This troper's Debate teacher/coach fits the definition of this trope quite handily. I'd like to offer some evidence:

This teacher, who shall remain nameless, introduced me to the headache healing power of figs, while failing to mention the other... benefits.

She has made tea during the middle of class. The chime from her water heating apparatus once led the class to believe they were out of time on an exercise.

Furthermore, she has politics which lean well to the left of center (yet always encourages a "free discussion of ideas"). No ideology is too extreme, no matter what end of the spectrum.

Finally, she plays what can only be called "Earth music" on a regular basis, to promote calm. Note that it works.

This troper's social studies/history teacher in Middle School... a hard core liberal dedicated to making America look as bad as possible in every historical event he could. Not that this was bad, because as a result we were introduced to lots of material that wouldn't be discussed by most students until late in high school. 90% of students hated him because he'd make us discuss sensitive issues like abortion in class, and feelings always got hurt. I loved him though. Definitely a major hippie judging by the experiences he'd relate to us about his younger years.

This Troper's Speech/Theatre Arts teacher, and the school musical director. HATES Bush; he would never pass up an opportunity to slam him, was very active in the 1960s, especially during the anti-war movement. Also attended IU, which for those of you who don't know, is very liberal. He is retiring this year and did ''Hair'' as the spring musical. A joke amongst some kids was that the plot could probably be switched out with his college years, and no one would notice the difference. I'll never forget the time he mentioned how 1968 was a good year for him, but would didn't elaborate on why. Three guesses why though.

This troper had an American literature teacher her junior year of high school. The class would often go out and sit in a circle on the school's lawn to discuss and act out the various books and stories they were reading. For one project, we were given a rock and told to channel the rock and befriend our rock in order to tell the rock's perspective on history. Needless to say, I had an excellent time in the class.

TruthInTelevision: This editor actually had a hippie math teacher in eighth grade.

Haha! Who didn't? Mine taught social studies.

My current art teacher. Bonus points as she used to have a family of foxes who she fed every day and followed her around.

It was only in the last week or so of this troper's first year at sixth form when she realised her music lecturer was a ''prog rock'' hippie teacher. All together now...

This troper basically went to a hippie ''school'', but the folkie music teacher deserves special mention.

This troper once had a moderately famous poet for a prof, a woman whose backstory actually included running away to Berkeley to be with an older man who taught there.

This troper had a hippie teacher who often enough would show any kind of movies (incl. ''PoliceAcademy'') in class, talk about her time in Afghanistan or make a stroll along the river with us and her dog, instead of, well, teaching us stuff.

This troper had a hippie subtitute teacher in high school. He spent half the class period talking about his personal philosophy on life. Another time he completely trashed the lesson plan left for him, and told us all about his frequent trips to Peru and all the crazy hijinks he had there. Afterwards, I learned that he had worked with Warner Bros., and had assisted in the creation of those M&M cartoon characters. So I guess he wasn't completely crazy...

Averted - Many, many teachers RadioactiveZombie has met are democrats, and likeable ones who weren't typical, screechy stereotypical liberals he's fought with way too much over the internet. They're all fun to debate with, too. And his eighth grade algebra teacher was actually a former hippie, who, strangely, hated drugs.

This troper's law/history/social studies teacher in high school (all separate classes, of course, he just taught a lot of them) admits he used to be a hippie and apparently had very long hair during his time in college. His classes were amazing in that they were both easy but still informative. He wasn't a strict enforcer of deadlines by any means, he sometimes concluded his senior-level classes early (and quietly), he often left the classroom for extended periods of time without word. The Crowning Moment of Hippie, though, had to be when, in Social Studies class, he stepped out for a bit while we were watching 2001:A Space Odyssey, and came back just as the movie reached most... unusual climax and seemed... suspiciously impressed with it.

This troper's biology professor is the best kind of this. She's a nature-loving, bread-baking, feral-cat-sanctuary-running environmentalist with an awesome casual bohemian style and a love for everything from more traditional "hippie" music to spacey 90's rock. She's a lot snarkier than the hippie stereotype, though, and told us stories about how she used to spit on the Tru-Green people when they came to the apartment complex she lived in when she was younger. She's a sweet, funny, awesome, and inspirational person. I ended up dropping out of college, but consider her a mentor of sorts, and we've kept in touch.

Not sure if this is considered a Hippy Teacher, but this troper once had a maths teacher who was a Russo-Irishman who constantly acted like he was drunk or stoned. Or both. He was all-around awesome (especially when he let us play Interstate '76 in the science lab at lunch)

Agreed. Anyone who lets you play Interstate '76 for any reason is awesome.

