Quirky Teacher Not Quite as Inspiring Online

 

*writes "Oh... Captain... my...*

(Westchester, NY) When twelve year-old Aidan Griggs began online classes at Llewellyn Academy, he wasn't really sure what to expect. The august halls of the institution helped to shape his father, his father's employer, and any number of oil barons and hedge fund managers. However, his English teacher has changed the game significantly on the class.

"First, he had us destroy our textbooks," says Griggs. "Which was weird because it was just deleting a file. I guess he meant it to be, like, symbolic or something, but we just had to download a new one from the cloud later. Then, he started yelling something about 'carpe diem' and poetry. I don't know. I muted him and went back to sleep."

Harold Brumbacher, the English teacher in question, strives to be a an inspiration for the children whose lives he touches.

"Education used to mean something!" howls Brumbacher in a video that he did not record. "Not in this country, but in ancient Greece and Rome! They let cried out poetry from the tops of mountains! They drank from the Pierian spring!"

"Give him the clown filter," says Grigg's friend Billy Washington. "Yeah, ha, that's great. I wonder when he's going to figure out that we're recording his class, not him."

TikTok videos of Brumbacher, created without his knowledge, have collectively reached over a million views. However, he is not reaching people in the way that he might have wanted.

"Ew. Is he actually crying about Twain being cancelled? That is so cringy," says Aidan's older sister, Phoebe Griggs. "The guy was like a perv. I read something about that in my English class last year."

On the screen in front of them, Brumbacher cries comically large tears talking about how Twain has enriched the lives of people for decades, with "his comedic genius, his sincerity, and his penchant for social justice! He will live on! To paraphrase his torch bearer years later, 'He will not merely endure; he will prevail!'"

"Yeah, this is bad," says Griggs, "but you should have seen him on the first day. He was trying to get everyone to stand on our furniture. Hunter Anders fell off and got hurt. I hear they're going to fire him over that. It's a shame. The guy was seriously the only reason that I logged on for classes most days. Not because I was learning anything, I mean, he was just a complete mess."