Troubles as metalbending instructor

Toph traveled the world to teach metalbending to other earthbenders, founding an academy for the art soon after the Hundred Year War's end. Her first known students were Penga,The Dark One, and Ho Tun, whom she chose due to fact that her meteorite bracelet would shiver in the presence of these "super emotional people".

Toph attacked Kunyo and his students, demanding they leave heracademy.

Toph met Team Avatar while they were on their way to Yu Dao when they were visiting the colony to learn of its situation.[13] On their way toward Ba Sing Se to inform Earth King Kuei about Zuko's decision, Toph decided it was time to go back to her academy, and she left the team, accompanied by Sokka. He inquired her about her initiative to start the school, to which she answered that she had felt a "calling" to teach what she had discovered. However, Sokka did not believe this and realized the real reason was that she liked to tell people what to do. When they arrived at the academy, Toph caught her students leaving, but they excused themselves saying they had been kicked out. The earthbender proceeded to the academy and saw Kunyo and his firebending students, and ordered him to leave the place; the firebender refused, stating it was his school before the Harmony Restoration Movement. When they were about to fight for the academy's possession, Sokka interrupted them and proposed a "match to the sit" between their students in three days, which both instructors accepted.

Toph told Sokka how she had chosen her three students, but was unsure whether they could metalbend, so Sokka offered to help by being a "motivational bender". However, after two unsuccessful attempts to get the pupils to bend, Toph gave up and confessed to her friend her feeling of failure as she was trying to make her students something they were not; she stated her intention to surrender on the day of the battle. That day, at their opponent's arrival, she began sitting down but was interrupted by her "lily livers", who demonstrated they could metalbend and attacked the firebending team with metal coins, easily defeating them and making Kunyo sit down. Toph, happy at her students' victory, renewed her trust in them and continued with their training.[14]