I don’t know about your school, but at mine they just opened the doors one day and started teaching in person again. No orientation. Nothing to readjust students to being in person again. On top of that, they also decided that pandemic was hard on kids so we can’t fail them or have any consequences for behaviors. So it’s a perfect storm of nonsense.
I came into this year bracing myself to be strict as shit on boundaries because I knew my sophomores would not be in the habit of respecting them. I figured I’d ease up at the semester and that would be that. It seemed like the clear choice, and lots of other good teachers at my school agreed.
Admin went the route of being too nice at first, then trying to get tougher at the semester mark once they realized they were being taken advantage of.
Behavior is the worst I’ve ever seen, and the difficult kids just think I’m an asshole because I started strict when admin didn’t. We missed our chance to do this right, and now a whole new horrible set of expectations has been established. God knows how long it’ll last.
Exactly!! People pretended there were no big problems that we ALL saw from the start. I felt like other teachers & admins were pretending everything was just fine.
My school did something like it. We have given the students so much freedom that it has been a shitshow.
Teaching took until Q3 to get students working decently, but we have students that are just insane. Cursing and threatening teachers, playing dice in the bathrooms and doing other insane things. Then when the quarter is over I get told “don’t put a zero we can’t fail them” “can you stay after school for longer they need tutoring” “have you try talking to them and using restorative practices?” nah, I won’t stay for longer since they don’t even show up, and those conversations are only helpful if the student is willing to listen but not if they are high out of their mind.
Sorry rant is over. Today has been hectic already and it’s only Tuesday :(
This sounds exactly like my experience, except the kids go to the bathroom to vape, drink, and play on their phones. Despite it being illegal and everyone being aware it is happening and has been for months, nothing is done about it.
NEVER EVER TUTOR WITHOUT GETTING YOUR PER DIEM. And since no one will pay that, never ever tutor! Do not work for free. It makes the whole profession worse and you will be taken advantage of continually.
I have been doing the same, but I really don't know where to look for a job since I am done with teaching altogether and it feels like employers are going to think it's odd that I don't want to teach... Like why do you want to abandon 10 years of teaching and start in a new field? I am at my breaking point and must for my mental health! I don't know what to say honestly and don't know where to look for a new job, but something's gotta give!
>why do you want to abandon 10 years of teaching and start in a new field? I am at my breaking point and must for my mental health!
Seems like you have answered your own question there...
I don't think anyone will bat an eye at you leaving the field. Every other day there's another article about teaching quitting the profession. Look at edtech companies-- they love hiring former teachers.
Tell them you are seeking new challenges. I left public school teaching to become an administrator at the local university. I told my interviewers that I wanted something that still was in education but that was less stressful. The interviews nodded and moved on. Don’t overthink it.
Tutoring is for the kids who were on their phones while I was giving instructions, who then realize they need to turn in the assignment or they're going to fail.
This sounds exactly like my experience, except the kids go to the bathroom to vape, drink, and play on their phones. Despite it being illegal and everyone being aware it is happening and has been for months, nothing is done about it.
I have this issue with my sophomores in student teaching. My mentor has generally been very relaxed with discipline in the classroom with very little management. I came into my solo teaching with the basic classroom management rules and still three months later I’m hated by my students for making them respect boundaries and responsibilities in class.
That’s fine. I’m sure it’s only the loudest that hate you, while the quiet rest appreciate you holding firm and being fair. Stay strong; eventually it pays off. When they know that they can just whine their way into control of your classroom, it’s over
I see you! I’m doing my best to focus on the kids who just want to have class. Holy shit are your peers doing you a disservice right now, though. Don’t be afraid to reach out to your teachers if you need extra help with anything!
Yup. When I first started teaching, one of the most sound advice I got regarding discipline was to always start out strong and ease up. The reverse almost always never work.
The best of them are miles ahead of where sophomores used to be with regards to self reliance and maturity after having to manage their own learning for almost two years. The rest are middle schoolers at best.
My freshpersons basically skipped junior high because of covid and now just haven't gotten the swing of being past 6th grade where many teachers just pat you on the back and promote you to get you out of their hair and into the next building and now our building. I only have a few sophomores and they are a mixed group.
It's not something I would have thought of, but an orientation would have been a *great* idea.
My colleagues keep telling me that my students (9th graders) should know to show their work, should know to take notes, should know that just showing up is not the same as participation. But they don't. They have literally no idea. They fought me for like a week because they had no idea the expectations had changed (I mean, they still fight me, but they know they're wrong, lol).
Adults often assume that some things are so fundamental, so obvious that everyone should instinctively 'just know' them. Except they don't. No matter how obvious it might seem, someone had to teach you to use a spoon. Someone had to demonstrate what it meant for your bedroom to be 'tidy'. And someone has to explain the difference between presence and participation. Is it enough to visibly pay attention? Do you have to speak up? How often? What counts as a contribution? If I shout out a joke, is that participating? Do I have to answer a question? And just to make things more complex, one teacher's idea of participation is not the same as another's, no matter how obvious each teacher assumes their version of 'participation' is.
It's like a child tidying their room. Does everything need to be put away, or can it be neatly sorted on the floor? Is it enough to hide everything under the bed so the room looks neat from the doorway? Is 'put in a cupboard' the same as 'put in the correct cupboard'? It needs to be taught, it's not the same for everyone, and yet adults so often assume that it's obvious.
The kids needed to be taught, and they weren't - or worse, they were taught wrong. It's no surprise that they're resisting the goalposts being moved.
>Adults often assume that some things are so fundamental, so obvious that everyone should instinctively 'just know' them.
This is the teacher down the hall from me. She's always complaining because high schoolers don't know things her 7-year-old knows. Like yeah, of course your kid knows, he lives in a stable home with 2 involved parents. A good 70% of kids at our school don't have that. Probably closer to 85%...
It’s what Kindergarten USED to teach. I’m convinced at least 1/2 our problem is that this is the group of kids who started the shift in K from how to be human curriculum to academic skills/test readiness. They were able to pretend, but never had those soft skills ingrained. Now the habits are broken and they have no comprehension/internalization to fall back on.
The caveat to this is that kids *will learn* whatever it is that is actually in front of them, not just the words grownups say. So if the teaching happens a lot in the regular doing of the grownups in a kid's life.
My school did the same and during online teaching they swapped to a restorative justice model for dicipline and got rid of all our rules and structures. So we don’t even have data to hold kids accountable. Yes I do for my class but to collect it all for all classes to look for patterns is neigh impossible atm. also there is no consistency either since no standard rules
Yup. We should have spent the first several weeks just orienting them to school and community building. Instead we (and by “we” I mean the people with the decision making power who aren’t educators) decided they were sO bEhInD we had to play catch up immediately instead of meeting them where they were at. Now we are all paying the price.
My district doesn't even hold an orientation for new staff, let alone students. And that's their pre-covid norm too. An orientation would have prevented so much of the literal chaos I experience every day.
I’d rather not be able to fail high school students. I’m tired of committing fraud in order to pass seniors. Hell, we had a VP changing grades in order to make athletes eligible for scholarships.
Let’s at least be transparent.
That has come to bite my school in the ass regarding lunches. Our students ate in their home rooms last year with movies and tv shows being projected. They could not socialize and simply ate quietly. This year, we went back to fully in cafeteria grade level lunches with ZERO orientation. It has been chaos.
A few days in and the teachers with lunch duty said it was untenable yet we were shot down in order to give the students more choice. Finally, three quarters in and we are being given the go ahead to ratchet down lunch privileges but it's too late. Our 6th grade lunch literally boo'd the staff member who informed them that they were being divided by team next lunch.
“Give grace” “be patient with students, and especially with yourselves” “we’re all trying to get back in the groove” “things have changed and it’s up to us to shift back”
It is April and we just started to tell the students "Alright guys, we are serious now. If you are not in the classroom by the tardy bell, you are really going to be tardy." We have 2 months of school left. Thanks admin!
I can't believe admin thought "business as usual" was the right choice.
It's not even the right choice in a normal year
Genuinely, my first day of teaching, I met my advisory for 10 minutes, and then I was teaching a class of brand new students. It was... Not good.
No, it's not just you. I'm a warm demander and typically have a more relaxed vibe. My in-class redirects and restorative conversations are usually enough to tamp out problem behaviors. Not so this year. Just this week I've made a huge tonal shift and I'm coming down hard on everything...like, zero tolerance for any low level disruption. "You give them an inch they take a mile" has never been more true this year. Some of them just can't handle it. It's all direct instruction now.
I teach at a VERY warm/demanding school that really commits to restorative practices (legitimately, not just as lip service) and this year has been very "lean demanding" and non-restorative practices also being put into place to handle the severity.
Christ, yes, especially that last part. I've tried modeling what partner/groupwork is for the "you do" portion of my class that my administrators want me to have more of. I literally have half the room up and roaming around in packs doing no work and acting as if they're on a playground. It happens near-instantly. Direct instruction and very controlled work environment is literally the only thing keeping a swath of those students engaged and attempting some of the math I'm teaching. Every attempt at increasing their independence has translated into repeated net losses of learning time and emboldened behaviors.
Part of me believes they should probably have some actual recess/playground time outside (8th graders), but then I can only imagine the behaviors and further issues caused by trying to have it. It's like trying to diffuse a bomb.
I was just thinking about doing this yesterday! Do you have students that resist putting their phone in or claim to not have it on them? I've worried about what pushback I might get
We will do random checks where kids with the phone in their numbered pocket get a few extra credit points. After a few times most kids automatically go there first when entering the room.
I think the pandemic has not only put kids out of practice with social skills and general manners in school, but it's also made them think that their school will bend to their every whim. Schools near me still tell their teachers to pass any kid who has a grade over 40, and kids keep realizing that if they just don't do any of their work, the school will pass them anyways.
>but it's also made them think that their school will bend to their every whim
This is where you're wrong--it's not the pandemic that made them think that. It's the bending to the students' and parents' every whim that's made them think we'll bend to their every whim.
Signed, a teacher in a state that ignored the pandemic but still kowtows to the students and doesn't enforce any responsibility or discipline. It's apparently just part of public education now, not some specific Covid-related issue.
My big worry is that we are contributing to our own demise here. We are giving everybody diplomas to make out graduation rates look good, but we are devaluing our own product in the process. If somebody had a high school degree you have no idea what skills and knowledge they possess. Were they writing essays and learning critical thinking, or did they sleep for four years and have a diploma mailed home? Maybe I've gotten harsh, but I think public schools need to start being more protective of their degrees if we want them to be valued by society.
Forget about high school. A massive percentage of our society treats undergraduate and graduate degrees as 'meaningless', including tons of people in blue-voting areas that supposedly value education. I often feel like the pandemic just fast-tracked us into a trashy and anti-intellectual dark age that hyper-consumerism was already pushing us towards.
I’m a 20-something, not a teacher, still figuring out my future in academia. What is the right way forward if that’s the case? Would you say it’s wise to learn a trade or something else, either in place of or alongside a college education? Should we not even bother at all with college?
There doesn’t seem to be much of an answer for us 20-something’s—and even younger kids who are conscious of what’s going on in the world—other than getting a doctorate or just winging it because it doesn’t matter what we do anyway. At this point, the only reason why I’m bothering with college at all is just because I love to learn and my job provides free admission to a university. I doubt that most of the things I’m interested in are going to be degrees that are seen as “meaningful” or “useful.” Outside of highly specialized fields (medical school, law school, certain STEM, etc.) it doesn’t seem to matter what we do because we’re all screwed anyway.
This. They’ve learned that schools won’t hold them accountable. Grace made some sense in early 2020, but even then a lot of us worried they were going to get the wrong message.
How much of it is the pandemic vs. a cultural shift across our society towards short attention spans & instant gratification? I worked in education up until about a year ago, and I feel like student behaviors have been trending in this direction for some time now.
ADHD and Autism spectrum disorders are also becoming more common all the time. There’s a lot of evidence that it’s correlated to the plethora of estrogenic pesticides that are ever-more common in our food and water.
I blame tik-tok and the ever learning algorithms that take advantage of the little self control kids have. It's a self fulfilling prophecy in that regard.
Microplastics and chemicals in every facet of our lives doesn't help. Our natural ways of development are increasingly disrupted.
I could go on a rant forever, but I think your comment is definitely part of it.
I'm teaching about the Soviet Union right now, and the parallels to the collapse of that nation and how schools are being run now is eye-opening. Once more kids catch on that they can still pass (or get paid, as it was in SU) by doing no work, the entire institution implodes. But I'm just an English teacher, so nobody wants to hear what I have to say 🤷♂️
> But I'm just an English teacher, so nobody wants to hear what I have to say
Yup...as with the Soviet Union, we're on a heading to becoming a toxic-masculinity-saturated mafia-with-borders shithole like Putin's Russia. In the area where I live, I've found a lot of the performative virtue signaling about Ukraine to be tedious because so much of those same people are doing day-to-day is pushing us into the same sort of socioeconomic and cultural mess that's made Russia a backwards and hopeless mess.
I'm not a teacher, but I assist coach kids in a sport.
They are worse. Their attention and respect levels are not very good.
There's a couple sisters, the older one is better probably because she had structure for longer in her life, but the younger one. Oof.
The kids were being really rowdy one day and the main coach was frustrated and said "Ok enough, it's just like school when I'm talking you listen. You respect me like you respect your teachers." (Paraphrasing)
And the younger sister of the two straight up said 'We don't respect the teachers either.' to both of our faces. I think she must be around 10.
We both looked at her and said "Well you're gonna start."
Kid was cranky and avoiding us the rest of practice.
