If you're looking for the animated series, see Teacher's Pet.
"Teacher, teacher! I know! I know!"
"I was so unpopular in high school, the crossing guard used to lure me into traffic."
— Annie, Community
This is the kid at school that nobody likes. Not because they're stupid, or annoying, or a bully, but because they suck up to the teacher. They'll bring the teacher the traditional apple every day, they'll always volunteer to answer any question, and more often than not they'll be The Informant to the teacher, tattling on the other students whenever they make the smallest infringement of the rules.
Needless to say, most of the other students tend to despise this person, and they're often portrayed as a traitor to the rest of the class. Typical of series that are set in elementary school. The older the kids are in the setting, the better the chance that the teacher really hates their guts. If the students are in college though, the tables are turned as everyone needs to get close to a professor for participation marks, reference letters they'll need for adulthood, or introductions to industry contacts who can help with their internship or entry-level job search.
Foil to the Teacher's Unfavorite Student.
See also: Professional Butt-Kisser.
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Played With in In the Heart of Kunoichi Tsubaki. As the Akane Class's top student and a stickler for the rules, Tsubaki is effectively the middle ground between the students and the teachers, the latter of whom have full confidence in her. However, unlike the trope, Tsubaki isn't resented for this and has the admiration of her fellow students as a result.
- Deconstructed in Run with the Wind. Kakeru Kurahara easily outmatched everyone else in his former track team, much to the delight of the coach. Much to the dismay of everyone else in the team, he gave Kakeru special treatment. All of this resulted in Kakeru being isolated and loathed by his peers. Also a subversion, as Kakeru was simply that good at running but never intended to be placed on a pedestal like that. The bad experiences of this trope is partly what causes his reluctant attitude towards being a part of a new track team in university in the current day.
Comedy Performance
- Billy Connolly joked that growing up in Glasgow, his school was one step up from a Borstalnote . He fondly described one of his classmates as Teacher's Pet -
She kept him in a cage at the back of the room, and every so often she'd dob a bit of raw meat in, to keep him quiet.
Comic Books
- The Bash Street Kids has Cuthbert Cringeworthy. The only pupil in the class who wears a uniform or gives Teacher any respect whatsoever. He also looks like Teacher, a Visual Pun on his status as "pet" and Uncatty Resemblance.
Films — Live-Action
- Margaret from art class in Ghost World, who gets constantly praised by her teacher for her comments and incomprehensible artworks.
- In A Hard Day's Night, The Beatles are troublemakers who make their manager's life a misery, except for Ringo Starr, leading to the others referring to him as this.
Literature
- Captain Underpants has the character Melvin Sneedly, who in addition to being this is also a huge tattletale. Unsurprisingly, all of the Sadist Teachers in the school love him.
- Chichikov from Dead Souls became this when he had a Sadist Teacher who'd give the best grades to, well, teacher's pets, and bad grades to smart kids who were even a little bit unruly — or showed too much smartness.
- Harry Potter:
- Hermione Granger starts off as this, but then gets Character Development, starting when Harry and Ron save her life and she lies to get them out of trouble.
- A one-sided version occurs with Durmstrang headmaster Karkaroff who lavishes praise and clear favoritism towards Krum who mostly brushes it aside.
- Another one-sided version occurs in Chamber of Secrets, with Lockhart giving this treatment to an unenthusiastic Harry as part of his Obi-Wannabe shtick.
- Draco Malfoy seems to have been this to Snape, partially owed to the fact he was friends with Lucius Malfoy back when they were students and later became Death Eaters. He also acts this way to Dolores Umbridge during the fifth book as the leader of the Inquisitorial Squad. When Snape is replaced as Potions Master by Slughorn, Draco seems dismayed to have lost his status.
- Language Arts: Charles becomes Mrs. Braxton's favorite student due to his excellent penmanship, earning him the hatred of the rest of the class, especially the bullies Bradley and Mitchell and the overachiever Astrida. Dana becomes his Only Friend.
- Agnan of French novel series Le Petit Nicolas. And in this setting, where the turbulent classmates are the main protagonists, he's portrayed as a Butt-Monkey.