This troper had a self proclaimed hippie teacher. He was pretty awesome-he'd give us extra credit on assignments for answering Star Wars trivia. (sadly, he never took me up on my offer for lightsaber combat. Would have been awesome.)

One of this troper's high school math teachers had an earring, dressed a lot like his students, had a large number of bumper stickers on his car IIRC, and wore sandals year-round. He actually wore socks under them for exactly half the year, starting and stopping at equinoxes.

This troper had a film teacher that was a cross between a hippie and a CloudCuckooLander. Unfortunately, she was living proof that TropesAreNotGood, since we never. Got. ''Anything.'' '''DONE.'''

My old American History teacher. You never knew when it was time for an old-fashioned acoustic guitar sing-along. .

This troper's old French teacher was like that. He was quite eccentric, bringing in a huge spaghetti meal in to school one day for us to eat.. so yeah.

This troper has had two: one taught zoology class in junior year, and another currently runs an art class. This is California, so yeah.

This troper's high school was ridiculously conservative - except for one English teacher, who was the personification of drugged-out liberal stereotypes. So yeah.

This troper's high school has several teachers that could be considered hippies. Hence, we created a numbered list. So, um... oh you know the rest.

One of this troper's junior-high teachers dressed like a hippie until he abruptly decided he wanted to get into administration, and so started wearing fancy suits and ties. It was such a momentous change it was mentioned in the yearbook. And yes, last I heard, he had gotten a vice-principal job in another district. (And yes, whatever clothes he wore, he was an excellent teacher.)

This troper's favorite teacher ever, who taught Jr. High biology, was, if not a hippie, bordering on it. He played acoustic guitar for us on occasion, was in a band called the All Bob Band (none of the members were named Bob), taught the occasional lesson using old Star Trek episodes, and, when we had to dissect a squid, fried up the edible bits for us on a hot plate when we were done.

My high school History-Geography teacher was a hippie. He remains one of my favorite teachers to this day.

This troper's high school shop/computer tech teacher was a ''Jesus freak'' hippie. (It was a Christian school, so that flew all right.) Computer class consisted of sitting around in ex-junkyard easy chairs, listening to (often quite entertaining) stories about the teacher's time as a missionary in Mexico, and occasionally playing movies on the computers. Fun times; never learned a thing about computers.

One of my favourite teachers was a ceramics teacher from secondary school. He always seemed at least slightly high and laid back. It was impossible to make him angry and he always gave good grades as long as you turned something in (which was good for me cuz I can't work clay to save my life).

This troper and all of the rest of his class are pretty sure our English teacher is a former hippie. Example: She spent the first class outlining the course prospectus - and making jokes about Crystal Meth. Also, when we finished LordoftheFlies, she didn't show up for class and left a note on the board about how we should just discuss the book by ourselves for the next two classes.

This troper has a teacher at his school whose room is adorned with posters of the Grateful Dead and the Doors and things like that, including a large tyedyed sheet hung on one wall. That should count for something.

This troper went to a Catholic high school, and believe it or not, her ''religion teacher'' was a hippie. CrystalDragonJesus indeed. He was a great teacher though. On the other hand, at the same school, her history/economics teacher was a pretty blatant stereotypical burnt-out, liberal, Dead Poet's Society-esque teacher, and even taught an independent-study course that involved critically listening and analyzing PinkFloyd songs. She never got along with him.

This troper's sixth grade teacher could and often did break into tears in class while talking about how Mother Earth was 'crying', had us undergo 'guided imageries' and made us write about our experiences afterward, and once told me that my aura was supposedly 'full of anger'. Arguably the strangest thing was when our country's conservative party was defeated in the 1993 election and replaced by the liberals, after which we had an impromptu milk party to celebrate.

This troper's high school History teacher, who, funnily enough. was also one of his favorite teachers. The man was a shameless Socialist, and the troper a shameless capitalist, but both of us were willing to have actual, intelligent debates instead of shouting matches, so we got along well by pleasantly arguing about the merits of each.

There's a teacher--though I don't have hiim this year--who ''seems'' to be a stoner. He always looks kinda high, he has long curly hair, and he's been spotted walking/driving out of places. Places with only ONE reason to visit, if you catch my drift.

I had two teachers in 10th grade who fit the bill. One was an American history teacher--he looked pretty straight-laced, but had a very touchy-feely personality, used folk songs as teaching aids, and often brought in an acoustic guitar; he was a nice guy who was good at what he did. The other was an art teacher--he had long hair and a scraggly beard, always seemed kinda confused, made us watch slide shows of his garden, and claimed to be friends with Carlos Santana; I didn't learn a damned thing in his class and I found out later that he sold marijuana to students.

