History Main / TeachersOutOfSchool

** An episode starts with Spinelli discovering not only that [[SadistTeacher Ms. Finster]] goes out shopping like a normal person, but that she's a friend of her parents. Gus is particularly surprised to hear this, since he assumed that teachers just sat quietly at their desks whenever school wasn't in session.
** Another episode is about the main six discovering that their main teacher, Miss Grotke, has a secret double life.

* Occasionally inverted on ''WesternAnimation/TheMagicSchoolBus''. Just because Mrs. Frizzle's class isn't in school doesn't mean they can't still have a field trip. Luckily, Mrs. Frizzle doesn't mind being visited by her class outside of school hours.

* ''VideoGame/Persona5'' gives us the Temperance Confidant Sadayo Kawakami. However, she's a bit of a subversion. As it happens, she has extra debts to pay outside of her usual ones that force her to take on a Maid Service job to get enough money to keep up with the demands, which severely limits having a free life outside school. [[spoiler:Only after getting to the root of the problem is when the Protagonist is able to set her free from her dead student's greedy guardians demanding compensation for feeling inferior socially that she is able to brighten up and cherish her life as a teacher]].

* In the premiere episode of ''WesternAnimation/ElinorWondersWhy'', "Ms. Mole's Glasses," Ari is astonished when the class's teacher, Ms. Mole, says that she's going shopping, and later admits he thought teachers lived inside the school. Elinor thinks this is goofy, asking where Ms. Mole would sleep if she lived inside the school.
-->'''Ari''': You mean teachers sleep, too?! Mind blowing!

* In the premiere episode of ''WesternAnimation/ElinorWondersWhy'', "Ms. Mole's Glasses," Ari is astonished when the class's teacher, Ms. Mole, says that she's going shopping, and later admits he thought teachers lived inside the school. Elinor thinks this is goofy, asking where Mrs. Mole would sleep if she lived inside the school.

Compare ParentsAsPeople, and VillainsOutShopping for when antagonists are encountered on unexpected mundane excursions. If the ''students'' are out of school, see ShouldntWeBeInSchoolRightNow. If the teacher still acts like a teacher when school is out, the teacher is a NonGivingUpSchoolGuy.

At the end of the day, kids go home. Do teachers go home? Of course not! Teachers are teachers. At the end of the day, teachers just get switched off and locked in a storage closet. Or they spend their summers sleeping in their vampire coffins until vacation is over, where they will rise up to [[VampiricDraining suck the life out of their students]] the next year.

With this thought in mind, it often comes as major shock when the kids see their teacher outside of school--such as at home, at a grocery store, or even out on a date. For most students, it's hard for them to think of their teachers actually having lives outside of their jobs, unless they're taking a break in the MysteriousTeachersLounge, where who knows what amazing and/or secret things teachers are doing in there.

* In the ''Wandering Son'' fic ''[[https://archiveofourown.org/works/14142669 Reunion]]'', one of Kanako's 4-year old students questions her on what she does after class. She thinks that Kanako sleeps at the school.

-->-- '''Gretchen''': WesternAnimation/{{Recess}}

* ''Literature/JunieBJones'' goes through this in ''Junie B. Jones is Not a Crook'' when she sees her teacher at the grocery store testing out a couple of grapes for quality-check and thinks that she's stealing.

* ''Persona5'' gives us the Temperance Confidant Sadayo Kawakami. However, she's a bit of a subversion. As it happens, she has extra debts to pay outside of her usual ones that force her to take on a Maid Service job to get enough money to keep up with the demands, which severely limits having a free life outside school. [[spoiler:Only after getting to the root of the problem is when the Protagonist is able to set her free from her dead student's greedy guardians demanding compensation for feeling inferior socially that she is able to brighten up and cherish her life as a teacher]].

* In ''Series/TheCosbyShow'' episode "Mrs. Westlake," Dr. Huxtable invites Theo's math teacher, Mrs. Westlake, and her husband over for dinner--Theo expects the worst, especially because Mrs. Westlake is widely considered to be the toughest math teacher at his high school (to the point of being called "The Dragon Lady"). However, during the dinner, Theo's surprised to see that outside of her life as a teacher, Mrs. Westlake is actually pretty friendly and reveals that Theo actually did pretty well on his math test (he got an 89%, which would be a B+).
* Subverted in the ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E3SchoolReunion School Reunion]]". When main characters are sneaking around a suspicious school at night, Rose says that she used to think that teachers sleep at school. A moment later...
-->'''The Doctor:''' ''[pointing at the ceiling, where "teachers" sleep in their [[GlamourFailure true alien form]]]'' Well... [[OhCrap They do]].
* The children's sitcom ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoap Microsoap]]'' was about a family which was going through a divorce. It had an arc where the children's father dated the son's teacher. The kid and his classmates suspected she was an automaton.
* Cookie led an after-hours school tour in ''Series/NedsDeclassifiedSchoolSurvivalGuide''. The "scariest" part of his tour was the part where he showed what the teachers do after-hours: they have their own rap group!

