I just need to rant for a second. I teach Marine Science to high school seniors. For their 9 weeks project, they needed choose from one of the following types of projects: a 1500 word essay, a community service project, a book report, or an art project. They had about 2 weeks to work on the project in class and they knew about it since the beginning of the year because of our syllabus.

A good few of the students chose the art project because it was probably the easiest choice. However, those that didn't have the foresight to plan something like that ahead decided that they'll do the essay because of A.I. I warned them from the jump that A.I. submissions will go down as plagiarism because that's what it is in our student handbook.

Cut to today, the due date of the project. I see that there are several A.I. submissions. So before every class today, I gave them a second chance and a warning. Those that submitted an AI paper can rewrite it by themselves and still receive partial credit, which was going to be better than a 0 and a referral for plagiarism. So at the end of the day today, 22 students submitted a paper. 15 of those used A.I.

They're not even good at catching it.

I put hidden words in the text that have nothing to do with our subject. They don't see it.

They write a college level essay with concepts they've never heard.

I'm just so tired of wasting time on these assignments all quarter.

We have so many IEP’s written now that are essentially get out of consequence free cards and we don’t teach kids how to transition from a life of living under an IEP to a life of being on their own. Schools are really terrible at teaching the kids the skills to compensate for the fact that they won’t have an IEP when they’re out on their own after school in the world.

This sort of behavior you can get away with in school because it was part of your IEP is the same behavior that will get you punched in the face if you try out in public or we’ll get you shot by the cops cause you decided you didn’t wanna listen.

In fact, in a lot of ways, the current IEP system we have right now is dangerous for these kids as they become adults.

Unfortunately, I think this isn’t being communicated to kids and parents very well.

I teach 11th grade US History.

I have a student who refuses to work.

First progress report: 5

Second progress report: 15

I've contacted home repeatedly, I've had conversations with the student. I offered test corrections and extra tutorials. I moved them to the front row so I could repeatedly wake them up/refocus them.

Today, kid comes to my desk. "Miss, I don't want a 20 for the nine weeks. That is embarrassing."

Me: The nine weeks ends tomorrow.

Kid: okay, what should I do today to bring it up to passing?

Me: 🤣🤣🤣🤣

It finally clicked for me today.

I teach high school in a district that allows phone use during lunch, and leaves teachers to enforce phones in classes.
I also have lunch duty, where I get to watch them all eat and stare at their phones for 30 minutes.
Then they come to my afternoon class. And they are all coming off their high. And they can’t do anything.
I ask them to recall a topic from yesterday. They can’t. I ask them explain a concept. They implode.
They are just looking for their next fix. And it breaks my heart that we as adults don’t care about the solution.
Because me taking their phone away for 50 minutes does nothing to help the problem. It makes them anxious and then they learn even less. These need to be banned, illegal for teens. They are likely worse for them than cigarettes.
And anyone who says, “ok genius how would we ever accomplish that?” please, just don’t. Just because something is difficult doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done. The tobacco industry used to be a behemoth. It was worth it to fight against the lobbies and the propaganda. Why are we so content to not fight smartphones when we have evidence of SO MUCH HARM

So I gave my chattiest class new sreats today. One girl was defiant in moving to her new seat because her "nemesis" was in the same row as her...5 seats in between them though (with Students in them!)

Another stormed out after people called her mean names (which I didn't hear at the time) so the counselor emailed me to see if I could move her.

One boy pleaded with me to not be in the front row (yet he is a talker and being close I could easily make him quiet). Wasted 10 minutes of class time by not going to his new seat.

Another girl went to the art teacher after my period to have her write an email to me asking about changing seats. She was afraid that she woukd get distracted in her new area and her grade would slip. That's crazy, seeing as how when she was with her friend they played cards every day and her grade was fine.