This Troper had a nature-loving math teacher who brandished a staff with a claw. She wrote a book.

My favorite teacher in middle school was a hippie who taught acoustic guitar for music. Believe it or not, it was part of the mandatory curriculum. She knew pretty much everything about folk music, jazz, rock, and even put on The Wizard of Oz synced to Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon. Oh, and she also taught drama and dance.

This Troper's ''principal'' has a reputation for being one, mainly because of all the references to India she used to make in her speeches and her ability to twist almost anything (notably, a bushwalk in New Zealand) into a life lesson. While not overtly hippy, she'd probably be one if of age in the sixties.

This troper's Early Modern Philosophy lecturer was a HippieTeacher to boot - long-haired, liberal and wearing flannel shirts.

The Smerf had an English teacher in community college that could be described as a new-age neohippy. Fresh out of college from some place she assured us was prestigious, yet we had never heard of. For a while, we thought she constantly had a booger up her nose until we realized it was a green nasal septum piercing she kept tucked up there. She also had 1" gapped ear piercings and wore what I originally thought were flesh colored tights every day, until she finally actually walked closer to me and I realized that she just didn't shave her legs. She was also one of the those socially conscious, socially progressive types who felt the need to read to much into everything. The real problem with all this? It was English II, which was supposed to be about ''research papers''. Our final project was a research 'poem.' FacePalm.

This troper's brother went to a college with a hippie gym teacher who preferred to be called "Talks-To-Trees".

This troper hashad at least one of these every year since fifth grade. (Living in Tacoma and the California bay area probably had something to do with this.) The biggest hippie teacher she ever had was her AP Psychology teacher, who was raised in a commune. Her class was about as unorganized as you can get, so this troper spent a lot of time staring at the teacher's air-purifying rock instead of working.

This Troper had one for her junior year in I.B. He was an English teacher and one of the harshest graders she's ever met. At least in the I.B. classes. He also teaches Mythology, and people say he's a lot better in that class, but for those of us who have him in I.B. English... Sweet God, I wonder how many other people had to drop I.B. because of that class. Even though I managed to get a passing grade the second semester, I ended up failing another class. But he even had the long hair. An underclassman friend of mine says that he's the type of teacher who ends every sentence with "man", but doesn't. So sometimes my friend says it for him. #QUOTE#Teacher: And Hades is the God of the Underworld. #QUOTE#Friend: Man.

This Troper's art teacher is one too. However, she's so lovable and nice and... well, and hippie we don't cause trouble for her. She also taught me to use Photoshop and Illustrator, among other design-related things the past two semesters. Anyway, for our art project, the subject is chocolate. Having a sick mind, I ought to draw a naked girl with chocolate as my way of 'defying the double-faced morals of the world'. However, when I noticed I might've over-done it, she was already there, watching the sketch. #QUOTE#Teacher: Dude... #QUOTE#Me: ...Yes? #QUOTE#Teacher: AWESOME! I APPROVE!!

This troper believes that every art teacher is/was a hippie (or at least slightly crazy, but in a good way). I once had an art teacher who NEARLY dressed like a hippie, was extremely leniant (to the point that her class is often like AnimalHouse), is so soft-spoken that someone with perfect hearing might need a hearing aid to hear her, is a huge Beatles (and, on an unrelated note TheyMightBeGiants) fan (once, she had us listen to "Dear Prudence" and write what our interpretation of it was; near the end of the semester, she brought in ''Revolver'', but unfortunately, the listening experience was marred by a lack of a speaker, so essentially we were listening to The Beatles ''a capella'' due to bad mastering [confound you, George Martin!!]; and she brought in such [=DVDs=] as ''YellowSubmarine'' and ''TheWiggles''--the latter sometimes when she brought two of her children), and, well, always seems to be in a haze as if she's on acid. She's very nice though, and would still remember your birthday eight years later.

Art teachers at this Aussie troper's school tend to have hippy or cloud cuckoo lander qualities. One teacher, who has since left, had a nose piercing, though the troper never met the teacher. However, her current art teacher once brought in an accordian, which was apparently for a year twelve student to sketch - she still gave us a concert.

Aversion: This troper's 10th grade English teacher wanted to be a hippie but was too young during the 60s. So, she just stuck to making Beatles references at times.