From the beginning of the first year of elementary all the way up until the end of the last year of high school, kids spend a large part of their day (usually around six to eight hours) in/at school, under the tutelage of a teacher of some kind. The class tends to develop a relationship with their teacher, but they typically never see their teacher as anything more than ''just'' their teacher.

With this thought in mind, it often comes as major shock when the kids see their teacher outside of school--such as at home, at a grocery store, or even out on a date. It's almost impossible for students to think that teachers actually have lives outside of their jobs, unless they're taking a break in the MysteriousTeachersLounge, where who knows what amazing and/or secret things teachers are doing in there.

* ''Series/TheCosbyShow'' episode "Mrs. Westlake". In a previous episode, Theo gets assigned to Mrs. Westlake, widely considered to be the toughest math teacher at his school. In that same episode, Dr. Huxtable invites Mrs. Westlake and her husband over for dinner, much to Theo's dread. However, Theo discovers that Mrs. Westlake is actually really nice and quite charming outside of school--as an added bonus, it turns out that Theo got an 89% on a math exam that recently took place in her class.

From Kindergarten/1st-grade to 12th-grade, kids spend most of their day (at least six to eight hours) at school, under the tutelage of a teacher of some kind. The class tends to develop a relationship with their teacher, but they typically never see their teacher as anything more than ''just'' their teacher.

* In ''Literature/HarryPotter,'' Harry winds up interacting with his teachers outside of school fairly often, especially after the Second War starts in the middle of the series. He notes that it was particularly odd when he once saw [[SternTeacher Professor McGonagall]] show up in {{Muggle}} clothes.
** In another book he wonders how weird it is to think of [[TheDumbledore Dumbledore]] outside of Hogwarts, and has an amusing mental image of him lying on a beach, rubbing suntan lotion on his long, crooked nose.

In elementary, middle and high schools, kids spend most of their day at school (usually around 6 to 8 hours), under the tutelage of a teacher (of some kind). The class tends to develop a relationship with their teacher, but they typically never see their teacher as anything more than ''just'' their teacher.

From Kindergarten to 12th-grade, kids spend most of their day at school (usually around 6 to 8 hours), under the tutelage of teacher (of some kind). The class tends to develop a relationship with their teacher, but they typically never see their teacher as anything more than ''just'' their teacher.

* In an early ''ComicStrip/{{Zits}}'' strip, Jeremy and Hector see a female teacher of theirs coming out of a Victoria's Secret-type store. They immediately race off to post about it on the Internet.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': {{Inverted}} for most of the time in the case of Principal Seymour Skinner. Even though he's a Green Beret and [[ShellShockedVeteran Vietnam War veteran]], he's still probably [[TheBore the dullest person]] in all of Springfield. When he's not in work he ''thinks'' of working, he [[MommasBoy lives with his mother]], and he thinks a class trip to a ''[[MuseumOfBoredom box factory]]'' is exciting enough to do more than once. Even his more badass moments just depict him as a NonGivingUpSchoolGuy. However, this trope gets ZigZagged in the season five episode, "[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS5E19SweetSeymourSkinnersBaadasssssSong Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song]]": After Skinner loses his job, Bart gets to know him outside of work. Even though Skinner is as boring as ever, Bart ''still'' manages to befriend him.

* ''ComicStrip/GrandAvenue''. In the [[http://assets.amuniversal.com/f5efe470fc7201301829001dd8b71c47 strip for September 17th, 2013]], Gabbie expresses disbelief that her teacher had such a busy summer vacation. The teacher angrily asks her is she thinks that all teachers do is teach, that they live at school and all they do in their spare time is grade papers.
* ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'': At one point, Calvin's mom mentions seeing his teacher, [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Ms. Wormwood]], at the supermarket. Calvin, surprised to hear this, remarks that he just kind of assumed that teachers slept in coffins all summer.
* In an early ''ComicStrip/{{Zits}}'' strip, Jeremy and Hector see a female teacher of theirs coming out of a Victoria's Secret-store. They immediately race off to post about it on the Internet.

