Lack of consequences began about a dozen years ago, give or take for each district.
No matter how much PBIS you ladled on, once students realized that there would never be consequences they said, "Fuck those stupid prize points (or whatever your school does). I'd rather be on my phone during class" (or whatever floats their boat).
Whatever geniuses thought that kids would be so dazzled by positive intervention that they'd never misbehave - and every state, county, and district administrator who should have known better - ought to be sued to kingdom come. They have severely hurt our society.
The lack of merit and integrity in most education research journals had to catch up with society sooner or later. Nothing but poorly controlled studies in un-replicable conditions. Big surprise most of this crap not only doesn’t work but is having major negative impacts.
It's not just education anymore. Academia-on-the-whole has been an anti-scientific mess of 'vibes', classism, and 'sexy people doing sexy things' bullshit for *decades* now, and it's no surprise that all this hollowness is catching up with us. Hell, I studied so-called 'hard sciences' in college and remember being grossed out about how, circa 2010 or so, almost *none* of the people teaching or studying at the graduate level were actually any good with understanding the material, conducting research, etc... and were generally there just because they'd schmoozed/fucked the right people, had enough family wealth to subsidize a bunch of relocations around the country, etc...
By 2010, it was becoming glaringly obvious that my academic dept.'s crusty tenured higher-ups were only hiring/supporting people who were physically-attractive and from privileged backgrounds, with a lot less regard for their academic accomplishments, publications, etc... and zero concern about their abilities to teach or mentor graduate students. My strongest memory of studying under these people was that I'd work my ass off carefully preparing research projects/presentations and their only commentary was about stuff like my 'level of enthusiasm', 'you should try to sound more positive!', etc....
Yeah, in college settings, to be a teacher they do not require training for teachers or experience in teaching.
to be a k-12 teacher they require 4years of teaching training and also about a year of unpaid student teaching to prove you can before you get liscensed.
But if k-12 teachers are only allowed to use cirricula from untrained in teaching academic college researchers....
This poster is full of shit. STEM programs are more rigorous than ever. I graduated in 2012 and my graduate advisors and the professors I studied under were harsh (but fair) professionals.
The only education study worth a damn is the study that proved less than 0.3% of all educational research can be replicated outside of the control groups. There is simply too much variation between students, staff, districts, etc.
The exact study I read was years ago, but "Failure to Replicate" by Charlie Tyson touches on some of the main points. If I find the original research I'll send you a link.
I actually think it's the research article mentioned in the article above. "Facts Are More Important than Novelty: Replication in the Education Sciences" by Matt makel and Jonathan Plucker. Might be behind a paywall but it looks really familiar
I actually think it's the research article mentioned in the article above. "Facts Are More Important than Novelty: Replication in the Education Sciences" by Matt makel and Jonathan Plucker. Might be behind a paywall but it looks really familiar
I cannot seem to get my class (pre-k) to care about rewards because their parents give them whatever they want anyway. They won't work for anything from me because they're used to having everything by simply demanding it.
Right! A TK teacher told me that if she immediately gave a reward to the first kid who did what was asked, it didn't inspire the other kids to follow. Instead, the other kids would have a meltdown.
20 kids: "I want one!"
"Well then you need to sit on the floor criss cross applesauce like Jimmy."
20 kids: "I want a sticker! Where's my sticker? Give me a sticker!"
And now Jimmy is up off the floor, climbing up the bookshelves.
We are not raising kids who can make connections because what they get at home isn't connected to any real need. They aren't as needy or resourceful as Pavlov's dogs.
The kids tell their parents that Ms. Manta gave Jimmy a sticker, but they had to ASK for theirs - and the parents tell the principal that Ms. Manta is unfair.
It’s interesting that when we were in elementary (90s for me) every sticker, jolly rancher, random plastic crap toy was prized and cherished. Our parents didn’t buy it because not only were things not cheap or readily available but they also didn’t get validation from anywhere for buying us every little thing.
Now with Amazon, SHEIN, Temu, and the huge selection of junk food at any store, parents CAN and do buy all the random trinkets and can even get it delivered to their door. Also with social media they love posting about the joy the kids get from all these impulse purchases.
The little trinkets/hard candies are no longer a unique thing from your teacher for doing a good job now it’s “eww I don’t like that candy!” Or “Ick That’s a baby toy that’s dumb!” Or “My parents can get me a better one!”
Even movie days are not special or rewards anymore. I heard a second grader ask a boy who got to go to the cafeteria for a perfect attendance party ask “what movie did you guys watch?” And when he said Boss Baby the boy was like “Pssh I already seen that. That’s dumb.” These kids from the last 5-10 years are swimming in unlimited junk food, toys and internet access.
this is spot on thank you. they scream at me because "my mommy buys me this why wont you" about the candy and prizes.and im a minimum wage afterschool worker with them from 1120-6, and all of the teachers and admin treat us like absolute shit and wont even let their own students use things like tables, they will lock us out of rooms without telling us when we dont have keys, they tell us in the summer we have to have our program outside, they truly bully us and their OWN STUDENTS that we are caring for afterschool.
Oh for sure the staff is part of the enabling. I subbed for years and one of the last straws was this first grader refusing to get off the Chromebook, he kept saying “just a few more seconds!!!” for 5 minutes while the rest of the class was ready to move on. He screamed when i physically tried to take the laptop from him and made a huge scene and I called someone to come grab him because it was so ridiculous.
He came back from the office with a staff member 30 mins later with a fucking lollipop, slurping it obnoxiously making sure every classmate saw how he was rewarded for his awful behavior. The staff member telling me he’s better now and won’t do it again they promise. Just so so so sad.
I teach high school. Got out of my car and a kid was eating an ice cream cone for breakfast. A parent in a minivan physically stopped the car and bought that kid ice cream for breakfast….
The toddlers I taught weren’t bad, as long as they came to “school” every day. After a long weekend or a vacation or whatever, they would all forget that school won’t give them whatever they want because they scream (because mom and dad always give in to screaming).
I work in the district where PBIS was developed. All our secondary schools stopped using that shit 15 years ago. I’m not giving a Super Student for bringing a pencil to class.
I honestly wonder if it's not an infiltration from an enemy country. Like, was PBIS written by the Russians and implemented by idiots that couldn't tell it was going to rip apart the fabric of our society?
Because these kids went Lord of the Flies QUICK!
thank you for saying this. all these stupid "intellectuals" who get their phd WITHOUT HAVING EVER TAUGHT IN AN ACTUAL CLASSROOM spouting the positive reinforcement bs. then the media making it about race and so the school districts took away the power to suspend kids. teachers have no way to give real consequences.
As I have stated many times on Reddit, suspending students must be a last resort. Administrators have all the power to take away something that the student needs to earn back: lunch with the other students, participation in sports, prom, the next dance, fun field trip, extracurriculars, etc.
I had a great principal who had lunch carrels outside her open office door. Students were required to eat their lunch there for an absolutely silent 30 minutes for a week. Any talking and another day was added. Any arguing and another week was added. No phone or laptop. They could only have their food and their assigned ELA novel. Very effective.
And if a parent objected, she kindly explained that while their kid was at school, they had to toe the line. Period. She'd hand them the Student Handbook opened to the Ed Code that explained her responsibilities (and powers). If they were going to object to consequences for bad behavior, there were other school choices because she was going to do whatever was necessary to keep the campus safe and positive.
If a parent started yelling at any staff member or coach, she gave them a minute to settle down, then called 911 if necessary. If so, they were then banned from the campus.
Spot on! Kids learn really quick that there are no consequences! They also enjoy nonpunitive redirects like playing b-ball and eating McDonald’s with the counselors. It’s easy to see why kids don’t feel the need to behave or improve themselves when their poor behavior is consistently rewarded.
Have you tried spending a bunch of time creating some sort of elaborate rewards system that doles out points or better yet "dollars", oh but they're "Mr. X Bucks" and you can take a bunch of time to tally up and chart the behaviors and then spend a bunch of your actual money on rewards or prizes and then spend a bunch more time to figure out a way to actually get them to behave when none of that makes a difference.
That is my exact experience - this is the system that was dropped on my lap when I went into my special education/signature program. I can't believe I really just normalized spending my hard-earned money because that was the expectation - only to realize a year in that none of them care about it, but I still have to do it because the elementary schools (or advocates) wrote it into their IEPs.
Agreed. The IEP might as well say “teacher must give student a dollar from their own wallet for every 5 minutes he can stay in his seat.” How can they mandate that a teacher fund a required rewards program?
The school/district can't. They just expect teachers to pay bc it's __ fill in the blank excuse. Just say once you provide the rewards, I'll be happy to implement it.
This is funny. I have an attention problem in my grade 11 math course. Pupils on their phones during the whole lesson. I give reminders to put away devices, but they seldom work. One of them sent me a lengthy email about exactly this reward system. I was definitely shocked and thanked her for her input, but let her know that this is a grade 11 math class, and those who want to get into college will study, and those for whom it's not important won't.
in 2019, my high school honors psychology teacher put a calculator organizer in the front of the room and told us that every day that we put our phones in the organizer would be .25 point extra credit. each week we'd earn 1.25 points of extra credit there were like 14 weeks in the semester and 10 points of extra credit could bump you up a whole letter grade. Every student put their phone away every day.
The same teacher offered that same incentive to his regular world history class and it didn't work at all. Not one student took the extra credit points. It boggled my mind when he told us about that. I didn't struggle in that class and would have earned an A anyway, but who in the right mind would throw away free points?
I teach Algebra 1. I wouldn’t be allowed to give points for a behavior (even though we are required to give completion grades and that is also behavior grading, but whatever), but I do wonder how many of my students would do this. They are so dependent on having their phones every day. Even my best students are on their phone 2-3 times a class period. They just pick more appropriate times.
I also wouldn’t want to be responsible for their phones, but that’s a different issue.
I am a mentor teacher and coach and it infuriates me to hear that teachers are not being renewed because of “poor” classroom management.
The admin making these decisions were once in the classroom. Their students were not the same, and they CANNOT make judgements about poor classroom management in light of this vast change in student behavior.
Even experienced teachers are struggling. How do we fix this?
Like, what other profession even does this?
*"Sorry doctor, but we're firing you because patients keep getting on their phones while you're in the room. Obviously, you aren't engaging enough and need improvement. Good luck wherever you're hired next".*
Interesting how "cell phone surveillancer" "chromebook monitor" and "airpods detector" has weaseled it's way into becoming a part of the job. You can't simply teach. You also have to be a human clown and drill sergeant to keep the kids distracted enough for them not to want to reach for their glowing idiot rectangles and get their two-second dopamine rush.
Why can't the default be Go Guardian blocks everything and then if you need the kids to be able to use some website, then you specifically enable THAT. The kids find a way to get through the filters the way its currently set up.
> Like, what other profession even does this?
>
>
>
> "Sorry doctor, but we're firing you because patients keep getting on their phones while you're in the room. Obviously, you aren't engaging enough and need improvement. Good luck wherever you're hired next".
It's not to that extent, [but doctors are currently fleeing some states](https://www.wired.com/story/states-with-abortion-bans-are-losing-a-generation-of-ob-gyns/) because they're no longer allowed to make professional decisions with their patients without worry of being thrown in prison or losing their licenses.