This Australian troper's politics teacher was a balding former hippie, he didn't allow his politics to enter his lessons as far as I remember. However the highlight of the year was when he brought the head of the cadet corps, a former volunteer Vietnam Vet, whose views on that war had not changed and they debated the necessity of Australia's involvement while taking the opposite side to the one we all knew they they held. It was brilliant and showed that both understood the opposing viewpoint perfectly and wasn't just a jingoist for their cause. I really gained new respect for both of them that day.

This troper's high school english teacher subverted this beautifuly. Since she initially seemed like a textbook hippie teacher, the class started spiraling out of control. Then she revealed the MagnificentBastard beneath the hippie. She meant it when she described her class as a benevolent dictatorship.

This troper had the same hippie teacher in 6th and 7th. She was both a basic science and earth science teacher. Oddly enough was seemingly opposed to people asking too many questions, as in they needed to free their minds. Actually did talk about "The Man" getting people down and whatnot.

Sophomore college Philosophical Argumentation and Expostion teacher for me. Professor Thaddeus Botham, went by Thad, hair to his waist and brought in his home brewed grown coffee every week. Tasted like the dirt it grew in, which may have been intentional.

I had a hippy teacher when i was about 9, he taught us more about how important it is to save the environment than we did about school stuff though.

This Editor calls most of his teachers by their first names, but was utterly unable to refer to the teacher in his video class as "Mr. Anderson" (despite the teacher being a fan of TheMatrix). Instead he called him Dave. This guy, however, wasn't actually a HippieTeacher, his acting and creative writing teachers count a little better.

My dad had a hippie auto shop teacher (back in the 70's) who allowed them to smoke in class under one condition, they did it in the room they kept the gas (I don't think he was serious).

One of my High School art teachers would qualify for this, and probably a few other teacher tropes. He told us that everyone should get arrested & spend a night in jail for the experience; a former student visited in one class & he & the teacher reminisced about getting high; & the teacher also invited some of the female students to come to his hot tub (I hear he later married one of them.)

This Troper's eighth grade science teacher. She was a hardcore PETA advocate and extreme liberal, and, consequently, very fun to troll.

Funny. HappyDuck's 8th grade science teacher's a hippie too. Actually, all of them except her history teacher are, to some degree.

This troper is a child of the 60's and 70's. I had a Civics teacher in 7th Grade who was very liberal and sort of a GranolaGirl. She did not shy away from holding frank discussions with us about Vietnam, race relations, drugs, prostitution, etc., in an honest and straightforward manner that respected our opinions and intelligence. She believed that "all work and no play" was stifling, so one day a week was given to more creative, but stimulating activities. One day we might be analyzing a recent political speech or protest song, another acting out a scene from ''Room 222'' -- one day we even went through all the "Paul is Dead" clues on TheBeatles albums. Best...class...ever. (Of course, today most school boards would probably burn her at the stake...)

I had a teacher senior year that, while not really a hippie, still fits this to some degree. He was quite liberal, as well as being very anti establishment and paying a lot of attention to current events and world issues. Every Friday, he'd show us a clip about something thought-provoking, and have us write about it. He did an entire unit on media analysis towards the end of the year. Heck, he had this huge mural in the back of the classroom depicting various revolutionaries, many of which I'd never heard of. His occasional inability to step off his soapbox (along with his love of playing devil's advocate) did get to be annoying at times. However, he was a very cool teacher, and the class was one of my favorites.

This troper had a highschool American History Teacher who was a former hippie. He even kept his hippie stuff hanging in his classroom and occasionally donned his old hippie clothes. What's more is that he even put down "the Man" and some current science studies, specifically the Large Hadron Collider project.

This troper's Feminist & Queer Theory professor was somewhat of an example of this: he even had us call him by his first name, and generally couldn't get too mad at you and was pretty hip to the current trends compared to a lot of other professors who are older. The only difference was that he wasn't a push-over in the grading department. He didn't grade harshly, just fairly: if you wrote a shitty essay he'd give you a shitty grade for it. And we had a pretty difficult reading list, too (like, good god, Foucault - don't read that stuff unless you're willing to suffer some brain-hurt).

Subverted with this troper. The teacher definitely had hippie-like tendencies in the past and did lean left, but nothing out of the ordinary. The class was different though: one guy was only with the Democrat party in the fact that they supported recreational drug use, some were the gun-toting-let's-secede-from-the-union right-wing people, etc. It's like everybody was libertarian but really wasn't aware of it.

This troper had one back in elementary school, she was one of those random assistant teachers and all I can remember about her is that she grew her own garden, taught us about turning off the lights/the ozone layer, and one day when we were in the classroom eating lunch (because of field day), her and her husband played us a song, both on guitars, both singing. The only part of the song I can remember is that "I was riding down the street on my bike looking at the cabbage fields, and seeing the bright sunny sky." Needless to say, she was one of my favorite teachers and I missed her the next year (if I can remember correctly she decided to take another job at another school.)

