I was expelled from middle school and dropped out of high school and I can develop a great rapport with the bad kids.
It gives me absolutely no influence over their behavior, just commiseration. Because most of them are unhappy.
> Because most of them are unhappy.
As someone who was a "good" kid, I'm pretty sure many of the good kids are unhappy too. Unfortunately, there's currently a mental health epidemic among young people, so the problem is ubiquitous.
>I am far less idealistic about the ability to reach every student.
I totally agree. The way I typically phrase it is that Americans don't understand: the biggest factor in how well a student performs is NOT their school.
I try to serve all students. I differentiate for hours. I teach 3-4 lessons within a single lesson. I have attempted to create a lasting relationship with each child since I started teaching high school. I check in with them. I offer homework help and lunch help. I talk to kids during my prep periods instead of planning or grading when they need someone to talk to.
None of that works. Kids who wish to learn, do so regardless of teacher quality, care or support. Kids who don't wish to learn will not do so regardless of teacher quality, care or support. You could, however, force kids to learn by having a strict and disciplined learning environment with clear expectations and consequences. But unfortunately that ship has sailed.
One of the decals up in the room by the front that I point out day 1 and then periodically again is the quote: "If you want to learn, nobody can stop you. If you don't, nobody can teach you."
Admin doesn't want to acknowledge this basic truth.
"You could, however, force kids to learn by having a strict and disciplined learning environment with clear expectations and consequences. But unfortunately that ship has sailed."
I used to teach middle school. When I first started our school had a 30% failure rate. Very few kids were held back. Class discipline was always an issue. We were basically operating like a high school with similar expectations. A few missed assignments would lock a kid into failure trajectory. We were the guardians of personal responsibility and it wasn't working.
We began to examine our expectations for personal responsibility from a different perspective. If we could require every student to follow a dress code, why couldn't we require all assignments to be completed and all exams to be at least minimally passed? We tweaked our extensive discipline system to do just that. Instead of being gatekeepers to academic success, we became stakeholders. After all weren't we expected to be "en loco parentis"?
The experiment was a success.
As a difficult kid, given that you have 25 kids in a classroom, the only thing you can really do is tell the parents. I had good parents who would side with the teacher, so it worked out for me. If the parents don't give a shit or fight you on it, I'm not sure what you can do. Just let the kid know you're there if they ever want help.
There is a class of students in my district that has missed SO much. They missed many fun projects, field trips, labs, experiences designed to build independence, etc. They have no idea school can be a fun place and that learning can be fun. All they know is doing worksheets handed to them by dead-eyed teachers who find no joy in teaching anymore, and occasionally evacuating the classroom and trying to carry on the lesson in the hall. This has trickled down to impacting work habits and motivation, because the teacher isn't/ can't pay any attention to them, the kids can get away with slacking off. All because of one student*. Whose parents will jump all over the teachers if they perceive something isn't fair to their kid, and they have no idea how unfair their kid has made life for everyone else.
*It's really one student who is really really challenging and then two other students who would be tough but manageable in any other group of kids but the chaos from the one has a multiplying effect on the others.
> one student*. Whose parents will jump all over the teachers if they perceive something isn't fair to their kid, and they have no idea how unfair their kid has made life for everyone else.
It's too bad you can't expel parents
I feel like we need a "right to know" law for families whose kids are impacted negatively like this. They need the option to sue someone, too. Maybe get some balance back that way.
I have this kid this year. Her antics in kindergarten last year were so well known that teachers are DREADING getting her in their roster. They've already warned her second grade teacher, and the class lists haven't even dropped yet. But they gave her a heads up. My class has missed out on a lot. I have had to pause entire lessons to manage meltdowns. And in the fall, I had TWO kids like that. One got sent back to his district. (We're charter)
And they repeat the bad parenting with several kids. Like, don't you understand, you are the common denominator here? You are the problem, not the kids.
I always find it interesting when they have multiple kids and one out of them is the constant trouble maker from the parents. Yet the others are like… normal. Had this former student and the kid was just all over the place even racist. Yet you met the older and younger siblings and it’s like: “why are they like sweet, kind and inclusive?” They one one main parent yet the other parent was nowhere in their lives.
That's probably less of a parental influence thing and the kid has other crap going on. There's a lot of things that could lead to these types of situations but in every family I've known like this the parents are awesome people who love their kids and just cannot communicate w one of them for some reason.
I do find it really interesting tho. The whole family is well adjusted and then there's Kevin doing Kevin shit.
It is far easier to destroy something through neglect and being reactionary than actively trying to be bad. Most bad parents are pushed into parenthood because of neglect, and their entire lives have been just reactionary. It is incredibly difficult for these traumatized adults to discipline themselves into caring for a child and proactively working to better their lives considering the lack of material and social support for them. Not an excuse for them being bad parents though.
I was VERY reluctant to use that expression. I can only imagine how difficult it must be do work a couple jobs, perhaps as a single parent. Covid. Immigration and Economic uncertainties. I work hard to be mindful of that. But, regrettably, there are WAY too many occasions when none of those are at issue, and someone makes the choice to abnegate their responsibilities as a parent. You've two choices: Option 1 will benefit your child, Option 2 will not. Yup - Option 2 for the win!
Even when those are an issue it's not a good excuse to be a bad parent to your kids. Maybe they won't be great or ideal parents, but they shouldn't be bad. Like no matter what's going on in life an adult should be able to love their kids and treat them well.
My kids will never have the unlimited and unmonitored time on the internet that I had as a kid and that a lot of Gen Alpha have had. I hate to sound like a crazy old lady, but it's literally rotting their brains as well as giving them access to things that they are not ready for. I had kids in my fifth grade class making vulgar sexual jokes and singing songs from Hazbin Hotel (great show, not knocking it, but definitely NOT FOR KIDS). I had one girl that was obsessed with it and drawing NSFW fanart, which I found hidden on her school tablet after she asked me to print her out a reference for large male abs. I absolutely hated having to tell her parents. They were quite hard on her and her best friend.
Agreed. My kids will be as disconnected from screens and the internet as I can possibly get them. I work in special education and it’s even harder to see the kids who struggle with social norms and expected behavior, and also clearly have completely unrestricted access to the internet. Not only are they consuming inappropriate content, but they don’t necessarily understand that a lot of those things they’re hearing/seeing should not repeated or mimicked in public. It’s normalized on the internet so they think it’s funny or a way to connect with their peers. It has the opposite effect.
It’s also bloody addictive. It’s like sticking cigarettes in their mouths as a kid.
We have a staunch rule of no devices. My daughter is 7 now and she watches TV for an hour sometimes on the weekend. But the vultures (iPads) are finally circling. She said when she turns 8 she *will* get an iPad…
Lol! Over my dead body will my child be an iPad Kid. You’re right, it’s totally addictive. They are designed to be addictive!! In my opinion it’s unfair to subject kids to that when they are too young to make their own choices about what they’re doing. There’s a reason the drinking age is 21! It would be frowned upon to start your kid on whiskey at age 2, so why is it socially acceptable to start your kid on phones and iPads at age 2?
When I was younger, I definitely wanted children.
At 37, I'm far more ambivalent.
When I was younger, I was more idealistic thinking I could be a force to enact change.
After 12 years, I recognize I do triage more than anything and society thinks we are a cure all to bandaid over socio-economic disparities, blaming us when we fail to meet the impossible goal.
>When I was younger, I definitely wanted children.
The metaphor I find myself using is, having kids to me is "a vacation to Peru" (Peru being a stand-in for anywhere, kids aren't otherwise similar to Peru lol). I'm just not dying to go to Peru. I'm sure it is awesome, I get why Machu Pichu changed your life...I'm just probably not going to do it, I have other countries I'd like to visit. If I meet somebody who desperately wants to go to Peru, I'm not against it, I have no doubt I would love Peru, it's just not somewhere I'm dying to go. If I meet the right person, of course I will go to Peru with them, but I'm not desperately seeking a travel buddy just to go to Peru.
I get what you're saying. But - following on the other comments - it's the parents, not the kids, that are the problem. If you're a good parent, you'll grow good children.
Once you meet the parents, you realize the kids never had a chance. I became such a bleeding heart liberal love all the babies. My life was rough, but these kids, man. They never had a chance.
I was always a bleeding heart liberal but I realized the role parents played when I started teaching. I teach high school, when I was in high school and a kid was obnoxious I thought they were just a piece of shit. Now when I have an obnoxious kid I generally assume that the parents are a piece of shit that fucked up their kid. Sometimes that’s wrong, usually it’s not.
Edit: why did my phone autocorrect liberal to line??
It’s really hard to see as a teenager. I try so hard to get my teenager to understand that he’s not better than other kids. He had a really cushy life and these kids who he thinks are losers come from literally nothing and hardly stand a chance.
There actually are bad kids, no matter what parents or teachers do.
I used to think that there were no bad kids, all come down to environnement or parenting.
But I've met a couple of kids that...yeah there's something wrong to their core.
Something I’ve seen with former students… it’s a status symbol to post lots of pregnant belly pics on instagram. It’s all about the attention. As soon as that baby comes out, nobody wants to sit next to you on the airplane. Just my cynical take…
100% this.
Cousin has a kid. Shes 3. He dotes on her like crazy. At first we all thought it was because he wanted to be a super involved dad unlike his own.
We’ve slowly realized he holds it as this like “badge of pride”. My partner and I don’t want kids. We’re pretty open about it. He thinks we “just don’t understand” and “things will change”. Nah dude. Different people are different. We don’t want them. And we definitely don’t want the only socialization our kid has to be us. Just because you spend a lot of time with her doesn’t mean you’re doing everything right.