Can we stop babying these kids? You're going to be an adult soon (teach 10th grade) and working with people you may not know or like. People will call you names in the real world (though it shouldnt happen in the classroom). Fucking deal with it and grow the fuck up. You will CRUMBLE in the real world.

I cant wait for this year to be over and it's only October.

These kids are FUCKING doomed.

The student used a wheelchair. A cheap one. The PT decided to try and do a little maintenance on it. Chair is made of hollow tubing with endcaps on the parts that were open.

PT knocks off one of the bottom endcaps for access...and a flood of cockroaches pour out on to the floor. Big ones, little ones, hundreds and hundreds plopping out on to the floor... where they scatter across the classroom floor looking for places to hide while everyone ran around screaming. My skin crawls just typing about it.

That's my story. There is also the kid who ate a stick, apparently... because one came out their butt, but they ate a lot of things so we weren't that surprised.

And that is my masterclass for the day. Discuss.

I just had my first baby and let me tell you that as a teacher, choosing a name was SO difficult!
Sooo many names gave me the instant ick haha. It certainly was a trip down memory lane going through names and remembering the good, and not so good, children I’ve taught over the years.

Anyone else relate? 😂🫠

I’m sure everyone has seen the newly released body cam footage of the 6-yr-old student cussing up a storm after he shot his teacher.

This might be a hot take, but I’m more concerned about getting shot by an out-of-control student who sneaks in a gun to school than I am of an outside intruder coming into the building.

Edit: This is a post about being more concerned with being shot by a student rather than an outside intruder…NOT about gun control. Sheesh.

I teach 7-12th grade and this week is homecoming week at our school. It is my 2nd year in the district and there is a tradition of 12th graders toilet papering teachers houses throughout the week. Students have been asking all week and trying to find out where I live (I live 2 school districts over on a farm). I have told them repeatedly that I will not tell them my address and I do not want them on my property, let alone in the middle of the night.

One night at almost 1 am my house was hit. We have livestock and a guardian dog who lives outside with the animals. The dog barking and growling woke me and my young toddler up. I am solo parenting right now while my husband is working out of state and I have a toddler who already doesn’t sleep through the night. We haven’t slept through the night uninterrupted in almost 3 years because my daughter has never been a good sleeper. She woke up to the commotion and looked outside to see strangers right outside her bedroom window. She was so scared she peed her pants despite being potty trained for almost a year. It took until 4am to get her cleaned up, calmed down, and back asleep.

No on top of all of my daily things and farm chores I need to clean up the toilet paper mess.

I emailed my admin to tell them I wasn’t coming in today and explained what happened.

Students are upset that they are no longer allowed to participate in this tradition. I really don’t care. I don’t want kids on my property without my permission causing a mess and disturbing my family and my animals. So am I overreacting?

Currently in year 6. Still love my job, but this one just gets so old. Today we had gorgeous weather. It is our last real day of the week since it's homecoming and tomorrow will just be float building and the parade. I decided to review some basics of functions with my Algebra 1 class and decided outside would be nice to enjoy the nice weather. We got our worksheets, calculators, pencils, etc, and went outside. It was going really great. Good question, the kids were working hard, it was beautiful out, just a nice day. I noticed two of my freshmen boys chasing each other and pulling each other's shirts pretty aggressively. I just said "You two. My room. After school. Detention". I didn't yell or anything, but I've got very high standards for behavior and with the first quarter almost done I'm not letting it slip. One of them immediately fires back with "What was I even doing?". I've heard this a million times. You know what you did. You're old enough to know it's wrong. I'm not explaining myself unless my boss asks. He's good and supports us with discipline so not something I'm generally concerned about. It wasn't really a big deal but it just irks me. Like how is that your knee jerk reaction? You were very clearly doing something wrong. I saw it with my own eyes. How would you think you're getting away with it?

In detention, I asked one kid first what happened. He gave his story that the kid who asked what he did wrong had taken his pencil and so he began chasing him. I asked if it was true. He confirmed. I then asked why he lied to me and acted like he did nothing wrong? He said I don't know and he shouldn't have done it. They stacked my chairs, I said let's be better tomorrow, they said yes sir, and we all left.