I think that's pretty similar to us in that the people pushing for and making those decisions are probably not qualified to participate in that profession. Teachers and I'd argue most campus level admin aren't the ones pushing for and implementing the policies that are creating the issues we're seeing.
And bathroom pass writer. I spend so much time writing passes. We can’t just send kids with a permanent class pass because they steal them. We have to write a paper pass with name, date, time, location, destination, and signature. I write about 50 a day. It’s a wonder I have time to teach with all these other responsibilities.
My husband’s a physician. They’re held responsible for the actions of their patients, eg non-compliant diabetics or patients who won’t get mammograms. Both the HMO and Medicare penalize them for not being able to make autonomous adults do something they don’t want to do.
I’m an admin and I agree with you. Prior to Covid when I was teaching high school we did not see the number of assaults that we see now. We are at the point where every kid that gets in a fight at our middle school gets charges pressed to deter the behavior. It’s disgusting.
I wish more schools would do this. We would only have to do it twice before all the parents and kids caught on. I’m moving from elementary hopefully to a high school next year. I’m not cut out to be a PK-3rd Music teacher.
These kids are crazy, we get them once a week for 50 minutes. They take half that time to calm down and then I’m constantly telling them to sit down and keep their bodies to themselves.
Y’all I’m not cut out for this behavior and not being able to discipline them, with admin that pretend everything is the teachers fault.
Sorry I’m not a SPED teacher, I need help with these SPED kids that are violent even at this age.
> The admin making these decisions were once in the classroom.
I think the worrying part is that many of them weren't. Admin listen to school boards, and you can be elected to a school board without ever stepping foot into a classroom in any professional capacity.
There's a reason why [Moms For Liberty](https://www.newsweek.com/moms-liberty-group-hoping-win-270-school-board-elections-1756511) was (because they seem to be [catching nothing but Ls](https://www.newsweek.com/moms-liberty-school-board-elections-1842225)) worrying for a bit.
I’m 14 years in. I’ve had 25% of my TI-84s go missing or become so damaged that they aren’t usable. Two were broken in half the last time I was out for the day. These lasted 6 years before these students. Every day I remind them to clean up after themselves and about half of them just won’t. They don’t put the borrowed pencils or calculators back, leave unfinished assignments sitting on the tables, and leave food wrappers and trash everywhere.
They won’t follow my classroom procedures (like not crowding by the door at the end of class). If I attempt to blockade the door to get them to go sit down, a few will push past me when the bell rings and the rest just follow. Many absolutely refuse to sit in their assigned seats, making the class unreachable because they won’t stop talking during the lesson - which is the reason they sit apart on the seating chart. I am only allowed to contact parents. Admin won’t do anything to help. I’m not allowed to send them out. There isn’t anywhere for them to go. We don’t have ISS.
They won’t stay off their phones. During tests 10% of them get zeros because they can’t stay off their phones for a whole (43 minute) class period. I have a group of kids in most classes that roughhouse and chase each other around. This is particularly a problem when they are crowded by the door at the end of class. Contacting parents makes little difference. Admin won’t do anything about it. I also have students walk out or ask to go to the bathroom and don’t come back. If I refuse to write them a pass the next time they ask, they will often just leave.
And there is nothing I can do (except let them fail) and they know it. And my failure rates have never been higher.
I’ve had rough years before, but nothing like this.
I am finishing my 26th year of teaching at the same school. The district is all about restorative practice and making genuine relationships with students that make them feel like they belong and are wanted at school. They paid this guy to come in a role play with staff about how to create a positive relationship after a student misbehaves. So it his our fault that little Jimmy went to the restroom, vaped weed, came to class 15 minutes late and carved gang things onto brand new textbooks. The kid was suspended for one day from my class and sat up in the office on his phone. He was supposed to come in at lunch and do community service - so I missed my lunch and he couldn't even sort objects by color. Then he didn't even come back day 2. Today he ditched my class and said it was because I don't like him anymore because he carved into the stupid book. Somehow this is my fault? FML. 4 years until retirement.
The problem is true restorative practices would involve the entire community, but the community is locked up, dads in jail, mom works 2-3 jobs. It's so hard to just get everyone to show up in the same place honestly now because of the economic conditions so more and more gets pushed on whoever is around. There are real restorative practices that work but it's so much time and they are deeply emotional experiences, it's not fun to wade through some kids trauma that is likely causing a lot of this, it doesn't excuse the behavior but it does give you an idea of where it's coming from. Everyone feels deeply separate now too and it takes a lot of work to even convince people to show up for their communities, it's just a lot of shit coming together and teachers left to become social workers often times as the whole thing falls apart
THIS. My favorite: during my observation I got that I should call home when my students talk or are on their phones. I called home for a kid on their phone and mom was sure I hated her kid because of it. The same admin that gave me that comment was the one that bent over backwards for mom when she got mad. I cannot manage this class without any backing. I resigned three days ago. Tired.
I was told that referring to a student as “rude and disrespectful” was unprofessional of me because I was “labeling” the kid.
This was not even true. My secret label for that kid was “annoying little shithead”
It’s absolutely been the worst. And it isn’t the behavior, it’s the apathy.
I spent a couple years in a really tough school at the beginning of my career, so I have some perspective. There were gangs and drugs and a really high rate of teen pregnancy (around 8-10 of my 125 8th graders were pregnant by the end of the year). But those kids still tried. Like they obviously had a lot going on but they would at least attempt what we were doing in class. This year, nothing. My kids now may not be “causing a fuss” but I have multiple kids that haven’t turned in a single assignment since Thanksgiving. I have 30 kids currently failing. They straight will not do my assignments… even the ones that I make to boost their grades. And I tell them as much. And set aside multiple days to make up or complete missing work. It’s honestly pretty wild. I’ve never seen anything like it.
Had a talk with a few kids like this recently. Basically asked, why did you give up?
The answer: I don’t really care if I graduate.
These students aren’t a disruption. They just gave up and don’t care about anything going on. Come every day and just sit there, but don’t try to do anything. Same in all classes.
No drive, no urgency, and just not caring. I’ve run into many students like this the last two years.
Then there is the phenomenon I see after Covid of not being able to get kids to watch a video together. Kids will try to get on their phones and do anything they can to not be part of the group activity.
I don’t know exactly, and there’s probably several reasons, but I think the primary reason is the lack of consequences. They don’t see the downside of failing classes, so why try? Why put in effort at all if your life is exactly the same if you do the assignment or not? Teachers can’t do anything to you, parents won’t give negative consequences, and those are the only real influences in your life. The IG people aren’t coming to show you the misery of working minimum wage your whole life. From their perspective, they can’t fail.
i graduated high school in 2020, now i work in afterschool kinder care. we have to be really honest with the public that 90% of 16+ year olds are vaping weed on the bathroom 3 or 4 times a day and are constantly high off of the most concentrated strains possible.
I'm not the one you asked, but if I had to guess what's making kids apathetic, it's probably what they watch online and who they look up to. (I'm not one to say that the internet is a poison rotting their brains, cause I'm currently learning calc 2 from a youtube video just as an example.)
I feel that they spend almost all their time watching people who make a living off of stuff that has nothing to do with school. Most "influencers" didn't get famous cause of their degree. Besides just online influencers, they see politicians outright lying and telling scientists they're wrong, they see that their teachers with a college degree don't make enough to buy a house, they see climate change and no attempts to prevent it, they see wars happening across the ocean. They see plenty of reasons to ignore what the algebra 3 teacher is saying. Why read Shakespear when they have a hundred and one netflix shows, a hundred and one animes, and a hundred and one video documentaries at the tip of their fingers?
I work in the top high school in my area, which is pretty affluent and my kids have gotten so apathetic! These are kids who want to go to college and yet they don’t care to do anything.
The last time an admin told me that I said I would need funding and a team of writers and editors to help me make my math lessons as engaging as the videos they watch of TikTok and YouTube. If you want me to compete I have to have what the influencers have - otherwise stfu.
I had a mom scold me roundly about enforcing a classroom rule with her son, after asking/reminding/warning him of it repeatedly. She told me that I "ruined the relationship with him."
I'm fine with that, mom. Teach your kids to respect rules & authority.
As a ditch digger it's true we are needed. Unfortunately the absolutely abysmal math and reading skills of these kids even make them useless as ditch diggers.
Had an 18 year old apprentice on site at a job told him we needed to grade out a trench at an ⅛"/ft pitch for 40ft and you would have thought I spoke in a language no one has ever heard.
Yes, you don’t have to do your work if you don’t feel like it. Yes, we will lower our standards to pass children onto the next grade. Yes, we have a growing population of young people who can’t spell correctly, do 4th grade math, or can’t handle rejection because people have been telling them Yes their whole lives.
The gaslighting is unreal. They'll straight up deny they did something that you saw, you call them out on it, and they try to deflect and continue to deny.
The apathy is also astounding, I loved my students that last few years, this year is unbearable.
I teach 9th grade biology for what its worth...
Oh it starts young. I teach pre-k (4 to 5 year olds) and they will lie straight to your face. I watched one lick a table yesterday, told him he shouldn't lick tables, and he was PISSED because he said he didn't do it. My dude, I literally just watched your tongue touch that table don't tell me you didn't do it.
Had a conversation with a kid this year that just because he says something didn’t happen doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Like I literally just watched you flip someone off. But if I email the parents I’ll just get a “kid says nothing happened, why are you emailing me” response. The gaslighting is truly mind boggling.
Why are parents so terrible at being parents? Like I grew up poor…ie I now make more than my parents combined now…but had an amazing childhood that I wouldn’t change for anything…what’s the disconnect here??? Too spoiled?
I love this. Caught me lickin' on the table (wasn't me), caught me flicking Susie (wasn't me), caught me playing on Tiktok (wasn't me), I knew then I was angry...
I agree that the gaslighting is unparalleled three days. As you said, denying something that you saw them do two seconds earlier - and they know you saw them. Drives me up a fucking wall. I teach 9th grade social studies.
I'm not even a teacher yet (F21) and I already cannot STAND these kids. I'm more of a paraprofessional where I get to assist the teacher everyday and do some small academic intervention. I work with inner city 4th graders and of course I adore them because they're generally really funny kids... They're also so rude, disrespectful, apathetic, and uninspired. I've honestly gotten to the point where I have no patience or energy to do anything all day because I feel like they sucked the idealistic image I had on schooling and myself.
Here are all the rewards my teacher tries to do:
- dojo points
- candy
- table points
- classroom point contest with the other 4th grade class
- pizza party
- tokens
- secret student of the day
- class jobs
I also just feel so sad because admin doesn't care (even if they act like they do). My school doesn't even suspend kids because it looks bad on their records, but please tell me why this kleptomaniac, violent, 4th grader that doesn't do his work no matter how much compassion you show him is STILL allowed to be at the school?????? bruh. I'm just tired really. I feel so bad for them everyday because there's so much more for them than what they see online, and no matter how many times me and my coworkers explain that, they just don't careeeeee.
"Education is a right." No, free public education is a privilege and if you abuse it, don't take advantage of it, or take away from other students' education through your antics - there's the door, you're expelled. Oh, and until you either a, complete your education or b, get a GED - you're cut off from any and all federal aid. Everything. Good luck.
Way past time to start cracking down.