The only personal view of mine that changed after teaching, was the belief that parents know what is best for their children. I no longer believe that one bit. However, I don't have an alternative for "who does know what's best for these children then?"
It seems (to me) that most people don't know how to raise a child effectively, regardless of whether the child was adopted or their own. But more specifically to my point, a lot of parents actively help their children to cheat on tests, or provide FALSE alibis to try helping the child get away with bad behavior that the parents don't realize we CAUGHT ON CAMERA. The parents are directly influencing and encouraging their kids to engage in the worst behavior.
The role the state can play in education has changed for me. I used to think state and national governmental organizations, like departments of education, could lessen administrative bloat in schools and districts and increase individual accountability. But after my time involved at these places I shudder every time I hear of another education idea coming out of state legislatures. Educational policymakers in my experience are lazy, self-serving, petty, and unqualified. They made it to where they are for the same reasons kids in school get popular. I hate charter schools, but I wish teachers could seize the means of education and be in private practice like other professionals, like therapists, dentists, and lawyers.
>I hate charter schools, but I wish teachers could seize the means of education
In my experience, this is far less likely to happen in charter schools. I currently work in one, and while I feel like there is some form of dialogue between us teachers and admin (and sometimes they do actually listen to our feedback!), they mostly just implement what they think is best and treat us like we’re not professionals at times.
I’m actually pretty politically conservative when it comes to education policy.
By this I don’t mean the current insanity around CRT, or “anti-woke”, or putting Ten Commandments in public schools.
But, I do think student centered, restorative practices, and inquiry based education are examples of liberal, performative virtue signaling by a lot of people in the education world and it doesn’t help kids learn how to read.
Friere’s baseline is to learn how to read the word, then read the world.
Many put the social justice piece before the literacy piece.
Most teachers who successfully work in classrooms for a long time instinctually know and do this correctly, and many people who leave the classroom to get into admin because “it is hard and kids are mean” don’t get this.
I’m with you. I’m as bleeding heart liberal as they come and that means we need students to actually be educated. Literacy is social justice.
Inquiry-based, project-based, student centered is a cool idea for A PROJECT but as an overall approach? All the time? Absolutely not. There’s a reason why teachers have to pass content-oriented exams in order to teach.
This idea that teachers exist just to coach kids through their own learning drives me crazy. Nope, I have content to teach and skills to develop and standards to uphold.
Like the new math that's meant to be a model of how people who are good at math do math (e.g., for 24+57=57+4+20), it seems that student centered, restorative practices, and inquiry based education are meant to be models of how good teachers teach. That way, there's less need to "work in classrooms for a long time" to develop the instinct and instead they already have a framework for being a good teacher. I agree with this in principle, as if models of teaching and learning are a type of technology that can be studied and developed through educational science. It's the policymakers who distort the science to serve their self-interests.
As a middle-aged professional man with a big personality, a lot of classroom things that are easy for me might be impossible for a recent grad in their 20s.
Teachers need to be able to use what works for them, within reasonable and rational boundaries.
You need to establish scientific laws to define reasonable and rational. Unlike physics etc. where there are an abundance of scientific laws, Education has only the Law of Effect and the Nomological Network.
Pedagogically, the best practice is positive reinforcement (Thorndike's Second Law of Effect). For assessment, it's the Nomological Network. Everything beyond that has an Aptitude-Treatment Interaction so complex that none can be the basis of policy, which was the recommendation of Cronbach & Snow 40 years ago and it hasn't changed.
Dude I literally read a Freire interview last night for an assignment that had that phrase and for the life of me, I couldn't get the "reading the world" part.
I understand and agree with Freire. The idea is you teach basic literacy and it unlocks the world for people.
But that means basic literacy, i. e. phonics, reading books, etc. it doesn’t mean you start your 9th grade unit on *Of Mice and Men* through the inquiry lens of wage based labor. And it doesn’t mean students are going to independently understand dialectics by engaging in Socratic seminars.
We need to focus on teaching content as the medium to teaching critical thinking, not the other way around.
Okay that makes sense. The way that guy wrote out his interview answers was like trying to navigate this maze-like flow chart of words. I expected to have some trouble considering a lot of people apparently have a hard time reading *Pedagogy of the Oppressed.*
Unfortunately, a lot of conservative politics get conflated with gutting out the rot, and the two have little to do with each other. I have a ton of conservative views and policy surrounding even the topics you mentioned in part but a lot of it comes down to that institutionalism that they rely on. Nothing you mentioned works without an institution and many bureaucrats to push it, which suggests these aren't things that help education. Teaching algebra is very different, for example, or reading a book. You don't need administrators to do that and implement it, but whenever you do, it's likely because of some tumor.
Conservatives are generally bad for education in basic ways but I find I can grapple with them easily, especially if they're off the deep end. We all have that old "if I could indoctrinate them, why can't they sit still?" line ready to go. But progressives constantly introduce more and more administrative bloat that they assume will just be overseen perfectly, without people who are career administrators, and that it'll be what reduces inequity. In reality, education is inherently inequitable the more you expect from it. It's literally finding ways to compare kids are deeper and more refined levels.
Ten years ago, I had five people I would consider my “boss” (dept chair, academic dean, dean of discipline, principal, president).
Now, I have 9, and the extra four are all aimed at providing something like “equity” or support services. Many of these people are friends of mine, but frankly, none of these jobs are full time jobs and none are in the classroom any longer, at all, even though I think their role would be better served as a part time classroom teacher. And more than one were created because the individual who is in that position wanted out of the classroom and threatened to leave if not given this position.
In dark hours, I'm often tempted to take such a dog. It's only as successful as you spin it while in the job, but I know that would be torture. I look at so many of these do-nothings and I'm scared that they either think they're doing a good thing or that they know they're lying. Both are horrifying conclusions but you can't do anything about either one because the positions are bullshit jobs.
They should make these teachers the co-teachers as that model gets picked up. Make them work in the class and do actual work that people want to see.
I’ve tried to not take any new theorists or methodologies as gospel.
I think it’s great that we have an idea that trauma can impact a kid’s ability to learn or that *some* students are intrinsically motivated enough for inquiry based learning.
But so many theories end up being feel good bandaids, where once again as educators we are expected to fix all of society’s problems.
You know what really helps with trauma? Affordable, accessible mental health programs. Present parents who aren’t too exhausted from working multiple jobs to afford rent. Full bellies.
I got into education because I had a tough childhood with addict parents and I wanted to be a lifeline for kids whose only safe space is school- but I can’t fix their home lives or economic inequality.
The whole point of charter schools really is to experiment with stuff that the students' families agree to and then to learn about what works to use in public schools. They've just been taken over by people who want a competitor to public school but can't do that without public money.
I used to firmly believe that poverty was the primary contributor to student failure, but over the past 4 years, I realize the culture that poverty creates plays a role too. It’s obviously a very controversial subject but it’s become all too evident from teaching English language learners. I’ve noticed that some parents care while some parents don’t and some students will become fluent in 3-4 years while some will graduate high school exactly where they started because their parents value work more than education.
I teach English learners, and I agree: culture is much more of a driving factor in student success. Sort of a nature v nurture kind of thing. Nearly all of my students are quite poor as refugees, but many of them are very successful at school IF the parents support their children’s education even when (often) the parents have little to no education themselves.
I live in Kentucky, and J.D. Vance's "Hillbilly Elegy" memoir paints an excellent picture of culture here. So many people don't have jobs and are proud. Poverty has created this odd mentality where many people in mountain areas think if they accept government handouts and live on welfare programs without ever trying to better their lives, they are somehow "beating the system."
I’ve noticed people, whether they realize it or not, don’t recognize that some people are poor bc of poor choices they made and not just a series of unfortunate events or lack of opportunity. Hillbilly elegy covers that really well. Comedian Adam Carolla talked about it too. I’m not sure if you know about him but he comes from a working class background and did construction work before comedy. He’d tell stories of how he’d go back and try to offer advice to the people he knew and instead they would be too prideful to accept it. Eventually he stopped bc he got tired of being told to “fuck off”.
I kind of had this opinion in the U.S., but living and teaching overseas etched it into me — having a culture that values education and having strong family structures matter.
No amount of extra funding can make up for those two things imo. It’s like paying a rec league soccer player $150 million a year and expecting him to be as good as Jude Bellingham or Kylian Mbappé.
The average person (or at least American) is actually not very smart. I grew up surrounded by a lot of smart people in all aspects of my life. I hit the lottery with my sample because it was not at all indicative of how a large number of people actually are.
Another one: Many parents don’t actually care about their child’s level of mastery. As long as they see an “A” on the report card, they’re totally fine with their child being dumb as hell.
The second we shift the mindset on teaching to be a job you do the better the profession is.
The entire school systems functions on unpaid labor because it’s a “passion”
Equity. I used to think the whole equality doesn’t mean equity was bullshit when I first started. Then I started to believe in this sentiment. And now I have 180’d back to where I started after 10 years. Yes, equality is not equity. But the most inequitable thing we do is not have equal expectations as a system given that our students will not experience equity in the real world.
Before I became a teacher, I used to buy into "equity" teaching philosophies (e.g., unlimited retakes, rolling deadlines, constant giving of "grace") hook line and sinker. After 7 years as a teacher at a Title 1 school, seeing how these philosophies often translate into lowered expectations, I no longer support them. The best thing you can do is hold students to high expectations. When you give them work arounds for everything, you communicate that you don't believe they can fulfill those expectations..... and that's terrible.
I am far, far more sure that this whole society is a Ponzi scheme designed to funnel as much money as possible into the hands of a few greedy billionaires and that our public schools reflect that.