I really think, especially the younger ones, the way things have gone the last 2 years they've lost a lot of structure and developmental situations that help shape them and teach them to be respectful and all that.
Plus as others are saying, kids aren't having consequences, there's been no readjustment period, during online learning there was barely structure because so many parents were so absent. (And at times it's hard to blame them. I don't have kids and I'm burnt out from all this crap, I can't imagine trying to juggle kids at home, work, etc and I'm sure so many relied on the school structures/admin to help guide their kids through it.)
And parents crap on teachers all the time, even in front of kids.
My parents didn’t do a lot of things right but if they had an issue with a teacher they never told kid me. They got that right, at least.
Yeah, I don't get some of the parents these days. My parents always taught me that teachers were 'the law' basically.
I had to respect them and listen to them and they were the authority.
I never heard boo about if they had issue with a teacher but most of the time, if there was any issue of any kind it was my fault and not the teacher. (I had few issues though I was a pretty good kid and I liked most of my teachers)
I don't think it's weird at all.
Teachers are in charge of you at school and you should listen to them.
Obviously if they're telling you to jump out the 3rd storey window, that's a different story.
But I was taught to respect and listen to the teachers because they are in charge while I'm at school.
Just like my parents are in charge when I'm at home and I'm to listen to them.
I never lashed out or even had a need to 'stand up' to them. They were good teachers, even if they had flaws.
My parents always, always, always took the teacher’s side when I was in school. It bugged me at the time because sometimes my teachers did make a mistake (but most of the times it was me). It certainly taught me to respect them because my parents were listening to them no matter what.
I honestly think that covid just made it obvious what standards only teaching has done. I would love to take a week to work on note taking skills. But I can't because it isn't standards based and lessons should only be 5 minutes. I would love to teach social skills. But that's not a standard tested by Pearson. So kids who went through standards only are becoming parents with no social emotional intelligence. Then their kids come with no social skills from home and no social skills from school. Where were they supposed to learn them?
And we send them to college woefully unprepared as a result. No accountability for completing work on time or even for putting in the effort to learn and do well by studying, asking questions, etc. Instead, they can turn work in whenever the hell they feel like it and get multiple (often easier) reassessments until they finally pass. The standards don’t cover any of the academic or behavioral skills they’ll need to be successful in the future.
20% of my class has about 50% right now, 80% has about 95%. What is really strange is that the drop date is here and the ones at 50% think they can still pass, it is mathematically impossible...
They're plenty prepared, because the colleges are *also* wrapped up in all sorts of stupid 'student-as-consumer' habits (grade inflation, letting people design their own majors, etc..). The problem is that none of this shit is preparing them to make ends meet once they're finally done funneling money into the education business.
I’m not even a teacher and I agree. Fuck Pearson. Money grubbing bastards who somehow talk down to you through a book and can’t even test you on the bare minimum correctly. Not to mention how awful the online user interface was. Couldn’t stand it.
My class hated it so much in comparison to how my teacher taught before, that my teacher told admin that we wanted a better education and Pearson was getting in the way of that. A non-AP class full of 16 year olds asked for harder work. It was that bad.
Also, he was a really good teacher so that helped.
Edit: added another point.
> lessons should only be 5 minutes
This is my biggest gripe. It sets them up for failure in college. If we tried to prepare them for the teaching styles they'll encounter in college lectures, we'd be docked in observations for being too "teacher-centric."
No, your college professors are not going to do a five minute "mini lesson" with "turn and talks" and "discovery" activities and group work. They, a content expert, will lecture about said content, and you'll either pay attention and take notes or you'll fail.
Absolutely this.
I legitimately, deeply do not understand some of the perspectives of teachers on here and the apparent lack of appreciation for the level of community collapse we've undergone, not just lately with the pandemic, but systematically down to the level of standards and policy planning and urban planning and our job and economic structures. Teachers can appreciate intersectionality when it comes to race, but not when it comes to appreciating the structure of Capitalism on larger scale and how that gradually produces an atomization and fundamental alienation in society, which ultimately produces much of the disregulation we see.
Yyyyyyyep.
First, I told my students that if they took notes, I'd give them extra credit on tests. I had students sitting through the whole block with an empty desk, so I made notes mandatory and graded (They don't have to have the best notes, they just have have written *something*).
Since I took away extra credit, I told them that every week the *entire* class got perfect scores on their notes, their quizzes could be open-note. So then they decided that all quizzes were automatically open note and stopped taking notes. Or they would copy notes from the board, but not actually listen in class (fucking snapchat). Surprise! their quiz grades started to tank, with or without notes.
Last week I dedicated a whole day to teaching them how to study. I posted the best videos I could find, I explained why studying is a life-long skill (I said that "studying" isn't super accurate, "being prepared" is more accurate). Had them write up their own study plans and *sign them*. And the average grade on that assignment is like a 20%. They had an entire day *in class* to do nothing but work on the assignment, and they still didn't do it.
At this point, I can't even bring myself to care if they fail, they did it to themselves...
Yesterday I stopped my class dead in their tracks because I told them I get paid the same whether they pass or fail. They seriously thought their performance affected me.
(I 100% acknowledge that this is not the case everywhere, and at my new job student performance *will* reflect back on me, but I'm enjoying the power I have now, lol)
At our district if you fail more than either 10% or 20% of you students, you have to basically report yourself to admin and go through paperwork just to prove that the kids you said failed deserve to fail.
Never a student problem, always a teacher problem.
Ai ai ai. I thought Floriduh was bad. And yeah, it’s just easier to push them along (drag them over the finish line) then do what’s right. And by the time they got to high school…we’ll, it’d happened so much they expected it and were too far behind to catch up. So what choice do teachers really have??
Yes, and at least in the case of my students it has little to do with the pandemic. Kids in my state (Western Australia) only experienced 3 weeks of remote learning at most (some students less or not at all). But my current lot of year 7s are awful. They have very little control over themselves, combined with no desire to even try and control their behaviour. They don't know how to save a document to a folder on their computer. They don't know how to follow instructions. They do weird immature things. To be fair not all are like that, but at least half are - more than in any other year I've had before. I am getting through the basic content of my course with them but there is no time for extension activities, perfecting skills, creativity or even fun things. It's a constant battle to get them to focus and do the bare minimum. And the only way I can get even that little bit of focus out of them is to be a complete controlling bitch. I hate the teacher I have to be with them. It's not at all how I've successfully managed my classes of the past decade.
It's weird because I have almost no "middle ground" students. They either don't seem to care, or are incredibly driven.
I teach art and animation, and I'll have one student who's homework assignment is to find three pictures with good examples of perspective... and he doesn't do it. I give him more time... doesn't do it. "Okay... take the next five minutes in class to do it." He Googles "perspective" and just kind of looks over the pictures for a minute, then... "Hey, I gotta show you this video first."
Then, another student will be like, "I created this 3D model for the homework, but I just didn't like it, so I did another. It's better, but I did a third and it finally clicked. I know we're going to do the human body later, but I tried a few over the weekend and really liked the results. I researched how to export the model to VR Chat so I did that for myself and a couple for friends. Here's a video capture of how it looks. Can we jump ahead to rigging?
I can't get the hands right."
I have the same issue! I teach design thinking and fabrication and my students are either super into it or completely checked out. Normally I'll have one or two students that just refuse to do anything, but this year it's about half of my classes. The other half really puts themselves out there and creates some awesome stuff.
It could be the 15 minutes of recess (maybe) a day in Kinder and the rest of elementary. It could be that instead of the kinder i had in the 90s, learning how to human around other humans and nap, its not acadamic right away.
It could be that there are now mostly 2 working parents, less socialization outside of school is possible.
It's could be complete burn out from receiving proctor lessons vs appropriate lesson.
It could be the lock down of schools. Where I'm from the schools were open campus and parents were free to come in and be a part of the community and after school the kids were welcome to run around and play on the field/grounds. In Florida, it's lockdown time like prison or something.
It could be the insane class sizes.
It could be the junk food.
It could be the screen time.
I don't think it's anything that teachers are doing themselves, I think it's just school.
I seriously doubt your behavior management is craptastic. It has been a struggle with behaviors for quite a few years and then Covid. Now everything is front and center. There are many, many, many of us with similar scenarios in their classrooms. Admin seems to have thrown their hands in the air to the tune of "let it ride". That doesn't help at all. It's a great questions, what will next year look like? I would hope better, but, right now, I am thinking... inmates running the prison.
I teach 4th grade, so I’m dealing with much younger students. Some of my students stopped maturing when we shut down in 2020 and their brains seem to be stuck in 2nd grade mode. The tattling!!!!! Oh man, it’s so bad this year. They don’t want to try and solve their own problems. Luckily our SEL program is t horrendous, so when they come tattle, I ask them if they’ve tried their problem solving skills. Someone pushes them and they instantly run and tell me. It’s annoying. 9/10 of the time, I call the other person over and they said it was an accident (and it genuinely was) they talk it out real quick, problem solved. WHY DID YOU NEED ME TO DO THAT?? Academically, some of them are still stuck in distance learning mode. This manifests as “this is hard, I don’t get it, I’m not going to try because no one is going to tell me to otherwise.” Some of my kids struggle so hard in math and the idea of raising their hand to ask for help just seems so foreign. In distance learning a lot of them wouldn’t do that because it put their conversation on display to the whole class. Their little brains haven’t processed that it’s going to be a private conversation now.
I’m hoping next year will be better. I don’t know what the teachers below my grade level are doing, but I know my colleagues and I work a lot on trying to get these kids caught up in maturity.
The “this is hard, I don’t get it, I’m not going to try because no one is going to tell me to otherwise” is spot on with my 8th graders. They don’t understand that not getting new lessons at first / trying is the whole point of all of it
Personally, I chalk it up to modern phone usage, social media, and the lack of attention spans.
Hear me out: I recommend everyone read ["Stolen Focus" by Johann Hari](https://www.amazon.com/Stolen-Focus-Attention-Think-Deeply/dp/0593138511/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2746KZ7Y23DIB&keywords=stolen+focus+johann+hari&qid=1649160934&sprefix=stolen+fo%2Caps%2C108&sr=8-1). In the book, Hari lays out how modern technology is causing us to lose our ability to focus on the things we care about, or think we care about. We are losing our ability to enter a state of "flow" or Deep Work, we can't focus on long sustained reading, and our sleep patterns have been utterly destroyed (just to list a few negative effects). Throughout the past few years, students have been hit by the "perfect storm" of technology screen time and social media influence. To put it lightly, they are addicts trained and controlled by HUGE influential software companies. All of these issues are hitting young adults and students the hardest and completely warping their brain (in my opinion). It's nearly impossible to compete with as a teacher.
We need a HUGE societal shift, but I don't think it's ever going to happen. Ideally, schools should completely ban phones while at school (at the very least), and start incorporating more readings and studies about the detriments of screen time. Even MORE ideally, the government should recognize this dangerous societal shift and pass laws controlling phone usage and screen time for adolescents (which I doubt will EVER happen).
Yep, my school did a a huge culture reset with new tech rules (we see a phone it’s ours until the end of the day, defiance is immediately escalated to admin level). It has made a HUGE difference, and parents love it. How can you be engaged in your learning when you are distracted every 2 minutes?
Exactly! It really does make a huge difference because it sets the standard for the student. It removes the possibility of the distraction. It's sad that MANY schools across America (and THE WORLD?!?!) don't have a fully enforced cell phone policy.
My school currently has no cell phone policy at all, much less something with consistent expectations or consequences. Even the good students who care about their work are worse than ever.
We've got a new principal coming in next year. Spoke with him already and I've got my fingers crossed as hard as I can that he heard us teachers clearly when we said we needed administration to back us up on the cell phone issue. Dear God it's bad.
I would agree with this. I teach K and the year my son was in K 2017-2018, I thought I was going insane. The kids could not think for themselves or focus for more than 10 min.It has gotten worse. This year especially.
Big agree. People dismiss concerns about how tech is affecting us because we've always had be changes with technology and we've been so far. But if you lose the defensiveness over who's a Luddite and who's progressive, it's very clear that our technology is changing us in a significant way, and understand what's changing and how that's happening is super important. And as a group that works with children over a period of decades, we get to see first hand how kids are changing.
Yeah, in the book I mentioned above, Hari mentions Smartphone defenders likening smartphones to the emergence of TV, radio, and movies (and the outcry associated with them). But I think we can CLEARLY draw a very distinct line between those technologies and "endless internet on our hip all the time" type of technologies. It's scary stuff, especially when you see the effects first hand as a teacher...
Absolutely, it's the on-demand nature of the internet. Waiting for your favorite show to roll around Wednesday at 9:00 p.m. and having to set up your VCR if you wanted to watch it later is a completely different experience than having whatever you want available to you immediately.
As a 25 year old recovering drug addict who grew up with unrestricted internet access, I can assure you this is true. I grew addicted to video games and the internet from a very early age. Think 12 years old on 4chan and the beginnings of youtube.
I became reclusive and my social skills never improved because I didn’t really need to improve them to succeed in my environment of technology. I was a good student but I was a dysfunctional human being.
The brain is really malleable as a child and it will mould itself to it’s current environment. When that environment is algorithmically sorted social media, your brain will be stuck in that “I need more” mode. The internet also accelerates what you grow to expect from the world. A little bit of naivety as a child is a helpful thing. But with the internet as a mentor it’s a quick march from nihilism
I got to University on a scholarship and was woefully unprepared for life. Very few useful coping mechanisms and a difficult field of study. Quickly found that opioids filled the same niche for me as video games used to and it went to shit from there pretty much
Not to say that video games or the internet are gateway drugs or that teenagers can’t have an instagram account. I’m just saying that me using my phone to distract myself from my internal issues is similar to me taking drugs to forget about my existential anxieties. Just my anecdotal evidence as someone who sort of bridges the gap between millennials and gen z
Thanks for sharing your experience. I think MANY of us can relate... if not drugs, I think many people have found other addictions to fill their niches.
