Fired Teacher

In Real Life and in fiction, a teacher who stands out in any way, does something even slightly unconventional, disagrees with the school's management, etc. often gets fired for it. The teacher tries to get back his/her job, the students and/or some parents rally behind them...and yet, the teacher still remains fired.

Sadly, rarely happens to a Sadist Teacher and is conversely rather likely to happen to a Cool Teacher, probably because Dean Bitterman is always in charge of the school.

Examples of Fired Teacher include:

Film

• In Dead Poets Society, after Mr. Keating is blamed for Neil's suicide.
• Howard in In and Out, after the parents hear that he's gay. Cue a heartwarming I Am Spartacus mass-decloseting from the students.
• Ms. Pomeroy (Drew Barrymore) in Donnie Darko.
• Peter Venkman in Ghostbusters.

Literature

• The Cat Ate My Gymsuit by Paula Danziger - Ms. Feeney gets fired for refusing to say the pledge of allegiance, though her Hippie Teacher ways probably also led to her downfall. After a fair amount of effort by her students, she gets reinstated, but ultimately does not return, as she would be under a fair amount of scrutiny and would not be able to teach as she wished.
• Harry Potter series:
  • Remus Lupin in Harry Potter. Technically he wasn't fired, he was compelled to resign after word got out that he was a werewolf; still, characters in-story refer to him as "sacked".
  • Dumbledore was forced into resignation twice over the course of the books (well, three times if you count his being killed).
  • Snape pretty much resigned as well in the penultimate book, when he left Hogwarts. Then Voldemort made him headmaster in the last book and he was more properly terminated at its end.
  • Hagrid might also qualify as the "perpetually-almost-about-to-get-fired" teacher.
  • Sybill Trelawney also qualifies as she was fired by Dolores Umbridge in front of the whole school. This is later subverted in the same book as she gets her job back when Dolores gets fired herself.
• Averted in James Hilton's Goodbye, Mr. Chips, in that Mr. Chipping, though ordered to retire for refusing to adopt modern methods (such as adopting the New Pronuncation of Latin and placing emphasis on high marks rather than on character development), is reinstated by the protests of his students and their parents.
  • The point being that it's a pretty upscale school and the students' parents, many of whom were his students as children, are now Earls, Viscounts and all that.
• Mr. Mell from David Copperfield.
• In the kids' novel The Landry News by Andrew Clements Mr. Larson is nearly fired after printing a controversial story in the school newspaper.
• Chaim Potok's The Chosen and The Promise go into this. Reuven's father helped found a Modern Orthodox high school yeshiva, but is, if not fired, edged out by the more conservative faculty that move in after the war. Reuven and Danny got to a yeshiva college where they both have professors who can't cover topics they'd really like to for fear of complaints.
• Thomas Chipperling, of Tomcat in Love, after his having relations with students and doing their assignments for them come to light.

Live Action TV

• The shop teacher on Popular gets fired after coming out as transsexual.
• In The 4400, one of the 4400 is a teacher, and is forced to leave her job when parents find out she has an 'ability' - she can draw out the hidden potential in people. Some parents don't like their children to become musical or artistic prodigies, it seems. (Eventually she gets a job teaching other 4400s in the 4400 Center.)
  • Another issue was that there were some students who simply didn't have hidden potential to be drawn out. Needless to say, those kids' parents were furious.
  • If memory serves, the problem was that she could only draw out the musical and artistic talents. The kid might have had the potential to be the best pilot the world has ever seen, but she couldn't help him. So yes, the parents were furious.
  • The generic fear was that she was using her ability to mess with her students' heads causing them to act out of character.
• This happened to a Hippie Teacher of Kevin's on The Wonder Years.
• Mike Delaney on All My Children was fired for coming out to his class. In this instance he was reinstated after suing the school board.
• On Glee when Sue becomes the new principal, she fires Mr Shuester. His students come to his defense and then the replacement teacher pisses Sue off even more than Will does. At the end of the episode she rehires him.

Newspaper Comics

• In a Peanuts story arc from the 1960s, Linus had to be dragged to school after Miss Othmar lost her tenure.

Web Original

• Jamie in Family gets fired after the Christian school she teaches at finds out she's polyamorous.

Western Animation

• The Simpsons:
  • Seymour Skinner, although a principal rather than a teacher, is fired for being unable to control his students (and for when Groundskeeper Willie falls on Superintendant Chalmers). Bart helps him get reinstated nonetheless, since even he thinks that the school is too loose under Ned Flanders (that, as well as some guilt for getting Skinner fired in the first place, especially unintentionally).
  • Both Skinner and Mrs. Krabappel are fired when it comes out that they're having an affair. Bart once more comes to the rescue.
  • Krabappel gets suspended after hitting Bart. While not fired as such, it is implied that the suspension is indefinite.
    • She was also fired in another episode, more specifically after Bart and the rest of the students spiked her drink with alcohol for innocent reasons (they wanted her to loosen up. It worked too well). In the same episode, the replacement teacher also got fired from being drunk on duty, only that time it was the teacher alone who was responsible for it.
  • While not a teacher per se and technically fired, Otto also ended up suspended with pay for spanking Bart after the latter managed to hijack the bus while he was meeting up with Metallica.
    • In a much earlier episode, Otto was suspended without pay for reckless driving (making up the time lost when playing Bart's guitar) and not holding a driver's license.
• Mr. Garrison in South Park becomes this after coming out of the closet in the "Fourth Grade" episode. After being re-hired later on, he tries to get fired again in order to get rich off of a discrimination lawsuit.
• Huey's teacher in The Boondocks ended up fired in the christmas episode because he used Huey's script for the school play (a script that was constantly rewritten by the Principal).
• Mr. Crocker in The Fairly OddParents became this when a seemingly nice substitute teacher showed up and Timmy wished she was the permanent teacher. The Better the Devil You Know trope came into play. It was so evident the episode's Brazilian title was a variation of the trope with a word for "crazy" instead of a word for "devil".

Video Game

• Quistis Trepe from Final Fantasy VIII is fired from being a See-D teacher because she's "lack of leadership skill," possible also involves her one side affair with one of her students.
• Geo's homeroom teacher in Mega Man Star Force is threatened with being fired when he protests using an experimental teaching tool on children. No punishment occurs to the principal for doing this when the technology proves unsafe the very next day.
  • Actually the principal gets his ass fired. He still manages to wind up as a country singer at the Grizzly Peaks resort.

Real Life

• Eileen Flynn, a schoolteacher at a Catholic school in New Ross, Ireland, was fired in 1982 for becoming pregnant outside of marriage. None of her appeals were successful and it's entirely possible that a similar case could reoccur.