I just finished reading Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor & Park, which almost everyone except for angry Minnesotan parents agree is a great YA book. It was named the Best Children’s Book of 2013 by Publisher’s Weekly, an NPR Best Book of 2013, and John Green loved it. I liked it quite a bit as well, and will definitely be seeing the inevitable movie or ABC Family show or whatever adaptation it inevitably inspires.

Despite all the ways that Eleanor & Park felt new and different, when it comes to the requisite teacher character, the book did not labor to carve out more than one dimension for him. The English teacher, Mr. Stessman, mostly exists to show how smart Eleanor is, and when she has a unique interpretation of Romeo and Juliet, he reels and mocks her. “Someone with a heart … Tell us, why has Romeo and Juliet survived four hundred years?” The answer he’s looking for is because it portrays people in love. Wow. Who wouldn’t want to go to school for revelations like that?

Almost every teacher’s speech in a teen book or movie boggles my mind in just how unlike it sounds like what teachers actually say in school. The speech is almost always “blah blah blah famous piece of literature is great because it talks about the important theme that this book or movie I am currently in is exploring. Do you understand that students!? Lesson over!”

I never once had an English teacher (or art teacher, or whatever teacher) pull out a great piece of work, ask our class why it was great and stop the discussion by making sure we understood that it was about some universal theme. Most of the English teachers I had would have given me an C- for any interpretation of a book that most teachers in books and movies beat over the heads of their students.

But beyond teachers whose uninspiring speeches are just catalysts for some kind of emotional transformation in a character (or coy comments on the theme of the book), teachers in teen books and literature get much worse. There’s Ezra, the teacher in Pretty Little Liars who dates a student and turns out to be, well … no spoilers here. Then there’s Ryan Matthews on 90210 who starts out as a cool teacher and then slowly goes beserk over the course of the show until he’s basically just a sad, jester-like character. When teachers aren’t trying to sleep with their students, they’re out to make their lives a living hell or desperately obsessed with their own egos.

I understand that in teen stories adult figures are not always going to be portrayed as friendly, great influences and there is often tension between teenagers and teachers. But the portrayal of these teachers is often miles away from what teachers are actually like, and they never do them any favors. I’m not saying that we need to make teachers hero figures in every story, but can we at least try to make their speeches a little bit more true to what kids are actually learning?

–Becky Lang