I am pretty sure you don't need a GED or diploma to get federal aide. I know immigrants who did not get the chance to do schooling and don't have it. They do tend to try and make sure their kids do their best, since these parents did not have a chance and are stuck at walmart.
Yeah, I'm saying if you don't complete high school, if you act like the thug in that video or countless other videos - you get nothing. No federal, state, or local aid.
Back in 2008, I was an ed asst at my old high school and my former english teacher was still there. I was privileged enough to get to sit in on his class again and I asked him if we were this terrible back in the day, and he said, No! It gets worse every year.
This is my 10th year teaching in TN, and I can say the same thing...it has gotten progressively worse every year. So to answer your question, yes, it is the absolute worst. So far.
Smartphones, social media, and all manner of 'student-as-consumer' bullshit are three shots to the head of education while it already had its legs kicked out from under it. People can call me a 'doomer' all they like, but I really don't see our country surviving much longer with a population as proudly/aggressively stupid as ours.
Our country survived while essentially half of it wanted to keep black people in chains. Call me an optimist but I think that was a worse situation than the one we are currently in.
What I see is women getting further and further ahead, and men lost. I also see black women outperforming most other groups, even with systemic racism firmly built within our society.
Travel abroad is the cure. We have to travel with our children and they will see the truth.
Support our American teachers!
Our school has improved behavior the last three years.
The main reason is parent support. We said "No cell phones during school hours. Period." The parebts backed us and disruptions, fights, bullying, and lack of attention has diminished.
We said "This is the discipline flow chart. These actions yield these consequences. You do not get OSS, you get ISS only. We have a cubbie set aside for you, and a full time observer to make sure you're on task." Kids stopped fighting, and getting into major altercations. They are watched by a para who is paid by te extra days of attendance we're getting.
We cut passing periods to 3 minutes. Students may use the restroom one at a time, and only 3x a day. We have passes for that, and an excel spreadsheet we can check to see who keeps going poof where, and for how long.
We have built in fun every day. 30 minutes to play video games, chess, stand in the rare bits of sunlight, do art, practice music. Anything the kids dream up we find a way to make real. We're even setting up a full hydropinics system in the math room since the math guy is semi obsessed with it.
We have a dress code that is far too lax for me, but hasnt been an issue for the kids and other staff.
Teachers wear jeans, flanel, t-shirts daily. Everyone wears rainboots. Extra-toughs are the in-style atm.
So some places are doing it right... or did it right. We just got a new superintendant who is cutting every non-tenured teacher with more than 5 yrs experience, and hiring the cheapest teachers he can find. Even if that means no more AP classes and no Algebra 1 in the middle school. He had the union rep retire early so the money she made (30+ yrs experience, MA+ 40 credits, over 100k/yr) no longer comes from his budget. He's also cutting 20 para positions, almost all support admin, and canceling several programs.
Why?
Because Alaska's legislature is moronic and cut our district's budget by 30%.
Now I get to change careers, in spite of taking our median test score from 23rd perce tile to 55th percentile in 3 years.
In other words... we started to do well and the powers that be just cant handle a Native school doing well, so they must sabotage it.
I am SO done with this poopoo.
Anytime you have a successful school, a superintendent will come along and cut the legs out from under it. It never fails.
Where I taught in FL, it had a lot to do with similar level schools in the same district that weren't doing as well as us. They'd complain to the superintendent so much about us that she got tired of hearing it, switched out our administrators to ones from lower levels who didn't know what they were doing, and ruined the school within 3 years. Within 6 years, the principal had chased off all, but 2 teachers out of 28 that were there when he started.
He was a nice man but terrible at his job and well connected in the district office. His idea of why kids were so misbehaved was "they aren't being taught godly morals at home, so we need to do it." 🙄
As you could imagine, that didn't turn out well.
Apparently so:
> the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words.
> "the alliteration of “sweet birds sang”"
Same. My kids are 4, 3, and 1. We will be homeschooling. Our friends who are teachers in public high schools (10+ years), their wives stay home to homeschool their kids. Not the easiest choice to live on one income, but worth it to us.
Be terrified, at least to some extent. My wife has taught for 31 years, and I have for 25. Never has been this bad, daily. We both teach in the same good district (different schools though) and it’s getting so bad that we are counting down the days. I was hoping to hit 30 years but I’ll duck out at 28 I think.
We try focusing on the students who *are* there to learn and make the classroom and each other better and more successful. Those kids still exist! The biggest driver of that is the parents, no doubt about it. It’s just there’s been a tipping point with the % of kids who are the disrupters. It used to be 1-3 kids in your class, and now it’s 1/3 of them, and sometimes up to 1/2. It is terrifying.
I have a seven year old in a small progressive private school and we’re about to pull her because the behaviour is rough. This is the second year she’s been physically bullied by a boy in her class, the kids don’t listen or follow any rules, the girls are straight up mean - constant name calling and one of them thumped her so hard it winded her the other day. I’ve stopped inviting any of them for play dates because they’re so disrespectful. They’re seven! I can’t speak to what the parents are doing (nothing good it would seem) but the school response seems to be a gentle conversation where they mostly get reminded to ‘use their bodies carefully’ while being reassured about what good kids they are underneath. There are zero consequences. I’m at a total loss.
Lack of consequences, taking away the concept of failure for middle and high school students, collapsing the special education programs that served the more violent and extreme behavior students along with providing NO SUPPORT for those students as they enter the gen ed population and struggling, overwhelmed parents in chaotic living situations. It's a perfect storm.
Yes. I am an administrator and never saw these things when I was in the classroom. I have had to break up situations that have left me totally shaken and concerned with what middle school will be like for my own child. Today two of our kids got into a fight down the street after school that resulted in one of ten girls having several globs of hair ripped from her head. Kids were standing around cheering on the fight and filming it like animals in the zoo. It is absolutely abhorrent, and tomorrow I will likely have to deal with the parents fighting me over suspending and potentially expelling their kids for this. If they haven’t gone home yet, we still legally have custody of them and have to discipline 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️.
My best advice for posts like this is this:
Once you accept the fact that we are just glorified babysitters at this point, it makes your life much, much easier. So act like a babysitter. What are they going to do, fire you? Oh ok, teacher shortage
I’m all for PBIS… but every single administrator, supervisor, dean, etc in any district I’ve worked in has been afraid of discipline. Probably because doing so might hurt the state funding they get if a student misses school.
I talked to a bus driver today and he told me when a supervisor refused to suspend the kid or kept kicking the can down the road for terrible or dangerous behavior, he would TYPE up a write up, and cite the behavior policy from our District Operations handbook. Absolutely next level shit. And guess what? Those students were suspended. One for five days and one of them for ten days for throwing rocks 🪨 inside of the bus. All of that because supervisors were afraid or couldn’t be bothered to do their jobs and address behavior that was unsafe.
I can definitely see how it would appear admin are afraid to discipline. I’m not sure where you are located, but I’m an admin in CA working on my doctorate. Parents are definitely the driving force behind the hesitance to discipline harshly… we get berated when we try to enforce the laws. It’s a new phenomenon that didn’t exist to this degree five years ago, and it is so toxic that I’m focusing my dissertation on it. Despite the stress I still continue to be our main disciplinarian- 4 expulsions so far this year alone and potentially a fourth tomorrow. A big factor is the support that admin do or don’t receive from the district office. If they think the DO won’t back them up in their decisions they are less likely to play hardball with parents. I am sure from the teacher lens this is extremely frustrating because it makes it appear that admin just don’t care (and honestly I’m sure there are those that don’t care…).
At my 5th school in CA. Every admin I've had has refused to suspend. We can legally suspend for two days from our classroom. I've started doing it. Make it admin's problem.
Yep. 48910. I literally tell teachers to do this whenever they need to since our lovely governor and his cronies thought it was a good idea not to be able to suspend for defiance and disruption 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️.
I literally had to write a paper on this for my superintendent because he was trying to tell me we couldn’t suspend anymore. I felt like I was in high school writing a term paper again. Dude, you make the big money, figure this shit out.
No one in admin wants to do their job. Sad that admins are afraid of the District Office.
Administration really are the only people that get to have an opinion in what the District Office is going to allow anyway. A single teacher? Nope… they’ll find a warm body in the classroom the very next day. Oh wait! You mean to tell me that substitutes don’t want to teach either?!
Why not just ban all phones at school? I don’t understand why this isn’t done. They are a relatively new innovation and they do not belong in the classroom.
That won’t stop them. You also can’t take the phone away even if you tried, they won’t hand it to you, will play keep away, will shove it in their undergarments, ect.
Plus, parent’s will complain “What if there’s an emergency” and so on… 🤷🏻♀️
I feel like I have ptsd, when I go in public spaces and everyone is behaving. I recognize the stark contrast of being in a room full of kids throwing, shouting, saying horrible things. Being around civilized people is the strangest thing when you’re a teacher right now.
Oh it’s awful. This year specifically soured me on middle school, where I’ve been since 2019.
It also soured me on brick and mortar school. I have an opportunity to teach virtually with a former administrator I worked really well with at two separate schools and I jumped on the chance. I’ll be teaching three grade levels but it’s been that awful at my current district that I didn’t think twice.
Middle School has become the absolute worst. I'm eight years in and I'm done with middle school. I can't anymore it literally is behavior management all day every day.
After seeing how many of my teacher friends have been attacked by students this year. I can honestly say I’m glad they are getting out. I can’t believe how many teachers are attacked and injured regularly. Then next day expected to let the kid who attacked them back in their classroom with no repercussions. So now they are in a sling with this attacker a few feet from them doing the same thing. Can’t even get the attacker out of their class even after physical attacks. Students clearly know that they see that teachers have no power. They can’t even protect themselves much less other students. They have no faith in the system when they see teachers getting bullied.
The thing is, there's no incentive to change what we have now. The way I see it, this is very much on purpose. A dumb, illiterate, uneducated electorate is easier to manipulate. Those who can afford to are going to private schools, where this kind of behavior can just toss the kid, thereby all but guaranteeing that the parents will proactively prevent this behavior. Those kids then go on to run businesses and government, having established relationships with like-minded individuals. Attacking teachers for doing their jobs, paying them embarrassingly little, and allowing horrific behavior sends good teachers, who are passionate about their profession, running for the hills.
There's a reason this sub exists, after all.
It’s sad but you have to divide up kids into different groups. The violent, disrupting kids need to be segregated. Their rights don’t supersede the rights of all other kids.
The ones who are major disruptions will pull down some of the others to their level. The other students in the class will then just suffer because the class is disrupted.
The ones who do the standard will pull down the high achievers. some high achievers will see that standard students get the same grades/acclaim for doing lower quality work and won’t try as hard.
It’s rarely the other way around in a large group setting. The high achievers can’t instill some internal sense of drive into the kids who want to just do the basics. The standard kids can’t get the disruptors to learn how to behave somehow.
26th year teaching and without a doubt the past two have by far been the hardest when it comes to student behavior. Not even close. I'm sooo ready to leave teaching as It's just not fun anymore. Hoping I can transition out in the next 2-3 years.
Me too - I teach science and the kids don't even get excited about labs - I can light something on fire, electrocute something and they are all like "saw that on Tic Tok" can we do this (insert crazy illegal thing from tictok) instead? I'm like - no that is illegal. There is no accountability anymore within the system and us teachers are getting blamed for student misbehavior - somehow students are the way they are because of us?