This Troper had a hippie math teacher at her school. She had braclets that she use to remind her of her "stories" and would never take them of, not even to wash them because she said the oils of her skin cleansed them. The teacher had fake money made of paper which were used to buy paper coupons ("Rainforest passes") that allowed students to get extra copies. The teacher cam up with this to make sure the students were not killing trees, yet her process was killing more than having extras.

Went to a Montessori school from first to eighth grade. It's harder to count the non-Hippie Teachers, though we had one awesome subversion: she was a bleeding heart liberal and Friend To All Living Things (and damn proud of it) but she was also the strictest teacher I've ever had. The middle school teachers were an acid casualty who was the living personification of all things hippie (and who did not need to be teaching), and a young cool hippie guy who I wanted to marry. I moved to a very conservative high school and met my first Christian Hippie Teacher. Leader of FCA, total conservative (but not in the preachy way), but he made us meditate during class and talk about our feelings.

This Troper's Theatre teacher was this. It was combined with a seriously unruly class, giving her a LizLemonJob. She has since dropped the class.

Side note: Her 7th grade social studies teacher was an ex hippie, but now he goes hunting for deer meat every thanksgiving. I kid you not.

This troper's Constituional Law professor at her law school is the very definition of a hippie teacher. Yes, he has the neat suit and the well done hair, but he plays hippie music music in class, tells stories about the 60s constantly, and just generally has this incredibly laid back attitude that just is awesome. What's really fun is hearing him tell stories about when he worked at the Justice Department... which just happened to be during the Nixon administration, so as you can imagine, they're pretty hilarious!

This troper's middle school social studies teacher was like this, and rather socialist. We spent 1/3-1/2 the year studying American history, and the rest studying (in order) F.R.E.L.I.M.O., the Khmer Rouge, and the evils of modern farming. Then again, the whole school was kind of... different.

This troper had an English teacher who would once a week take us outside to meditate. Uh, yeah.

Not my teachers but when I briefly lived on a commune there were alot of former teachers/professors there.

In seventh grade, this troper's technical education teacher was something between this and CloudCuckooLander. Not only he cracked jokes whenever he graded any work (such as writing "it only lacks gravy" on a dirty drawing, or turning badly drawn regular polygons into drawings of tombstones with epitaphs like "here lies precision"): he liked talking about his experiments with pyramid power and mind-synchronizing machines and he also showed us a video about ancient astronauts and the monuments of Cydonia. When the school year was over, he retired from teaching and opened a naturopathy center where he treated people with those methods. Later on, he started speaking at radiesthesia and naturopathy conferences and wrote books about naturopathy, magic words and magic wands.

This troper knows of three good examples:

Her 9th and 11th grade English teacher. He was the first teacher she ever had whose teaching philosophy was "Open with a philosophical question, sit back, and let nature take its course." He had a tattoo of "om" on his arm, constantly drank tea, biked to school, had us listen to anyone from Bob Dylan to Flobots in class before analyzing their music. In 9th we read a book about a talking environmentalist philosophical gorilla, and in 11th we watched movies like Koyaanisqatsi and documentaries on crafts this one artist who creates temporary "natural" sculptures, with the intent of discussing humanity's abuse of the environment and the value of tangible work as opposed to life in a cubicle. He was also took us outside when it was really nice and was generally one of everyone's favorite teachers.

Her college anthropology teacher, who seemed pretty normal (in an anthro professor-like way), if a bit nervous about teaching, until about halfway through the semester, when she started heading into the "hippy-dippy". As soon of the words "energy fields" were mentioned, her credibility in my mind took a sharp dive. That being said, she was extremely nice, and while she was somewhat inexperienced and tended to slip into MisplacedKindergartenTeacher mode with the early stuff that didn't apply to her focus of study, she generally knew what she was talking about. She was definitely willing to talk to students, pretty tolerant of obnoxious people with differing opinions (I agreed with them, but still thought they were obnoxious), and very obviously dedicated to her work and her students. Honorable Mention: The yoga teacher who started the first class with nothing but what could best be described as pure hippy-dippy in nature, but gradually made the lessons much less hippy-dippy and much more anatomical.

Her mother went to Catholic school and loves to talk about one particular teacher she has dubbed "The Hippie Nun." Apparently she was very easygoing and let her students read whatever they wanted, encouraging them to read controversial or liberal literature. It's been a while since this troper's heard about The Hippie Nun, but her mother always seemed particularly fond things of her.