You just watch it to see how they're going to handle it. By addressing such timely issues, the television series finds a common thread to which most teachers can relate. The close-knit circle of teachers often portrayed on the series also is common to schools everywhere. Teachers said they often develop bonds with their peers that help them cope with personal problems and rough days on the job. Sometimes those groups don't get along, they said, but the friction is usually contained in faculty lounges and rarely acted out before students, as often happens on the television series.
Younger teachers are more common at the elementary level.
But teachers said the random gang violence and frequent firings and rehirings of teachers often portrayed in the series are more in keeping with the workings of urban schools than those in Southeast Missouri. It doesn't really show the everyday realities for us, because every week there's something that's hard-core and so dramatic. Most days here aren't like that. Army soldiers won't be wearing Chinese-made black berets, after all. Slaughter cows and bulls steady.