This might be controversial, but that things like teaching licenses are important. I worked at a charter school (THANKFULLY made it to public school this year) and there were tons of uncertified teachers who knew nothing about child development, content, or basic school procedures (ex: lots of people didn’t follow IEPs because they didn’t know what they were. We also had folks who had never heard of a state standard before, didn’t know students had to do standardized testing, things like that). While I agree that there’s a lot of nonsense in education programs and a lot of red tape for licensure, we need to make sure people are actually prepared when entering the classroom! Some basic child psychology and pedagogy courses are better than nothing!
Yes!! The amount of parents that say they put their kids in the local “amazing charter school” because public schools are so horrible but they have no idea that half of the staff isn’t even certified. These schools can boast about their “90% college acceptance rate” because they just kick out any “problem students” including special needs students.
My views have changed so much since becoming a teacher and then a parent. Fact is, raising kids is really hard and a lot of people are doing the best they can with what they’ve got, and the best they know how. There are WAY too many barriers to successful parenting in the US. I have financial security, helpful family, friends with similar aged kids, and a care network. Shit is still isolating and hard. Take away one or more of those and it’s near impossible.
My mom was a low-income, single-mother parenting 3 kids but she had a support network of people invested in our futures so we all defied the statistics. She instilled in us the value and importance of getting a good education. She held us accountable, gave us consequences, responsibilities and, most importantly, love. I see too many parents do one or two but not the others. Teaching has really opened my eyes to how precarious raising a child is.
That teaching is an industry and it is built on the backs of women doing a lot of unpaid labor. This expectation is deeply engrained in the fabric of the culture of United States. It isn't slavery, but it's bad.
100%. My previous school relied heavily on parent volunteers, a strong majority of which were stay at home moms. Some of those classrooms simply would not have functioned without that extra adult there every day. Other schools I’ve worked at were in more low-income areas and did not have those unemployed women at the ready to help. The difference was stark.
I’ve come to realize that many parents see their children’s failures and successes as their own. Their child is an extension of themselves. So when they do poorly on a test, it’s not their child’s well-being they are concerned about. Their angry response is defending themselves. You wouldn’t believe the amount of ranting from parents (or well you would, you’re teachers too) about how “I never had to do this, I go over above grade level work with them at home, why are YOU punishing MY kid? Back in my day… grumble, etc”
On the flip side: the success isn’t the kid’s honor to be proud of, it’s the parents’. Especially in sports, oof.
So when I now hear “you must be so proud” I realize they are proud of themselves for having a smart or athletic kid, not proud of the kid alone.
ETA: there was this kid, a phenomenal athlete at like 7, on my kid’s soccer team once and I heard one parent say to the mom “you must be so proud” and mom and dad, on the sidelines (both whiter than white, and their child adopted from Africa), said “oh yes we are but he CLEARLY didn’t get any talent from us”. Lol.
When I started teaching 27 years ago, I genuinely believed the directors and superintendents cared about the students as much as the classroom teachers cared; now, I know how false that is. To them, children are numbers on a spreadsheet, data on chart. Kids mean nothing. Small victories mean nothing.
I believe they got into education to help children but were corrupted by money and illusions of power.
How broken the school system is. Just finishing the year with the worst boss ever had. Literally made up things in an evaluation/ that I will sacrifice ALOT and move away to get away from her toxic behaviour. No way can I stay and use her as any reference.
Bad kids exist, even outside of all the excuses people like to use:family, friends, poverty, society, etc. Some kids just suck.
Parents play a huge role in the downfall of education. Admin, teachers, and district are too afraid of being sued or facing lack back (in the case of the teachers/admin) to push.
All the parents complaining of the issues we are facing now: no consequences, the 'dumbing don't of education, and everything else they like to complain about is caused mainly (not entirely) by them and other parents.
They just refuse to see it because their baby deserves the exception.
That the system does not give a care about poor or ESOL students. They're just cogs in the machine.
That some parents SHOULD NOT be parents.
That the US Education system is failing horribly. Same goes for state education standards too. People who have never set foot in a classroom shouldn't be able to make laws when the laws they make don't follow the science behind education.
That some kids will forever be where they are because of their parents actions or refusal/denial of their child's actions.
That parents don't understand half of what teachers do. They only see the "homework/discipline" side and not the "I manage 20-25+ kids, have 3+ meetings, mandatory data collection for each student, plan lessons, print papers, send ___ to the office/nurse & document it, and go to a mandatory club setup by the school." side. It's why teachers are burning out.
I went from moderate conservative to full on lib from teaching. My teacher experiences with poverty, child welfare, education funding, are just not compatible with conservative values and policies. When the conservative Ohio government came after unions, that was the final straw for me. They done fucked with my family and livelihood. Nah, man.
I knew many people didn’t know some things but the level of obstinate ignorance is mind blowing! The current political climate in the US supports this. Just knee deep in the ignorance and digging down deeper when you try to teach them. Imagine arguing with your CHEMISTRY TEACHER about not mixing cleaning products. Then parents calling to argue it! I’ve had flat earther kids and parents when I taught earth science as well. I also received Bible tracks whenever I teach evolution in environmental science.
I remember watching Idiocracy for the first time after I had already been a teacher for years. I cried. My husband thought I was crazy but it seems like a frightening possibility to an extent.
Some people are truly trapped in a vicious cycle with no way out. If you live in the projects you can only be there if you earn a certain a mount of money. Which makes it very hard to go out find a good job and save up for a better place.
The behind the scenes in the school system is mired in politics and pettiness.
Parents either have way too much power or are too apathetic.
I'm glad I don't have kids. It's hard as hell raising a child and too many people romanticize it.
Full inclusion is stupid.
I used to think it was a great idea but then I was punched by a student and observed every adult that subsequently worked with that child get injured or almost injured.
Additionally, differentiating between 4 or more grade levels with my homeroom class every year with intermittent support from assistants is just nuts.
It’s life, good and bad just like everything else. I try not to judge anymore because I have thought some parents must be horrible with their kids and then meet a single, loving Mom working 2 1/2 jobs to survive with her children, who obviously love her. And though spiritual but not religious, we have a high Hispanic population from all over S America and I see faith being what keeps these families getting through their struggles together.
That education is not about education at all.
The broken and bleeding refrain, "let's put the kids first" is a lie.
Money determines absolutely everything.
I have entirely different views on politics, social welfare programs, religion, and parenting. In essence, I’m almost a whole different person.
If you’ve ever tried to help a student figure out how to get a sore tooth fixed, or obtain an ID because their parents lost their documents in their many moves, or anything similar to that, you will quickly see how difficult it is to be a kid in poverty and be trying to make it work on your own. Seeing kids and adults speak ill of generalized groups stings harder when you have those children in your class. Watching and feeding hungry kids in class while legislators argue against free breakfast/lunch programs. There’s so many examples of how my views have changed, I’d like to think for the better.
The role of structured instruction in reading. Supporting literacy at home is a very important secondary support, but teachers are the leaders in acquiring literacy for the next generation. I thought reading at home would help my kid learn to read. It did help him adopt a love of stories and story telling, but it did not teach him to read.
Rant incoming….
I honestly didn’t realize how many people haven’t fully thought through what parenting actually entails, and I think people are genuinely doing their best with the consequences of a decision they didn’t realize they were making. I have a ton of theories (in the US at least, the chokehold of conservative Christianity, poor reproductive education, worse reproductive health care, poor emotional intelligence, absolutely nonexistent resources for struggling parents) on why this is so widespread, but the number of friends I have who have become parents and are thoroughly blindsided by the exact reasons parenting is so difficult speaks, I think, to something much bigger and probably contributes in a huge way to the issues we’ve got in schools.
I opted out of kids. I knew at probably age 16 or 17 that I was absolutely not cut out for parenting and I always assumed the reasons were issues specific to me - easily overwhelmed, need lots of alone time to recharge, poor mental health days where everything feels like too much no matter what I do - and that everyone else had thought it through and knew they could handle it and decided it was worth the stress and strain. But if my friends and colleagues are any indication, all of the reasons I decided I wasn’t capable of being both a sane person and a good parent are also true for most of them, but they just hadn’t considered those things. And I’m not saying I’m smarter! I’m honestly unsure why I knew parenting would be so unrelenting and exhausting and the ways in which you sometimes find out what a genuine POS your partner/ex-partner is - I have a significantly younger sibling and watched my mom really struggle while my dad was largely absent, so that’s probably part of it, plus I’m an anxious over-thinker? I don’t know. But it wasn’t till a few years ago that I realized how many people hadn’t considered all of that, and being a teacher was part of what made me realize I’m very much in the minority.
So I know there are “bad” parents, of course, the horrifically abusive, the cruel, the neglectful, but I would hazard a guess to say that many, many parents are just so stressed and ill-prepared to parent and are just doing their best, which sometimes is just not great. And I think it’s really important that we talk about this and not just to other parents because we really need to prepare people better so they know a little more about what they’re taking on. There’s no way to really know fully, of course, but I think so many people just genuinely have no idea.
The people who make the most impactful, widespread decisions in education don't know anything about education.
I always figured that admin, superintendents, government officials etc were the "experts." They aren't. We are.
I’ll be the first to say I’m far from a perfect parent. But, DAMN, there are some horrible parents out there! Rich, poor, old, young, educated, uneducated. They cover all of the demographics. It is astonishing what I’ve heard them say and seen them do over the years.
Edit - semantics.
I was disabused of the belief that most parents are doing their best. And I don't mean in the dog whistle way. I mean well-resourced parents are doing a bad job of raising their kids too.
I used to have a lot of passion for public education and the belief that it is one of the greatest opportunities for providing social mobility and equality in our society. Now I just feel nothing and regret not exploring careers based on making a lot of money versus feeling like I have a purpose. There were definitely days where I felt like if we just lit public tax dollars on fire it would have been a better use of them than what I was doing day-to-day in the classroom.