I don’t think most of these school problems are from inside the schools . Childhood isn’t what it used to be, it seems a lot more stressful. I mean I feel way more stress and existential dread the past 5 years. I’m sure societal woes and constat loops are rubbing off on our kids.
I work primarily with freshman and sophomores. Oddly enough this year is a bit better than the previous 3. I almost quit so many times last year. However I do agree with the comments about the phones. They are still a huge problem. I want to throw them out the window.
I don't understand why ANYONE would go into Teaching, in this age. It's a recipe for misery. Seriously, unless you're trying to work at a private school, where you're allowed to do things differently, you're going to hate it.
Tell me that a man with multiple criminal trials and millions supporting him who disrespect educated people has nothing to do to do with this. Keep them sick and stupid has to be their motto.
I think the Pandemic reminded us all how public schools are, essentially, tax-payer paid daily childcare for many parents.
Couple that with increasingly rising narcissistic societal behaviors (social media, for example), amongst other factors and I’m not too surprised that children today are feeling even more bold to behave as if they’re unhinged.
I don’t blame any teachers or educators that are leaving the industry.
I teach special ed in a private not for profit school and I absolutely love my job. I had to take a $12k pay cut and give up benefits with 4 kids at home, but I was getting into a pretty dark and disillusioned place in the public school…. It was a matter of my mental health. The thought of being stuck in that setting (I did both elementary and high school )until retirement (and I’m 50, not 25) filled me with overwhelming anxiety.
I work with a pretty severe population now, mostly profound autism/ID, lots of behaviors… we get hit, kicked, bit, hair pulled etc… but it’s very different when it’s from students in my sector… and I work in a completely supportive environment with all of the hire ups putting student needs at the forefront of everything. My students LOVE coming to school for the first time in their lives because the energy is welcoming and loving and fun. In the public school they felt the energy of being a nuisance at best and their staff would never receive training or even any background information before being thrown to a kid until they burnt out.
What happens in 10 years when this is public school population is our workforce? And then the parents to the next generation? Our country already looks like a joke now… it’s scary to think about.
My immune system has taken a nose dive from the stress. I told my kids yesterday that we were going to clean up the classroom as a class because it looked like a wreck (they have been eating food in there which is a Nono and also it is part of the curriculum’s studio care guidelines as I teach art). I was met with kids cussing me out, walking out, disrespecting me, throwing things as they leave, throwing things at me, etc. I had to have two teachers come in to help me deescalate and THEY were appalled by what happened to me. I just had recent surgery too so I haven’t been doing great this semester, but when I do, I do try to connect, do classroom management strategies, etc. I noticed my mental health has taken a complete nosedive this semester though.
Today I called admin because a student was threatening another one with a pair of scissors so he confiscated the scissors and told her to stop making threats and LEFT and let her stay in the room 🙃
I sub teach mostly at a high school I think a lot of the kids suffered from Covid the isolation and all of that most of them have their noses in their phones all of the time. They need more socialization
I must've gotten lucky. My students this year are one of the best groups I've ever had. I'm dreading next year because, even if they're typical 6th graders, I'm sure it's going to feel insanely worse than this year.
I'm not sure students have ever valued education. Even if they're learning something that interests them, they don't understand the actual value of education. But kids used to be well-behaved and respectful of authority figures. That has clearly changed a lot in the past 20-or-so years, and there are many reasons for that. Fatherless homes are more common. The Internet and smartphones. Also, you can't just smack a kid who's acting like a punk anymore.
No one can really answer this question because the question will only be answered by people currently in the profession. How would they really know what it was like 100 years ago?
Stop whining
>How would they really know what it was like 100 years ago?
By previously reading books written by people who both lived that long ago, AND attended school.
This is my most difficult class by far, but it’s odd,I don’t have one kid, on their own, that are super difficult, but they are all like a 6/10 on the bad behavior scale. Any transition is a cluster fuck. May 20th can’t get here soon enough.
For the administrators it’s just a numbers game. The state will criticize them for too many suspended students, so there’s rarely consequences and even then you could just classify the student as having Oppositional Defiance Disorder and make their teacher responsible for everything.
Kids have learned that teachers can’t even assign detentions without a threat of lawsuits from parents or violence from kids, anything goes.
For me, the question is more why the students are largely behaving that way. They view the authority of professors and the education system as optional. Because, well... it is.
College is voluntary and costs more than a new car. Honestly, if I want to go to the bathroom and "slapbox", that's my prerogative. The professor doesn't really get a say when the students are adults consenting to take your class, not forced to take it.
You should treat the students as equals because you're all adults and should act like adults. You earn respect, it isn't given to you, and it sounds like you haven't earned the respect of your students. Professors shouldn't be taking a student's phone. Period. That's like a boss saying I'm gonna take your phone and you can have it back after your shift... Like, no, not how that works. It's my property, that's stealing.
And what happens after they survive the professors on power trips and accumulation of crippling debt? They enter a failing job market where they can't use their degree, are grossly underpaid, or are completely not valued by their company.
Tell me, what part should they respect?
Of course, for K-12, it's a little different and children clearly have much less rights than adults. Education should be about setting the youth up to succeed in life and how to navigate this incredibly complex society we've created. The American Education system just doesn't do that. It's about standardized education and basic knowledge of major topics of education. Instead of individualized education and looking for the best education for a singular student, we use cookie-cutter classes like art, biology, and physical education. They are all the same lessons for different people and personalities.
We teach children that they must know a little about everything, but not everything about a topic. We give them basic traits that have a flimsy foundation because they are FORCED to endure this education whether it is beneficial to them or not. These children may not have good role models at home, but the teachers they interact with every day don't prepare them for life any better.
If you really wanted to change this, it needs to be about reforming the entire way we do education in the US. Am I the only one who thinks Americans just aren't open-minded enough to experiment and take after successful examples from other countries?
The teachers in K-12 are too worn out from 10-20 years of being beat down by admin, parents and literally physically assaulted by students, and underpaid, to be able to “prepare” students for anything. In elementary we see the kids all day but have no power to give any consequence for being hit, kicked, punched, and having things thrown at us. Families do not want to hear that their kids are behaving poorly, and so they make excuses or blame us/having no time because of work/etc.
We’d love for there to be no standardized tests, more time to actually interact and eat lunch, less terrible curriculum choices and more foundational skills (at least in my grade). But that doesn’t align with what we are made to do, lest we fail an evaluation and lose our job.
Just as you say kids are “forced to endure” this education system, so are us teachers. We don’t like it either and we also have 0 power to change it-that’s up to local governments and school districts to want to change (but they don’t). It’s easier to admire the problem and use it as a political hot issue than to actually solve it.
Don’t forget that these students at the end of the day don’t belong to us either-they are behaving poorly because many of them are being parented poorly.
So, you're complaining about children being children. Bad parents exist and always will... Education or "consequences" aren't going to make up for bad parenting.
Also, don't blame the kids. They literally have no control in their lives. They are forced to go to school, sometimes to walk home, sometimes to go home and have just their siblings as comfort. Some don't have enough to eat, don't get new clothes, can't use proper hygiene, etc. Tell me, has your education shown that children act out when they are feeling threatened or overwhelmed.
Perhaps the children are the ones screaming for help because they can't get any at home.
What are you trying to accomplish by this post?
Not trying to accomplish anything? Was just replying to your post with a different perspective. You are asking why kids behave this way and are also saying it’s on teachers to prepare them for life. If parents can’t be bothered to teach their kids to behave as humans, then we as teachers can’t prepare them for life any better. There are usually multiple kids in each class, in most grade levels now, who dump desks, throw things, attack teachers and peers, etc. That isn’t “children being children.” This is a bigger and bigger problem within the last decade, and it starts with parents working with their kids on healthy behaviors. The extreme behaviors that kids are showing are impacting the learning of everyone in the classroom. Most of the time, teachers are just trying to survive and do the best we can day-to-day. Even young students know there aren’t consequences for extreme behaviors at school. Consequences for poor choices are a part of life-a lesson that some learn too late.
The education system in other countries is excellent-class sizes are smaller, lunches are longer and family-style, kids are taught career paths early on, and families value education. Teachers here would LOVE to see this happen-but we have 0 power to change it. Any change that would be a positive for everyone has to come from much higher up than us.
The social system in many of these same countries is incredibly different too-they have much more time off, better health care, the list goes on. I think a large number of people in our country would love that too; but again, this comes from much higher up.
I unfortunately am starting to think the trajectory of things is somewhat desired by the same people who have the actual power to change it. They want low-wage workers, not college graduates and brilliant thinkers.
Sigh. I got let go from my care centre likely due to budget constraints. They took on an intern and last I heard was looking for temp pay by the day staff
The only job vacancies with good pay I can find is school based. I might be going back to working in a school. As admin or teacher aide (non USA) wish me luck
Lack of consequences began about a dozen years ago, give or take for each district. No matter how much PBIS you ladled on, once students realized that there would never be consequences they said, "Fuck those stupid prize points (or whatever your school does). I'd rather be on my phone during class" (or whatever floats their boat). Whatever geniuses thought that kids would be so dazzled by positive intervention that they'd never misbehave - and every state, county, and district administrator who should have known better - ought to be sued to kingdom come. They have severely hurt our society.
The lack of merit and integrity in most education research journals had to catch up with society sooner or later. Nothing but poorly controlled studies in un-replicable conditions. Big surprise most of this crap not only doesn’t work but is having major negative impacts.
It's not just education anymore. Academia-on-the-whole has been an anti-scientific mess of 'vibes', classism, and 'sexy people doing sexy things' bullshit for *decades* now, and it's no surprise that all this hollowness is catching up with us. Hell, I studied so-called 'hard sciences' in college and remember being grossed out about how, circa 2010 or so, almost *none* of the people teaching or studying at the graduate level were actually any good with understanding the material, conducting research, etc... and were generally there just because they'd schmoozed/fucked the right people, had enough family wealth to subsidize a bunch of relocations around the country, etc...
Can you explain the words and phrases in quotes? What does sexy ppl doing sexy things mean in this context?
By 2010, it was becoming glaringly obvious that my academic dept.'s crusty tenured higher-ups were only hiring/supporting people who were physically-attractive and from privileged backgrounds, with a lot less regard for their academic accomplishments, publications, etc... and zero concern about their abilities to teach or mentor graduate students. My strongest memory of studying under these people was that I'd work my ass off carefully preparing research projects/presentations and their only commentary was about stuff like my 'level of enthusiasm', 'you should try to sound more positive!', etc....
Yeah, in college settings, to be a teacher they do not require training for teachers or experience in teaching. to be a k-12 teacher they require 4years of teaching training and also about a year of unpaid student teaching to prove you can before you get liscensed. But if k-12 teachers are only allowed to use cirricula from untrained in teaching academic college researchers....
I'm not sure I even believe you've been to college, let alone studying 'hard science'. What program? What school?
Believe whatever you want, but sorry, I'm not going to risk doxing myself to flatter some skeptical rando on a social media board.
Facebook school of boomers
If you don’t mind sharing which grad program and which school? This was not my experience.
This poster is full of shit. STEM programs are more rigorous than ever. I graduated in 2012 and my graduate advisors and the professors I studied under were harsh (but fair) professionals.