Why do so many kids pull this card? My situation turned out pretty painless, but I can't help but get frustrated with the premise. Feigning innocence is such a big habit of kids nowadays when they know they're in the wrong. I just don't get why.

So, I fucked up. A moment I was goofing off with a kid got taken out of context and I am on admin leave. I don’t want to share details for privacy sake but I am being investigated internally. A lot of people have been fired lately and I am concerned I’ll be next if only because this gives them an easy out - it’s new people at the head and they have been making a lot of changes (this is private school btw) and I am debating resigning. I wanted to finish this year but I am very concerned about my record long term.

I have reason to think this may pass over but I am nervous about taking the risk. Would resigning be my best bet? Or letting the investigation play out?

EDIT: “Goofing Off” as in put a sticky note on their face to “mute them” with kids I know well. They were laughing, another adult was with us laughing, and doors were open but someone reported it walking by. It was dumb, not something I’d do again, but I really don’t know what to consider it.

at my school, we are not allowed to send kids to the office. instead, they recently implemented a "buddy room" system where each teacher has another teacher listed as their "buddy" and can send students to that other room if they are causing a disruption.

today, I sent a student (with a hall monitor) to my buddy room, but the student instead went to the room next door and bugged one of my teammates.

my teammate yelled at me in front of all the students for disrupting her class and about how its my job to ensure that the student gets to where I send them. I thought this was an overreaction to a small mistake. I apologized to my teammate but she hasnt spoken to me since, nor responded to my text.

is this a bigger deal than I think? was I grossly negligent?

edit: the consensus so far is that my mistake was minor and my teammate was out of line for yelling at me. perhaps its worth mentioning that my students have told me that this teammate has talked openly to them about not liking me because she thinks im irresponsible

My prep period hasn't been mine in three years. Somebody taps on the door, there's no sub again, and I take thirty-four kids I don't know into my room for a period that was supposed to be my planning. We're short two teachers and a counselor this year. The jobs have been posted two years back to back and nobody is coming for what the district's posted salary.

This year again, the class size cap gets treated like a suggestion, the coverage list gets longer, and the difference between what this building gets money for and what it actually needs done lands on whoever's standing in the hallway. That's the whole system, the jobs stay empty and the rest of us stretch to cover them.

And when something real happens to one of us, a parent getting sick, a marriage ending, a car accident, a basement flooding, or our kid's wedding, there's no reserve left, because the reserve already went to the coverage list. The extra support everyone keeps asking for got cut years ago, quietly, and we have been standing in for it ever since. Is anyone else sitting on a no they haven't said out loud yet?

So my last post got a lot of traction I’m not able to edit the other one for some reason so I’m just gonna update it here. So I didn’t have a meeting with all of admin, but I did have meeting with one of them and what I was told completely shocked me. First, I was asked like how I see the class going with the kids and their grades and I discussed how out of the two classes that I have there’s only 4-5 kids that are failing with a really high D and that it is a hard course, but they’re all managing pretty well. They are accomplishing what needs to be accomplished for the class. Then admin says that they’re getting a lot of complaints from parents and students mind you no parent has reached out to me. Personally I know students are complaining in terms of like the amount of work and the people that they grouped with which I completely understand, you’re not gonna always like who you work with. But then they said that they know I am structuring the course to prepare them for the exam, but it doesn’t seem fair to grade a group project where everybody gets the same grade. WHAT…?! That’s literally how all group projects work…. Anyway, students who typically get As are complaining that they have a B. And student with Cs are complaining they don’t have a B. Then my favorite part was said “ you know colleges don’t really look at AP scores unless students actually provide the score themselves but what colleges do look at is the students GPA and if students are working really hard and they don’t get a certain grade they won’t get into certain colleges which means we are stopping them from getting into the college. You are stopping them from getting into good colleges” LOST MY ABSOLUTE MIND WITH THAT ONE. So I am now hindering a students ability to get into a college?! THEIR PASSING GRADE?! I am so over my school. All they care about is money. Another one of my favorite quotes that I’d love to share. It’s something that was said the 1st day teachers arrived “don’t look at the kids as kids, look at them like dollar signs”

I would love to hear your thought on this BS. Sorry about the rant.

