong with modern education," but eventually changes his mind and breaks out the paddle. That doesn't work either. He winds up quitting, just like his predecessor.
- The Simpsons: In "Bart Gets a Z," after Bart gets Mrs. Krabappel fired by spiking her coffee with booze, her replacement Zach starts out being one of these, a hip recent graduate who encourages his students to use their phones as part of their classwork, among other fun things. He's fired by the end of the episode — he also winds up getting drunk, but because he's already sick of dealing with kids.