- Molly in The Poison Apples is this, wanting nothing more than to discuss her favourite books with her Humanities teacher when no one else in the class really cares, to the extent that he has to shut her down because she's talked about the topic so much already.
- In the Rainbow Magic series, one book has Steffi, a no-nonsense sort of girl who tells the teacher about the April Fool's pranks — though part of it's because of Jack Frost taking her sense of humor away.
- Teachers Pet 1989 by Johanna Hurwitz. Cricket initially resents the new girl, who seems to please the teacher better than she could — until she learns that the new girl is just a genuinely nice person, and that she doesn't have to be a teacher's pet to be special.
- Niles Sparks in The Terrible Two. He's the type who always has his hair combed neatly and is the first to have his hand raised for a question. It's actually a coverup for him being a prankster. Not only is he the last person you'd suspect, as a student aide he has access to things and places that other students don't, like the teacher's lounge.
- Vincent in Thief of Time, who is always bursting to tell Miss Susan the correct answer to her questions, despite her attempts to give everyone else a turn, and is desperately proud of his gold and silver star collection. Susan privately has him down as Boy Most Likely To Be Murdered By His Wife, and trips him up with a question that requires a bit of imagination rather than memorising facts.
Susan: Does [the existence of timezones] mean it's "then" there when it's "now" here?
Vincent: Ooo ... Doesn't make sense, miss.
Susan: Questions don't have to make sense, Vincent. But answers do.
Live-Action TV
- An All That skit has two students actually competing to be the teacher's pet.
- Detective Amy Santiago in Brooklyn Nine-Nine was apparently this in her youth (or at least wanted to be this; there's some hints that the teacher wasn't very fond of her either).
Holt: Santiago, when I greet the Deputy Chief I want you there by my side to make a good impression. No offence, but you are something of a teacher's pet.
Santiago: [proudly] None taken! People love their pets.
[Detective Diaz gives her a withering stare] - Annie in Community. For example, instead of putting his binder back, Señor Chang drops it on the floor and orders Annie to pick it up.
- Gen V: Jordan is Brink's teacher's assistant, and it's shown that Brink greatly cares for them and helped shield Jordan from the marketing problems their gender usually caused with Vought's practices, and was even willing to throw Marie under the bus to protect them. It's telling that barely a day after Brink's death Jordan gets immediately dropped from Rank 2 to Rank 5 and suddenly dropped hard by Vought's marketing people due to how inviable they are with middle America. It's revealed in "Jumanji" that he offered them the position as a bribe in exchange for their silence about Golden Boy's mental state.
- In Hank Zipzer, Nick McKelty is this to Miss Adolf. Emily would love to be a teacher's pet, but most of the teachers find her incredibly annoying.
- In the Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide episode "Guide to: Teachers", Ned tries to become one to his science teacher, believing it would help him get his grades up. It doesn't work. Meanwhile, Moze is accused of being one when she tries to help the new student teacher stand up for himself.
- Our Miss Brooks:
- An unusual example is Walter Denton, who likes Miss Brooks so much he's usually driving her to school. However, he doesn't sit in the front of the classroom, is Book Dumb, and apparently popular amongst the student body.
- Also applies to Harriet Conklin, who is Miss Brooks' best student. She's also the daughter of the principal to boot. However, this doesn't stop her from being popular enough to be the president of the student body.
- Sally in Simon And The Witch doesn't like anyone doing better at school than her (and is willing to destroy Simon's craft work when it outshines hers). She's also outraged when the witch seems to have done better than her in a general knowledge test, although she does come top in a spelling test and sits and smirks when this is announced. At the jumble sale she's both on the door and running a stall, and she later takes the lead role in the school panto. She finishes her Maths ahead of everyone else, then asks for more. She's class monitor, gives out and collects just about everything, and is always sucking up to Miss Phoeble. Not surprisingly, she isn't popular. The second series is set in the school holidays and sees her looking for "intelligent" activities to fill the time.