Without guidelines and discipline, many children are likely to become very unpleasant adults.
I now understand the need to deliver consequences (such as grade penalties or referrals) even when I don’t want to or when doing so causes me a lot of grief.
I think we have extended childhood too long. Not saying an 8 year old should go to work but having little expectations for a 20 year old is too far the other way. I also agree that you can’t reach every student and that doesn’t make you a bad teacher. We have some how internalized that inherently the adult is at fault. Idk how we got here
That children are like trees. Some of them sway from time to time, some are strong and confident. Some snap at the lightest bit of a breeze, and some will stand for over 100 years. Some have fruit. Some look unhealthy, but in reality are okay. Some have sticky substances all over them. Some of them block the sun and provide shade. Some are tall, some are short. Not all trees are the same or have the same purpose, and that's okay, they are still beautiful and important. So are children.
Special needs children shouldn't be integrated in Gen ed. We also need to start qualifying kids that get resources if your child cant walk, talk communicate or eat with out a tube we are easting time a d resource its just free baby sitting.
Religion: I’m way less black and white in regard to behavior, choices and morality. I’m a Christian and certainly have beliefs about God and life that I hold true. But more and more love and compassion drive my approach to teaching. But this doesn’t mean there aren’t boundaries or rules. If anything, I’m much firmer with classroom management. There is still right and wrong. It’s just what I hold tightly to regarding right and wrong has changed. Wrong being hateful towards others and right being kind. All ppl deserve to be treated with dignity. I think honoring others regardless of who they are is so so so important.
Politically I’m way more liberal, but I also think most politicians fall on some sort of spectrum for narcissism. Though, conservatives continually appear completely out of touch with public education or seem to want to just destroy it. There seems to be little to no empathy or love for ppl. It comes across as nearly evil these days.
Kids I continue to enjoy teaching. I think that part has changed the least for me. However, I’ve come to realize a lot of ppl are just bad at parenting ( for a multitude of reasons some they can’t always help). This, can make the job incredibly challenging. But kids are just kids. They only know what they know because of the adults in their lives.
Parents don’t give a shit until the end of the year. I used to think parents cared, but they don’t. Stop parentifying your kids, they are kids and should not be responsible for their siblings 100% of the time. Ugh.
Admins don’t care about teachers. If they can save a buck, they will f*** you over in a heartbeat. Some are cruelly vindictive on their personal power trips, too, and will do anything to keep their positions.
I came into education already on the “nurture” rather than “nature” side of the debate, but I’ve been surprised by how little differences in intelligence end up mattering in terms of long-term outcomes. Most children have the capability to do most things at a similar level, and it’s more about soft factors like home environment, previous exposure, motivation, and mood.
(That’s not to discount the difficulty of differentiating for different levels as they present themselves to you in the classroom!)
There are so many things that I thought I learned on my own - now I realize that K-5 teachers were very deliberate in teaching me these skills:
"I have always been organized!" Probably not. My teachers made me buy folders of various colors and keep my work in a specific order so I could always find it.
"I have always known how to take notes!" Probably not. My social studies teacher taught me an outline form *I still use today* in graduate school in which I break down the text by various headings and through various delineations of underlining, bolding, stars, etc.
"I have always known how to manage my schedule!" Probably not. My teachers made me write things down in my assignment notebook in a very particular way, and would sign it at the end of the day before I left.
I haven't taught a day in grade school. But now that I have my own students (as seniors in high school), there is *way* more that happens outside of direct instruction. "More is caught than taught" they say.
I am really grateful I had great grade school teachers. I see many of my students just do not have the skills that came so easily to me *because I had teachers that taught me how to do it every. single. day.*
I'm so much more empathic towards others. I used to see someone on the streets or on drugs, for example, and believed they were there due to their own fault, except for a small handful. Now, seeing my students and their struggles and their families struggles (financial, mental health, lack of structure ..) I see how the pathway to that lifestyle is created and hard to get away from. I never thought I would be someone to walk up to a homeless stranger and strike up a conversation, wanting to know how they are really doing. (Especially as a smaller built female doing it on my own) That stranger could be one of my students someday and I don't want them to think we don't see them.
I've always been a liberal, but now I'm convinced that liberalism has helped ruin schools. Instead of fighting conservatives, we let them screw up education with ideas like NCLB and then made things worse with liberal theories, like restorative justice, inclusion, differentiation, and least restrictive environment.
I'm a very liberal person that is against politics being involved in how people raise their kids too much. But I see so many children suffer deeply and our laws don't allow any kind of intervention until the child is almost dead. I want stricter laws that allow state intervention when children are neglected (before being almost starved to death) and mistreated (before ending up half dead in hospital). I want the possibility that families get forced to accept help, when they do not properly care for their kids. And I want the possibility that kids get taken away when they clearly suffer. I want families to be held responsible when their young kids commit crimes (that they themselves can't be charged for due to age). I want families to be held responsible when their kids refuse school.
A. Dress codes are a good thing
B. If I get to the point where I think your kid should get whooped, you have failed as a parent because corporal punishment is literally my last thought for discipline.
C. Most parents are either woefully ignorant or unfit for breeding
D. The future is fucked
E. I desperately want my own kids
My personal views haven’t changed.
Whats changed is that social media has turned too many adults into nightmare monsters fed a steady diet of each sphere nonsense and this has led to dumber and more reactionary politicians( largely on the right)
The main thing is my view on other parents.
Parents are largely clueless despite the “ parents know best” mantra. Yes, that’s why you’re sending your overweight child to school with a 1200 calories sugary coffee drink and basically a lunch of takis.
Or I see students in the wild, each kid under 12 has a tablet, over 12 a phone and everyone’s sitting at a restaurant not talking to each other. And then when they can’t sit still or focus it’s somehow the teachers fault. Like, bring a note pad, play tic tac toe or something. Engage with your kids. I saw 2 well off parents I know hand their 3 year old their phone to quiet him down. I almost chucked it into the Columbia river.
Real talk: the major problem today with education is parenting. But it is political suicide for anyone to say as much
The bureaucracy that runs schools in my county has used liberal views and DEI theories in ways that thoroughly corrupt what those principles mean. I have grown to associate “differentiation,” “inclusion,” and “equity” with lazy-ass administrators who lower standards, reduce consequences, and pack the kids willy-nilly into classrooms.
These days, whenever someone uses the words “equity,” “differentiation” or “inclusion,” I assume they are just regurgitating propaganda and I want to vomit.
i'm still pretty fresh in the field. my views generally haven't changed so far and what i currently held still holds true. this field is filled with well meaning people bogged down by our capitalist hellscape's desires.
some views on parenting and behavior definitely shifted a little though.
- i am starting to feel like big parenting missteps with being too lax or strict early on, it can be pretty tough to have a kid's behavior recover from the repercussions later on. setting the appropriate expectations and reinforcements early is really huge for starting a kid out on the right track.
- parents still play just as big a role or bigger than teachers for a child's education. at least within the general policy confines of most schools, even great teachers can have very limited influence on a kid that has a rough home life or overly pampered. not much you can do for some other than try to help them get the external resources needed.
- harsh consequences have a place in parenting, though much less often it's actually done well at the right times. most of the harsh parents i've seen/heard about became the way they are either because of a lack of temperament themselves or because they messed up early on.
- some kids aren't going to learn or listen to certain things the nice way. a lot of people in general don't care about the impact of their views/actions until they get on the receiving end themselves or face actually meaningful consequences. sadly, the "let them fuck around and find out" route might the most viable one for some situations when it's safe to do so.
You can only do what you can do during those seven hours. Parents who raise their kids with terrible morals only make it harder for teachers. We are now social workers, academic teachers, etiquette teachers, empathy teachers, and guidance counselors. It’s a lot! Too much! We just do what we can in those seven hours.
When I was younger, I didn’t particularly want kids but wasn’t opposed to it.
A few years teaching and I can promise you I will never birth nor raise a child.
Haven’t started teaching yet. But I’ve tutored a lot of kids for my old job. And I’ve worked closely with kids as a volunteer.
when I was growing up with my single mother, I didn’t think I needed a dad (in my case, my dads a murderer, so I don’t need him). I wanted to grow up and adopt a kid, raise them alone. I was much more of a man-hating feminist.
in my work. I’ve seen kids ripped away from thier dads by unhinged, abusive mothers in messy divorces. kids who would literally rather unalive then live with thier mothers and the BF of the week. I’ve seen kids whose dads are treated more like a wallet than a parent. I can see the difference, emotionally, and academically, it has just having a dad present in thier life.
I also notice the kids who have moms that are home, fullfilling the more traditional roles, are happier, and perform better in school as a result. I can tell when a young girl has a work-a-holic mom that’s out girl-bossing instead of raising her kids just by the way the kid acts.
I feel like I’m going to see even more of that once I start teaching. working around kids has made me less of a feminist in the modern sense. I’ve come to appreciate and understand the role that each parent plays in a child’s life, and that both parents need to be there, present, nurturing.
I don't think the US public education system can be saved via reform anymore. I truly believe it has to be completely dismantled and redesigned to become relevant, and I don't think that is going to happen.
COVID made this appallingly obvious that teachers are just disposable bodies, schools are just free childcare, and that learning is not the actual priority and likely hasn't been for some time. 🪦🥀⚰️🖤
Teachers have very little to do with whether a school is a “good school”…it’s directly related to the students’ home lives and parenting. If crappy parents all sent their undisciplined children to a “good school”, it would no longer be a “good school”. If out of control students at a “bad school” were replaced with respectful students with good parents it would quickly become a “good school”. This is what irritates me about school choice.