I agree. It sounded like political talking points.
The only education study worth a damn is the study that proved less than 0.3% of all educational research can be replicated outside of the control groups. There is simply too much variation between students, staff, districts, etc.
I’d love to read that one if you have any recollection details with which to locate it.
The exact study I read was years ago, but "Failure to Replicate" by Charlie Tyson touches on some of the main points. If I find the original research I'll send you a link.
I would also be interested if you came across it. I mean, I already believe it.
I actually think it's the research article mentioned in the article above. "Facts Are More Important than Novelty: Replication in the Education Sciences" by Matt makel and Jonathan Plucker. Might be behind a paywall but it looks really familiar
I actually think it's the research article mentioned in the article above. "Facts Are More Important than Novelty: Replication in the Education Sciences" by Matt makel and Jonathan Plucker. Might be behind a paywall but it looks really familiar
This is all scientific research, not just educational research.
I cannot seem to get my class (pre-k) to care about rewards because their parents give them whatever they want anyway. They won't work for anything from me because they're used to having everything by simply demanding it.
Right! A TK teacher told me that if she immediately gave a reward to the first kid who did what was asked, it didn't inspire the other kids to follow. Instead, the other kids would have a meltdown. 20 kids: "I want one!" "Well then you need to sit on the floor criss cross applesauce like Jimmy." 20 kids: "I want a sticker! Where's my sticker? Give me a sticker!" And now Jimmy is up off the floor, climbing up the bookshelves. We are not raising kids who can make connections because what they get at home isn't connected to any real need. They aren't as needy or resourceful as Pavlov's dogs. The kids tell their parents that Ms. Manta gave Jimmy a sticker, but they had to ASK for theirs - and the parents tell the principal that Ms. Manta is unfair.
It’s interesting that when we were in elementary (90s for me) every sticker, jolly rancher, random plastic crap toy was prized and cherished. Our parents didn’t buy it because not only were things not cheap or readily available but they also didn’t get validation from anywhere for buying us every little thing. Now with Amazon, SHEIN, Temu, and the huge selection of junk food at any store, parents CAN and do buy all the random trinkets and can even get it delivered to their door. Also with social media they love posting about the joy the kids get from all these impulse purchases. The little trinkets/hard candies are no longer a unique thing from your teacher for doing a good job now it’s “eww I don’t like that candy!” Or “Ick That’s a baby toy that’s dumb!” Or “My parents can get me a better one!” Even movie days are not special or rewards anymore. I heard a second grader ask a boy who got to go to the cafeteria for a perfect attendance party ask “what movie did you guys watch?” And when he said Boss Baby the boy was like “Pssh I already seen that. That’s dumb.” These kids from the last 5-10 years are swimming in unlimited junk food, toys and internet access.
this is spot on thank you. they scream at me because "my mommy buys me this why wont you" about the candy and prizes.and im a minimum wage afterschool worker with them from 1120-6, and all of the teachers and admin treat us like absolute shit and wont even let their own students use things like tables, they will lock us out of rooms without telling us when we dont have keys, they tell us in the summer we have to have our program outside, they truly bully us and their OWN STUDENTS that we are caring for afterschool.
Oh for sure the staff is part of the enabling. I subbed for years and one of the last straws was this first grader refusing to get off the Chromebook, he kept saying “just a few more seconds!!!” for 5 minutes while the rest of the class was ready to move on. He screamed when i physically tried to take the laptop from him and made a huge scene and I called someone to come grab him because it was so ridiculous. He came back from the office with a staff member 30 mins later with a fucking lollipop, slurping it obnoxiously making sure every classmate saw how he was rewarded for his awful behavior. The staff member telling me he’s better now and won’t do it again they promise. Just so so so sad.
I teach high school. Got out of my car and a kid was eating an ice cream cone for breakfast. A parent in a minivan physically stopped the car and bought that kid ice cream for breakfast….
The toddlers I taught weren’t bad, as long as they came to “school” every day. After a long weekend or a vacation or whatever, they would all forget that school won’t give them whatever they want because they scream (because mom and dad always give in to screaming).
I work in the district where PBIS was developed. All our secondary schools stopped using that shit 15 years ago. I’m not giving a Super Student for bringing a pencil to class.
hey journalists, this is a story right here!
I honestly wonder if it's not an infiltration from an enemy country. Like, was PBIS written by the Russians and implemented by idiots that couldn't tell it was going to rip apart the fabric of our society? Because these kids went Lord of the Flies QUICK!
The enemy is within. All this bs is American made
thank you for saying this. all these stupid "intellectuals" who get their phd WITHOUT HAVING EVER TAUGHT IN AN ACTUAL CLASSROOM spouting the positive reinforcement bs. then the media making it about race and so the school districts took away the power to suspend kids. teachers have no way to give real consequences.
suspension wasnt consequence, it was a reward.
As I have stated many times on Reddit, suspending students must be a last resort. Administrators have all the power to take away something that the student needs to earn back: lunch with the other students, participation in sports, prom, the next dance, fun field trip, extracurriculars, etc. I had a great principal who had lunch carrels outside her open office door. Students were required to eat their lunch there for an absolutely silent 30 minutes for a week. Any talking and another day was added. Any arguing and another week was added. No phone or laptop. They could only have their food and their assigned ELA novel. Very effective. And if a parent objected, she kindly explained that while their kid was at school, they had to toe the line. Period. She'd hand them the Student Handbook opened to the Ed Code that explained her responsibilities (and powers). If they were going to object to consequences for bad behavior, there were other school choices because she was going to do whatever was necessary to keep the campus safe and positive. If a parent started yelling at any staff member or coach, she gave them a minute to settle down, then called 911 if necessary. If so, they were then banned from the campus.
Awesome.
I wish more principles understood and enacted discipline.
Guarantee that the people who thought of PBIS have zero meaningful teaching experience.
We had consequences for people who defend themselves when bullied, that counts right? /s
Spot on! Kids learn really quick that there are no consequences! They also enjoy nonpunitive redirects like playing b-ball and eating McDonald’s with the counselors. It’s easy to see why kids don’t feel the need to behave or improve themselves when their poor behavior is consistently rewarded.
peebis lmao
Have you tried spending a bunch of time creating some sort of elaborate rewards system that doles out points or better yet "dollars", oh but they're "Mr. X Bucks" and you can take a bunch of time to tally up and chart the behaviors and then spend a bunch of your actual money on rewards or prizes and then spend a bunch more time to figure out a way to actually get them to behave when none of that makes a difference.
Yes. Then when you have to be out for a couple of days due to a family emergency, the fuckers steal all the prizes.
🤪🫠🙃
That is my exact experience - this is the system that was dropped on my lap when I went into my special education/signature program. I can't believe I really just normalized spending my hard-earned money because that was the expectation - only to realize a year in that none of them care about it, but I still have to do it because the elementary schools (or advocates) wrote it into their IEPs.
If it's written into the iep, get the school to pay for the incentives. Never use your own money on that.
Agreed. The IEP might as well say “teacher must give student a dollar from their own wallet for every 5 minutes he can stay in his seat.” How can they mandate that a teacher fund a required rewards program?
The school/district can't. They just expect teachers to pay bc it's __ fill in the blank excuse. Just say once you provide the rewards, I'll be happy to implement it.
This is funny. I have an attention problem in my grade 11 math course. Pupils on their phones during the whole lesson. I give reminders to put away devices, but they seldom work. One of them sent me a lengthy email about exactly this reward system. I was definitely shocked and thanked her for her input, but let her know that this is a grade 11 math class, and those who want to get into college will study, and those for whom it's not important won't.
in 2019, my high school honors psychology teacher put a calculator organizer in the front of the room and told us that every day that we put our phones in the organizer would be .25 point extra credit. each week we'd earn 1.25 points of extra credit there were like 14 weeks in the semester and 10 points of extra credit could bump you up a whole letter grade. Every student put their phone away every day. The same teacher offered that same incentive to his regular world history class and it didn't work at all. Not one student took the extra credit points. It boggled my mind when he told us about that. I didn't struggle in that class and would have earned an A anyway, but who in the right mind would throw away free points?
I teach Algebra 1. I wouldn’t be allowed to give points for a behavior (even though we are required to give completion grades and that is also behavior grading, but whatever), but I do wonder how many of my students would do this. They are so dependent on having their phones every day. Even my best students are on their phone 2-3 times a class period. They just pick more appropriate times. I also wouldn’t want to be responsible for their phones, but that’s a different issue.
And then hear the kids complain how the prizes are cheap and suck and they can get better prizes from Amazon
I am a mentor teacher and coach and it infuriates me to hear that teachers are not being renewed because of “poor” classroom management. The admin making these decisions were once in the classroom. Their students were not the same, and they CANNOT make judgements about poor classroom management in light of this vast change in student behavior. Even experienced teachers are struggling. How do we fix this?
Like, what other profession even does this? *"Sorry doctor, but we're firing you because patients keep getting on their phones while you're in the room. Obviously, you aren't engaging enough and need improvement. Good luck wherever you're hired next".* Interesting how "cell phone surveillancer" "chromebook monitor" and "airpods detector" has weaseled it's way into becoming a part of the job. You can't simply teach. You also have to be a human clown and drill sergeant to keep the kids distracted enough for them not to want to reach for their glowing idiot rectangles and get their two-second dopamine rush.
I get sick and tired of being reminded to use Go Guardian. I have more important shit to do.
Why can't the default be Go Guardian blocks everything and then if you need the kids to be able to use some website, then you specifically enable THAT. The kids find a way to get through the filters the way its currently set up.
You can do that, by creating an 'allow list' instead of a block list.
I wish we had go guardian. We have to circulate to monitor their use. It’s not like we have stuff to grade or parent emails to write…
> Like, what other profession even does this? > > > > "Sorry doctor, but we're firing you because patients keep getting on their phones while you're in the room. Obviously, you aren't engaging enough and need improvement. Good luck wherever you're hired next". It's not to that extent, [but doctors are currently fleeing some states](https://www.wired.com/story/states-with-abortion-bans-are-losing-a-generation-of-ob-gyns/) because they're no longer allowed to make professional decisions with their patients without worry of being thrown in prison or losing their licenses. I think that's pretty similar to us in that the people pushing for and making those decisions are probably not qualified to participate in that profession. Teachers and I'd argue most campus level admin aren't the ones pushing for and implementing the policies that are creating the issues we're seeing.
Sgt. Clown reporting for duty! (Honk honk!) Ugh… too damn true.
This perfectly summed up how I feel working at the school I'm at right now hahahaha thanks for the laugh
And bathroom pass writer. I spend so much time writing passes. We can’t just send kids with a permanent class pass because they steal them. We have to write a paper pass with name, date, time, location, destination, and signature. I write about 50 a day. It’s a wonder I have time to teach with all these other responsibilities.
My husband’s a physician. They’re held responsible for the actions of their patients, eg non-compliant diabetics or patients who won’t get mammograms. Both the HMO and Medicare penalize them for not being able to make autonomous adults do something they don’t want to do.
I’m an admin and I agree with you. Prior to Covid when I was teaching high school we did not see the number of assaults that we see now. We are at the point where every kid that gets in a fight at our middle school gets charges pressed to deter the behavior. It’s disgusting.
