Ciao, Professore! stars Paolo Villaggio as a diligent northern Italian grade school teacher who, thanks to a computer error, is transferred to a decrepit school in a small impoverished town in southern Italy. Facing an empty classroom, he goes out on the streets and retrieves the children who have been working as waiters, barbers, cigarette smugglers, and drug runners. Next, he confronts a janitor who has been forcing the kids to pay him for toilet paper and chalk. Soon the professor realizes that to get things done, he must bend the rules. This spritely film, directed by Lina Wertmuller, joins a long line of other movies about teachers who are tutored in the realities of life by their students.