* ''Literature/MyTeacherSleepsInSchool'' is a children's book about kids trying to prove their teacher well, lives at school. Towards the end of the book the students are taken on a bus trip to the teacher's house and they learn teachers do in fact have lives outside of their jobs.

* In the children's book ''Literature/TheCatAteMyGymsuit'', Marcy is surprised to learn her teacher has a first name.

Kids spend most of their day (usually around eight hours at the most) inside school, under the tutelage of a teacher. The class tends to develop a relationship with their teacher, but they always believe that their teacher is nothing more than ''just'' their teacher.

With this thought in mind, it comes as a real shock when the kids meet their teacher at home, or in the grocery store, or even out on a date. It's almost impossible to conceive that they have a life outside of their jobs at school, unless they're taking a break in the MysteriousTeachersLounge, where who knows what amazing and/or secret things teachers are doing in there.

This trope is about the myopic perspective of the teacher's students who don't realize their teacher has a life outside of school.

* ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'': At one point Calvin's mom mentions seeing his teacher [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Ms. Wormwood]] at the supermarket. Calvin remarks that he just kind of assumed that teachers slept in coffins all summer.

* ''Series/TheCosbyShow'' episode "Mrs. Westlake". In a previous episode, Theo gets assigned to Mrs. Westlake, widely considered to be the toughest math teacher at his school. In that same episode, Dr. Huxtable invites Mrs. Westlake and her husband over for dinner, much to Theo's dread. However, Theo discovers that Mrs. Westlake is actually really nice and quite charming outside of school--as an added bonus, it turns out that Theo did pretty well on a math exam he recently had in her class (either a B+ or an A-)

Kids spend most of their day inside school, under the tutelage of a teacher. The class tends to develop a relationship with their teacher, but they always believe that their teacher is nothing more than just their teacher.

With this thought in mind, it comes as a real shock when the kids meet their teacher at home, or in the grocery store, or even on a date. It's almost impossible to conceive that they have a life outside of school, unless they're taking a break in the MysteriousTeachersLounge, where who knows what amazing and secret things teachers are doing in there.

* ''Series/TheCosbyShow'' episode "Mrs. Westlake". In a previous episode, Theo gets assigned to Mrs. Westlake, widely considered to be the toughest math teacher at his school. In that same episode, Dr. Huxtable invites Mrs. Westlake and her husband over for dinner, much to Theo's dread. However, Theo discovers that Mrs. Westlake is actually really nice and quite charming outside of school.

* Averted in ''WesternAnimation/TeachersPet'', where the teacher is the main character Leonard's mother, and title character [[TalkingAnimal Spot/Scott's]] owner. She regularly embarrasses him in class but there are occasions where he'd exploit it.

* ''WesternAnimation/HeyArnold'' had the teachers go on strike. Because of the strike, the kids rejoiced that they could spend their days out of school, but found that the teachers all had found temporary jobs at all the places they liked to hang out. The kids return to school to avoid the teachers, but are evicted by Principal Wartz, who tells them every day the strike goes on, they cut days from summer vacation. That's when Arnold vows to end the strike as soon as possible.

!!Examples

[[folder:Film]]
* A subplot in ''Film/MeanGirls'' involves the protagonist's inadvertent sabotage of Ms. Norbury's reputation. A lot of other characters don't quite understand that teachers are also people.
-->"I love seeing teachers out of school. It's like watching a dog walk on its hind legs..."

* In ''HarryPotter,'' Harry winds up interacting with his teachers outside of school fairly often, especially after the Second War starts in the middle of the series. He notes that it was particularly odd when he once saw [[SternTeacher Professor McGonagall]] show up in {{Muggle}} clothes.

[[folder:LiveActionTV]]

* Subverted in the ''Series/DoctorWho'' episode [[Recap/DoctorWhoS28E3SchoolReunion "School Reunion"]]. When main characters are sneaking around a suspicious school at night, Rose says that she used to think that teachers sleep at school. A moment later...
--> '''Doctor:''' ''[pointing at the ceiling, where "teachers" sleep in their [[GlamourFailure true alien form]]]'' Well... [[OhCrap They do]].

* ''Series/{{iCarly}}'' had an episode dedicated to this, where the group tries to figure out what Miss Briggs, their EvilTeacher, does outside of school. Freddy brought the trope up earlier in the episode by pointing out, "You never really think of teachers having lives outside of school," and Sam admits that she always assumed they just slept in the teacher's lounge at night.

