Teach Your Kids How To Be A Winner The Kenny Powers Way

Eastbound and Down (available to stream anytime on HBO Now) made a considerable impression, mostly thanks to its co-creator and star, Danny McBride, who played the foul-mouthed former baseball wunderkind Kenny Powers. McBride’s set to return to HBO next month in the new sitcom, Vice Principalsas one of the titular vice principals who vies for the top position at the school. It may seem like a drastic change as far as characters go, but if you look back on Kenny Power’s brief and ill-fated teaching career, you can’t deny that he taught more than his share of lessons to those students. For those of you who are looking to impart wisdom on a youth, here are Kenny Powers’ best lessons from his brief tenure as a middle-school gym teacher.

1. Wow Them With The History Of You

Kenny Powers knows that he’s awesome, so what better way to shape the young minds of tomorrow then by talking about himself? He’s a former superstar who changed the face of Major League Baseball when he was only 19 — just a few years older than these kids in his class. Do you think he has time to answer questions about running the mile? Would you have time to answer questions about running the mile? No. Instead, Kenny wisely chooses to focus on his own definitive greatness. Otherwise how else are these kids going to learn from it? While you don’t have Kenny’s resume, your kid is better off abandoning the academic questions to ask about your accomplishments… or Kenny’s, of course.

2. Be Confident And Never Coddle

More often than not, if a kid needs some motivation, they’re probably not going to get it by being coddled. Luckily for them, coddling isn’t the way Kenny Powers does things. Instead, he looks at the world like it’s something to be conquered while it simultaneously revolves around him. Sure, it may sound ridiculous, but that outlook has helped Kenny get through both good times and bad. Maybe there’s something to a rabid, unchecked ego after all.

3. Don’t Fight In A School Surrounded By Books

Even when Kenny is at his most buttoned-down and most ready to give up his hopes and dreams for a small-town gym teacher’s life, he’s still quick to react when a fight erupts in the library between two students. After breaking up the fight, he kindly comforts the love of his life, April (Katy Mixon), after she takes a stray punch to the face. Even through all this heartbreak and emotion, Kenny’s still able to teach not one, but two valuable lessons throughout all this. The first: there’s a time and a place for everything. The second: fighting and books simply do not mix.

4. Focus On Priorities

This is probably the most important lesson Kenny gets to impart during his brief time as a middle-school gym teacher. While he’s leaving the school behind under the false pretense that he’s going back to the Majors, he takes the time to tell the kids what’s really important in life: being able to make it rain. Cash does rule everything around us, after all. Still, he shows an enormous amount of discretion by holding back the exact amount he’ll be getting paid, but he’s sure to note it’s enough to make all his students’ parents depressed.

5. You Do You

This is a great Kenny Powers lesson, and not just for the content of his message, but for the manner in which he gives it: over a hijacked school PA system. While it turns out that his teaching career wasn’t meant to last, everyone can take comfort in knowing it’s only because being a teacher wasn’t who Kenny really was. Still, it’s the underlying message in what he’s saying that really resonates here. Know who you are, and be proud of who that person is. You think there’d be a punchline right around now, but that’s actually a pretty solid message.

Finally, and this should be obvious if you really want to win at life, the best way is to simply dance your way through it. Just know you look cooler in your mind than you do in the hallway.

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