teacher of the year

Though Abbot Elementary is celebrated for finding the comedy gold out of how underserved our current public school systems are in America, it’s still a network sitcom and limited to 22 minutes that are clean enough for primetime. Given what teachers have had to go through before the pandemic, during it, and right at this moment, their true thoughts on what’s going on in and around the classroom might not exactly be appropriate for the classroom.

Luckily, some teachers are stand-up comedians, unbound by network censors, and one of those teachers is the hysterical Rachel Mac. Mac gives a much more adult portrait of what life as a professional educator in 2023 is like on her debut comedy album, the aptly titled, Teacher of the Year. Mac doesn’t shy away from the realities of the class room that are much more akin to an R-rated comedy, but does so in such a matter-of-factly way that there’s a certain undeniable appeal (even though a parent might do a double take if they heard this material in the class room instead of a comedy club).

If you really want to have a hilarious warts-and-all picture of why teachers deserve better pay for teaching future generations and, overall, probably deserve more respect and admiration, on top of listening a self-assured hour of stand-up comedy that would likely get a “parental advisory” sticker if anyone bought CDs en masse anymore, then get Mac’s Teacher of the Year, available now from AST Records, and listen to it ASAP.