[[folder:NewspaperComics]]
* ''ComicStrip/GrandAvenue''. In the [[http://assets.amuniversal.com/f5efe470fc7201301829001dd8b71c47 strip for September 17th, 2013]], Gabbie expresses disbelief that her teacher had such a busy summer vacation. The teacher angrily asks her is she thinks that all teachers do is teach, that they live at school and all they do in their spare time is grade papers.
* ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'': At one point Calvin's mom mentions seeing his teacher [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Ms. Wormwood]] at the supermarket. Calvin remarks that he just kind of assumed that teachers slept in coffins all summer.
* In an early ''ComicStrip/{{Zits}}'' strip, Jeremy and Hector see a female teacher of theirs coming out of a Victoria's Secret-store. They immediately race off to post about it on the internet.

[[folder:VideoGames]]
* ''Persona5'' gives us the Temperance Confidant Sadayo Kawakami. However, she's a bit of a subversion. As it happens, she has extra debts to pay outside of her usual ones that force her to take on a Maid Service job to get enough money to keep up with the demands, which severely limits having a free life outside school. [[spoiler:Only after getting to the root of the problem is when the Protagonist is able to set her free from her dead student's greedy guardians demanding compensation for feeling inferior socially that she is able to brighten up and cherish her life as a teacher]].
[[/folder]]

[[folder:WesternAnimation]]

* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Recess}}'' starts with Spinelli discovering not only that [[SadistTeacher Ms. Finster]] goes out shopping like a normal person, but that she's a friend of her parents. Gus was particularly surprised to hear this, since he assumed that teachers just sat quietly at their desks whenever school wasn't in session.
** Another episode was about the main six discovering that their main teacher, Miss Grotke, had a secret double life.

* ''WesternAnimation/LloydInSpace'' featured a robot for a teacher named Mrs. Bolt. Her class thinks of her as just a machine that makes their lives miserable, until one episode where her husband chose to invite her class over for a party. Lloyd was surprised that Mrs. Bolt had a life outside teaching--and a husband (despite the fact she went by "Mrs.").
* Averted in ''WesternAnimation/TeachersPet'', where the teacher was the main character Leonard's mother, and title character [[TalkingAnimal Spot/Scott's]] owner. She regularly embarrassed him in class but there were occassions where he would exploit it.
* On ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'' when Mr. Ratburn's ceiling collapses and he temporarily moves in with the Read family, Arthur's little sister DW is confused.
-->DW: So, the school roof fell in?
-->Mr. Ratburn: No, the roof to my home.
-->DW: But you're a teacher - The school '''is''' your home.
-->Mr. Ratburn: Teachers don't live at school, D.W. We have houses just like you.
-->DW: The world seemed so simple before this moment.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': {{Inverted}} for most of the time in the case of Principal Seymour Skinner. Even though he's a Green Beret and [[ShellShockedVeteran Vietnam War veteran]], he's still probably [[TheBore the dullest person]] in all of Springfield. When he's not in work he ''thinks'' of working, he [[MommasBoy lives with his mother]], and he thinks a class trip to a ''[[MuseumOfBoredom box factory]]'' is [[IncrediblyLameFun exciting enough to do more than once]]. Even his more badass moments just depict him as a NonGivingUpSchoolGuy. However, this trope gets ZigZagged in the season five episode, [[Recap/TheSimpsonsS5E19SweetSeymourSkinnersBaadasssssSong Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song]]: After Skinner loses his job, Bart gets to know him outside of work. Even though Skinner is as boring as ever, Bart ''still'' manages to befriend him.

* {{Subverted}} in ''WesternAnimation/InvaderZim,'' because according to [[AllThereInTheManual some bonus material]], [[AmbiguouslyHuman Ms. Bitters]] ''never'' leaves school--the building was actually built around her. Of course, this doesn't fit with [[MultipleChoicePast other statements about her]].

* In Andrew Clements's ''The Landry News'', the teacher Karl Larson recalls a teacher he had when he was a kid, a seemingly perfect woman named Mrs. Spellman with perfect hair, flawless cursive, and gold stars that were valued by even the toughest boys. Then, while out on holiday on Memorial Day, he saw on her the beach with her family, wearing a swimsuit that didn't hide any of her midriff bulges or purple veins and her husband pointing a cooler and asking her "Hey, Mabel, hand me a cold one, would you?" Shocked, he in an instant realized that the Mrs. Spellman he knew at school was mostly a fictional character, created both by her and in his mind.