Mr. Garvey – The Substitute Teacher

Key & Peele (K&P) is an American sketch comedy television series created by Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele that aired on Comedy Central. Both Key and Peele previously worked on Mad TV.

This is the first in a series of skits about Mr. Garvey the substitute teacher.

From Wikipedia – Mr. Garvey is played by Key, Mr. Garvey is an angry and intimidating substitute teacher and 20-year veteran of urban education.

He distrusts (he refuses to allow students to leave for club photos, as he believes that it is a made-up excuse to leave class, even after a schoolwide announcement over the intercom, which he also believes to be fake) and has trouble pronouncing the common names of his mild-mannered and generally white suburban students, though he vehemently believes his pronunciations are correct, such as pronouncing the name Jacqueline as “Jay-kwellin” or Blake as “Balakay” or Denise as “Dee-Nice” and his most known Aaron as “A. A. Ron”.

Any corrections from the students are seen as highly disrespectful lies meant to make him look foolish. Mr. Garvey forces his students to acknowledge themselves by his incorrect pronunciations, often at the very real threat of being sent to Principal O’Shaughnessy (pronounced “O-Shag-Hennessy” by Garvey) for disrespect.

The only student Mr. Garvey seems to trust is an African American boy at the back of the class named Timothy (accent on the “o”) (played by Peele), who is implied to be from the inner city and claims to have a daughter. In March 2015, it was announced that Key would reprise the role of Mr. Garvey in a feature-length film Substitute Teacher with Jordan portraying a rival teacher.