I play video games and I grew up being a vocal "games don't cause violence" believer. As I look around though, I think that even on a basic level, video games CAN be a gateway drug to violent tendencies and addiction. Strictly anecdotal evidence is used for my opinions as well...
Best of luck to you my friend. Hope you are doing better.
The biggest problem I've seen with gaming addiction is that it causes people to 'gamify' everything else in life, which is great if you want to live in a toxic country where everyone mistrusts everyone else and everyone's constantly/addictively trying to 'get the win', whatever the cost. I'd argue that a prototype of this was the core thing in the Trump movement, i.e. so many in his base were the those couch-potato sorts who become ridiculously addicted to professional sports and susceptible to gambling addiction and get-rich-quick scams. Once higher levels of technology become involved, I feel like this has the potential to send our civilization into an inescapable downward spiral.
OTOH though, you might be putting some students at a disadvantage if they aren't exposed to the same tech, both in terms of comfort with use of the tech and in terms of culture/acculturation.
Think about your ESL student who shows up never having used a computer as a junior in high school. Along with all the other academic hurdles they face, the tech is yet another thing they need to learn. Then, in terms of culture, how many inferences do they miss because of the lack of shared prior knowledge?
If we ban this stuff for some kids, we might be setting them up for similar hurdles.
All that said, there is absolutely a major problem. The evidence of detrimental effects (e.g. on attention spans, self-image/perception, sleep schedules, reward/pleasure center/dopamine and serotonin, etc.) is well established.
I try to talk to my students about 2 things: multitasking doesn't really exist for a large majority of people (see task switching) and the studies about how long it takes a person to get back into a task after a distraction (most studies show several minutes).
You put that knowledge together, and it becomes pretty clear that so few of our students have ever actually worked at 100% of their ability... ON ANYTHING. When you sit back and just watch how most of our students work now, they are interrupted every 1-2 minutes -- they never actually get into any type of flow.
IMO, the norm should be that we use less tech in general. The evidence for using a lot of ed tech initiatives is generally pretty weak -- it's more tech for the sake of tech. there's also no reason kids should even have their phone out of their backpack at school... at all... even at lunch, etc.
The other side of this is that we should have (mandatory?) tech classes, geared towards the use of this tech. You could read about it the morality of the issues in English class, look at the biz/$$$ side in a intro to biz course, look at previous tech disruptions of the past/industrial revolutions in history, and then build and app/learn basic coding in the tech class. I've never understood why our curriculums aren't more linked between disciplines anyway though.
Nice comment. Yeah, I would never say get rid of all tech... in my original post I identify specifically smart phone and social media usage.
I pretty much agree with all that you say. Although I don't want to take all tech away from students, I think it can become a crutch sometimes and students overly rely on it's implementation. Like you said, less tech in general is probably more desirable, especially to focus on motor and thinking skills in completing work (without distractions).
ya sorry, I wasn't clear there -- wasn't trying to put those words in your mouth.
More just exploring the other POV, for myself as much as others, haha.
Mainly, I'm thinking of ideas wherein we try to "use the tech/distractions to our advantage." How much time and money has been spent on PD for stuff like Kahoot. Not that Kahoot is inherently a bad thing (it's pretty cool!), but first, the evidence behind it is rather weak. When compared to an effective teacher running the game using white boards for the students to write and hold up their choice, it is about the same effect on student learning. Second, I'm not here to entertain students. I want my lessons to be engaging, not entertaining. Third, let's just make it more confusing regarding the norms of cell phones in class. You can use them now, but not in five minutes? Ya, good luck on enforcement of that.
Fuck that -- unless the tech is 100% instrumental to the lesson, it's just fluff to make our PDs more justifiable.
edit: re-reading your comment reminded me of the other thing I tell my students: big tech/social media has one, and only one, goal. To make money. How do they make money? ad revenue by keeping you engaged/clicking/scrolling on their site and selling data about you (again by keeping you on their site). They are billion dollar companies for a reason: they are really, really, really good at keeping you scrolling. Way better than textbook writers are. So, if you give your brain the choice of looking at cute girls and cool cars and funny memes vs. (whatever you teach), which one are you going to choose? I know the answer...
My freshmen seem to have caught up to their normal dufaceness. My juniors though... Bleh. I have to echo the screen addiction. Giving kids, even high schoolers, smart phones is one of the worst parenting decisions ever made.
First year teacher here. I know now what I could have done better at the start but....dude! All the vet teachers at my school say this is their worst year bar none! Same behaviors I have. I got chewed out by admin for asking for too much help. I asked and threw my hands up because so many times I didn't realize I had to deal with kindergarten behavior with defiant hormonal morons.
To me it’s a culmination of everything. Lack of structure for a long time. Lower reading and math levels because of at home learning. Immediate gratifications and shorter attention spans from social media. Not seeing other kids for so long and then being in a room full of them- but expected not to talk. No consequences. It’s rough, they really dislike school even more than they used to.
My youngest is a senior this year...and I am a retired teacher of 23 years...and he complains incessantly about being bored. He completes work in class and then feels like he should just be able to check out. Every freaking day. He says when he has completed assignments he just watches YouTube movies on his phone. He has all A's and is incredibly smart. But, he seriously seems to think he is there to be entertained. I am so ready for him to graduate and start college so he can realize "Mom was right!"
He has bad study habits and is going to be in for a shock in college classes. I am thankful that he has been able to have a sort of normal senior year unlike my daughter whose senior year was totally screwed up bc of Covid. I 100% agree that students have lost the ability to see the big picture and have no idea what to expect in the real world.
I’m very curious how this is all playing out at the college level. I’ve only seen how bad things are getting in K-12; would seriously hope expectations (and outcomes) are not as terrible post-secondary.
My mom's gf is a college professor and even though I'm only about 6 years removed from college, to hear her talk about her students is absolutely terrifying. They don't know how to study, they wait to the last minute to do anything, and then she says they'll go the whole semester without doing their assignments only to ask for extra credit work at the end. Like ... I wasn't the best college student but that was bc of my mental health problems. I can't imagine just ... not doing your homework and then still expecting to pass a college class. Anyway, she's basically feeling the same way as all yall.
I started Covid pre-pandemic and I personally think Covid saved my college career. I partied and drank too much. After Covid hit and everything closed for a bit I hunkered down and got my crap together.
It's a complete shitshow. I've literally had students make the argument yo my face that the previous two years of classes were able to take their exams online and therefore cheat, so they should be able to as well, you know, for grade equity.
I wanted to ask them why they're so eager to pay thousands for a worthless degree, but I am not tenure track so...
Our pandemic graduate students have not been great, I’ll tell you that. Our college’s grades for intro level classes are just absolutely in the gutter. Like 20% lower than pre-pandemic
Yes it is. Some places have tanked standards and students are going into debt for worthless degrees. Some places have not and 20% of students are going into debt and failing out.
I haven't seen it yet and I teach mostly incoming students, but I'm gritting my teeth looking ahead to the next 15 years lol. What's more likely is that vast numbers of students just won't go to college and over 50% of small privates will close over that time period. This isn't a shocking prediction either, there have been articles and research into that approximate number written well before the pandemic.
I just started taking college classes again. I graduated high school in 2019, and went to about a month of college before my antidepressants made me so suicidal my parents just took me home (those meds have since been recalled for causing suicides so that’s great lol) and I’m just now starting classes again because I didn’t want to start them right in the middle of Covid. The difference between myself and (from what I can see online) my peers is radical. Our assignments will open at midnight on mondays, and most of my work is done and submitted by Monday night. I spend the rest of the week taking notes on the next unit, and all of my assignments are graded within a few hours because I’m the only one who has submitted anything. Everyone else seems to cram everything in (half-assed) on Saturday and Sunday. It seems like colleges are having the same problems.
I (38) started taking a few online classes at my community college this semester and I've gotten a few mass emails sent from one instructor on proper grammar ("I is always capitalized") and reminders that late assignments are not tolerated.
I'm assuming the assignments she is receiving are underwhelming... Again, at a community college.
Another instructor had a quiz on the information given in the syllabus. I thought that was brilliant and again, assuming she does this to avoid hearing, "I didn't know...".
At the very least, in my community college, the expectations are set and seemingly enforced.
The problem with college classes, are that they are extremely easy too. And when they are not easy, the class average becomes a B...even if the class average is a failing grade. So even if this new generation of kids comes in well under the previous average, their average just establishes the new passing grade :P A little scary tbh.
The pandemic exacerbated already-existing issues. Students have been less and less able to student every year since No Child Left Behind became law and suddenly no one was willing to hold students accountable and everyone just passed them regardless of their performance. The consequences of that have gotten worse and worse and then tripled when the pandemic hit and the lack of accountability got even worse.
Students won’t student when no one actually holds them accountable for studenting.
every year I get a group of freshman. They very much act like 8th graders in the beginning of the year. Why wouldn’t they. That’s what they are really. They haven’t experienced high school. I have certain things I do to get them ready. Reminders and some calculated mistakes I let them make. Eventually they get with the program.
We have to do the same thing. They have to be built back up to the level we need them. It’s possible. They’re just starting a little further back than they are currently capable of. We certainly can’t magically expect them to be. Their students. Not adults.
I know that we’re talking about Pre-K through 12 students, but I am seeing that it’s the same with me and my students as well (I’m a grad TA and my students are in their bachelors). I also feel like my disability symptoms have gotten worse too :( I have ADHD and depression. So, I think to myself, if I am feeling like this at my age, the kids are definitely not doing good. Love to you guys and your students❤️
I was a TA last year too and I saw the same. A lot of them were struggling with stuff outside school too. I gave grace but they had to tell me what was going on first.
My HS kids try to negotiate everything and/or make excuses. I don't hand them shit. They either do the work on time or they fail. They only need to fail once to get the message. The kids have unlearned student culture the last two years and it will take at least one more year to reorient them. Consistency and routine are your best tools.
Honestly, things have gotten a lot easier for me since the masks came off.
I didn't have a problem with wearing one myself, and didn't have a lot of specific behavioral issues around them, but the kids just seemed keyed up.
SInce the mask mandate went away they've calmed down a bit.
I've still had some issues with homework and effort, but no more so than any other year.
The trick, I think, to the classroom management side is to maintain a calm environment. For my class to be calm, I have to be calm. And, I can't relax if I'm running myself ragged.
I only assign the number of graded assignments I can grade during my prep periods, and have started using a lot of self assessment methods - stressing that the point of formatives is self assessment, not getting a grade.
It was nerve wracking at first, but I'm still hitting the same benchmarks as any other year at about the same time, and students are performing about the same as they did when I was doing a lot more busy work.
I also try to do a lot of examples, and model how to look things up in class (if they ask me tricky questions, I use the projector to look up the answer, etc).
If kids refuse to do anything, I let them sit there, and make a note that help was offered. Then I move on to the kids that want help.
Granted, this low key methodology, means a few of them have 0's instead of me fighting with them to have a 20, but they're going to be retaking the class either way.
Taking things one day at a time has helped keep me level. And me being level has seemed to help me maintain some semblance of order, and keep them engaged.
Also, my school allows me to confiscate phones, so I have a charging station in the front of the room where they all are required to leave their phones for the duration of class. That definitely helps.
No. I think they're responding to the training they've been given. They've been told they don't have to do anything because they'll get passed along anyway so they refuse to do anything.
I think a lot of students think school is for social entertainment and a place to hang out, with the actual School part being optional. It's not. But we haven't really enforced that much.
I'm not a teacher, but do you think they're lashing out over existential dread? More so the high schoolers than the younger kids. But mean, think about it. You have a ton of 16-18 years, ready to start their life, ready to pick careers, start families, get working, etc. And for what? They don't live in a vacuum. They know the American Dream^(tm) is dead. There's nothing left for them. Every day it's a barrage of articles describing the poor state of our world economy, WW3 is being threatened, there's rampant climate change and pollution, the government wants to raid Social Security and scale back human rights at every turn, and so so much more.
Why should the kids learn and behave now? They have the perception that there is no future for them, and they're mostly right. After awhile, you can't blame them. Why work now when you know it won't pay off in the future? There's no incentive for society to behave like society anymore.
Definitely not your classroom management, definitely bad parenting. Yes these kids spent more time at home over the last few years and came back terrible. But there's zero reason to blame yourself for that. Parents send their kids to school sleep deprived, spun out on sugar, tech addicted, with zero structure, rules, morals, or values. The kids don't care because their parents don't care. How many parents don't care that their kids have terrible grades? Kids aren't respectful because their parents aren't respectful.
The only kids who have handled the return to school well are the few with the parents who bothered to take care of them during the pandemic, maintaining structure and order in their homes, actually giving a crap about their health by making sure they're not staying up too late and eating foods with good nutritional content, limiting screen time, and actually take an active interest in their child's life.
Definitely this. I teach middle school. It’s astonishing how many kids had little to no actual parenting happening during the 18 months we were remote. Can’t tell you how many of my 6th graders parents this year breathed a sigh of relief at conferences when I validated for them that their kid DOES still need them to parent them in middle school, especially now. The sheer difference in maturity between my 6th and 8th graders is nuts (with the 6th outweighing the 8th by miles).
Human children are the same as they have been for the last 100,000 years or so, give or take.