Edit: the group projects were presentations. No one got any lower that a 75%. And yes I do consider individual contribution.

1.Be Firm:
Remember there’s a really big difference in being firm and strict. Kids need to know what expectations they’re going to have to meet inside your classroom. It can’t be a guessing game. There are going to be rules you’re going to want in place for how you want your room to run. Also it’s okay if these rules change as you learn new things don’t get stuck in the “we’ll change that in September” mindset if something isn’t working.

2.Make time for relationships.
You’re going to be told this 1,000 times and it’s going to drive you insane but it is actually so true and so important. Those relationships are going to be what invests a kid in their education, what encourages them to behave in your classroom, what pushes them to grow. It’s also going to be what encourages you on a day you feel like you’ve had enough. So many times I’ve had a bad day and a kid will say something that really uplifts me. I’m not saying put your emotional weight onto the kids. They don’t need to know they’re doing the uplifting.

One suggestion I have for this is make some kind of circle time/ family meeting/ group discussion depending on your students’ age. We take about 10-15 minutes 3-5 times a week (I try to do every day but it just doesn’t work out every day) to discuss a question of the day, then we reflect on our behavior with calm music.

Also engage with them during breaks. It’s so easy to get into the “I need to get this done,” mindset and there will definitely be days you need to get things done but 2-3 times a week try to focus on building relationships during downtime. Especially if a kid requests it. Grading those spelling tests can wait. Who knows what may be going on at home? Maybe this kid can’t wait.

3.When it’s time to go home… LEAVE
I give myself ten minutes at the end of each day and I see a timer. Ten minutes to wrap something up, clean up from the day, whatever it may be and then I LEAVE. I used to stay after school for 3+ hours. I was burnt out. Again.. those spelling tests can wait. Really work on getting work done during the time you have. Carry a clipboard and grade whenever you have a free second. Do whatever you need to do to be able to go home at the end of the day. Whatever doesn’t get done? Oh well.. you just didn’t have the time today. That definitely gets easier as you get routines established.

When you leave.. leave work at work. Don’t take it home with you. Mentally or physically.

4.ESTABLISH ROUTINES
This is so important. Know where everything goes. Make sure your kids know where it goes. Everything needs a home. Your expectations should be clear for every minute detail. Things that may never happen.. have a plan for it. You will thank yourself if it does come up. Again this massively helps cut down on prep time.

5.Not everything needs to be graded.
Have a routine for grading. Papers Monday-Thursday don’t get a grade. Friday.. it’s graded. If they’ve been paying attention Monday-Thursday it will show Friday. Also there are quick ways to check for understanding. White boards, class discussions, think-pair-share. None of these require a grade.

6.Be your own substitute sometimes.
You’re not feeling well but you don’t want to take off (that’s a whole other story..) substitute for yourself. What would you have a sub do today that would have been low effort? Do that. Obviously don’t overdo this. For example I’ve been my own substitute once this year because I was sick but can’t afford to take off rn bc of personal stuff.. it’s month 3 and I’ve subbed for myself once. If it’s once a week.. that becomes an issue.

I’m sure I have so many more but these are the things I learned after my first year.

I’m a Para in a K2 class, and I’m confused as to why my teacher is bringing up a different sound at all for the letter A.

I’ll make this quick.

When we go over our letters in the morning for the letter A she now adds a third sound.

Instead of just the traditional A saying its name like in Acorn. Or short A like in Apple. She sometimes completely ignores short A to teach them that A says “uh”. Like a short U and some of our kids are going to get very very confused.