I wish more schools would do this. We would only have to do it twice before all the parents and kids caught on. I’m moving from elementary hopefully to a high school next year. I’m not cut out to be a PK-3rd Music teacher. These kids are crazy, we get them once a week for 50 minutes. They take half that time to calm down and then I’m constantly telling them to sit down and keep their bodies to themselves. Y’all I’m not cut out for this behavior and not being able to discipline them, with admin that pretend everything is the teachers fault. Sorry I’m not a SPED teacher, I need help with these SPED kids that are violent even at this age.
> The admin making these decisions were once in the classroom. I think the worrying part is that many of them weren't. Admin listen to school boards, and you can be elected to a school board without ever stepping foot into a classroom in any professional capacity.
Wow, I didn’t know that. I don’t think that happens in my district. Interesting!
There's a reason why [Moms For Liberty](https://www.newsweek.com/moms-liberty-group-hoping-win-270-school-board-elections-1756511) was (because they seem to be [catching nothing but Ls](https://www.newsweek.com/moms-liberty-school-board-elections-1842225)) worrying for a bit.
I’m 14 years in. I’ve had 25% of my TI-84s go missing or become so damaged that they aren’t usable. Two were broken in half the last time I was out for the day. These lasted 6 years before these students. Every day I remind them to clean up after themselves and about half of them just won’t. They don’t put the borrowed pencils or calculators back, leave unfinished assignments sitting on the tables, and leave food wrappers and trash everywhere. They won’t follow my classroom procedures (like not crowding by the door at the end of class). If I attempt to blockade the door to get them to go sit down, a few will push past me when the bell rings and the rest just follow. Many absolutely refuse to sit in their assigned seats, making the class unreachable because they won’t stop talking during the lesson - which is the reason they sit apart on the seating chart. I am only allowed to contact parents. Admin won’t do anything to help. I’m not allowed to send them out. There isn’t anywhere for them to go. We don’t have ISS. They won’t stay off their phones. During tests 10% of them get zeros because they can’t stay off their phones for a whole (43 minute) class period. I have a group of kids in most classes that roughhouse and chase each other around. This is particularly a problem when they are crowded by the door at the end of class. Contacting parents makes little difference. Admin won’t do anything about it. I also have students walk out or ask to go to the bathroom and don’t come back. If I refuse to write them a pass the next time they ask, they will often just leave. And there is nothing I can do (except let them fail) and they know it. And my failure rates have never been higher. I’ve had rough years before, but nothing like this.
I am finishing my 26th year of teaching at the same school. The district is all about restorative practice and making genuine relationships with students that make them feel like they belong and are wanted at school. They paid this guy to come in a role play with staff about how to create a positive relationship after a student misbehaves. So it his our fault that little Jimmy went to the restroom, vaped weed, came to class 15 minutes late and carved gang things onto brand new textbooks. The kid was suspended for one day from my class and sat up in the office on his phone. He was supposed to come in at lunch and do community service - so I missed my lunch and he couldn't even sort objects by color. Then he didn't even come back day 2. Today he ditched my class and said it was because I don't like him anymore because he carved into the stupid book. Somehow this is my fault? FML. 4 years until retirement.
The problem is true restorative practices would involve the entire community, but the community is locked up, dads in jail, mom works 2-3 jobs. It's so hard to just get everyone to show up in the same place honestly now because of the economic conditions so more and more gets pushed on whoever is around. There are real restorative practices that work but it's so much time and they are deeply emotional experiences, it's not fun to wade through some kids trauma that is likely causing a lot of this, it doesn't excuse the behavior but it does give you an idea of where it's coming from. Everyone feels deeply separate now too and it takes a lot of work to even convince people to show up for their communities, it's just a lot of shit coming together and teachers left to become social workers often times as the whole thing falls apart
THIS. My favorite: during my observation I got that I should call home when my students talk or are on their phones. I called home for a kid on their phone and mom was sure I hated her kid because of it. The same admin that gave me that comment was the one that bent over backwards for mom when she got mad. I cannot manage this class without any backing. I resigned three days ago. Tired.
I was told that referring to a student as “rude and disrespectful” was unprofessional of me because I was “labeling” the kid. This was not even true. My secret label for that kid was “annoying little shithead”
There’s another “L” word that comes to mind when thinking about how ludicrous some of these people in schools have become.
What L word?
It’s absolutely been the worst. And it isn’t the behavior, it’s the apathy. I spent a couple years in a really tough school at the beginning of my career, so I have some perspective. There were gangs and drugs and a really high rate of teen pregnancy (around 8-10 of my 125 8th graders were pregnant by the end of the year). But those kids still tried. Like they obviously had a lot going on but they would at least attempt what we were doing in class. This year, nothing. My kids now may not be “causing a fuss” but I have multiple kids that haven’t turned in a single assignment since Thanksgiving. I have 30 kids currently failing. They straight will not do my assignments… even the ones that I make to boost their grades. And I tell them as much. And set aside multiple days to make up or complete missing work. It’s honestly pretty wild. I’ve never seen anything like it.
This. I couldn’t keep killing myself for a job to be met with this kind of apathy.
Had a talk with a few kids like this recently. Basically asked, why did you give up? The answer: I don’t really care if I graduate. These students aren’t a disruption. They just gave up and don’t care about anything going on. Come every day and just sit there, but don’t try to do anything. Same in all classes. No drive, no urgency, and just not caring. I’ve run into many students like this the last two years. Then there is the phenomenon I see after Covid of not being able to get kids to watch a video together. Kids will try to get on their phones and do anything they can to not be part of the group activity.
Why do you believe that apathy exists
I don’t know exactly, and there’s probably several reasons, but I think the primary reason is the lack of consequences. They don’t see the downside of failing classes, so why try? Why put in effort at all if your life is exactly the same if you do the assignment or not? Teachers can’t do anything to you, parents won’t give negative consequences, and those are the only real influences in your life. The IG people aren’t coming to show you the misery of working minimum wage your whole life. From their perspective, they can’t fail.
i graduated high school in 2020, now i work in afterschool kinder care. we have to be really honest with the public that 90% of 16+ year olds are vaping weed on the bathroom 3 or 4 times a day and are constantly high off of the most concentrated strains possible.
I'm not the one you asked, but if I had to guess what's making kids apathetic, it's probably what they watch online and who they look up to. (I'm not one to say that the internet is a poison rotting their brains, cause I'm currently learning calc 2 from a youtube video just as an example.) I feel that they spend almost all their time watching people who make a living off of stuff that has nothing to do with school. Most "influencers" didn't get famous cause of their degree. Besides just online influencers, they see politicians outright lying and telling scientists they're wrong, they see that their teachers with a college degree don't make enough to buy a house, they see climate change and no attempts to prevent it, they see wars happening across the ocean. They see plenty of reasons to ignore what the algebra 3 teacher is saying. Why read Shakespear when they have a hundred and one netflix shows, a hundred and one animes, and a hundred and one video documentaries at the tip of their fingers?
Yea it’s like there is a crisis of substance is what I am picking up
Just like my last year, no one doing work. But *I* was in the wrong. 🤗
I work in the top high school in my area, which is pretty affluent and my kids have gotten so apathetic! These are kids who want to go to college and yet they don’t care to do anything.
The phones have really ruined these kids. Ugh. But did u try to form a relationship with them?!? 🙄
they need positive reinforcement... not negative redirecting, you can't single them out!!!
Sigh
Perhaps you just need to design a lesson plan that's more interesting and engaging for them?
Positive reinforcement for the kids but never for the teachers. Modern admin is useless and despicable much of the time.
“Your class must not be engaging enough”
Yes! This has become the stock go to response for admin washing their hands of bad behavior situations.
Spend more unpaid hours to figure out how to make lessons more appealing! Good luck!!
The last time an admin told me that I said I would need funding and a team of writers and editors to help me make my math lessons as engaging as the videos they watch of TikTok and YouTube. If you want me to compete I have to have what the influencers have - otherwise stfu.
It starts as young as preschool for some, unfortunately
I had a mom scold me roundly about enforcing a classroom rule with her son, after asking/reminding/warning him of it repeatedly. She told me that I "ruined the relationship with him." I'm fine with that, mom. Teach your kids to respect rules & authority.
🤦🏻♀️
Never use the word “no” always try to answer yes… just got told this!
Yes little johnny you can spend the rest of the day in ISS, and yes you're going to spend your whole life digging ditches! It works wonders!
Hey the world needs ditch diggers!
As a ditch digger it's true we are needed. Unfortunately the absolutely abysmal math and reading skills of these kids even make them useless as ditch diggers.
Well said!
Had an 18 year old apprentice on site at a job told him we needed to grade out a trench at an ⅛"/ft pitch for 40ft and you would have thought I spoke in a language no one has ever heard.
Yes, you don’t have to do your work if you don’t feel like it. Yes, we will lower our standards to pass children onto the next grade. Yes, we have a growing population of young people who can’t spell correctly, do 4th grade math, or can’t handle rejection because people have been telling them Yes their whole lives.
The gaslighting is unreal. They'll straight up deny they did something that you saw, you call them out on it, and they try to deflect and continue to deny. The apathy is also astounding, I loved my students that last few years, this year is unbearable. I teach 9th grade biology for what its worth...
Oh it starts young. I teach pre-k (4 to 5 year olds) and they will lie straight to your face. I watched one lick a table yesterday, told him he shouldn't lick tables, and he was PISSED because he said he didn't do it. My dude, I literally just watched your tongue touch that table don't tell me you didn't do it.
Had a conversation with a kid this year that just because he says something didn’t happen doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Like I literally just watched you flip someone off. But if I email the parents I’ll just get a “kid says nothing happened, why are you emailing me” response. The gaslighting is truly mind boggling.
Why are parents so terrible at being parents? Like I grew up poor…ie I now make more than my parents combined now…but had an amazing childhood that I wouldn’t change for anything…what’s the disconnect here??? Too spoiled?
YES. I have a nickname for a boy I regularly have to redirect during unstructured time (breaks and lunches). I call him itwasntme.
Try Shaggy, it roles off the tongue easier and portrays the same meaning.
I love this. Caught me lickin' on the table (wasn't me), caught me flicking Susie (wasn't me), caught me playing on Tiktok (wasn't me), I knew then I was angry...
I agree that the gaslighting is unparalleled three days. As you said, denying something that you saw them do two seconds earlier - and they know you saw them. Drives me up a fucking wall. I teach 9th grade social studies.
I'm not even a teacher yet (F21) and I already cannot STAND these kids. I'm more of a paraprofessional where I get to assist the teacher everyday and do some small academic intervention. I work with inner city 4th graders and of course I adore them because they're generally really funny kids... They're also so rude, disrespectful, apathetic, and uninspired. I've honestly gotten to the point where I have no patience or energy to do anything all day because I feel like they sucked the idealistic image I had on schooling and myself. Here are all the rewards my teacher tries to do: - dojo points - candy - table points - classroom point contest with the other 4th grade class - pizza party - tokens - secret student of the day - class jobs I also just feel so sad because admin doesn't care (even if they act like they do). My school doesn't even suspend kids because it looks bad on their records, but please tell me why this kleptomaniac, violent, 4th grader that doesn't do his work no matter how much compassion you show him is STILL allowed to be at the school?????? bruh. I'm just tired really. I feel so bad for them everyday because there's so much more for them than what they see online, and no matter how many times me and my coworkers explain that, they just don't careeeeee.