Music
- Referenced in The Police's song "Don't Stand So Close To Me", though disturbing Teacher/Student Romance subtext:
Her friends are so jealous
You know how bad girls get
Sometimes it's not so easy
To be the teacher's pet
Video Games
- Ms. Applegate's mission in Kindergarten is a darker take on this. It revolves around earning gold stars by getting your fellow students in trouble, with the ultimate goal of earning a lunch pass that allows you to eat lunch with her. However, the thing is that getting the students into trouble means getting them killed, which Ms. Applegate is counting on, since no kids means she (and her "little rat" as she so affectionately calls you) gets to go home early.
- Aqua from Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep is a more benevolent version. Nomura has described her as an "honour student-type", and she follows Master Eraqus's teachings the closest out of the three protagonists, even spying on Terra for him. This does not stop her being very loyal to the other two, however. Mess with them and she will kick your ass. Also, it turns out this is a very much justified example of the trope, because Terra ends up repeatedly tricked into committing evil up to and including killing Master Eraqus, and Ven leaves home without permission and almost gets used as the X-Blade. So Aqua's path was the correct one all along.
- School swot Einstein in Skool Daze and Back to Skool answers every question in class, prefacing the answer with "Please sir, I cannot tell a lie...". Will also tattle on other students' misdeeds.
- In Yandere Simulator, "Teacher's Pet" is a personality type for students. If a Teacher's Pet finds a corpse or you commit a murder in front of them, they will run for a teacher and bring them to the scene of the crime. If you can clean up the crime scene and dispose of the corpse before they come, the teacher will assume the student to be playing a bad joke on her, and the student will be mentally scarred from the experience.
Webcomics
- Jared Sun from Weak Hero is a member of the student council and goes out of his way to suck up to the teachers, making him popular with them but not with the other students.
Western Animation
- Oblina from Aaahh!!! Real Monsters is The Gromble's favorite student and his best pupil when it comes to scaring humans.
- Nanette Manoir from Angela Anaconda. To the point where in Angela's fantasy, Nanette kisses Mrs. Brinks' butt... literally.
- In Arthur, when Mr. Ratburn moves in with Arthur's family for a little while due to his roof needing repair, the other kids say that Arthur will now be the teacher's pet and always get high marks. Then he gets an "A" on a quiz, apparently confirming their suspicions, although Arthur claims it was because he studied. Binky taunts him with a song:
- Ginger Foutley from As Told by Ginger is a self-described "science geek" and frequent kiss up to her chemistry teacher, Mr. Celia. She also happens to be a favorite of her English teacher, Ms. Zorski, due to her talent for writing.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender: Hide from the episode "The Headband" is a star student who gets special treatment from the headmaster and rats out Aang's secret dance party.
- Detention has Shelley, the only kid Ms. Kisskillya likes.
- Ed, Edd n Eddy doesn't have teachers show up on screen due to Adults Are Useless and Minimalist Cast, but Kevin mentions that he compliments teachers to get higher marks in the episode "Pick an Ed". However, this was out of manipulation and he isn't actually a teacher's pet.
- Kaeloo: In the episode "Let's Play Teachers", Quack Quack becomes one since he can answer all the questions correctly in class. Stumpy, who never gives any correct answers, angrily calls him a "teacher's pet" and threatens to beat him up at recess.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has a background character named Teacher's Pet. Given how names typically work in this universe, he is most likely exactly what you expect. Twilight Sparkle also served as this while she was still in Canterlot and in the early seasons of the show, doing her best to make Princess Celestia proud of her to the point where the mere possibility of being tardy on an assignment drove her temporarily insane.
- The Owl House: "Escaping Expulsion" plays the trope for laughs. The student who seeks out and basks in every scrap of praise from her instructor (to the point of making statues of 'Ms Teacher' for extra credit) would be a standard example were it not for how Lilith Clawthorne is pushing fifty and commanded Emperor Belos's enforcers before going rogue and sacrificing her magic for the sake of her marginally younger sister; whereas her instructor in the use of glyphs, Luz Noceda, is a fourteen year old human girl and said sister's foster daughter in all but name.
- Randall from Recess is the class tattletale, who snitches on the other kids for Ms. Finster.
- Martin Prince from the The Simpsons is this to Ms. Krabappel. A bookworm who serves as a sort of rival and foil to Bart (famously an "underachiever and proud of it"), his enthusiasm makes him the only student who cares about what Ms. Krabappel does and also a giant Bully Magnet.