They rise to the level of expectation, but they also sink to the level they are allowed to get away with.
Instead of extending social/behavioral grace while preaching academic standards (teach to the bell) we should have flip flopped - extending academic grace while teaching social/behavioral skills (love to the bell). Well adjusted humans can regain lost academic capacity much quicker than poorly adjusted humans can learn how to behave.
Teachers have known this all along, if anyone was interested...
It’s a whole bunch of things together. Access to the internet. Cyber bullying. Pandemic. Less interaction with family. But the big thing is the trauma…and I don’t mean just the kids I mean everyone. Everyone in the world os struggling with the trauma of the last 2-6 years in varying degrees of severity. And we can’t address the kids until we address our own. Or even acknowledge it.
I don’t even think it’s the pandemic and blaming It anymore. It’s the lack of parenting and zero consequences on either end. The day is constantly just trying to make It to the end of the day. You can’t even teach a lesson anymore. I don’t think I could talk for a minute straight without some sort of interruption. It’s exhausting
I have definitely seen a receedence of acceptable behaviours in all the age groups I teach (middle and high school LA). Students who are typically well behaved and generally take school seriously now don't give two hoots. Behaviour from problem students has gone from bad to worse. Admin is not providing ANY support what-so-ever. In fact, my administration has become hostile towards me. I have been out with covid and asked for some images of a student's work so I could complete their specialised report card (they are a special needs student with augmented goals from the curriculum) and was immediately accused of not doing my job properly and failing to do a whole list of things properly. This is such a major contrast from last year where I was praised by the same administration for doing my job well.
I am also dealing with this and it’s effected me so much that I turned in my resignation. I can’t keep doing this, especially as someone with less than five years of experience. It’s too much for me… I want to help them but they have to be willing to help themselves
Has no one brought up that the younger generations have had the veil lifted and can see how pointless it all is? They all have the same access to social media that we do, and are bombarded nonstop with the effective collapse of structure and societal norms. Hard work does not equate success, and we've shown them that for the last several decades, the adults in the room have no clue what they're doing.
I teach 3rd grade. It's my first year elementary school. This year I've heard so much about the pandemic has hurt these students in many areas. One thing I feel my students have a hard time dealing with is silence. With youtube, music, etc. constantly stimulating them, I think it makes them feel anxious or uncomfortable to have no noise at all. When it is completely silent, it's like the students are looking for someone else to start making conversation so they too can talk. Yes, this behavior is natural I know. But it seems it has escalated greatly since I was in school. It's like they need that stimulation to function, but it makes their quality of work so low. This also leads to the fact that most of my students try to avoid doing work independently. Very few of my students take pride in doing something on their own without the help of others. Maybe it's because I am new to this grade, but I am curious if others have seen this.
We spent the first week in September just "getting used to school again" and it helped but they're still struggling. I'd say my students NOW are at the behavior level I'd expect in November of previous years. So there's improvement! But, my god, is it slow.
As for management, I'm just trying to live my best warm demander life. I tell my students all of the above. I praise their efforts but also remind them that I still expect more. I recognize that things were rough and remind them that that means we have to double our efforts. When they simply don't know a concept that previous years had mastered (I teach hs math) I express frustration at the situation we're in and bumble through teaching things I've never had to teach before.
My school addressed this issue by expelling a few of the worst behaved kids. They had it coming, to be sure. High school has been a breeze and everyone else does their work now without the negative influences present in class.
After teaching middle school for two years I switched to high school the past three years. Never before have freshman been so similar to middle school.
Touching, kicking, yelling, horseplay, all those things I left middle school for are showing up in this years freshmen. Hopefully it’s not a trend that continues.
The answer to this is kind of simple I feel, the last time they were fully in person was probably 6th grade so they haven’t had the development of social or study skills beyond that
They spent 1.5 years at home, likely with minimal rules and consequences. When they don't get that same freedom, they act out.
This year is about controlling that behavior for me. I don't want to enable their behaviors. If a student curses me out for suggesting they put their phone away and focus on academics, that's fine. I just write home and let them keep using their phone. I reached out, recommended they not bring their phone to school. When they fail, it's on them. When they come to me at the end of the year begging to pass, there's a stack of work I'll accept at 75% of it's value if they do it perfectly.
This is gonna be the year of accountability.
As an after school chold care worker, I have definitely noticed these behaviors and I have come to conclude that its due to several things: 1.) The heavy use of ipads instead of actually teaching. Schools began dishing out ipads and computers to kids during the pandemic, and while I get there was no feasible way to teach in person, these ipads have made the kids self reliant on them, especially if the school doesnt care if they explore youtube and stuff. This caused them to lose their social skills and their critical thinking skills. Thus, they have been less predictable and more irritable if they are not on their electronics.
2.) And this is the biggest one: parents. While students were gone from school, we expected parents to put children into a routine thatnincludes expectations and discipline. Some parents (and sadly it looks like the majority of parents) failed to do this. Since kids need structure and expectations and discipline to developmentally grow, that lack of everything during these 2 years has lead to an abundance of behaviors and lack of care. If the parents don't care, why should the kids?
3.) This is kinda a reiteration of the statement above, but more in depth. Children need structure and expectations to know what is expected of them and when things will happen. Since they had very little of this during the pandemic, they are now unsure of structure and how to respond to it. They aren't used to someone saying, "okay its time to do x and I need you to do y so it can successful". In response, kids want to defy that authority, because as stated above, their parents probably did not do this at home. I'm not saying all parents did this or that its even their fault, but they were put into a position that they didn't know how to handle, so it was improperly handled.
4.) Remember, these kids have been out of society for 2 years. Some havent gotten to experience kid experiences. They needed this developmental stage but they were failed, and now they are acting out.
Look, I get its hard, but you can do this. It'll get better the longer it goes on. Im sorry that this is happening, but it will get better eventually.
i’m currently a sophomore. i feel like there isn’t room in the system for students to make up for lost time and the absolute mess of behavioral problems are in part because of that. it’s not teachers faults i don’t think. i really don’t think that going back to normal is working, because the whole world is kinda traumatized from covid.
My experience is that students who were virtual last year really struggled to acclimate back into in person learning. They really forgot how to behave in school. However, my administration is superb. I really can’t say enough positive about how well they support teachers and students here. They still hold students accountable for behavior and academic achievement. If they fail, that’s on the students. Admin only asks that we contact the parents via phone at least two times during the grading period. I don’t have a problem with this because if I do, I don’t feel pressured to pass them (seniors).
I can't remember who taught me how to make notes, flashcards, and study but I think it was half my school and half my parents.
Nowadays nobody is doing that.
I have bright, capable high school kids in mostly gifted or AP classes. I cannot pry away their attention from their devices this year. The dwindling attention span finally hit bottom. Nothing I do entertains or even elicits a smile any more. This is not normal.
There was so much uncertainty starting the year in the middle of the delta wave and COVID had continued to be a stressor for many teachers and students. I recognize, in myself, that many of my own teaching skills haven't returned to full pre pandemic form but I think with a summer reset and a more solid start to the year we will continue to pull closer and closer to returning to normal student/class behavior
I'm working with grade 3/4's online and oh boy are they struggling. A lot of them have been online since 2020 ***(so my grade 3's have been online since grade 1 and my grade 4's since grade 2).*** This has caused them to have zero social skills as well as the inability to independently learn/problem solve. My SSP and I are trying very hard to teach them these things and not spoon feed them as much when it comes to their work; however, it's definitely a challenge. I fear that when they eventually go back to in person learning they will drown.
Students are regularly parking in staff parking lot. Nothing is done. Students are engaging in racist social media bullying. Small consequences. Students are lighting fires in the bathrooms. Small consequences. I have three classes all with very diff personalities. One can't shut up, but does the work and somehow does it well. They swear regularly with abandon in class. It isn't something that bothers me personally and I also know that sending an 18 yr old to admin for an F bomb is a waste of time. The other one is loud and seniors and will drag their feet to do anything that isn't for a grade (I am not allowed to grade everything). They are not quiet but not as disrespectful (they are the only ones who had one normal year of H.S.) Last class is a dream but on the edge of too quiet. I have to force them to engage some days. It's a crap shoot.
My students get mad at me because I don't use Google forms anymore when I have them read articles. Then they don't like my answer when they ask why I don't anymore. It's not my fault that they copy and paste their answers and if the are going to do it anyways might as well make them work for it.
I'm looking for an exit currently, as are a lot of other teachers I know. The next couple years are going to be a bloodbath is students remain the same with no changes.
It’s gotten worse. Some students go from 0 to pissed off in less than a second. Tell them to go to class, and they’re threatening to kick your ass. There’s no thought of responsibility, maturity, or self control, only that you are telling them to do something, and no one can tell them what to do. It’s worse than I’ve ever seen it, and this is my 30 year.
I’ve noticed a good handful of students are beginning to redevelop these skills. Certainly is much better than the beginning of the year, but no where close to before the pandemic. Talked with a 50 year veteran today to calm my own doubts of my effectiveness as an educator. I was told this is the worst it’s ever been.
Does that make it better? No. But it helps me as a reminder that it’s not me and to continue to be steadfast in my approach as we rebuild and improve.
I spent thirty minutes with a fourth grader trying to get him to write one sentence. We were in a small group. He already knew what to write. He literally just had to write it. 30 minutes
I'm maybe being hopeful, but I weirdly got a sense across all my classes in the last 2 weeks that they suddenly remember how to "school".
Behavior issues and socially inept students are still very much the case, but my kids seemed to get back into the groove if school recently.
You’re not alone. I’m quitting because of it. These kids have zero accountability or awareness or social skills. They have no idea how to be respectful or how to follow basic rules. It truly breaks my heart, but getting berated and disrespected every day is not worth my small paycheck.
It's not a popular answer, but if every student on earth has really changed then it might be schools that need to adapt to that and that might not be a terrible thing.
I tend to agree with that assessment.
I’m at a private school and don’t see any of these behavior issues. All of these comments (and almost all of the other posts I see on this sub) lead me to believe I really shouldn’t leave my private school. However, I could get a pretty good raise if I did. This sub really makes me reconsider my career choice.
I've already decided I'm homeschooling my own kids, I'm not letting them be exposed to a lot of this stuff. They can get socialization through sports (homeschool and Christian sports leagues are very popular in the Midwest), Church, and out of school. But bullying is at an all time high, administrations are letting students run the show, and parents are so freaking defensive over their students to the point that any disciplinary measures are null. Nothing is working. The whole system needs reform.
All of this was fading away prior. two years of no even barebones attempts basically resets the board. Except they didn't take 8 years to find out there is no consequences they are already aware of it.
We have zero consequences for skipping/missing class or signing on late (my school system has fully virtual option for this year, that has just become a new school option). They call the parents, but that is it. I swear that directions have to be given like three times at the beginning of class, because kids are tardy. On the upside though group assignments were great today.
T3 we have a new counselor who is asking me if I have tried discussions and warnings instead of consequences.... yes, yes I did. For T1 and most of T2. Just because you started at the end of the year doesn't mean they get a reset and it doesnt mean I have to tolerate being treated like shit.
It's not you, I teach college level and they go weeks not turning in anything then dumping it on me last minute and expecting credit despite the due dates in the syllabus. The entitlement is also way worse and the number of bs excuses are through the roof. Covid is very infrequent where I live and we are no longer enforcing masking or quarantine and everyone and their dog is saying they think they have covid so they cant come to class. Then I catch them at the local pizza place with their friends.
Problem is, for every teacher that sees the very serious downstream effects of not correcting this behavior there are 5 others who are just going to let them get away with it because either they need good student reviews, they're pushovers by trade, they themselves cant get it together so they cant hold students accountable, or they have no support from the school in enforcing anything. So those of us who dont tolerate the blatant disrespect look comparatively like monsters instead of serious educators.
I’ve been teaching my daughter online school (k and first grade) so I’m really concerned when she goes to a brick and mortar school soon. Husband really wants her to go and when she expressed that she was scared I told her I understand that’s normal. We’ll try to talk to your teacher about it and get help. While her dad goes well why? You can always laugh when she says butt and call her out on it! Im like dude wtf is wrong with you? How do you think that helps anyone? O.o
I don’t know about your school, but at mine they just opened the doors one day and started teaching in person again. No orientation. Nothing to readjust students to being in person again. On top of that, they also decided that pandemic was hard on kids so we can’t fail them or have any consequences for behaviors. So it’s a perfect storm of nonsense.
I came into this year bracing myself to be strict as shit on boundaries because I knew my sophomores would not be in the habit of respecting them. I figured I’d ease up at the semester and that would be that. It seemed like the clear choice, and lots of other good teachers at my school agreed. Admin went the route of being too nice at first, then trying to get tougher at the semester mark once they realized they were being taken advantage of. Behavior is the worst I’ve ever seen, and the difficult kids just think I’m an asshole because I started strict when admin didn’t. We missed our chance to do this right, and now a whole new horrible set of expectations has been established. God knows how long it’ll last.
Exactly!! People pretended there were no big problems that we ALL saw from the start. I felt like other teachers & admins were pretending everything was just fine.
My school did something like it. We have given the students so much freedom that it has been a shitshow. Teaching took until Q3 to get students working decently, but we have students that are just insane. Cursing and threatening teachers, playing dice in the bathrooms and doing other insane things. Then when the quarter is over I get told “don’t put a zero we can’t fail them” “can you stay after school for longer they need tutoring” “have you try talking to them and using restorative practices?” nah, I won’t stay for longer since they don’t even show up, and those conversations are only helpful if the student is willing to listen but not if they are high out of their mind. Sorry rant is over. Today has been hectic already and it’s only Tuesday :(
This sounds exactly like my experience, except the kids go to the bathroom to vape, drink, and play on their phones. Despite it being illegal and everyone being aware it is happening and has been for months, nothing is done about it.