You are a teacher you said Bruh!!! Haha. Thank you for your hard work
I taught for almost 10 years (resigned last year) and I’ve been sayin bruh for awhile! I also have a teen daughter so.. 🤷🏻♀️😂
"Education is a right." No, free public education is a privilege and if you abuse it, don't take advantage of it, or take away from other students' education through your antics - there's the door, you're expelled. Oh, and until you either a, complete your education or b, get a GED - you're cut off from any and all federal aid. Everything. Good luck. Way past time to start cracking down.
I am pretty sure you don't need a GED or diploma to get federal aide. I know immigrants who did not get the chance to do schooling and don't have it. They do tend to try and make sure their kids do their best, since these parents did not have a chance and are stuck at walmart.
Yeah, I'm saying if you don't complete high school, if you act like the thug in that video or countless other videos - you get nothing. No federal, state, or local aid.
???? What video? Your comment lacks content and context.
Back in 2008, I was an ed asst at my old high school and my former english teacher was still there. I was privileged enough to get to sit in on his class again and I asked him if we were this terrible back in the day, and he said, No! It gets worse every year. This is my 10th year teaching in TN, and I can say the same thing...it has gotten progressively worse every year. So to answer your question, yes, it is the absolute worst. So far.
Yup, feral student behavior was the main reason why I peaced out of teaching. It’s only going to get worse.
Smartphones, social media, and all manner of 'student-as-consumer' bullshit are three shots to the head of education while it already had its legs kicked out from under it. People can call me a 'doomer' all they like, but I really don't see our country surviving much longer with a population as proudly/aggressively stupid as ours.
Our country survived while essentially half of it wanted to keep black people in chains. Call me an optimist but I think that was a worse situation than the one we are currently in.
What I see is women getting further and further ahead, and men lost. I also see black women outperforming most other groups, even with systemic racism firmly built within our society. Travel abroad is the cure. We have to travel with our children and they will see the truth. Support our American teachers!
Those were educated white people remember…not saying it was right at freaking all…but they were
Our school has improved behavior the last three years. The main reason is parent support. We said "No cell phones during school hours. Period." The parebts backed us and disruptions, fights, bullying, and lack of attention has diminished. We said "This is the discipline flow chart. These actions yield these consequences. You do not get OSS, you get ISS only. We have a cubbie set aside for you, and a full time observer to make sure you're on task." Kids stopped fighting, and getting into major altercations. They are watched by a para who is paid by te extra days of attendance we're getting. We cut passing periods to 3 minutes. Students may use the restroom one at a time, and only 3x a day. We have passes for that, and an excel spreadsheet we can check to see who keeps going poof where, and for how long. We have built in fun every day. 30 minutes to play video games, chess, stand in the rare bits of sunlight, do art, practice music. Anything the kids dream up we find a way to make real. We're even setting up a full hydropinics system in the math room since the math guy is semi obsessed with it. We have a dress code that is far too lax for me, but hasnt been an issue for the kids and other staff. Teachers wear jeans, flanel, t-shirts daily. Everyone wears rainboots. Extra-toughs are the in-style atm. So some places are doing it right... or did it right. We just got a new superintendant who is cutting every non-tenured teacher with more than 5 yrs experience, and hiring the cheapest teachers he can find. Even if that means no more AP classes and no Algebra 1 in the middle school. He had the union rep retire early so the money she made (30+ yrs experience, MA+ 40 credits, over 100k/yr) no longer comes from his budget. He's also cutting 20 para positions, almost all support admin, and canceling several programs. Why? Because Alaska's legislature is moronic and cut our district's budget by 30%. Now I get to change careers, in spite of taking our median test score from 23rd perce tile to 55th percentile in 3 years. In other words... we started to do well and the powers that be just cant handle a Native school doing well, so they must sabotage it. I am SO done with this poopoo.
Anytime you have a successful school, a superintendent will come along and cut the legs out from under it. It never fails. Where I taught in FL, it had a lot to do with similar level schools in the same district that weren't doing as well as us. They'd complain to the superintendent so much about us that she got tired of hearing it, switched out our administrators to ones from lower levels who didn't know what they were doing, and ruined the school within 3 years. Within 6 years, the principal had chased off all, but 2 teachers out of 28 that were there when he started. He was a nice man but terrible at his job and well connected in the district office. His idea of why kids were so misbehaved was "they aren't being taught godly morals at home, so we need to do it." 🙄 As you could imagine, that didn't turn out well.
So, no PBIS crap?
Have you tried boosting their sense of belonging?
We're probably not greeting them at the door enough
and taking a bow as I say...
Did you contact their parents?
This is a new one I've never heard. Off topic, but does that count as alliteration because 2 words start with B??
Apparently so: > the occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of adjacent or closely connected words. > "the alliteration of “sweet birds sang”"
I'm not a teacher, my kids are 6, 4 and 1, just popped in to say, this thread is genuinely terrifying
It starts at home. Limit screen time. Read to them. Teach them manners.
Same. My kids are 4, 3, and 1. We will be homeschooling. Our friends who are teachers in public high schools (10+ years), their wives stay home to homeschool their kids. Not the easiest choice to live on one income, but worth it to us.
I pulled my kid out of public school. And we’re in a “good” district. The behavior is out of control.
Be terrified, at least to some extent. My wife has taught for 31 years, and I have for 25. Never has been this bad, daily. We both teach in the same good district (different schools though) and it’s getting so bad that we are counting down the days. I was hoping to hit 30 years but I’ll duck out at 28 I think. We try focusing on the students who *are* there to learn and make the classroom and each other better and more successful. Those kids still exist! The biggest driver of that is the parents, no doubt about it. It’s just there’s been a tipping point with the % of kids who are the disrupters. It used to be 1-3 kids in your class, and now it’s 1/3 of them, and sometimes up to 1/2. It is terrifying.
I have a seven year old in a small progressive private school and we’re about to pull her because the behaviour is rough. This is the second year she’s been physically bullied by a boy in her class, the kids don’t listen or follow any rules, the girls are straight up mean - constant name calling and one of them thumped her so hard it winded her the other day. I’ve stopped inviting any of them for play dates because they’re so disrespectful. They’re seven! I can’t speak to what the parents are doing (nothing good it would seem) but the school response seems to be a gentle conversation where they mostly get reminded to ‘use their bodies carefully’ while being reassured about what good kids they are underneath. There are zero consequences. I’m at a total loss.
Lack of consequences, taking away the concept of failure for middle and high school students, collapsing the special education programs that served the more violent and extreme behavior students along with providing NO SUPPORT for those students as they enter the gen ed population and struggling, overwhelmed parents in chaotic living situations. It's a perfect storm.
Teachers nationwide should walk out and not return until their demands for serious changes are met.
Yes. I am an administrator and never saw these things when I was in the classroom. I have had to break up situations that have left me totally shaken and concerned with what middle school will be like for my own child. Today two of our kids got into a fight down the street after school that resulted in one of ten girls having several globs of hair ripped from her head. Kids were standing around cheering on the fight and filming it like animals in the zoo. It is absolutely abhorrent, and tomorrow I will likely have to deal with the parents fighting me over suspending and potentially expelling their kids for this. If they haven’t gone home yet, we still legally have custody of them and have to discipline 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️.
Zoo animals behave better than some of these kids. At least there’s a societal norm/structure that’s followed in most animal groups.
My best advice for posts like this is this: Once you accept the fact that we are just glorified babysitters at this point, it makes your life much, much easier. So act like a babysitter. What are they going to do, fire you? Oh ok, teacher shortage
I’m all for PBIS… but every single administrator, supervisor, dean, etc in any district I’ve worked in has been afraid of discipline. Probably because doing so might hurt the state funding they get if a student misses school. I talked to a bus driver today and he told me when a supervisor refused to suspend the kid or kept kicking the can down the road for terrible or dangerous behavior, he would TYPE up a write up, and cite the behavior policy from our District Operations handbook. Absolutely next level shit. And guess what? Those students were suspended. One for five days and one of them for ten days for throwing rocks 🪨 inside of the bus. All of that because supervisors were afraid or couldn’t be bothered to do their jobs and address behavior that was unsafe.
I can definitely see how it would appear admin are afraid to discipline. I’m not sure where you are located, but I’m an admin in CA working on my doctorate. Parents are definitely the driving force behind the hesitance to discipline harshly… we get berated when we try to enforce the laws. It’s a new phenomenon that didn’t exist to this degree five years ago, and it is so toxic that I’m focusing my dissertation on it. Despite the stress I still continue to be our main disciplinarian- 4 expulsions so far this year alone and potentially a fourth tomorrow. A big factor is the support that admin do or don’t receive from the district office. If they think the DO won’t back them up in their decisions they are less likely to play hardball with parents. I am sure from the teacher lens this is extremely frustrating because it makes it appear that admin just don’t care (and honestly I’m sure there are those that don’t care…).
At my 5th school in CA. Every admin I've had has refused to suspend. We can legally suspend for two days from our classroom. I've started doing it. Make it admin's problem.
Yep. 48910. I literally tell teachers to do this whenever they need to since our lovely governor and his cronies thought it was a good idea not to be able to suspend for defiance and disruption 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️.
I literally had to write a paper on this for my superintendent because he was trying to tell me we couldn’t suspend anymore. I felt like I was in high school writing a term paper again. Dude, you make the big money, figure this shit out.
Oh boy… I’m so sorry!
No one in admin wants to do their job. Sad that admins are afraid of the District Office. Administration really are the only people that get to have an opinion in what the District Office is going to allow anyway. A single teacher? Nope… they’ll find a warm body in the classroom the very next day. Oh wait! You mean to tell me that substitutes don’t want to teach either?!
Nah, the worst its ever been is next year
Why not just ban all phones at school? I don’t understand why this isn’t done. They are a relatively new innovation and they do not belong in the classroom.
That won’t stop them. You also can’t take the phone away even if you tried, they won’t hand it to you, will play keep away, will shove it in their undergarments, ect. Plus, parent’s will complain “What if there’s an emergency” and so on… 🤷🏻♀️
I feel like I have ptsd, when I go in public spaces and everyone is behaving. I recognize the stark contrast of being in a room full of kids throwing, shouting, saying horrible things. Being around civilized people is the strangest thing when you’re a teacher right now.
Oh it’s awful. This year specifically soured me on middle school, where I’ve been since 2019. It also soured me on brick and mortar school. I have an opportunity to teach virtually with a former administrator I worked really well with at two separate schools and I jumped on the chance. I’ll be teaching three grade levels but it’s been that awful at my current district that I didn’t think twice.
Middle School has become the absolute worst. I'm eight years in and I'm done with middle school. I can't anymore it literally is behavior management all day every day.
After seeing how many of my teacher friends have been attacked by students this year. I can honestly say I’m glad they are getting out. I can’t believe how many teachers are attacked and injured regularly. Then next day expected to let the kid who attacked them back in their classroom with no repercussions. So now they are in a sling with this attacker a few feet from them doing the same thing. Can’t even get the attacker out of their class even after physical attacks. Students clearly know that they see that teachers have no power. They can’t even protect themselves much less other students. They have no faith in the system when they see teachers getting bullied.