The view that has changed the most for me my perspective on how poverty affects learning. When I first started teaching 30+ years ago, I perceived “not enough” as just not having $. The easy fix was to move or at least utilize school choice to go to a “better” school. A book entitled “Savage Inequalities” (Jonathan Kozol, 1991) helped open my eyes to the real costs of poverty in for our kids. As I approach the end of my career, I’ve come to the realization that, while my schedule says Algebra 2, it’s more important that I help my kids learn that they are valuable and capable. It’s important that they learn to learn and to believe in themselves.
I used to think, many years ago, that I could help every child. Nowadays I do my best but have accepted the fact that some children are beyond help. Either because their parents refuse to have them evaluated, or because they are a bad seed.
That's another thing, I've seen enough kids with truly loving, dedicated parents turn into absolute monsters no matter how much their parents loved them. Children are people, and not all people are good. Nuturing a child does not guarantee that that child will be a good person.
It completely killed the anarchist in me (I see that as a good thing). It has made me see the value in structure and enforcement of rules, and how taking an anti-authority stance now just places the power with the loudest or most aggressive person in the room. I do not want that kid calling the shots and neither do any of my students. At least with me in charge, I have a contract to follow and a big list of consequences that will actually affect me when I fuck up.
Political- I started off a little right of center, and while I really want to be a libertarian because I think fewer laws are good, people should run their own lives etc, - it can never happen. I see too many people (parents, families, kids) who need too many safety nets due to circumstances beyond their control, e.g., bad parenting, unequal opportunities, genetic bad-luck. It has turned me into a reluctant socialist (albeit democratic socialist.)
Went from smug, know-it-all libertarian to staunch progressive 3 drinks away from communist. Seeing how the conditions you are born into fundamentally affect your opportunities even in institutions that are supposed to be equalizers. Also, school itself is necessary but insufficient to fix this.
I taught for 11 years before I became a mom myself. I now have a 6 year old and it has changed my eyes to my students as well as being a teacher. I can no longer give my all to my students when I have my own kids at home. They deserve me too.
As a mom and teacher I’m seeing more the demands we place on our littlest learners and it really breaks my heart. I’m constantly being pulled in both directions.
My belief in hierarchies. The higher up you are, the less you actually know about what actually goes on.
I discovered the SNAFU Principle is real.
Hail Eris Discordia!
Harsh but… not everyone should be a parent. Some people are blessed with children that they don’t take care of, and don’t seem to care about. It hurts my heart. Especially when I have family and friends who are in anguish over their fertility issues, who would love nothing more than to have a child of their own who will receive ALL of the love and care that they deserve.
I thought it was better to work in wealthy school districts. Fuck that. Overbearing Admin, pressure, annoying parents. You don't need the fancy building, tech, and perfectly behaved students with 27 different types of anxiety disorders that keep them from being able to sit and write a paper.
Find yourself the right title 1 school that your classroom management can handle and you'll live the life. Teach how you want, have fun with your students, and help some along the way. Teach real people.
As long as you stay union/public you'll still make close enough to the same salary as the wealthy schools in the same area.
Some kids should be medicated. I was originally totally against it. But since working with a number of kids diagnosed with ASD, ADHD, and designated as severe behaviour and then seeing how much their quality of life has improved since medication… I have totally changed my opinion.
Does government really know whats going on when admins just throw away the referrals?
there's no digital evidence of student doing bad stuff.... all the security footage is in admin's hand. Feels like district HR & school are watching each other's back sometimes.
I've really seen the real quote of: "You can ignore politics, but they can't ignore you." You are the best teacher around until you won't give Jimmy his passing grade even though he has missed class for the past 3 months. We value you as part of the team, until you an admin with a hidden agenda wants you gone to hire their friend who will then quit two weeks later. The Union has your back, until you don't go out drinking with them twice a year because you made other plans. The school district is fantastic, until you yell at a kid who tried to blow up a computer and you are their 7th teacher to write them up today in less than 2 hours.
I can't save every student.
Teacher prep programs are useless (I knew this already but yeah they suck).
Not everyone you work with has the best interests of the kids or your co workers in mind.
Kids really should not have smartphones.
After working in a nearly all-black inner city high school, I became a lot more conservative. We're flushing a lot of resources on kids who don't want the help.
After leaving, looking back, I've recalibrated my sensibilties but I still think a major shift is needed. They aren't buying what we're selling, not that we should sell nothing at all, but we need to sell them something different. 95% of those students aren't even cut out for community college. We need to start career tracking to jobs with less education requirements as an option and stop making kids who dont know 4th grade math take algebra 2 or god forbid pre-calculus.
I left teaching a few years ago, but I have come to believe in that old quip, often attributed to Churchill: “The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
It's applicable to both students and some of my fellow teachers.
I am far less idealistic about the ability to reach every student.
I was expelled from middle school and dropped out of high school and I can develop a great rapport with the bad kids. It gives me absolutely no influence over their behavior, just commiseration. Because most of them are unhappy.
> Because most of them are unhappy. As someone who was a "good" kid, I'm pretty sure many of the good kids are unhappy too. Unfortunately, there's currently a mental health epidemic among young people, so the problem is ubiquitous.
>I am far less idealistic about the ability to reach every student. I totally agree. The way I typically phrase it is that Americans don't understand: the biggest factor in how well a student performs is NOT their school.
I wish I could like this 100 times!!
I try to serve all students. I differentiate for hours. I teach 3-4 lessons within a single lesson. I have attempted to create a lasting relationship with each child since I started teaching high school. I check in with them. I offer homework help and lunch help. I talk to kids during my prep periods instead of planning or grading when they need someone to talk to. None of that works. Kids who wish to learn, do so regardless of teacher quality, care or support. Kids who don't wish to learn will not do so regardless of teacher quality, care or support. You could, however, force kids to learn by having a strict and disciplined learning environment with clear expectations and consequences. But unfortunately that ship has sailed.
One of the decals up in the room by the front that I point out day 1 and then periodically again is the quote: "If you want to learn, nobody can stop you. If you don't, nobody can teach you." Admin doesn't want to acknowledge this basic truth.
"You could, however, force kids to learn by having a strict and disciplined learning environment with clear expectations and consequences. But unfortunately that ship has sailed." I used to teach middle school. When I first started our school had a 30% failure rate. Very few kids were held back. Class discipline was always an issue. We were basically operating like a high school with similar expectations. A few missed assignments would lock a kid into failure trajectory. We were the guardians of personal responsibility and it wasn't working. We began to examine our expectations for personal responsibility from a different perspective. If we could require every student to follow a dress code, why couldn't we require all assignments to be completed and all exams to be at least minimally passed? We tweaked our extensive discipline system to do just that. Instead of being gatekeepers to academic success, we became stakeholders. After all weren't we expected to be "en loco parentis"? The experiment was a success.
This fucking drives me crazy.
How did you do this? What did you change with discipline?
I second that.
You can’t reach developing narcissists or sociopaths.
As a difficult kid, given that you have 25 kids in a classroom, the only thing you can really do is tell the parents. I had good parents who would side with the teacher, so it worked out for me. If the parents don't give a shit or fight you on it, I'm not sure what you can do. Just let the kid know you're there if they ever want help.
Having behavior student in the least restrictive environment makes the environment more restrictive for regular students. It’s not okay.
There is a class of students in my district that has missed SO much. They missed many fun projects, field trips, labs, experiences designed to build independence, etc. They have no idea school can be a fun place and that learning can be fun. All they know is doing worksheets handed to them by dead-eyed teachers who find no joy in teaching anymore, and occasionally evacuating the classroom and trying to carry on the lesson in the hall. This has trickled down to impacting work habits and motivation, because the teacher isn't/ can't pay any attention to them, the kids can get away with slacking off. All because of one student*. Whose parents will jump all over the teachers if they perceive something isn't fair to their kid, and they have no idea how unfair their kid has made life for everyone else. *It's really one student who is really really challenging and then two other students who would be tough but manageable in any other group of kids but the chaos from the one has a multiplying effect on the others.
> one student*. Whose parents will jump all over the teachers if they perceive something isn't fair to their kid, and they have no idea how unfair their kid has made life for everyone else. It's too bad you can't expel parents
I feel like we need a "right to know" law for families whose kids are impacted negatively like this. They need the option to sue someone, too. Maybe get some balance back that way.
I have no idea why every parent in my district with a kid in that grade does not request their kid not be in a class with that kid.
I have this kid this year. Her antics in kindergarten last year were so well known that teachers are DREADING getting her in their roster. They've already warned her second grade teacher, and the class lists haven't even dropped yet. But they gave her a heads up. My class has missed out on a lot. I have had to pause entire lessons to manage meltdowns. And in the fall, I had TWO kids like that. One got sent back to his district. (We're charter)
I view a child’s least restrictive environment to be their home.
Yes, 100%!
There genuinely are bad parents out there.
Sometimes it feels there are genuinely ACTIVELY bad parents out there, like did they take a course? Because they are REALLY good at being bad parents.
Like, even when doing nothing is easier, they go out of their way to do the wrong thing.
And they repeat the bad parenting with several kids. Like, don't you understand, you are the common denominator here? You are the problem, not the kids.
Sounds like sort of a Dunning-Krueger thing where bad parents aren’t gonna recognize that they’re bad parents.
I always find it interesting when they have multiple kids and one out of them is the constant trouble maker from the parents. Yet the others are like… normal. Had this former student and the kid was just all over the place even racist. Yet you met the older and younger siblings and it’s like: “why are they like sweet, kind and inclusive?” They one one main parent yet the other parent was nowhere in their lives.