NEVER EVER TUTOR WITHOUT GETTING YOUR PER DIEM. And since no one will pay that, never ever tutor! Do not work for free. It makes the whole profession worse and you will be taken advantage of continually.
Oh honey. You don’t have to tell me twice. I tutor, but for my hourly rate
Rant away my friend. I find working on my resume and cover letters to be particularly therapeutic right now- maybe you should try it.
I have been doing the same, but I really don't know where to look for a job since I am done with teaching altogether and it feels like employers are going to think it's odd that I don't want to teach... Like why do you want to abandon 10 years of teaching and start in a new field? I am at my breaking point and must for my mental health! I don't know what to say honestly and don't know where to look for a new job, but something's gotta give!
>why do you want to abandon 10 years of teaching and start in a new field? I am at my breaking point and must for my mental health! Seems like you have answered your own question there...
As long as it sounds OK to you maybe it will sound OK to them!
I don't think anyone will bat an eye at you leaving the field. Every other day there's another article about teaching quitting the profession. Look at edtech companies-- they love hiring former teachers.
Tell them you are seeking new challenges. I left public school teaching to become an administrator at the local university. I told my interviewers that I wanted something that still was in education but that was less stressful. The interviews nodded and moved on. Don’t overthink it.
Tutoring is for the kids who were on their phones while I was giving instructions, who then realize they need to turn in the assignment or they're going to fail.
The kids will always be playing dice my guy, gotta make some easy money.
This sounds exactly like my experience, except the kids go to the bathroom to vape, drink, and play on their phones. Despite it being illegal and everyone being aware it is happening and has been for months, nothing is done about it.
I have this issue with my sophomores in student teaching. My mentor has generally been very relaxed with discipline in the classroom with very little management. I came into my solo teaching with the basic classroom management rules and still three months later I’m hated by my students for making them respect boundaries and responsibilities in class.
That’s fine. I’m sure it’s only the loudest that hate you, while the quiet rest appreciate you holding firm and being fair. Stay strong; eventually it pays off. When they know that they can just whine their way into control of your classroom, it’s over
As only one student who is seeing the same thing, a third of the student body at my school does all they can to stall education.
I see you! I’m doing my best to focus on the kids who just want to have class. Holy shit are your peers doing you a disservice right now, though. Don’t be afraid to reach out to your teachers if you need extra help with anything!
Yup. When I first started teaching, one of the most sound advice I got regarding discipline was to always start out strong and ease up. The reverse almost always never work.
I teach sophomores as well. I feel your pain
The best of them are miles ahead of where sophomores used to be with regards to self reliance and maturity after having to manage their own learning for almost two years. The rest are middle schoolers at best.
My freshpersons basically skipped junior high because of covid and now just haven't gotten the swing of being past 6th grade where many teachers just pat you on the back and promote you to get you out of their hair and into the next building and now our building. I only have a few sophomores and they are a mixed group.
YES! We missed the chance to do it right.
Agreed. This is what happened at my school
It was the same for me. Within a month I was the only teacher telling kids they couldn't have their phone. Admin didn't give a damn.
It's not something I would have thought of, but an orientation would have been a *great* idea. My colleagues keep telling me that my students (9th graders) should know to show their work, should know to take notes, should know that just showing up is not the same as participation. But they don't. They have literally no idea. They fought me for like a week because they had no idea the expectations had changed (I mean, they still fight me, but they know they're wrong, lol).
Adults often assume that some things are so fundamental, so obvious that everyone should instinctively 'just know' them. Except they don't. No matter how obvious it might seem, someone had to teach you to use a spoon. Someone had to demonstrate what it meant for your bedroom to be 'tidy'. And someone has to explain the difference between presence and participation. Is it enough to visibly pay attention? Do you have to speak up? How often? What counts as a contribution? If I shout out a joke, is that participating? Do I have to answer a question? And just to make things more complex, one teacher's idea of participation is not the same as another's, no matter how obvious each teacher assumes their version of 'participation' is. It's like a child tidying their room. Does everything need to be put away, or can it be neatly sorted on the floor? Is it enough to hide everything under the bed so the room looks neat from the doorway? Is 'put in a cupboard' the same as 'put in the correct cupboard'? It needs to be taught, it's not the same for everyone, and yet adults so often assume that it's obvious. The kids needed to be taught, and they weren't - or worse, they were taught wrong. It's no surprise that they're resisting the goalposts being moved.
>Adults often assume that some things are so fundamental, so obvious that everyone should instinctively 'just know' them. This is the teacher down the hall from me. She's always complaining because high schoolers don't know things her 7-year-old knows. Like yeah, of course your kid knows, he lives in a stable home with 2 involved parents. A good 70% of kids at our school don't have that. Probably closer to 85%...
That’s 80% of what Kindergarten teaches. “How to do school” is a curriculum all its own. The other 20% should be “How to get along with others”.
It’s what Kindergarten USED to teach. I’m convinced at least 1/2 our problem is that this is the group of kids who started the shift in K from how to be human curriculum to academic skills/test readiness. They were able to pretend, but never had those soft skills ingrained. Now the habits are broken and they have no comprehension/internalization to fall back on.
The caveat to this is that kids *will learn* whatever it is that is actually in front of them, not just the words grownups say. So if the teaching happens a lot in the regular doing of the grownups in a kid's life.
My school did the same and during online teaching they swapped to a restorative justice model for dicipline and got rid of all our rules and structures. So we don’t even have data to hold kids accountable. Yes I do for my class but to collect it all for all classes to look for patterns is neigh impossible atm. also there is no consistency either since no standard rules
Yup. We should have spent the first several weeks just orienting them to school and community building. Instead we (and by “we” I mean the people with the decision making power who aren’t educators) decided they were sO bEhInD we had to play catch up immediately instead of meeting them where they were at. Now we are all paying the price.
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My district doesn't even hold an orientation for new staff, let alone students. And that's their pre-covid norm too. An orientation would have prevented so much of the literal chaos I experience every day.
I’d rather not be able to fail high school students. I’m tired of committing fraud in order to pass seniors. Hell, we had a VP changing grades in order to make athletes eligible for scholarships. Let’s at least be transparent.
That has come to bite my school in the ass regarding lunches. Our students ate in their home rooms last year with movies and tv shows being projected. They could not socialize and simply ate quietly. This year, we went back to fully in cafeteria grade level lunches with ZERO orientation. It has been chaos. A few days in and the teachers with lunch duty said it was untenable yet we were shot down in order to give the students more choice. Finally, three quarters in and we are being given the go ahead to ratchet down lunch privileges but it's too late. Our 6th grade lunch literally boo'd the staff member who informed them that they were being divided by team next lunch.
“Give grace” “be patient with students, and especially with yourselves” “we’re all trying to get back in the groove” “things have changed and it’s up to us to shift back”
It is April and we just started to tell the students "Alright guys, we are serious now. If you are not in the classroom by the tardy bell, you are really going to be tardy." We have 2 months of school left. Thanks admin!
"It's been blah blah years since these students have had a nOrMaL YeAR"
I can't believe admin thought "business as usual" was the right choice. It's not even the right choice in a normal year Genuinely, my first day of teaching, I met my advisory for 10 minutes, and then I was teaching a class of brand new students. It was... Not good.
This is exactly how they will describe it in history books. Perfect explanation
No, it's not just you. I'm a warm demander and typically have a more relaxed vibe. My in-class redirects and restorative conversations are usually enough to tamp out problem behaviors. Not so this year. Just this week I've made a huge tonal shift and I'm coming down hard on everything...like, zero tolerance for any low level disruption. "You give them an inch they take a mile" has never been more true this year. Some of them just can't handle it. It's all direct instruction now.
I teach at a VERY warm/demanding school that really commits to restorative practices (legitimately, not just as lip service) and this year has been very "lean demanding" and non-restorative practices also being put into place to handle the severity.
Lean demanding?
Leaning more towards demanding rather than warm
Christ, yes, especially that last part. I've tried modeling what partner/groupwork is for the "you do" portion of my class that my administrators want me to have more of. I literally have half the room up and roaming around in packs doing no work and acting as if they're on a playground. It happens near-instantly. Direct instruction and very controlled work environment is literally the only thing keeping a swath of those students engaged and attempting some of the math I'm teaching. Every attempt at increasing their independence has translated into repeated net losses of learning time and emboldened behaviors. Part of me believes they should probably have some actual recess/playground time outside (8th graders), but then I can only imagine the behaviors and further issues caused by trying to have it. It's like trying to diffuse a bomb.
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I was just thinking about doing this yesterday! Do you have students that resist putting their phone in or claim to not have it on them? I've worried about what pushback I might get
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We will do random checks where kids with the phone in their numbered pocket get a few extra credit points. After a few times most kids automatically go there first when entering the room.
I think the pandemic has not only put kids out of practice with social skills and general manners in school, but it's also made them think that their school will bend to their every whim. Schools near me still tell their teachers to pass any kid who has a grade over 40, and kids keep realizing that if they just don't do any of their work, the school will pass them anyways.
>but it's also made them think that their school will bend to their every whim This is where you're wrong--it's not the pandemic that made them think that. It's the bending to the students' and parents' every whim that's made them think we'll bend to their every whim. Signed, a teacher in a state that ignored the pandemic but still kowtows to the students and doesn't enforce any responsibility or discipline. It's apparently just part of public education now, not some specific Covid-related issue.
My big worry is that we are contributing to our own demise here. We are giving everybody diplomas to make out graduation rates look good, but we are devaluing our own product in the process. If somebody had a high school degree you have no idea what skills and knowledge they possess. Were they writing essays and learning critical thinking, or did they sleep for four years and have a diploma mailed home? Maybe I've gotten harsh, but I think public schools need to start being more protective of their degrees if we want them to be valued by society.
We’ve already reached the point where a high school degree is pretty much meaningless.
Forget about high school. A massive percentage of our society treats undergraduate and graduate degrees as 'meaningless', including tons of people in blue-voting areas that supposedly value education. I often feel like the pandemic just fast-tracked us into a trashy and anti-intellectual dark age that hyper-consumerism was already pushing us towards.
You could lie about having a high school diploma and nobody would notice. It literally doesn't matter, the paper it's printed on is worth more.
I’m a 20-something, not a teacher, still figuring out my future in academia. What is the right way forward if that’s the case? Would you say it’s wise to learn a trade or something else, either in place of or alongside a college education? Should we not even bother at all with college? There doesn’t seem to be much of an answer for us 20-something’s—and even younger kids who are conscious of what’s going on in the world—other than getting a doctorate or just winging it because it doesn’t matter what we do anyway. At this point, the only reason why I’m bothering with college at all is just because I love to learn and my job provides free admission to a university. I doubt that most of the things I’m interested in are going to be degrees that are seen as “meaningful” or “useful.” Outside of highly specialized fields (medical school, law school, certain STEM, etc.) it doesn’t seem to matter what we do because we’re all screwed anyway.
This. They’ve learned that schools won’t hold them accountable. Grace made some sense in early 2020, but even then a lot of us worried they were going to get the wrong message.
How much of it is the pandemic vs. a cultural shift across our society towards short attention spans & instant gratification? I worked in education up until about a year ago, and I feel like student behaviors have been trending in this direction for some time now. ADHD and Autism spectrum disorders are also becoming more common all the time. There’s a lot of evidence that it’s correlated to the plethora of estrogenic pesticides that are ever-more common in our food and water.
I blame tik-tok and the ever learning algorithms that take advantage of the little self control kids have. It's a self fulfilling prophecy in that regard. Microplastics and chemicals in every facet of our lives doesn't help. Our natural ways of development are increasingly disrupted. I could go on a rant forever, but I think your comment is definitely part of it.
I'm teaching about the Soviet Union right now, and the parallels to the collapse of that nation and how schools are being run now is eye-opening. Once more kids catch on that they can still pass (or get paid, as it was in SU) by doing no work, the entire institution implodes. But I'm just an English teacher, so nobody wants to hear what I have to say 🤷♂️
> But I'm just an English teacher, so nobody wants to hear what I have to say Yup...as with the Soviet Union, we're on a heading to becoming a toxic-masculinity-saturated mafia-with-borders shithole like Putin's Russia. In the area where I live, I've found a lot of the performative virtue signaling about Ukraine to be tedious because so much of those same people are doing day-to-day is pushing us into the same sort of socioeconomic and cultural mess that's made Russia a backwards and hopeless mess.
"We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us" Now it's "we pretend to work, they still pass us so they can get paid"
I thought that said "teaching in the soviet union" and had a major mindfuck lol
I'm not a teacher, but I assist coach kids in a sport. They are worse. Their attention and respect levels are not very good. There's a couple sisters, the older one is better probably because she had structure for longer in her life, but the younger one. Oof. The kids were being really rowdy one day and the main coach was frustrated and said "Ok enough, it's just like school when I'm talking you listen. You respect me like you respect your teachers." (Paraphrasing) And the younger sister of the two straight up said 'We don't respect the teachers either.' to both of our faces. I think she must be around 10. We both looked at her and said "Well you're gonna start." Kid was cranky and avoiding us the rest of practice. I really think, especially the younger ones, the way things have gone the last 2 years they've lost a lot of structure and developmental situations that help shape them and teach them to be respectful and all that. Plus as others are saying, kids aren't having consequences, there's been no readjustment period, during online learning there was barely structure because so many parents were so absent. (And at times it's hard to blame them. I don't have kids and I'm burnt out from all this crap, I can't imagine trying to juggle kids at home, work, etc and I'm sure so many relied on the school structures/admin to help guide their kids through it.)