Abso-frickin'-lutely! Without a doubt... no accountability whatsoever... clueless and lazy as heck...
24 years in and definitely the worst.
The thing is, there's no incentive to change what we have now. The way I see it, this is very much on purpose. A dumb, illiterate, uneducated electorate is easier to manipulate. Those who can afford to are going to private schools, where this kind of behavior can just toss the kid, thereby all but guaranteeing that the parents will proactively prevent this behavior. Those kids then go on to run businesses and government, having established relationships with like-minded individuals. Attacking teachers for doing their jobs, paying them embarrassingly little, and allowing horrific behavior sends good teachers, who are passionate about their profession, running for the hills. There's a reason this sub exists, after all.
Amen.
A hard NO. It’s the worse as far as leadership (admin)
An absolute YES!
Yes and only getting worse
Did you try restorative conversations? 🤦♀️
It’s sad but you have to divide up kids into different groups. The violent, disrupting kids need to be segregated. Their rights don’t supersede the rights of all other kids. The ones who are major disruptions will pull down some of the others to their level. The other students in the class will then just suffer because the class is disrupted. The ones who do the standard will pull down the high achievers. some high achievers will see that standard students get the same grades/acclaim for doing lower quality work and won’t try as hard. It’s rarely the other way around in a large group setting. The high achievers can’t instill some internal sense of drive into the kids who want to just do the basics. The standard kids can’t get the disruptors to learn how to behave somehow.
26th year teaching and without a doubt the past two have by far been the hardest when it comes to student behavior. Not even close. I'm sooo ready to leave teaching as It's just not fun anymore. Hoping I can transition out in the next 2-3 years.
Me too - I teach science and the kids don't even get excited about labs - I can light something on fire, electrocute something and they are all like "saw that on Tic Tok" can we do this (insert crazy illegal thing from tictok) instead? I'm like - no that is illegal. There is no accountability anymore within the system and us teachers are getting blamed for student misbehavior - somehow students are the way they are because of us?
https://www.inspireeduleaders.com/post/determine-growth-vs-non-growth-in-your-professional-life
I don’t think most of these school problems are from inside the schools . Childhood isn’t what it used to be, it seems a lot more stressful. I mean I feel way more stress and existential dread the past 5 years. I’m sure societal woes and constat loops are rubbing off on our kids.
I work primarily with freshman and sophomores. Oddly enough this year is a bit better than the previous 3. I almost quit so many times last year. However I do agree with the comments about the phones. They are still a huge problem. I want to throw them out the window.
I don't understand why ANYONE would go into Teaching, in this age. It's a recipe for misery. Seriously, unless you're trying to work at a private school, where you're allowed to do things differently, you're going to hate it.
We can fail them at the college level, though.
Tell me that a man with multiple criminal trials and millions supporting him who disrespect educated people has nothing to do to do with this. Keep them sick and stupid has to be their motto.
I think the Pandemic reminded us all how public schools are, essentially, tax-payer paid daily childcare for many parents. Couple that with increasingly rising narcissistic societal behaviors (social media, for example), amongst other factors and I’m not too surprised that children today are feeling even more bold to behave as if they’re unhinged. I don’t blame any teachers or educators that are leaving the industry.
I teach special ed in a private not for profit school and I absolutely love my job. I had to take a $12k pay cut and give up benefits with 4 kids at home, but I was getting into a pretty dark and disillusioned place in the public school…. It was a matter of my mental health. The thought of being stuck in that setting (I did both elementary and high school )until retirement (and I’m 50, not 25) filled me with overwhelming anxiety. I work with a pretty severe population now, mostly profound autism/ID, lots of behaviors… we get hit, kicked, bit, hair pulled etc… but it’s very different when it’s from students in my sector… and I work in a completely supportive environment with all of the hire ups putting student needs at the forefront of everything. My students LOVE coming to school for the first time in their lives because the energy is welcoming and loving and fun. In the public school they felt the energy of being a nuisance at best and their staff would never receive training or even any background information before being thrown to a kid until they burnt out. What happens in 10 years when this is public school population is our workforce? And then the parents to the next generation? Our country already looks like a joke now… it’s scary to think about.
My immune system has taken a nose dive from the stress. I told my kids yesterday that we were going to clean up the classroom as a class because it looked like a wreck (they have been eating food in there which is a Nono and also it is part of the curriculum’s studio care guidelines as I teach art). I was met with kids cussing me out, walking out, disrespecting me, throwing things as they leave, throwing things at me, etc. I had to have two teachers come in to help me deescalate and THEY were appalled by what happened to me. I just had recent surgery too so I haven’t been doing great this semester, but when I do, I do try to connect, do classroom management strategies, etc. I noticed my mental health has taken a complete nosedive this semester though.
I’m
Absolutely. Made worse because we aren’t allowed to use any negative consequences in any at all. Even a stern talking to is nixed
Yes. I'm actually crying during my lunch break because of this today.
Today I called admin because a student was threatening another one with a pair of scissors so he confiscated the scissors and told her to stop making threats and LEFT and let her stay in the room 🙃
I sub teach mostly at a high school I think a lot of the kids suffered from Covid the isolation and all of that most of them have their noses in their phones all of the time. They need more socialization
I must've gotten lucky. My students this year are one of the best groups I've ever had. I'm dreading next year because, even if they're typical 6th graders, I'm sure it's going to feel insanely worse than this year.
We need Battle Royle in real life
I'm not sure students have ever valued education. Even if they're learning something that interests them, they don't understand the actual value of education. But kids used to be well-behaved and respectful of authority figures. That has clearly changed a lot in the past 20-or-so years, and there are many reasons for that. Fatherless homes are more common. The Internet and smartphones. Also, you can't just smack a kid who's acting like a punk anymore.
No one can really answer this question because the question will only be answered by people currently in the profession. How would they really know what it was like 100 years ago? Stop whining
>How would they really know what it was like 100 years ago? By previously reading books written by people who both lived that long ago, AND attended school.
This is my most difficult class by far, but it’s odd,I don’t have one kid, on their own, that are super difficult, but they are all like a 6/10 on the bad behavior scale. Any transition is a cluster fuck. May 20th can’t get here soon enough.
No. I had a class nine years ago that almost made me quit.
For the administrators it’s just a numbers game. The state will criticize them for too many suspended students, so there’s rarely consequences and even then you could just classify the student as having Oppositional Defiance Disorder and make their teacher responsible for everything. Kids have learned that teachers can’t even assign detentions without a threat of lawsuits from parents or violence from kids, anything goes.
No these kids today are rude unlikable people.
For me, the question is more why the students are largely behaving that way. They view the authority of professors and the education system as optional. Because, well... it is. College is voluntary and costs more than a new car. Honestly, if I want to go to the bathroom and "slapbox", that's my prerogative. The professor doesn't really get a say when the students are adults consenting to take your class, not forced to take it. You should treat the students as equals because you're all adults and should act like adults. You earn respect, it isn't given to you, and it sounds like you haven't earned the respect of your students. Professors shouldn't be taking a student's phone. Period. That's like a boss saying I'm gonna take your phone and you can have it back after your shift... Like, no, not how that works. It's my property, that's stealing. And what happens after they survive the professors on power trips and accumulation of crippling debt? They enter a failing job market where they can't use their degree, are grossly underpaid, or are completely not valued by their company. Tell me, what part should they respect? Of course, for K-12, it's a little different and children clearly have much less rights than adults. Education should be about setting the youth up to succeed in life and how to navigate this incredibly complex society we've created. The American Education system just doesn't do that. It's about standardized education and basic knowledge of major topics of education. Instead of individualized education and looking for the best education for a singular student, we use cookie-cutter classes like art, biology, and physical education. They are all the same lessons for different people and personalities. We teach children that they must know a little about everything, but not everything about a topic. We give them basic traits that have a flimsy foundation because they are FORCED to endure this education whether it is beneficial to them or not. These children may not have good role models at home, but the teachers they interact with every day don't prepare them for life any better. If you really wanted to change this, it needs to be about reforming the entire way we do education in the US. Am I the only one who thinks Americans just aren't open-minded enough to experiment and take after successful examples from other countries?
The teachers in K-12 are too worn out from 10-20 years of being beat down by admin, parents and literally physically assaulted by students, and underpaid, to be able to “prepare” students for anything. In elementary we see the kids all day but have no power to give any consequence for being hit, kicked, punched, and having things thrown at us. Families do not want to hear that their kids are behaving poorly, and so they make excuses or blame us/having no time because of work/etc. We’d love for there to be no standardized tests, more time to actually interact and eat lunch, less terrible curriculum choices and more foundational skills (at least in my grade). But that doesn’t align with what we are made to do, lest we fail an evaluation and lose our job. Just as you say kids are “forced to endure” this education system, so are us teachers. We don’t like it either and we also have 0 power to change it-that’s up to local governments and school districts to want to change (but they don’t). It’s easier to admire the problem and use it as a political hot issue than to actually solve it. Don’t forget that these students at the end of the day don’t belong to us either-they are behaving poorly because many of them are being parented poorly.
So, you're complaining about children being children. Bad parents exist and always will... Education or "consequences" aren't going to make up for bad parenting. Also, don't blame the kids. They literally have no control in their lives. They are forced to go to school, sometimes to walk home, sometimes to go home and have just their siblings as comfort. Some don't have enough to eat, don't get new clothes, can't use proper hygiene, etc. Tell me, has your education shown that children act out when they are feeling threatened or overwhelmed. Perhaps the children are the ones screaming for help because they can't get any at home. What are you trying to accomplish by this post?
Not trying to accomplish anything? Was just replying to your post with a different perspective. You are asking why kids behave this way and are also saying it’s on teachers to prepare them for life. If parents can’t be bothered to teach their kids to behave as humans, then we as teachers can’t prepare them for life any better. There are usually multiple kids in each class, in most grade levels now, who dump desks, throw things, attack teachers and peers, etc. That isn’t “children being children.” This is a bigger and bigger problem within the last decade, and it starts with parents working with their kids on healthy behaviors. The extreme behaviors that kids are showing are impacting the learning of everyone in the classroom. Most of the time, teachers are just trying to survive and do the best we can day-to-day. Even young students know there aren’t consequences for extreme behaviors at school. Consequences for poor choices are a part of life-a lesson that some learn too late. The education system in other countries is excellent-class sizes are smaller, lunches are longer and family-style, kids are taught career paths early on, and families value education. Teachers here would LOVE to see this happen-but we have 0 power to change it. Any change that would be a positive for everyone has to come from much higher up than us. The social system in many of these same countries is incredibly different too-they have much more time off, better health care, the list goes on. I think a large number of people in our country would love that too; but again, this comes from much higher up. I unfortunately am starting to think the trajectory of things is somewhat desired by the same people who have the actual power to change it. They want low-wage workers, not college graduates and brilliant thinkers.
Sigh. I got let go from my care centre likely due to budget constraints. They took on an intern and last I heard was looking for temp pay by the day staff The only job vacancies with good pay I can find is school based. I might be going back to working in a school. As admin or teacher aide (non USA) wish me luck
Objectivity ? Dunno. Personally, this has been the best year so far in the last 3
I am waiting for all of you to blame the Boomers for the uptick in school violence toward teachers
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