One of the dangers in using a stock photo? You never know who else has used it.
That’s the situation the Austin School District is finding itself in. As a post on the Austin Reddit page points out, the stock photo gracing the cover of AISD’s guide for new hires is the same photo used in a popular, unfortunately named meme: Unhelpful High School Teacher.
An internet meme, of course, is an image of a person or thing including text from that subject’s perspective: think of the indomitable Scumbag Steve, the ever-helpful Good Guy Greg, or Texas’ own Laina, aka the Overly Attached Girlfriend.
The internet detectives at Know Your Meme trace the Unhelpful High School Teacher image back to a Corbis Images stock photo, and note the meme has been around for a while – even getting the Buzzfeed treatment.
While AISD may get some LOLs out of the mixup – which we’ve confirmed as real, via a PDF version of the guide shared on Reddit – Unhelpful High School Teacher won’t be winning any educator awards. Here’s a sampling of her teaching technique:
