What to Know
Teaching is often a thankless profession. Teachers work so hard — they deal with large classroom sizes, ever changing rules, and often have to work with less resources than they need. Many work well outside the confines of school hours to make sure their students have everything they can to succeed. And despite this, many people still consider teaching a less than necessary profession. Apparently, one of those people is comedian Tracy Morgan. In a recent conversation, Morgan made disparaging comments about teachers. And people didn’t hesitate to let him have it.
His comments were completely misguided.
Morgan recently took part in a conversation with current Saturday Night Live cast member Marcello Hernández for Variety’s “Actors on Actors.” During the conversation, Hernández shared that when he was in school, he was told he was “an excessive talker” and “did mischief.”
“You had a sense of humor,” he told the younger comedian. “And they couldn’t control that. God gave that to you.” To that, Hernández replied, “And now look, I’m getting paid for mischief.”
This is where things begin to take a turn.
“And they’re still making minimum wage,” Morgan said. Hernández, who was clearly surprised by the comment, countered by saying “Not enough.” But Morgan didn’t stop there.
“I can’t stand teachers,” Morgan said. “You know why? Because they have a ceiling, they have a limit. That’s all they’re ever going to be. I teach my kids sky’s the limit.”
The backlash was immediate, and people didn’t hold back.
The emphasis on someone's worth solely based on their salary is how we got to this timeline.
— Gaming Since NES (@GamingSinceNES) June 10, 2026
The teachers who dedicate their careers to sharing their knowledge are vital to our society and deserve more respect than what they are currently receiving.
Over on X, commenters had a lot of strong opinions about Tracy Morgan and his sentiments.
“He had a point at first but a rich celebrity making fun of teachers who are notoriously underpaid and under-appreciated is just weird,” one person wrote.
“The emphasis on someone’s worth solely based on their salary is how we got to this timeline,” another person commented. “The teachers who dedicate their careers to sharing their knowledge are vital to our society and deserve more respect than what they are currently receiving.”
“How about teachers being paid more, being appreciated more because using common sense, if those are the people educating the future and present of a nation…maybe they deserve to be more appreciated so they can do a better job and not be joked by making ‘the minimum wage,’” someone else wrote.
“Oh Tracy what a dumb thing to say. Making minimum wage? Looking down on educators because they make less than you? How sad,” another comment read.
Teachers also didn’t hesitate to chime in with their thoughts on Tracy Morgan.
Many teachers commented on the story on Buzzfeed, and they made it clear that Morgan’s comments were unwelcome.
“As a teacher, I’m completely disgusted,” one teacher wrote. “Such total ignorance and disrespect for people who have a really tough job and try to help kids every day. I’d like to see Tracy jump into a classroom for a couple of days-especially a SPED classroom, maybe with some autistic kids present.”
“I’m a NYC Public High School teacher and this is so disgusting. I teach in one of the poorest congressional districts in the US because these kids need adults to care about them. Tracy should know growing up how life is like for these kids. I love my job and never have looked at it as a dead-end job. Guess I’m not watching season 2 of his show. F-off, Tracy,” another teacher wrote.
“I don’t care what Morgan has to say about my career path. His opinion, while ignorant and embarrassing to share out loud, has no effect on the impact that I’m making on my students.”
“As a teacher (25 years in), i’m disgusted by his comment. Sure I wish I got paid more, but it’s not a ‘ceiling.’ I could leave and do other things, but I don’t WANT to.” another teacher wrote. “Teaching isn’t a dead-end job. We don’t get paid minimum wage, and what we do isn’t meaningless.”