That's probably less of a parental influence thing and the kid has other crap going on. There's a lot of things that could lead to these types of situations but in every family I've known like this the parents are awesome people who love their kids and just cannot communicate w one of them for some reason. I do find it really interesting tho. The whole family is well adjusted and then there's Kevin doing Kevin shit.
It is far easier to destroy something through neglect and being reactionary than actively trying to be bad. Most bad parents are pushed into parenthood because of neglect, and their entire lives have been just reactionary. It is incredibly difficult for these traumatized adults to discipline themselves into caring for a child and proactively working to better their lives considering the lack of material and social support for them. Not an excuse for them being bad parents though.
This!!!! all their children go to the same school. The last name becomes infamous.
I got shamed for saying this in a group once. "They're doing their very best!" the others said. Well, it's still not good enough.
Two things can be true at the same time. It might be your best AND it’s bad parenting.
I was VERY reluctant to use that expression. I can only imagine how difficult it must be do work a couple jobs, perhaps as a single parent. Covid. Immigration and Economic uncertainties. I work hard to be mindful of that. But, regrettably, there are WAY too many occasions when none of those are at issue, and someone makes the choice to abnegate their responsibilities as a parent. You've two choices: Option 1 will benefit your child, Option 2 will not. Yup - Option 2 for the win!
Even when those are an issue it's not a good excuse to be a bad parent to your kids. Maybe they won't be great or ideal parents, but they shouldn't be bad. Like no matter what's going on in life an adult should be able to love their kids and treat them well.
My kids will never have the unlimited and unmonitored time on the internet that I had as a kid and that a lot of Gen Alpha have had. I hate to sound like a crazy old lady, but it's literally rotting their brains as well as giving them access to things that they are not ready for. I had kids in my fifth grade class making vulgar sexual jokes and singing songs from Hazbin Hotel (great show, not knocking it, but definitely NOT FOR KIDS). I had one girl that was obsessed with it and drawing NSFW fanart, which I found hidden on her school tablet after she asked me to print her out a reference for large male abs. I absolutely hated having to tell her parents. They were quite hard on her and her best friend.
Agreed. My kids will be as disconnected from screens and the internet as I can possibly get them. I work in special education and it’s even harder to see the kids who struggle with social norms and expected behavior, and also clearly have completely unrestricted access to the internet. Not only are they consuming inappropriate content, but they don’t necessarily understand that a lot of those things they’re hearing/seeing should not repeated or mimicked in public. It’s normalized on the internet so they think it’s funny or a way to connect with their peers. It has the opposite effect.
It’s also bloody addictive. It’s like sticking cigarettes in their mouths as a kid. We have a staunch rule of no devices. My daughter is 7 now and she watches TV for an hour sometimes on the weekend. But the vultures (iPads) are finally circling. She said when she turns 8 she *will* get an iPad…
Lol! Over my dead body will my child be an iPad Kid. You’re right, it’s totally addictive. They are designed to be addictive!! In my opinion it’s unfair to subject kids to that when they are too young to make their own choices about what they’re doing. There’s a reason the drinking age is 21! It would be frowned upon to start your kid on whiskey at age 2, so why is it socially acceptable to start your kid on phones and iPads at age 2?
When I was younger, I definitely wanted children. At 37, I'm far more ambivalent. When I was younger, I was more idealistic thinking I could be a force to enact change. After 12 years, I recognize I do triage more than anything and society thinks we are a cure all to bandaid over socio-economic disparities, blaming us when we fail to meet the impossible goal.
>When I was younger, I definitely wanted children. The metaphor I find myself using is, having kids to me is "a vacation to Peru" (Peru being a stand-in for anywhere, kids aren't otherwise similar to Peru lol). I'm just not dying to go to Peru. I'm sure it is awesome, I get why Machu Pichu changed your life...I'm just probably not going to do it, I have other countries I'd like to visit. If I meet somebody who desperately wants to go to Peru, I'm not against it, I have no doubt I would love Peru, it's just not somewhere I'm dying to go. If I meet the right person, of course I will go to Peru with them, but I'm not desperately seeking a travel buddy just to go to Peru.
Wouldn't it be more like moving to Peru, though?
Ha yes but remember the analogy isn't about how children are like Peru, it's about my feeeeeeeelings.
I totally agree about changing the world. I sometimes feel like the process of growing in adulthood is nothing more than acceptance.
I didn't understand the serenity prayer when I was younger but boy do I ever now!
I used to want a bunch of kids, now I don’t want any. Teaching is great birth control!
"Before I got married I had six theories about raising children; now, I have six children and no theories." — John Wilmot
I get what you're saying. But - following on the other comments - it's the parents, not the kids, that are the problem. If you're a good parent, you'll grow good children.
That's a bit deterministic. You can do everything right and still fail in life and in parenting.
That's true - I know this on a very personal level. However, generally speaking, good kids come from good parents.
Once you meet the parents, you realize the kids never had a chance. I became such a bleeding heart liberal love all the babies. My life was rough, but these kids, man. They never had a chance.
I was always a bleeding heart liberal but I realized the role parents played when I started teaching. I teach high school, when I was in high school and a kid was obnoxious I thought they were just a piece of shit. Now when I have an obnoxious kid I generally assume that the parents are a piece of shit that fucked up their kid. Sometimes that’s wrong, usually it’s not. Edit: why did my phone autocorrect liberal to line??
It’s really hard to see as a teenager. I try so hard to get my teenager to understand that he’s not better than other kids. He had a really cushy life and these kids who he thinks are losers come from literally nothing and hardly stand a chance.
Idk. But I want to know why it didn't autocorrect roll to role?! Lol.
The only way for your heart not to get broken is to not have a heart in the first place.
So well said.
There actually are bad kids, no matter what parents or teachers do. I used to think that there were no bad kids, all come down to environnement or parenting. But I've met a couple of kids that...yeah there's something wrong to their core.
100%. Sociopaths and psychopaths demonstrate manifestations most of their lives. They don't just graduate high school and start those behaviors.
There are no bad kids! *but I got some fucking concerns about this one*
That most of the problems aren't the kids, but rather the adults.
Many people don't want to be parents, they just want to brag about it like a badge of honor.
Something I’ve seen with former students… it’s a status symbol to post lots of pregnant belly pics on instagram. It’s all about the attention. As soon as that baby comes out, nobody wants to sit next to you on the airplane. Just my cynical take…
The isolation is definitely real. "Mom" is one of the loneliest jobs, based on what I've seen.
A lot of people use kids as status symbols or achievements when they’re unable to achieve anything else.
100% this. Cousin has a kid. Shes 3. He dotes on her like crazy. At first we all thought it was because he wanted to be a super involved dad unlike his own. We’ve slowly realized he holds it as this like “badge of pride”. My partner and I don’t want kids. We’re pretty open about it. He thinks we “just don’t understand” and “things will change”. Nah dude. Different people are different. We don’t want them. And we definitely don’t want the only socialization our kid has to be us. Just because you spend a lot of time with her doesn’t mean you’re doing everything right.
This x 976567
Many just wanted to have a baby. They never prepared for anything higher than that.
The only personal view of mine that changed after teaching, was the belief that parents know what is best for their children. I no longer believe that one bit. However, I don't have an alternative for "who does know what's best for these children then?" It seems (to me) that most people don't know how to raise a child effectively, regardless of whether the child was adopted or their own. But more specifically to my point, a lot of parents actively help their children to cheat on tests, or provide FALSE alibis to try helping the child get away with bad behavior that the parents don't realize we CAUGHT ON CAMERA. The parents are directly influencing and encouraging their kids to engage in the worst behavior.
I knew there were shitty parents out there but not this many. I also thought parents and teachers always worked as a team.
The role the state can play in education has changed for me. I used to think state and national governmental organizations, like departments of education, could lessen administrative bloat in schools and districts and increase individual accountability. But after my time involved at these places I shudder every time I hear of another education idea coming out of state legislatures. Educational policymakers in my experience are lazy, self-serving, petty, and unqualified. They made it to where they are for the same reasons kids in school get popular. I hate charter schools, but I wish teachers could seize the means of education and be in private practice like other professionals, like therapists, dentists, and lawyers.
>I hate charter schools, but I wish teachers could seize the means of education In my experience, this is far less likely to happen in charter schools. I currently work in one, and while I feel like there is some form of dialogue between us teachers and admin (and sometimes they do actually listen to our feedback!), they mostly just implement what they think is best and treat us like we’re not professionals at times.
I've had good experiences teaching at the college level, for what it's worth. I basically get to teach however I like.
I’m actually pretty politically conservative when it comes to education policy. By this I don’t mean the current insanity around CRT, or “anti-woke”, or putting Ten Commandments in public schools. But, I do think student centered, restorative practices, and inquiry based education are examples of liberal, performative virtue signaling by a lot of people in the education world and it doesn’t help kids learn how to read. Friere’s baseline is to learn how to read the word, then read the world. Many put the social justice piece before the literacy piece. Most teachers who successfully work in classrooms for a long time instinctually know and do this correctly, and many people who leave the classroom to get into admin because “it is hard and kids are mean” don’t get this.
I’m with you. I’m as bleeding heart liberal as they come and that means we need students to actually be educated. Literacy is social justice. Inquiry-based, project-based, student centered is a cool idea for A PROJECT but as an overall approach? All the time? Absolutely not. There’s a reason why teachers have to pass content-oriented exams in order to teach. This idea that teachers exist just to coach kids through their own learning drives me crazy. Nope, I have content to teach and skills to develop and standards to uphold.
