With summer nearly over and the Back-to-School season just around the corner, let's highlight some of the most iconic educators and teachers ever to grace the classroom across cartoons and animation. Since most animated shows and films aim to encapsulate the childhood experience taking on an education, there has been an abundance of memorable aged mentors and teachers that range from unlikely, yet insightful masters to begrudging public school administrators. These characters are able to blend the responsibilities of being a full-time educator with being standout, iconic personalities in their own right, to varying degrees of heightened sympathy and comedy.
Professor Owl in Disney’s Adventures in Music (1953)
Owls have historically been portrayed as the wisest and most knowledgeable of all woodland creatures, but Professor Owl (originally voiced by Bill Thompson) specializes in giving his fellow fowl the most essential education a bird can receive; an understanding of music. Featured in Walt Disney’s Adventures in Music series of shorts, including the Academy Award-winning Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom, Professor Owl gives his students spirited lectures on not only the history and mechanics of music, but an appreciation for the medium in all of its forms. Professor Owl is perhaps most well-known to 90’s kids in the role of host in the Disney Sing-Along Songs series of VHS tapes, introducing compilations of classic Disney songs with his own unique narration.
Mr. Simmons in Hey Arnold (1996-2004)
The greatest lesson consistently taught by Nickelodeon’s Hey Arnold is compassion for people society may take for granted, be they eccentric boarding house tenants or bizarre neighborhood weirdos of urban legend. One of the standout recurring characters that helped teach this lesson, among other general studies at P.S. 118, is the good-hearted Mr. Simmons (Dan Butler). In a tough, inner-city public school, Simmons can be seen as an overly sentimental push over whose kindness and giving nature are mistaken for weakness by the student body and even fellow educators. What has made Simmons endear over the bulk of the series’ run amidst a revolving door of one-off characters is his presence in and out of the classroom as a gentle heart who genuinely gives his all into his job and wants only the best for his students, who, in turn, grow as young people thanks to him. For a lot of the misfit and misguided students of P.S. 118, Simmons is perhaps the only guiding voice they have.
Mr. Crocker in The Fairly Odd Parents (2001-2017)
Kid-centric cartoons love to position older authority figures (teachers, parents, babysitters) as the villains out to ruin childhood’s fun. The Fairly Odd Parents took the overbearing teacher archetype and amplified it to an obsessively deranged degree with the creation of Denzel Crocker. Voiced by Carlos Alazraqui, Crocker relishes in the suffering of children by giving them failing grade after failing grade, especially buck-toothed, pink-hatted hero, Timmy Turner (Tara Strong). What elevated Crocker to full-blown villainy is his constant attempts to capture and expose the existence of Timmy’s FAIRY! GOD! PARENTS!!! As an educator, Crocker is a glutton for dealing out academic punishment, but as a villain, he alone has raised the stakes of the series’ status quo on many occasions with his plots to ruin Timmy’s life and rule the world.
Master Shifu in Kung Fu Panda (2008)
They say that under a great master, the student will eventually become the teacher. In DreamWorks’ Kung Fu Panda trilogy, the often cantankerous Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) himself learns a great deal of wisdom upon taking on the impossible task of training pudgy fanboy panda Po (Jack Black) into the Dragon Warrior master of Kung Fu. With every new skill or technique he tries to teach his panda pupil, Po masters tenfold what Shifu was capable of, leaving him eager to learn from his own student. On top of that, Shifu’s journey across the three feature films demonstrates that despite one believing to have learned all there is to learn and having a confident grasp on their own abilities, you never stop learning and the greatest lessons come out of humility and shattered expectations.
Joe Gardner in Soul (2020)
Pixar’s Soul takes gig-jazz musician and middle school band teacher Joe Gardner (Jamie Foxx) on a trip through space and time for a cosmic change in perspective in order to learn that life is worth living, but even before his soul-swapping adventure, Joe teaches that a key element to music and life in general is inspiration. Joe’s entire existence revolves around music and his devotion to it turns into enthusiasm in students who often credit him as the reason they pursue their musical ambitions. While Joe didn’t seek out a full-fledged career in education and would rather make a star of himself, there is no denying his abilities as a guiding hand to his students who learned more from him than just music alone.
