Inspired by the wide variety of teacher memes making their way around the interweb, I decided to add a little snark to my first-day-of-school overview of class procedures with some personalized memes that will be impossible for students to ignore.

The Meme Generator at IMPFlip.com is a handy little tool if you want to give this a try, but I ended up making all of my own from scratch, so to speak. All you need to do is paste the background image you want into a Word document or Powerpoint slide and type with the “Impact” font that comes standard on most Microsoft products. Impact is the hipsters’ universally recognized meme font of choice, I was told by two teen girls wearing chunky black-framed reading glasses. So, you know, I have it from the source. If you don’t have “Impact” in your font library, you can download it free here for both Mac and PC.

Directing the meme characters to say all of the unfiltered things I want to say to my students (but edit for the sake of professionalism) was surprisingly cathartic. A few of my creations were too catty to include in the final lecture presentation (this will be given on the first day of school, after all, and I don’t want to terrify the darlings), but it sure felt good to release some of my psyche’s silent screamers.

A sampling of the memes that made the final cut and will be included as lecture backdrop on the first day of school:



Feel free to grab any of these or be inspired to make your own.

Teach on, everyone!