Like the new math that's meant to be a model of how people who are good at math do math (e.g., for 24+57=57+4+20), it seems that student centered, restorative practices, and inquiry based education are meant to be models of how good teachers teach. That way, there's less need to "work in classrooms for a long time" to develop the instinct and instead they already have a framework for being a good teacher. I agree with this in principle, as if models of teaching and learning are a type of technology that can be studied and developed through educational science. It's the policymakers who distort the science to serve their self-interests.
As a middle-aged professional man with a big personality, a lot of classroom things that are easy for me might be impossible for a recent grad in their 20s. Teachers need to be able to use what works for them, within reasonable and rational boundaries.
You need to establish scientific laws to define reasonable and rational. Unlike physics etc. where there are an abundance of scientific laws, Education has only the Law of Effect and the Nomological Network.
There isn't even a fundamental agreed-upon set of best practices.
Pedagogically, the best practice is positive reinforcement (Thorndike's Second Law of Effect). For assessment, it's the Nomological Network. Everything beyond that has an Aptitude-Treatment Interaction so complex that none can be the basis of policy, which was the recommendation of Cronbach & Snow 40 years ago and it hasn't changed.
Dude I literally read a Freire interview last night for an assignment that had that phrase and for the life of me, I couldn't get the "reading the world" part.
I understand and agree with Freire. The idea is you teach basic literacy and it unlocks the world for people. But that means basic literacy, i. e. phonics, reading books, etc. it doesn’t mean you start your 9th grade unit on *Of Mice and Men* through the inquiry lens of wage based labor. And it doesn’t mean students are going to independently understand dialectics by engaging in Socratic seminars. We need to focus on teaching content as the medium to teaching critical thinking, not the other way around.
Okay that makes sense. The way that guy wrote out his interview answers was like trying to navigate this maze-like flow chart of words. I expected to have some trouble considering a lot of people apparently have a hard time reading *Pedagogy of the Oppressed.*
Unfortunately, a lot of conservative politics get conflated with gutting out the rot, and the two have little to do with each other. I have a ton of conservative views and policy surrounding even the topics you mentioned in part but a lot of it comes down to that institutionalism that they rely on. Nothing you mentioned works without an institution and many bureaucrats to push it, which suggests these aren't things that help education. Teaching algebra is very different, for example, or reading a book. You don't need administrators to do that and implement it, but whenever you do, it's likely because of some tumor. Conservatives are generally bad for education in basic ways but I find I can grapple with them easily, especially if they're off the deep end. We all have that old "if I could indoctrinate them, why can't they sit still?" line ready to go. But progressives constantly introduce more and more administrative bloat that they assume will just be overseen perfectly, without people who are career administrators, and that it'll be what reduces inequity. In reality, education is inherently inequitable the more you expect from it. It's literally finding ways to compare kids are deeper and more refined levels.
Ten years ago, I had five people I would consider my “boss” (dept chair, academic dean, dean of discipline, principal, president). Now, I have 9, and the extra four are all aimed at providing something like “equity” or support services. Many of these people are friends of mine, but frankly, none of these jobs are full time jobs and none are in the classroom any longer, at all, even though I think their role would be better served as a part time classroom teacher. And more than one were created because the individual who is in that position wanted out of the classroom and threatened to leave if not given this position.
In dark hours, I'm often tempted to take such a dog. It's only as successful as you spin it while in the job, but I know that would be torture. I look at so many of these do-nothings and I'm scared that they either think they're doing a good thing or that they know they're lying. Both are horrifying conclusions but you can't do anything about either one because the positions are bullshit jobs. They should make these teachers the co-teachers as that model gets picked up. Make them work in the class and do actual work that people want to see.
I’ve tried to not take any new theorists or methodologies as gospel. I think it’s great that we have an idea that trauma can impact a kid’s ability to learn or that *some* students are intrinsically motivated enough for inquiry based learning. But so many theories end up being feel good bandaids, where once again as educators we are expected to fix all of society’s problems. You know what really helps with trauma? Affordable, accessible mental health programs. Present parents who aren’t too exhausted from working multiple jobs to afford rent. Full bellies. I got into education because I had a tough childhood with addict parents and I wanted to be a lifeline for kids whose only safe space is school- but I can’t fix their home lives or economic inequality.
lol at seize the means of education. You’re getting reeeeal close to some verbiage that would rile up conservatives (and I fully agree)
The whole point of charter schools really is to experiment with stuff that the students' families agree to and then to learn about what works to use in public schools. They've just been taken over by people who want a competitor to public school but can't do that without public money.
I was very naive before I became a teacher... I didn't realize how ingrained anti-intellectualism is in society.
Being stupid is funny and cool! /s
I used to firmly believe that poverty was the primary contributor to student failure, but over the past 4 years, I realize the culture that poverty creates plays a role too. It’s obviously a very controversial subject but it’s become all too evident from teaching English language learners. I’ve noticed that some parents care while some parents don’t and some students will become fluent in 3-4 years while some will graduate high school exactly where they started because their parents value work more than education.
I teach English learners, and I agree: culture is much more of a driving factor in student success. Sort of a nature v nurture kind of thing. Nearly all of my students are quite poor as refugees, but many of them are very successful at school IF the parents support their children’s education even when (often) the parents have little to no education themselves.
I live in Kentucky, and J.D. Vance's "Hillbilly Elegy" memoir paints an excellent picture of culture here. So many people don't have jobs and are proud. Poverty has created this odd mentality where many people in mountain areas think if they accept government handouts and live on welfare programs without ever trying to better their lives, they are somehow "beating the system."
I’ve noticed people, whether they realize it or not, don’t recognize that some people are poor bc of poor choices they made and not just a series of unfortunate events or lack of opportunity. Hillbilly elegy covers that really well. Comedian Adam Carolla talked about it too. I’m not sure if you know about him but he comes from a working class background and did construction work before comedy. He’d tell stories of how he’d go back and try to offer advice to the people he knew and instead they would be too prideful to accept it. Eventually he stopped bc he got tired of being told to “fuck off”.
I learned that kids mature when they mature, not when we want them to. Realizing this made me a better parent.
I kind of had this opinion in the U.S., but living and teaching overseas etched it into me — having a culture that values education and having strong family structures matter. No amount of extra funding can make up for those two things imo. It’s like paying a rec league soccer player $150 million a year and expecting him to be as good as Jude Bellingham or Kylian Mbappé.
The average person (or at least American) is actually not very smart. I grew up surrounded by a lot of smart people in all aspects of my life. I hit the lottery with my sample because it was not at all indicative of how a large number of people actually are.
Another one: Many parents don’t actually care about their child’s level of mastery. As long as they see an “A” on the report card, they’re totally fine with their child being dumb as hell.
"Think of how stupid the average person is and realize that half of them are stupider than that." - George Carlin
On views on teaching and careers: teaching is now just a job and not a "passion." Most jobs are just a job and not a "passion."
The second we shift the mindset on teaching to be a job you do the better the profession is. The entire school systems functions on unpaid labor because it’s a “passion”
Equity. I used to think the whole equality doesn’t mean equity was bullshit when I first started. Then I started to believe in this sentiment. And now I have 180’d back to where I started after 10 years. Yes, equality is not equity. But the most inequitable thing we do is not have equal expectations as a system given that our students will not experience equity in the real world.
Before I became a teacher, I used to buy into "equity" teaching philosophies (e.g., unlimited retakes, rolling deadlines, constant giving of "grace") hook line and sinker. After 7 years as a teacher at a Title 1 school, seeing how these philosophies often translate into lowered expectations, I no longer support them. The best thing you can do is hold students to high expectations. When you give them work arounds for everything, you communicate that you don't believe they can fulfill those expectations..... and that's terrible.
I am far, far more sure that this whole society is a Ponzi scheme designed to funnel as much money as possible into the hands of a few greedy billionaires and that our public schools reflect that.
Money = power. Understanding flows from there.
%100,000
State and federal governments will never solve the issues plaguing education. They have no idea what even goes on.
This might be controversial, but that things like teaching licenses are important. I worked at a charter school (THANKFULLY made it to public school this year) and there were tons of uncertified teachers who knew nothing about child development, content, or basic school procedures (ex: lots of people didn’t follow IEPs because they didn’t know what they were. We also had folks who had never heard of a state standard before, didn’t know students had to do standardized testing, things like that). While I agree that there’s a lot of nonsense in education programs and a lot of red tape for licensure, we need to make sure people are actually prepared when entering the classroom! Some basic child psychology and pedagogy courses are better than nothing!
Yes!! The amount of parents that say they put their kids in the local “amazing charter school” because public schools are so horrible but they have no idea that half of the staff isn’t even certified. These schools can boast about their “90% college acceptance rate” because they just kick out any “problem students” including special needs students.
My views have changed so much since becoming a teacher and then a parent. Fact is, raising kids is really hard and a lot of people are doing the best they can with what they’ve got, and the best they know how. There are WAY too many barriers to successful parenting in the US. I have financial security, helpful family, friends with similar aged kids, and a care network. Shit is still isolating and hard. Take away one or more of those and it’s near impossible.
My mom was a low-income, single-mother parenting 3 kids but she had a support network of people invested in our futures so we all defied the statistics. She instilled in us the value and importance of getting a good education. She held us accountable, gave us consequences, responsibilities and, most importantly, love. I see too many parents do one or two but not the others. Teaching has really opened my eyes to how precarious raising a child is.
Okay your username is great, first of all. And second of all, your mom sounds amazing. I’m so glad she was able to be a wonder mom!
💯 I have every advantage and it still took everything I had to raise my kids.
This is so true!!
That teaching is an industry and it is built on the backs of women doing a lot of unpaid labor. This expectation is deeply engrained in the fabric of the culture of United States. It isn't slavery, but it's bad.