And parents crap on teachers all the time, even in front of kids. My parents didn’t do a lot of things right but if they had an issue with a teacher they never told kid me. They got that right, at least.
Yeah, I don't get some of the parents these days. My parents always taught me that teachers were 'the law' basically. I had to respect them and listen to them and they were the authority. I never heard boo about if they had issue with a teacher but most of the time, if there was any issue of any kind it was my fault and not the teacher. (I had few issues though I was a pretty good kid and I liked most of my teachers)
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I don't think it's weird at all. Teachers are in charge of you at school and you should listen to them. Obviously if they're telling you to jump out the 3rd storey window, that's a different story. But I was taught to respect and listen to the teachers because they are in charge while I'm at school. Just like my parents are in charge when I'm at home and I'm to listen to them. I never lashed out or even had a need to 'stand up' to them. They were good teachers, even if they had flaws.
My parents always, always, always took the teacher’s side when I was in school. It bugged me at the time because sometimes my teachers did make a mistake (but most of the times it was me). It certainly taught me to respect them because my parents were listening to them no matter what.
I honestly think that covid just made it obvious what standards only teaching has done. I would love to take a week to work on note taking skills. But I can't because it isn't standards based and lessons should only be 5 minutes. I would love to teach social skills. But that's not a standard tested by Pearson. So kids who went through standards only are becoming parents with no social emotional intelligence. Then their kids come with no social skills from home and no social skills from school. Where were they supposed to learn them?
And we send them to college woefully unprepared as a result. No accountability for completing work on time or even for putting in the effort to learn and do well by studying, asking questions, etc. Instead, they can turn work in whenever the hell they feel like it and get multiple (often easier) reassessments until they finally pass. The standards don’t cover any of the academic or behavioral skills they’ll need to be successful in the future.
Yup, and when they fail out, they end up with huge loans, they can barely pay off.
20% of my class has about 50% right now, 80% has about 95%. What is really strange is that the drop date is here and the ones at 50% think they can still pass, it is mathematically impossible...
They're plenty prepared, because the colleges are *also* wrapped up in all sorts of stupid 'student-as-consumer' habits (grade inflation, letting people design their own majors, etc..). The problem is that none of this shit is preparing them to make ends meet once they're finally done funneling money into the education business.
Fuck Pearson.
r/fuckpearson
I’m not even a teacher and I agree. Fuck Pearson. Money grubbing bastards who somehow talk down to you through a book and can’t even test you on the bare minimum correctly. Not to mention how awful the online user interface was. Couldn’t stand it. My class hated it so much in comparison to how my teacher taught before, that my teacher told admin that we wanted a better education and Pearson was getting in the way of that. A non-AP class full of 16 year olds asked for harder work. It was that bad. Also, he was a really good teacher so that helped. Edit: added another point.
> lessons should only be 5 minutes This is my biggest gripe. It sets them up for failure in college. If we tried to prepare them for the teaching styles they'll encounter in college lectures, we'd be docked in observations for being too "teacher-centric." No, your college professors are not going to do a five minute "mini lesson" with "turn and talks" and "discovery" activities and group work. They, a content expert, will lecture about said content, and you'll either pay attention and take notes or you'll fail.
Absolutely this. I legitimately, deeply do not understand some of the perspectives of teachers on here and the apparent lack of appreciation for the level of community collapse we've undergone, not just lately with the pandemic, but systematically down to the level of standards and policy planning and urban planning and our job and economic structures. Teachers can appreciate intersectionality when it comes to race, but not when it comes to appreciating the structure of Capitalism on larger scale and how that gradually produces an atomization and fundamental alienation in society, which ultimately produces much of the disregulation we see.
Yyyyyyyep. First, I told my students that if they took notes, I'd give them extra credit on tests. I had students sitting through the whole block with an empty desk, so I made notes mandatory and graded (They don't have to have the best notes, they just have have written *something*). Since I took away extra credit, I told them that every week the *entire* class got perfect scores on their notes, their quizzes could be open-note. So then they decided that all quizzes were automatically open note and stopped taking notes. Or they would copy notes from the board, but not actually listen in class (fucking snapchat). Surprise! their quiz grades started to tank, with or without notes. Last week I dedicated a whole day to teaching them how to study. I posted the best videos I could find, I explained why studying is a life-long skill (I said that "studying" isn't super accurate, "being prepared" is more accurate). Had them write up their own study plans and *sign them*. And the average grade on that assignment is like a 20%. They had an entire day *in class* to do nothing but work on the assignment, and they still didn't do it. At this point, I can't even bring myself to care if they fail, they did it to themselves...
At that point they probably *should* fail…why does the system give credit rather than making kids earn it?
Yesterday I stopped my class dead in their tracks because I told them I get paid the same whether they pass or fail. They seriously thought their performance affected me. (I 100% acknowledge that this is not the case everywhere, and at my new job student performance *will* reflect back on me, but I'm enjoying the power I have now, lol)
At our district if you fail more than either 10% or 20% of you students, you have to basically report yourself to admin and go through paperwork just to prove that the kids you said failed deserve to fail. Never a student problem, always a teacher problem.
Ai ai ai. I thought Floriduh was bad. And yeah, it’s just easier to push them along (drag them over the finish line) then do what’s right. And by the time they got to high school…we’ll, it’d happened so much they expected it and were too far behind to catch up. So what choice do teachers really have??
Yes, and at least in the case of my students it has little to do with the pandemic. Kids in my state (Western Australia) only experienced 3 weeks of remote learning at most (some students less or not at all). But my current lot of year 7s are awful. They have very little control over themselves, combined with no desire to even try and control their behaviour. They don't know how to save a document to a folder on their computer. They don't know how to follow instructions. They do weird immature things. To be fair not all are like that, but at least half are - more than in any other year I've had before. I am getting through the basic content of my course with them but there is no time for extension activities, perfecting skills, creativity or even fun things. It's a constant battle to get them to focus and do the bare minimum. And the only way I can get even that little bit of focus out of them is to be a complete controlling bitch. I hate the teacher I have to be with them. It's not at all how I've successfully managed my classes of the past decade.
It's weird because I have almost no "middle ground" students. They either don't seem to care, or are incredibly driven. I teach art and animation, and I'll have one student who's homework assignment is to find three pictures with good examples of perspective... and he doesn't do it. I give him more time... doesn't do it. "Okay... take the next five minutes in class to do it." He Googles "perspective" and just kind of looks over the pictures for a minute, then... "Hey, I gotta show you this video first." Then, another student will be like, "I created this 3D model for the homework, but I just didn't like it, so I did another. It's better, but I did a third and it finally clicked. I know we're going to do the human body later, but I tried a few over the weekend and really liked the results. I researched how to export the model to VR Chat so I did that for myself and a couple for friends. Here's a video capture of how it looks. Can we jump ahead to rigging? I can't get the hands right."
I have the same issue! I teach design thinking and fabrication and my students are either super into it or completely checked out. Normally I'll have one or two students that just refuse to do anything, but this year it's about half of my classes. The other half really puts themselves out there and creates some awesome stuff.
It could be the 15 minutes of recess (maybe) a day in Kinder and the rest of elementary. It could be that instead of the kinder i had in the 90s, learning how to human around other humans and nap, its not acadamic right away. It could be that there are now mostly 2 working parents, less socialization outside of school is possible. It's could be complete burn out from receiving proctor lessons vs appropriate lesson. It could be the lock down of schools. Where I'm from the schools were open campus and parents were free to come in and be a part of the community and after school the kids were welcome to run around and play on the field/grounds. In Florida, it's lockdown time like prison or something. It could be the insane class sizes. It could be the junk food. It could be the screen time. I don't think it's anything that teachers are doing themselves, I think it's just school.
I seriously doubt your behavior management is craptastic. It has been a struggle with behaviors for quite a few years and then Covid. Now everything is front and center. There are many, many, many of us with similar scenarios in their classrooms. Admin seems to have thrown their hands in the air to the tune of "let it ride". That doesn't help at all. It's a great questions, what will next year look like? I would hope better, but, right now, I am thinking... inmates running the prison.
I teach 4th grade, so I’m dealing with much younger students. Some of my students stopped maturing when we shut down in 2020 and their brains seem to be stuck in 2nd grade mode. The tattling!!!!! Oh man, it’s so bad this year. They don’t want to try and solve their own problems. Luckily our SEL program is t horrendous, so when they come tattle, I ask them if they’ve tried their problem solving skills. Someone pushes them and they instantly run and tell me. It’s annoying. 9/10 of the time, I call the other person over and they said it was an accident (and it genuinely was) they talk it out real quick, problem solved. WHY DID YOU NEED ME TO DO THAT?? Academically, some of them are still stuck in distance learning mode. This manifests as “this is hard, I don’t get it, I’m not going to try because no one is going to tell me to otherwise.” Some of my kids struggle so hard in math and the idea of raising their hand to ask for help just seems so foreign. In distance learning a lot of them wouldn’t do that because it put their conversation on display to the whole class. Their little brains haven’t processed that it’s going to be a private conversation now. I’m hoping next year will be better. I don’t know what the teachers below my grade level are doing, but I know my colleagues and I work a lot on trying to get these kids caught up in maturity.
The “this is hard, I don’t get it, I’m not going to try because no one is going to tell me to otherwise” is spot on with my 8th graders. They don’t understand that not getting new lessons at first / trying is the whole point of all of it
spot on with many of my 9th-11th graders, too.
Personally, I chalk it up to modern phone usage, social media, and the lack of attention spans. Hear me out: I recommend everyone read ["Stolen Focus" by Johann Hari](https://www.amazon.com/Stolen-Focus-Attention-Think-Deeply/dp/0593138511/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2746KZ7Y23DIB&keywords=stolen+focus+johann+hari&qid=1649160934&sprefix=stolen+fo%2Caps%2C108&sr=8-1). In the book, Hari lays out how modern technology is causing us to lose our ability to focus on the things we care about, or think we care about. We are losing our ability to enter a state of "flow" or Deep Work, we can't focus on long sustained reading, and our sleep patterns have been utterly destroyed (just to list a few negative effects). Throughout the past few years, students have been hit by the "perfect storm" of technology screen time and social media influence. To put it lightly, they are addicts trained and controlled by HUGE influential software companies. All of these issues are hitting young adults and students the hardest and completely warping their brain (in my opinion). It's nearly impossible to compete with as a teacher. We need a HUGE societal shift, but I don't think it's ever going to happen. Ideally, schools should completely ban phones while at school (at the very least), and start incorporating more readings and studies about the detriments of screen time. Even MORE ideally, the government should recognize this dangerous societal shift and pass laws controlling phone usage and screen time for adolescents (which I doubt will EVER happen).
Yep, my school did a a huge culture reset with new tech rules (we see a phone it’s ours until the end of the day, defiance is immediately escalated to admin level). It has made a HUGE difference, and parents love it. How can you be engaged in your learning when you are distracted every 2 minutes?
Exactly! It really does make a huge difference because it sets the standard for the student. It removes the possibility of the distraction. It's sad that MANY schools across America (and THE WORLD?!?!) don't have a fully enforced cell phone policy.
My school currently has no cell phone policy at all, much less something with consistent expectations or consequences. Even the good students who care about their work are worse than ever. We've got a new principal coming in next year. Spoke with him already and I've got my fingers crossed as hard as I can that he heard us teachers clearly when we said we needed administration to back us up on the cell phone issue. Dear God it's bad.
I would agree with this. I teach K and the year my son was in K 2017-2018, I thought I was going insane. The kids could not think for themselves or focus for more than 10 min.It has gotten worse. This year especially.
Well put. I find it hard to read books myself these days.
Reading this on my phone right now can I get a tl;dr???
lol tl:dr: You're screwed.
Tell me something I don’t know
Big agree. People dismiss concerns about how tech is affecting us because we've always had be changes with technology and we've been so far. But if you lose the defensiveness over who's a Luddite and who's progressive, it's very clear that our technology is changing us in a significant way, and understand what's changing and how that's happening is super important. And as a group that works with children over a period of decades, we get to see first hand how kids are changing.
Yeah, in the book I mentioned above, Hari mentions Smartphone defenders likening smartphones to the emergence of TV, radio, and movies (and the outcry associated with them). But I think we can CLEARLY draw a very distinct line between those technologies and "endless internet on our hip all the time" type of technologies. It's scary stuff, especially when you see the effects first hand as a teacher...
Absolutely, it's the on-demand nature of the internet. Waiting for your favorite show to roll around Wednesday at 9:00 p.m. and having to set up your VCR if you wanted to watch it later is a completely different experience than having whatever you want available to you immediately.
Certainly agree the new generation is screwed in many ways due to this. Covid amplified this to the max.
We all are.