Mung Daal in Chowder (2007-2010)
Cooking master and surrogate father to young cooking apprentice Chowder (Nicky Jones), mustachioed chef Mung Daal is the eccentric old mentor in the tradition of archetypal characters like King Arthur’s Merlin or The Karate Kid’s Mr. Miyagi. Voiced by Dwight Schultz, Mung runs his own catering company as the self-proclaimed greatest chef in Marzipan City and irresistible lady’s man. Cooking in Marzipan City is far from mundane as most dishes require a jack-of-all-trades in order to prepare a buffet’s worth of fantastically bizarre dishes, including everything from bomb diffusion and barbershop singing. Mung sees each new dish that is ordered at the catering company as an opportunity to imbue Chowder with what it takes to become a great chef, despite he himself not being one.
All Might in My Hero Academia (2016-Present)
With the very concept of a high school for superheroes, My Hero Academia has no shortage of memorable super powered teachers, from Present Mic to Eraser Head, but one of them hold a candle to the most infectiously aspirational teacher/hero of them all. The world’s once most powerful and popular superhero, All Might juggles mentoring Izuku “Deku” Midoryia as his successor to his power “One for All” and being a staff teacher at U.A. High School. His greatest attribute as an educator is the different teaching methods he uses when alternating between teaching his sole pupil and a whole class. He can go from rabble-rousing and morale boosting to stern and impartial within a moment’s notice. While he may not be the immovable symbol of peace anymore, he is still an electrically effective educator.
Mrs. Puff in SpongeBob SquarePants (1999-Present)
In his 23 years on the air, SpongeBob (Tom Kenny) has yet to earn his driving license. Although he is an accomplished fry cook, his driving skills are hilariously catastrophic, rendering Bikini Bottom’s roads in utter disarray on many occasions. The greatest victim of SpongeBob’s motorized mayhem would be his driving instructor, Mrs. Puff (Mary Jo Catlett). While Puff is able to competently teach and grant almost every other student that takes her class with a certified license, SpongeBob’s ineptitude pushes her to desperate measures and causes her tremendous medical expenses. Despite being a living airbag, she receives the brunt of vehicular punishment whenever she supervises SpongeBob behind the wheel. Even at the cost of her own physical well-being and sanity, Mrs. Puff continues to teach SpongeBob how to drive with every passing season as a truly dedicated teacher, whether she wants to or not.
Springfield Elementary Staff in The Simpsons (1989-Present)
For a school that’s nestled in the heart of dysfunctional suburbia Springfield, USA that is also the stomping grounds of proud-of-it underachiever and troublemaker Bart Simpson (Nancy Cartwright), Springfield Elementary has an entire faculty of delightfully cynical administrators and teachers that fittingly satirize the ebbs and flows of a typical public-school day. Mrs. Krabappel (Marcia Wallace), one of the chief authority figures in Bart’s life, tries to administer schoolroom justice with a snide cackle and a sharp tongue fitting for the 10-year-old rebel, while also matching him on his level of attitude. Miss Hoover (Maggie Roswell) callously waits out the clock with an above-it-all demeanor and lesson plan that are not receptive to the bookworm-ish eagerness of her top student, Lisa Simpson (Yeardley Smith). Muscle-toned Scotsman Groundskeeper Willie (Dan Castellaneta) has perhaps the greatest passion for his work out of anybody on the campus, scrubbing the toilets and mowing the lawns with an unhinged love for the job. Perhaps the most iconic of Springfield’s educators, the “steamed hams” cooker himself Principal Seymour Skinner (Harry Shearer) reigns over Springfield Elementary with a tight grip and iron fist that serves as the perfect foil for Bart and a great hyper-exaggeration of the kind of self-serious educator most of us have grown up knowing.