‘The Pitt’ shines light on compassionate teaching

Opinion

“The Pitt,” HBO Max’s Emmy-winning television medical drama, is a breakout hit.

Medical professionals and critics alike laud the show for its realistic portrayal of an emergency room.

That the show is also a master class in teaching has largely escaped notice.

As a critic and scholar who writes about representations of teachers in popular media, I hadn’t expected to think about teaching when tuning in for a fictional show about Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital.

Popular media: education and escape

Philosopher of education Adam Greteman and K.J. Burke, an expert in teacher education, highlight how popular media serves as an educational space.

Lessons about schooling can appear as a pleasurable escape from reality, both reflecting and sometimes distorting the full scope of people’s lived experiences.

Television, film and even children’s picture books shape public perceptions of the teaching profession — and so does “The Pitt.”

Dr. Michael (Robby) Robinavitch (Noah Wyle) mentors a team of nurses and doctors at a teaching hospital. The ER may not be a formal classroom, but what makes “The Pitt” so intriguing as a case study about education is its setting outside the classroom.

Interns learn on the go in a hands-on setting with real-world consequences and problems.

While I cannot comment specifically about the show’s depictions of what may be needed for best-practice ER infrastructure and education, I’m interested in how the show offers compelling insights around what it means to teach with and through trauma that are relevant for education in schools and at post-secondary levels at large.

The COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic looms large in “The Pitt,” and flashbacks to one particularly awful day intrude into Dr. Robby’s mind throughout the episodes.

Like doctors and nurses, educators were on the front lines during the pandemic.

A recent study highlights the pandemic’s lingering adverse effect on teacher recruitment and retention. Likewise, in a 2022 study, researchers in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Colorado School of Medicine found that the stressors on K-12 educators led to burnout and other mental health challenges.

Attending to the mental health of both students and teachers as part of, rather than outside of, teacher training is a start.

Stereotypes of male educators

To fully understand Dr. Robby, it is essential to recognize how his character transcends familiar stereotypes of male educators in popular culture. Familiar tropes include the buffoon (Mr. D in the show of the same name), the burnout (the teacher in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”), the disciplinarian (the assistant principal in “The Breakfast Club”), the maverick (Dewey Finn in “School of Rock,” John Keating in “Dead Poets Society”), the villain (Severus Snape in “Harry Potter”) and the wise mentor (Albus Dumbledore in “Harry Potter”).

In “The Pitt,” Dr. Robby doesn’t fit neatly into any of these categories. Specifically, he embraces vulnerability and compassion that expand previous representations of teaching in popular culture.

Dr. Robby has more in common with characters like the teacher Justine Gandy in the 2025 film “Weapons” or Dan Dunne in 2006’s “Half Nelson,” who were deeply flawed, yet highly empathetic — super feelers who connect with the people they teach.

Compassionate teaching methods

Struggling with PTSD from the pandemic and the loss of his mentor, Dr. Robby suffers a panic attack in Episode 13.

This background informs Dr. Robby’s compassionate teaching methods, which align with current calls for trauma-informed approaches in education.

Dr. Robby leans into trauma on both a social (the pandemic and its aftermath; an epidemic of drug overdoses) and an individual level (the loss of his own mentor to COVID-19 under his watch) as the starting point for instruction.

After 15 years of university teaching, I, too, begin with the assumption that most students are merely holding it together for class as they deal with a range of experiences like personal depression, anxiety, grief and abuse, as well as collective distress about wildfires, war and increasing authoritarianism across the globe.

Cultural diversity

The Pitt’s diverse cast speaks multiple languages and brings different cultural perspectives to the ER.

Dr. Robby’s ability to build on the differences of the interns, doctors and staff endorses equity and inclusion as essential to the art of teaching, especially as DEI initiatives are being dismantled or rebranded across North America.

While classrooms in the United States and Canada are increasingly ethnically and linguistically diverse, the teachers are not. The ER is stronger because of the differences that the interns bring.

Violence

In Episode 12, “6:00 p.m.,” a mass shooting at a music festival fills the hospital with victims who need to be triaged.

Not only in the U.S., but also in Canada, educational systems advise lockdown drills. The Aug. 27, 2025, Annunciation Catholic Church shooting in the U.S. is just one example of how teachers in the U.S. live with the reality and fear of threats from guns.

Such threats are not as present across Canadian educational spaces, but still a reality.

And in both health care and schools, such stark eruptions point to wider systemic problems that need to be addressed across society, not only when they become crises.

Dr. Robby receives constant pressure to prioritize profits over patient care.

Likewise, as post-secondary institutions struggle with financial constraints as they navigate the pandemic’s fallout, “The Pitt” teaches us that now, more than ever, we need to value face-to-face interaction.

Across disciplines, institutions need to provide supports for educators to shape emergent curricula co-built with and for the students who show up in our classrooms.

Students need opportunities in their own communities to work side by side with an experienced mentor, like Dr. Robby, in hands-on, real-world spaces outside of the formal classroom.

The teacher we need

Dr. Robby is no John Keating of “Dead Poets Society,” and that’s a refreshing break from romanticized ideas about individual teachers saving the day.

“The Pitt” offers us instead a vulnerable yet compassionate male teacher with fears and flaws like his interns and patients. Dr. Robby is the teacher we all need right now.

» Elizabeth A. Marshall is a professor of education at Simon Fraser University.

» This column was originally published at The Conversation Canada: theconversation.com/ca