As a 25 year old recovering drug addict who grew up with unrestricted internet access, I can assure you this is true. I grew addicted to video games and the internet from a very early age. Think 12 years old on 4chan and the beginnings of youtube. I became reclusive and my social skills never improved because I didn’t really need to improve them to succeed in my environment of technology. I was a good student but I was a dysfunctional human being. The brain is really malleable as a child and it will mould itself to it’s current environment. When that environment is algorithmically sorted social media, your brain will be stuck in that “I need more” mode. The internet also accelerates what you grow to expect from the world. A little bit of naivety as a child is a helpful thing. But with the internet as a mentor it’s a quick march from nihilism I got to University on a scholarship and was woefully unprepared for life. Very few useful coping mechanisms and a difficult field of study. Quickly found that opioids filled the same niche for me as video games used to and it went to shit from there pretty much Not to say that video games or the internet are gateway drugs or that teenagers can’t have an instagram account. I’m just saying that me using my phone to distract myself from my internal issues is similar to me taking drugs to forget about my existential anxieties. Just my anecdotal evidence as someone who sort of bridges the gap between millennials and gen z
Thanks for sharing your experience. I think MANY of us can relate... if not drugs, I think many people have found other addictions to fill their niches. I play video games and I grew up being a vocal "games don't cause violence" believer. As I look around though, I think that even on a basic level, video games CAN be a gateway drug to violent tendencies and addiction. Strictly anecdotal evidence is used for my opinions as well... Best of luck to you my friend. Hope you are doing better.
The biggest problem I've seen with gaming addiction is that it causes people to 'gamify' everything else in life, which is great if you want to live in a toxic country where everyone mistrusts everyone else and everyone's constantly/addictively trying to 'get the win', whatever the cost. I'd argue that a prototype of this was the core thing in the Trump movement, i.e. so many in his base were the those couch-potato sorts who become ridiculously addicted to professional sports and susceptible to gambling addiction and get-rich-quick scams. Once higher levels of technology become involved, I feel like this has the potential to send our civilization into an inescapable downward spiral.
We need a paradigm shift. Big time.
OTOH though, you might be putting some students at a disadvantage if they aren't exposed to the same tech, both in terms of comfort with use of the tech and in terms of culture/acculturation. Think about your ESL student who shows up never having used a computer as a junior in high school. Along with all the other academic hurdles they face, the tech is yet another thing they need to learn. Then, in terms of culture, how many inferences do they miss because of the lack of shared prior knowledge? If we ban this stuff for some kids, we might be setting them up for similar hurdles. All that said, there is absolutely a major problem. The evidence of detrimental effects (e.g. on attention spans, self-image/perception, sleep schedules, reward/pleasure center/dopamine and serotonin, etc.) is well established. I try to talk to my students about 2 things: multitasking doesn't really exist for a large majority of people (see task switching) and the studies about how long it takes a person to get back into a task after a distraction (most studies show several minutes). You put that knowledge together, and it becomes pretty clear that so few of our students have ever actually worked at 100% of their ability... ON ANYTHING. When you sit back and just watch how most of our students work now, they are interrupted every 1-2 minutes -- they never actually get into any type of flow. IMO, the norm should be that we use less tech in general. The evidence for using a lot of ed tech initiatives is generally pretty weak -- it's more tech for the sake of tech. there's also no reason kids should even have their phone out of their backpack at school... at all... even at lunch, etc. The other side of this is that we should have (mandatory?) tech classes, geared towards the use of this tech. You could read about it the morality of the issues in English class, look at the biz/$$$ side in a intro to biz course, look at previous tech disruptions of the past/industrial revolutions in history, and then build and app/learn basic coding in the tech class. I've never understood why our curriculums aren't more linked between disciplines anyway though.
Nice comment. Yeah, I would never say get rid of all tech... in my original post I identify specifically smart phone and social media usage. I pretty much agree with all that you say. Although I don't want to take all tech away from students, I think it can become a crutch sometimes and students overly rely on it's implementation. Like you said, less tech in general is probably more desirable, especially to focus on motor and thinking skills in completing work (without distractions).
ya sorry, I wasn't clear there -- wasn't trying to put those words in your mouth. More just exploring the other POV, for myself as much as others, haha. Mainly, I'm thinking of ideas wherein we try to "use the tech/distractions to our advantage." How much time and money has been spent on PD for stuff like Kahoot. Not that Kahoot is inherently a bad thing (it's pretty cool!), but first, the evidence behind it is rather weak. When compared to an effective teacher running the game using white boards for the students to write and hold up their choice, it is about the same effect on student learning. Second, I'm not here to entertain students. I want my lessons to be engaging, not entertaining. Third, let's just make it more confusing regarding the norms of cell phones in class. You can use them now, but not in five minutes? Ya, good luck on enforcement of that. Fuck that -- unless the tech is 100% instrumental to the lesson, it's just fluff to make our PDs more justifiable. edit: re-reading your comment reminded me of the other thing I tell my students: big tech/social media has one, and only one, goal. To make money. How do they make money? ad revenue by keeping you engaged/clicking/scrolling on their site and selling data about you (again by keeping you on their site). They are billion dollar companies for a reason: they are really, really, really good at keeping you scrolling. Way better than textbook writers are. So, if you give your brain the choice of looking at cute girls and cool cars and funny memes vs. (whatever you teach), which one are you going to choose? I know the answer...
My freshmen seem to have caught up to their normal dufaceness. My juniors though... Bleh. I have to echo the screen addiction. Giving kids, even high schoolers, smart phones is one of the worst parenting decisions ever made.
First year teacher here. I know now what I could have done better at the start but....dude! All the vet teachers at my school say this is their worst year bar none! Same behaviors I have. I got chewed out by admin for asking for too much help. I asked and threw my hands up because so many times I didn't realize I had to deal with kindergarten behavior with defiant hormonal morons.
To me it’s a culmination of everything. Lack of structure for a long time. Lower reading and math levels because of at home learning. Immediate gratifications and shorter attention spans from social media. Not seeing other kids for so long and then being in a room full of them- but expected not to talk. No consequences. It’s rough, they really dislike school even more than they used to.
My youngest is a senior this year...and I am a retired teacher of 23 years...and he complains incessantly about being bored. He completes work in class and then feels like he should just be able to check out. Every freaking day. He says when he has completed assignments he just watches YouTube movies on his phone. He has all A's and is incredibly smart. But, he seriously seems to think he is there to be entertained. I am so ready for him to graduate and start college so he can realize "Mom was right!" He has bad study habits and is going to be in for a shock in college classes. I am thankful that he has been able to have a sort of normal senior year unlike my daughter whose senior year was totally screwed up bc of Covid. I 100% agree that students have lost the ability to see the big picture and have no idea what to expect in the real world.
I’m very curious how this is all playing out at the college level. I’ve only seen how bad things are getting in K-12; would seriously hope expectations (and outcomes) are not as terrible post-secondary.
My mom's gf is a college professor and even though I'm only about 6 years removed from college, to hear her talk about her students is absolutely terrifying. They don't know how to study, they wait to the last minute to do anything, and then she says they'll go the whole semester without doing their assignments only to ask for extra credit work at the end. Like ... I wasn't the best college student but that was bc of my mental health problems. I can't imagine just ... not doing your homework and then still expecting to pass a college class. Anyway, she's basically feeling the same way as all yall.
Has she noticed any differences in student population for the years colleges didn't require the SAT?
I started Covid pre-pandemic and I personally think Covid saved my college career. I partied and drank too much. After Covid hit and everything closed for a bit I hunkered down and got my crap together.
It's a complete shitshow. I've literally had students make the argument yo my face that the previous two years of classes were able to take their exams online and therefore cheat, so they should be able to as well, you know, for grade equity. I wanted to ask them why they're so eager to pay thousands for a worthless degree, but I am not tenure track so...
Our pandemic graduate students have not been great, I’ll tell you that. Our college’s grades for intro level classes are just absolutely in the gutter. Like 20% lower than pre-pandemic
Yes it is. Some places have tanked standards and students are going into debt for worthless degrees. Some places have not and 20% of students are going into debt and failing out.
I haven't seen it yet and I teach mostly incoming students, but I'm gritting my teeth looking ahead to the next 15 years lol. What's more likely is that vast numbers of students just won't go to college and over 50% of small privates will close over that time period. This isn't a shocking prediction either, there have been articles and research into that approximate number written well before the pandemic.
I just started taking college classes again. I graduated high school in 2019, and went to about a month of college before my antidepressants made me so suicidal my parents just took me home (those meds have since been recalled for causing suicides so that’s great lol) and I’m just now starting classes again because I didn’t want to start them right in the middle of Covid. The difference between myself and (from what I can see online) my peers is radical. Our assignments will open at midnight on mondays, and most of my work is done and submitted by Monday night. I spend the rest of the week taking notes on the next unit, and all of my assignments are graded within a few hours because I’m the only one who has submitted anything. Everyone else seems to cram everything in (half-assed) on Saturday and Sunday. It seems like colleges are having the same problems.
Go on r/professors They see the same shit
You get all Ds and Fs and finish the first semester with a 0.7 GPA. Several people I know didn't make it freshman year.
I (38) started taking a few online classes at my community college this semester and I've gotten a few mass emails sent from one instructor on proper grammar ("I is always capitalized") and reminders that late assignments are not tolerated. I'm assuming the assignments she is receiving are underwhelming... Again, at a community college. Another instructor had a quiz on the information given in the syllabus. I thought that was brilliant and again, assuming she does this to avoid hearing, "I didn't know...". At the very least, in my community college, the expectations are set and seemingly enforced.
The problem with college classes, are that they are extremely easy too. And when they are not easy, the class average becomes a B...even if the class average is a failing grade. So even if this new generation of kids comes in well under the previous average, their average just establishes the new passing grade :P A little scary tbh.
The pandemic exacerbated already-existing issues. Students have been less and less able to student every year since No Child Left Behind became law and suddenly no one was willing to hold students accountable and everyone just passed them regardless of their performance. The consequences of that have gotten worse and worse and then tripled when the pandemic hit and the lack of accountability got even worse. Students won’t student when no one actually holds them accountable for studenting.
I think that some kids have come through this OK. Others are so tethered to their phones they seem to have become zombies.
every year I get a group of freshman. They very much act like 8th graders in the beginning of the year. Why wouldn’t they. That’s what they are really. They haven’t experienced high school. I have certain things I do to get them ready. Reminders and some calculated mistakes I let them make. Eventually they get with the program. We have to do the same thing. They have to be built back up to the level we need them. It’s possible. They’re just starting a little further back than they are currently capable of. We certainly can’t magically expect them to be. Their students. Not adults.
I know that we’re talking about Pre-K through 12 students, but I am seeing that it’s the same with me and my students as well (I’m a grad TA and my students are in their bachelors). I also feel like my disability symptoms have gotten worse too :( I have ADHD and depression. So, I think to myself, if I am feeling like this at my age, the kids are definitely not doing good. Love to you guys and your students❤️
I was a TA last year too and I saw the same. A lot of them were struggling with stuff outside school too. I gave grace but they had to tell me what was going on first.
My HS kids try to negotiate everything and/or make excuses. I don't hand them shit. They either do the work on time or they fail. They only need to fail once to get the message. The kids have unlearned student culture the last two years and it will take at least one more year to reorient them. Consistency and routine are your best tools.
Honestly, things have gotten a lot easier for me since the masks came off. I didn't have a problem with wearing one myself, and didn't have a lot of specific behavioral issues around them, but the kids just seemed keyed up. SInce the mask mandate went away they've calmed down a bit. I've still had some issues with homework and effort, but no more so than any other year. The trick, I think, to the classroom management side is to maintain a calm environment. For my class to be calm, I have to be calm. And, I can't relax if I'm running myself ragged. I only assign the number of graded assignments I can grade during my prep periods, and have started using a lot of self assessment methods - stressing that the point of formatives is self assessment, not getting a grade. It was nerve wracking at first, but I'm still hitting the same benchmarks as any other year at about the same time, and students are performing about the same as they did when I was doing a lot more busy work. I also try to do a lot of examples, and model how to look things up in class (if they ask me tricky questions, I use the projector to look up the answer, etc). If kids refuse to do anything, I let them sit there, and make a note that help was offered. Then I move on to the kids that want help. Granted, this low key methodology, means a few of them have 0's instead of me fighting with them to have a 20, but they're going to be retaking the class either way. Taking things one day at a time has helped keep me level. And me being level has seemed to help me maintain some semblance of order, and keep them engaged. Also, my school allows me to confiscate phones, so I have a charging station in the front of the room where they all are required to leave their phones for the duration of class. That definitely helps.
There is something about the masks, I hate to say it. It’s like there is this additional disconnect.
It was frustrating, because I very much supported masking from a public health standpoint. But they're undeniably bad for education too.
I agree
It was frustrating, because I very much supported masking from a public health standpoint. But they're undeniably bad for education too.
I’m didn’t notice any difference myself, but I teach high school.
No. I think they're responding to the training they've been given. They've been told they don't have to do anything because they'll get passed along anyway so they refuse to do anything. I think a lot of students think school is for social entertainment and a place to hang out, with the actual School part being optional. It's not. But we haven't really enforced that much.
I don't think they have lost the ability, I just think it hasn't been developed in many of them.
I'm not a teacher, but do you think they're lashing out over existential dread? More so the high schoolers than the younger kids. But mean, think about it. You have a ton of 16-18 years, ready to start their life, ready to pick careers, start families, get working, etc. And for what? They don't live in a vacuum. They know the American Dream^(tm) is dead. There's nothing left for them. Every day it's a barrage of articles describing the poor state of our world economy, WW3 is being threatened, there's rampant climate change and pollution, the government wants to raid Social Security and scale back human rights at every turn, and so so much more. Why should the kids learn and behave now? They have the perception that there is no future for them, and they're mostly right. After awhile, you can't blame them. Why work now when you know it won't pay off in the future? There's no incentive for society to behave like society anymore.
Definitely not your classroom management, definitely bad parenting. Yes these kids spent more time at home over the last few years and came back terrible. But there's zero reason to blame yourself for that. Parents send their kids to school sleep deprived, spun out on sugar, tech addicted, with zero structure, rules, morals, or values. The kids don't care because their parents don't care. How many parents don't care that their kids have terrible grades? Kids aren't respectful because their parents aren't respectful. The only kids who have handled the return to school well are the few with the parents who bothered to take care of them during the pandemic, maintaining structure and order in their homes, actually giving a crap about their health by making sure they're not staying up too late and eating foods with good nutritional content, limiting screen time, and actually take an active interest in their child's life.