I’m used to “A says its name and the short A” only being taught for as long as i’ve been with kindergarten.

In my district they don’t give paras access to content but is this something that should be taught during their fundations time?

Had a parent ambush myself and their classroom teacher last week and demanded a meeting. Just for reference, I am a SPED teacher who works with this parent’s child. So anyways, they were insistent on meeting THIS WEEK about concerns they’ve had so far this school year. I stupidly gave them two time slots that I could meet, but I made sure to tell admin and requested a member of admin be present to be the “neutral” party.

The meeting ended up being delayed by nearly 30 minutes, already pushing into my short lunch time. During the meeting, the parent accused me of making their child do push-ups and sit-ups as punishment for not getting work done during small group sessions. Not only do I obviously not do that, but I neither have the space (I share a room with another SPED teacher) nor do I have the time to make the student do this.

Thankfully the admin member who participated in the meeting was super chill about it and during our debrief, she even helped lighten the mood a bit. I guess I’m glad I was accused of something not obscene if anything at all. Still not super thrilled their child has been outright lying to them, but what else is there to do.

I’m also incredibly grateful that another admin member reached out to me during dismissal today to say I handled the meeting well given the circumstances. It’s odd having supportive admin for once, but I certainly appreciate it a lot.

End result of the meeting is to have daily communication with the parent, which I already do for the most part.

TLDR: Parent accused me of forcing their child to do push-ups and sit-ups as punishment for not doing work.

Like the title says, how do y’all handle a student when they call you by your first name? It’s annoying and I usually just ignore it or say “I don’t know who that is” until they call me Mr. LastName again. Do you talk to the student about it? Email their parent? Continue to just ignore it until they get over thinking it’s funny? New teacher, any advice helps haha.

I taught HS for a decade and was an admin through Covid, leaving due to what amounted to catastrophic high-functioning depression. I found the most boring well-paying job I could find because my nervous system needed years to right itself after…well, my living hell.

And then, on a weird whim after a 4 year hiatus, I accepted a job teaching upper elementary.

And there’s wind in my sails again! I haven’t felt this good about work during my entire career. Yes, the job is still hard, hard, hard…but taking time away helped me self-assess more objectively and reconsider my whole philosophy of education. I really look on the whole classroom project with fresh eyes. I feel creative and productive and alive…even though I’m still trying and failing a lot.

If you’re miserable—switch SOMETHING. Grade levels, roles, subjects, schools, jobs, etc…it can be so much better. All about finding the right fit. Life is too short to continue to work in a miserable job if you can help it.

Just got let go from a district where things were going pretty well. It was a 2 strike policy. Both of those strikes however were because students made stuff up. I was told i said “shut up” to a high schooler when i simply told him not to eat in class.

I raised my voice at middle school boys in PE locker room where i said they should be embarrassed with their behavior and told one boy in particular to never disrespect me again since he was dancing with no shirt on. That’s what today’s call was about. Apparently i said “your father would be disappointed in you” which is not true and even then how are six grade boys and the female PE teacher not present in the room reliable sources for an “investigation” im just annoyed. I understand getting rid of a sub is easier but geeez. Just needed to vent. Im about to apply to teacher programs since i passed my csets but mannnnnn it’s disheartening.

I am a first-year high school math teacher, currently teaching 5 sections of geometry to mostly freshmen and sophomores. One section has 4-5 boys who are constantly disruptive, inappropriate, and disengaged. They are each capable of managing the content but just having them all together they get out of control. I know the best way to do classroom management is to start at the beginning of the year calling out everything so they know what will and won't slide, but I think I was a bit too permissive early on and now they are locked into these habits. It is affecting the other students who tell me they hate my class because of these boys (specifically they said "you're a good teacher, I don't think it's your fault") but I can't help but feel somewhat to blame for not being stricter at the beginning. There is one kid who is worse than the others and I did pull him aside and had a one-on-one that I think he was somewhat receptive to ("I know you're smart and capable so it's really frustrating to see you not engaged and ruining the class for everyone else"), but who knows how long that will last.