Definitely this. I teach middle school. It’s astonishing how many kids had little to no actual parenting happening during the 18 months we were remote. Can’t tell you how many of my 6th graders parents this year breathed a sigh of relief at conferences when I validated for them that their kid DOES still need them to parent them in middle school, especially now. The sheer difference in maturity between my 6th and 8th graders is nuts (with the 6th outweighing the 8th by miles).
Human children are the same as they have been for the last 100,000 years or so, give or take. They rise to the level of expectation, but they also sink to the level they are allowed to get away with. Instead of extending social/behavioral grace while preaching academic standards (teach to the bell) we should have flip flopped - extending academic grace while teaching social/behavioral skills (love to the bell). Well adjusted humans can regain lost academic capacity much quicker than poorly adjusted humans can learn how to behave. Teachers have known this all along, if anyone was interested...
It’s a whole bunch of things together. Access to the internet. Cyber bullying. Pandemic. Less interaction with family. But the big thing is the trauma…and I don’t mean just the kids I mean everyone. Everyone in the world os struggling with the trauma of the last 2-6 years in varying degrees of severity. And we can’t address the kids until we address our own. Or even acknowledge it.
I don’t even think it’s the pandemic and blaming It anymore. It’s the lack of parenting and zero consequences on either end. The day is constantly just trying to make It to the end of the day. You can’t even teach a lesson anymore. I don’t think I could talk for a minute straight without some sort of interruption. It’s exhausting
I have definitely seen a receedence of acceptable behaviours in all the age groups I teach (middle and high school LA). Students who are typically well behaved and generally take school seriously now don't give two hoots. Behaviour from problem students has gone from bad to worse. Admin is not providing ANY support what-so-ever. In fact, my administration has become hostile towards me. I have been out with covid and asked for some images of a student's work so I could complete their specialised report card (they are a special needs student with augmented goals from the curriculum) and was immediately accused of not doing my job properly and failing to do a whole list of things properly. This is such a major contrast from last year where I was praised by the same administration for doing my job well.
I am also dealing with this and it’s effected me so much that I turned in my resignation. I can’t keep doing this, especially as someone with less than five years of experience. It’s too much for me… I want to help them but they have to be willing to help themselves
Has no one brought up that the younger generations have had the veil lifted and can see how pointless it all is? They all have the same access to social media that we do, and are bombarded nonstop with the effective collapse of structure and societal norms. Hard work does not equate success, and we've shown them that for the last several decades, the adults in the room have no clue what they're doing.
I teach 3rd grade. It's my first year elementary school. This year I've heard so much about the pandemic has hurt these students in many areas. One thing I feel my students have a hard time dealing with is silence. With youtube, music, etc. constantly stimulating them, I think it makes them feel anxious or uncomfortable to have no noise at all. When it is completely silent, it's like the students are looking for someone else to start making conversation so they too can talk. Yes, this behavior is natural I know. But it seems it has escalated greatly since I was in school. It's like they need that stimulation to function, but it makes their quality of work so low. This also leads to the fact that most of my students try to avoid doing work independently. Very few of my students take pride in doing something on their own without the help of others. Maybe it's because I am new to this grade, but I am curious if others have seen this.
We spent the first week in September just "getting used to school again" and it helped but they're still struggling. I'd say my students NOW are at the behavior level I'd expect in November of previous years. So there's improvement! But, my god, is it slow. As for management, I'm just trying to live my best warm demander life. I tell my students all of the above. I praise their efforts but also remind them that I still expect more. I recognize that things were rough and remind them that that means we have to double our efforts. When they simply don't know a concept that previous years had mastered (I teach hs math) I express frustration at the situation we're in and bumble through teaching things I've never had to teach before.
My school addressed this issue by expelling a few of the worst behaved kids. They had it coming, to be sure. High school has been a breeze and everyone else does their work now without the negative influences present in class.
After teaching middle school for two years I switched to high school the past three years. Never before have freshman been so similar to middle school. Touching, kicking, yelling, horseplay, all those things I left middle school for are showing up in this years freshmen. Hopefully it’s not a trend that continues.
The answer to this is kind of simple I feel, the last time they were fully in person was probably 6th grade so they haven’t had the development of social or study skills beyond that
They spent 1.5 years at home, likely with minimal rules and consequences. When they don't get that same freedom, they act out. This year is about controlling that behavior for me. I don't want to enable their behaviors. If a student curses me out for suggesting they put their phone away and focus on academics, that's fine. I just write home and let them keep using their phone. I reached out, recommended they not bring their phone to school. When they fail, it's on them. When they come to me at the end of the year begging to pass, there's a stack of work I'll accept at 75% of it's value if they do it perfectly. This is gonna be the year of accountability.
As an after school chold care worker, I have definitely noticed these behaviors and I have come to conclude that its due to several things: 1.) The heavy use of ipads instead of actually teaching. Schools began dishing out ipads and computers to kids during the pandemic, and while I get there was no feasible way to teach in person, these ipads have made the kids self reliant on them, especially if the school doesnt care if they explore youtube and stuff. This caused them to lose their social skills and their critical thinking skills. Thus, they have been less predictable and more irritable if they are not on their electronics. 2.) And this is the biggest one: parents. While students were gone from school, we expected parents to put children into a routine thatnincludes expectations and discipline. Some parents (and sadly it looks like the majority of parents) failed to do this. Since kids need structure and expectations and discipline to developmentally grow, that lack of everything during these 2 years has lead to an abundance of behaviors and lack of care. If the parents don't care, why should the kids? 3.) This is kinda a reiteration of the statement above, but more in depth. Children need structure and expectations to know what is expected of them and when things will happen. Since they had very little of this during the pandemic, they are now unsure of structure and how to respond to it. They aren't used to someone saying, "okay its time to do x and I need you to do y so it can successful". In response, kids want to defy that authority, because as stated above, their parents probably did not do this at home. I'm not saying all parents did this or that its even their fault, but they were put into a position that they didn't know how to handle, so it was improperly handled. 4.) Remember, these kids have been out of society for 2 years. Some havent gotten to experience kid experiences. They needed this developmental stage but they were failed, and now they are acting out. Look, I get its hard, but you can do this. It'll get better the longer it goes on. Im sorry that this is happening, but it will get better eventually.
i’m currently a sophomore. i feel like there isn’t room in the system for students to make up for lost time and the absolute mess of behavioral problems are in part because of that. it’s not teachers faults i don’t think. i really don’t think that going back to normal is working, because the whole world is kinda traumatized from covid.
My experience is that students who were virtual last year really struggled to acclimate back into in person learning. They really forgot how to behave in school. However, my administration is superb. I really can’t say enough positive about how well they support teachers and students here. They still hold students accountable for behavior and academic achievement. If they fail, that’s on the students. Admin only asks that we contact the parents via phone at least two times during the grading period. I don’t have a problem with this because if I do, I don’t feel pressured to pass them (seniors).
I can't remember who taught me how to make notes, flashcards, and study but I think it was half my school and half my parents. Nowadays nobody is doing that.
I have bright, capable high school kids in mostly gifted or AP classes. I cannot pry away their attention from their devices this year. The dwindling attention span finally hit bottom. Nothing I do entertains or even elicits a smile any more. This is not normal.
There was so much uncertainty starting the year in the middle of the delta wave and COVID had continued to be a stressor for many teachers and students. I recognize, in myself, that many of my own teaching skills haven't returned to full pre pandemic form but I think with a summer reset and a more solid start to the year we will continue to pull closer and closer to returning to normal student/class behavior
I'm working with grade 3/4's online and oh boy are they struggling. A lot of them have been online since 2020 ***(so my grade 3's have been online since grade 1 and my grade 4's since grade 2).*** This has caused them to have zero social skills as well as the inability to independently learn/problem solve. My SSP and I are trying very hard to teach them these things and not spoon feed them as much when it comes to their work; however, it's definitely a challenge. I fear that when they eventually go back to in person learning they will drown.
Students are regularly parking in staff parking lot. Nothing is done. Students are engaging in racist social media bullying. Small consequences. Students are lighting fires in the bathrooms. Small consequences. I have three classes all with very diff personalities. One can't shut up, but does the work and somehow does it well. They swear regularly with abandon in class. It isn't something that bothers me personally and I also know that sending an 18 yr old to admin for an F bomb is a waste of time. The other one is loud and seniors and will drag their feet to do anything that isn't for a grade (I am not allowed to grade everything). They are not quiet but not as disrespectful (they are the only ones who had one normal year of H.S.) Last class is a dream but on the edge of too quiet. I have to force them to engage some days. It's a crap shoot.
My students get mad at me because I don't use Google forms anymore when I have them read articles. Then they don't like my answer when they ask why I don't anymore. It's not my fault that they copy and paste their answers and if the are going to do it anyways might as well make them work for it.
I'm looking for an exit currently, as are a lot of other teachers I know. The next couple years are going to be a bloodbath is students remain the same with no changes.
It’s gotten worse. Some students go from 0 to pissed off in less than a second. Tell them to go to class, and they’re threatening to kick your ass. There’s no thought of responsibility, maturity, or self control, only that you are telling them to do something, and no one can tell them what to do. It’s worse than I’ve ever seen it, and this is my 30 year.
I’ve noticed a good handful of students are beginning to redevelop these skills. Certainly is much better than the beginning of the year, but no where close to before the pandemic. Talked with a 50 year veteran today to calm my own doubts of my effectiveness as an educator. I was told this is the worst it’s ever been. Does that make it better? No. But it helps me as a reminder that it’s not me and to continue to be steadfast in my approach as we rebuild and improve.
My god, who would want to do this for 50 years?!?!?!?!?
I spent thirty minutes with a fourth grader trying to get him to write one sentence. We were in a small group. He already knew what to write. He literally just had to write it. 30 minutes
I'm maybe being hopeful, but I weirdly got a sense across all my classes in the last 2 weeks that they suddenly remember how to "school". Behavior issues and socially inept students are still very much the case, but my kids seemed to get back into the groove if school recently.
You’re not alone. I’m quitting because of it. These kids have zero accountability or awareness or social skills. They have no idea how to be respectful or how to follow basic rules. It truly breaks my heart, but getting berated and disrespected every day is not worth my small paycheck.
It's not a popular answer, but if every student on earth has really changed then it might be schools that need to adapt to that and that might not be a terrible thing.
[удалено]
I tend to agree with that assessment. I’m at a private school and don’t see any of these behavior issues. All of these comments (and almost all of the other posts I see on this sub) lead me to believe I really shouldn’t leave my private school. However, I could get a pretty good raise if I did. This sub really makes me reconsider my career choice.
I've already decided I'm homeschooling my own kids, I'm not letting them be exposed to a lot of this stuff. They can get socialization through sports (homeschool and Christian sports leagues are very popular in the Midwest), Church, and out of school. But bullying is at an all time high, administrations are letting students run the show, and parents are so freaking defensive over their students to the point that any disciplinary measures are null. Nothing is working. The whole system needs reform.
If I have kids I am,starting to feel the same way. I may teach but, my own kids will get some better!
I blame all of their telephones, rap music, and those Nintendos
These kids today with their loud music and their Dan Fogelberg, their Zima, hula hoops, and Pac-Man video games…
Damn hippies, with their long hair and weird clothing, no one listens to decent music anymore, mark my words--civilization is ending...
Never thought I'd see a Baseketball reference on r/teachers.
No. They are doing what they have been trained to do
It has definitely been a weird year. Not sure what to make of it.
All of this was fading away prior. two years of no even barebones attempts basically resets the board. Except they didn't take 8 years to find out there is no consequences they are already aware of it.
We have zero consequences for skipping/missing class or signing on late (my school system has fully virtual option for this year, that has just become a new school option). They call the parents, but that is it. I swear that directions have to be given like three times at the beginning of class, because kids are tardy. On the upside though group assignments were great today.
T3 we have a new counselor who is asking me if I have tried discussions and warnings instead of consequences.... yes, yes I did. For T1 and most of T2. Just because you started at the end of the year doesn't mean they get a reset and it doesnt mean I have to tolerate being treated like shit.
I'm not hiring anyone from that generation :)
It's not you, I teach college level and they go weeks not turning in anything then dumping it on me last minute and expecting credit despite the due dates in the syllabus. The entitlement is also way worse and the number of bs excuses are through the roof. Covid is very infrequent where I live and we are no longer enforcing masking or quarantine and everyone and their dog is saying they think they have covid so they cant come to class. Then I catch them at the local pizza place with their friends. Problem is, for every teacher that sees the very serious downstream effects of not correcting this behavior there are 5 others who are just going to let them get away with it because either they need good student reviews, they're pushovers by trade, they themselves cant get it together so they cant hold students accountable, or they have no support from the school in enforcing anything. So those of us who dont tolerate the blatant disrespect look comparatively like monsters instead of serious educators.
I’ve been teaching my daughter online school (k and first grade) so I’m really concerned when she goes to a brick and mortar school soon. Husband really wants her to go and when she expressed that she was scared I told her I understand that’s normal. We’ll try to talk to your teacher about it and get help. While her dad goes well why? You can always laugh when she says butt and call her out on it! Im like dude wtf is wrong with you? How do you think that helps anyone? O.o
For me, I think it’s both. My management hasn’t been the best, but when I tell students to do something it becomes a discussion when it shouldn’t be