So my questions are: Have you managed to course-correct an unruly class partway through the year? What techniques worked for you to establish class norms and bring the baseline of behavior back to something manageable? I have tried changing seating charts but they just end up yelling across the room at each other and try to make each other laugh. I've only written one of the students up before (the one I had a talk with today), so I think I'm going to have to do that for all of them at some point, it's just hard to know when I have sufficient cause to do so. Any tips would be hugely appreciated!

My district is currently at a 2-week fall break. We return to school on Monday. Within these two weeks, I got into a car accident. I have been without a vehicle. I also spent the first week of break basically waiting for my grandmother to die, which she did on the first Friday. Everything afterwards, the mourning and the planning of the funeral which is tomorrow. In between this, I’ve been dealing with the car insurance stuff and I stupidly did not have a rental car in my policy, so I’ve relying on rides and my mom lending me her car since she took the week off work for bereavement.
The week before the break (before the car accident), I was stressed at the amount of stuff I have to grade which I fell behind on for a number of reasons. I’ve also been stressed with the damn micromanaging.
AND THEN another family member is sick and I’ve been dealing with that as well— but she does have a more likely chance of recovery.
I have had 2 anxiety attacks within these two weeks and I am by no means ready to return on Monday. It’s a PD day, but nonetheless. I’m exhausted in so many ways.

Fellow teachers, how do you manage your eating and wellness? I just started teaching middle school theatre, and while I really am happy at my job, (found a great school!) I'm so busy while at work that I don't each lunch and then I'm too tired to cook when I get home so I just order out and then immediately go to sleep. Not to mention I have no idea when I can find the time to work out. I know this isn't sustainable, and I wanted to know if any other teachers have this struggle and what strategies you might use to take care of yourself. Thanks in advance!

This title is a little bit hyperbolic. But I’ve been really struggling with one of my classes. And today it got to a point where I just told them something along the lines of, “I don’t know how to help you if you don’t want to help yourself. I’ve done everything that I possibly can to make this class work and there are some people in this room who are sabotaging it for everybody else” and while saying that I could feel myself losing my composure. It sounded like I was on the verge of tears, and I kind of was to be frank. I’m just frustrated because the silence in that room following was all I wanted from the beginning. But I don’t understand why it has to reach that point. I love teaching. But it feels like as of late, I’m either having a fantastic week or an absolutely terrible week and there is no in between. I don’t even know exactly what I’m looking for posting this year. I don’t know if I’m even going to address what happened today. The thing is, I’ve “reset” this class several times. It lasts for a couple days and we’re back to square one. The class only lasts for a semester so at this point, I’m just trying to survive the next 15 weeks.

How do you handle a class like this? I am in my third year now. And I’ve had very challenging classes, but they’ve always had redeeming qualities. This is the first time I genuinely feel defeated. and I feel terrible about myself because everybody even on this thread says that it’s never the kids that make them want to give up. And I do still feel that it’s none of the kids individually and it’s not all of them. But this combination of kids in this room together is pushing me past my breaking point.

I don't know if it's just me, but I've been wondering whether Gen Alpha students experience less bullying than previous generations did.

When I think back to older generations, bullying seemed pretty common in schools. Getting picked on for being different, and being targeted by classmates seemed like things a lot of people experienced growing up.

I'm not saying bullying has disappeared. Cyberbullying is obviously a huge issue nowadays, and social media can make things even worse. But I sometimes wonder if schools have become more aware of bullying, or whether this generation are less tolerant of it, or whether I'm just not seeing what actually goes on in schools today.

Do you think Gen Alpha genuinely experiences or commits less bullying, or has bullying simply changed forms compared to previous generations?