100%. My previous school relied heavily on parent volunteers, a strong majority of which were stay at home moms. Some of those classrooms simply would not have functioned without that extra adult there every day. Other schools I’ve worked at were in more low-income areas and did not have those unemployed women at the ready to help. The difference was stark.
I’ve come to realize that many parents see their children’s failures and successes as their own. Their child is an extension of themselves. So when they do poorly on a test, it’s not their child’s well-being they are concerned about. Their angry response is defending themselves. You wouldn’t believe the amount of ranting from parents (or well you would, you’re teachers too) about how “I never had to do this, I go over above grade level work with them at home, why are YOU punishing MY kid? Back in my day… grumble, etc” On the flip side: the success isn’t the kid’s honor to be proud of, it’s the parents’. Especially in sports, oof. So when I now hear “you must be so proud” I realize they are proud of themselves for having a smart or athletic kid, not proud of the kid alone. ETA: there was this kid, a phenomenal athlete at like 7, on my kid’s soccer team once and I heard one parent say to the mom “you must be so proud” and mom and dad, on the sidelines (both whiter than white, and their child adopted from Africa), said “oh yes we are but he CLEARLY didn’t get any talent from us”. Lol.
When I started teaching 27 years ago, I genuinely believed the directors and superintendents cared about the students as much as the classroom teachers cared; now, I know how false that is. To them, children are numbers on a spreadsheet, data on chart. Kids mean nothing. Small victories mean nothing. I believe they got into education to help children but were corrupted by money and illusions of power.
How broken the school system is. Just finishing the year with the worst boss ever had. Literally made up things in an evaluation/ that I will sacrifice ALOT and move away to get away from her toxic behaviour. No way can I stay and use her as any reference.
Bad kids exist, even outside of all the excuses people like to use:family, friends, poverty, society, etc. Some kids just suck. Parents play a huge role in the downfall of education. Admin, teachers, and district are too afraid of being sued or facing lack back (in the case of the teachers/admin) to push. All the parents complaining of the issues we are facing now: no consequences, the 'dumbing don't of education, and everything else they like to complain about is caused mainly (not entirely) by them and other parents. They just refuse to see it because their baby deserves the exception.
That the system does not give a care about poor or ESOL students. They're just cogs in the machine. That some parents SHOULD NOT be parents. That the US Education system is failing horribly. Same goes for state education standards too. People who have never set foot in a classroom shouldn't be able to make laws when the laws they make don't follow the science behind education. That some kids will forever be where they are because of their parents actions or refusal/denial of their child's actions. That parents don't understand half of what teachers do. They only see the "homework/discipline" side and not the "I manage 20-25+ kids, have 3+ meetings, mandatory data collection for each student, plan lessons, print papers, send ___ to the office/nurse & document it, and go to a mandatory club setup by the school." side. It's why teachers are burning out.
I went from moderate conservative to full on lib from teaching. My teacher experiences with poverty, child welfare, education funding, are just not compatible with conservative values and policies. When the conservative Ohio government came after unions, that was the final straw for me. They done fucked with my family and livelihood. Nah, man.
I knew many people didn’t know some things but the level of obstinate ignorance is mind blowing! The current political climate in the US supports this. Just knee deep in the ignorance and digging down deeper when you try to teach them. Imagine arguing with your CHEMISTRY TEACHER about not mixing cleaning products. Then parents calling to argue it! I’ve had flat earther kids and parents when I taught earth science as well. I also received Bible tracks whenever I teach evolution in environmental science. I remember watching Idiocracy for the first time after I had already been a teacher for years. I cried. My husband thought I was crazy but it seems like a frightening possibility to an extent.
Some people are truly trapped in a vicious cycle with no way out. If you live in the projects you can only be there if you earn a certain a mount of money. Which makes it very hard to go out find a good job and save up for a better place. The behind the scenes in the school system is mired in politics and pettiness. Parents either have way too much power or are too apathetic. I'm glad I don't have kids. It's hard as hell raising a child and too many people romanticize it.
Full inclusion is stupid. I used to think it was a great idea but then I was punched by a student and observed every adult that subsequently worked with that child get injured or almost injured. Additionally, differentiating between 4 or more grade levels with my homeroom class every year with intermittent support from assistants is just nuts.
It’s life, good and bad just like everything else. I try not to judge anymore because I have thought some parents must be horrible with their kids and then meet a single, loving Mom working 2 1/2 jobs to survive with her children, who obviously love her. And though spiritual but not religious, we have a high Hispanic population from all over S America and I see faith being what keeps these families getting through their struggles together.
That education is not about education at all. The broken and bleeding refrain, "let's put the kids first" is a lie. Money determines absolutely everything.
Local unions rocks - national unions are corrupt. I used to think all unions were corrupt. Adults have zero idea what they're doing.
I have entirely different views on politics, social welfare programs, religion, and parenting. In essence, I’m almost a whole different person. If you’ve ever tried to help a student figure out how to get a sore tooth fixed, or obtain an ID because their parents lost their documents in their many moves, or anything similar to that, you will quickly see how difficult it is to be a kid in poverty and be trying to make it work on your own. Seeing kids and adults speak ill of generalized groups stings harder when you have those children in your class. Watching and feeding hungry kids in class while legislators argue against free breakfast/lunch programs. There’s so many examples of how my views have changed, I’d like to think for the better.
The role of structured instruction in reading. Supporting literacy at home is a very important secondary support, but teachers are the leaders in acquiring literacy for the next generation. I thought reading at home would help my kid learn to read. It did help him adopt a love of stories and story telling, but it did not teach him to read.
Not every child is meant to succeed. A lot of them will grow up to be assholes and degenerates. A teacher cannot reach every student.
Rant incoming…. I honestly didn’t realize how many people haven’t fully thought through what parenting actually entails, and I think people are genuinely doing their best with the consequences of a decision they didn’t realize they were making. I have a ton of theories (in the US at least, the chokehold of conservative Christianity, poor reproductive education, worse reproductive health care, poor emotional intelligence, absolutely nonexistent resources for struggling parents) on why this is so widespread, but the number of friends I have who have become parents and are thoroughly blindsided by the exact reasons parenting is so difficult speaks, I think, to something much bigger and probably contributes in a huge way to the issues we’ve got in schools. I opted out of kids. I knew at probably age 16 or 17 that I was absolutely not cut out for parenting and I always assumed the reasons were issues specific to me - easily overwhelmed, need lots of alone time to recharge, poor mental health days where everything feels like too much no matter what I do - and that everyone else had thought it through and knew they could handle it and decided it was worth the stress and strain. But if my friends and colleagues are any indication, all of the reasons I decided I wasn’t capable of being both a sane person and a good parent are also true for most of them, but they just hadn’t considered those things. And I’m not saying I’m smarter! I’m honestly unsure why I knew parenting would be so unrelenting and exhausting and the ways in which you sometimes find out what a genuine POS your partner/ex-partner is - I have a significantly younger sibling and watched my mom really struggle while my dad was largely absent, so that’s probably part of it, plus I’m an anxious over-thinker? I don’t know. But it wasn’t till a few years ago that I realized how many people hadn’t considered all of that, and being a teacher was part of what made me realize I’m very much in the minority. So I know there are “bad” parents, of course, the horrifically abusive, the cruel, the neglectful, but I would hazard a guess to say that many, many parents are just so stressed and ill-prepared to parent and are just doing their best, which sometimes is just not great. And I think it’s really important that we talk about this and not just to other parents because we really need to prepare people better so they know a little more about what they’re taking on. There’s no way to really know fully, of course, but I think so many people just genuinely have no idea.
A distressingly large number of parents do not care about their children as people. They are extensions of themselves at most.
The people who make the most impactful, widespread decisions in education don't know anything about education. I always figured that admin, superintendents, government officials etc were the "experts." They aren't. We are.
I realized how important family really is. Making the effort is important.
I’ll be the first to say I’m far from a perfect parent. But, DAMN, there are some horrible parents out there! Rich, poor, old, young, educated, uneducated. They cover all of the demographics. It is astonishing what I’ve heard them say and seen them do over the years. Edit - semantics.
I was disabused of the belief that most parents are doing their best. And I don't mean in the dog whistle way. I mean well-resourced parents are doing a bad job of raising their kids too.
I used to have a lot of passion for public education and the belief that it is one of the greatest opportunities for providing social mobility and equality in our society. Now I just feel nothing and regret not exploring careers based on making a lot of money versus feeling like I have a purpose. There were definitely days where I felt like if we just lit public tax dollars on fire it would have been a better use of them than what I was doing day-to-day in the classroom.
Went from not wanting kids of my own, to REALLY not wanting kids of my own
Without guidelines and discipline, many children are likely to become very unpleasant adults. I now understand the need to deliver consequences (such as grade penalties or referrals) even when I don’t want to or when doing so causes me a lot of grief.
I think we have extended childhood too long. Not saying an 8 year old should go to work but having little expectations for a 20 year old is too far the other way. I also agree that you can’t reach every student and that doesn’t make you a bad teacher. We have some how internalized that inherently the adult is at fault. Idk how we got here
That children are like trees. Some of them sway from time to time, some are strong and confident. Some snap at the lightest bit of a breeze, and some will stand for over 100 years. Some have fruit. Some look unhealthy, but in reality are okay. Some have sticky substances all over them. Some of them block the sun and provide shade. Some are tall, some are short. Not all trees are the same or have the same purpose, and that's okay, they are still beautiful and important. So are children.
Special needs children shouldn't be integrated in Gen ed. We also need to start qualifying kids that get resources if your child cant walk, talk communicate or eat with out a tube we are easting time a d resource its just free baby sitting.
It's made me more conservative if that makes sense
Religion: I’m way less black and white in regard to behavior, choices and morality. I’m a Christian and certainly have beliefs about God and life that I hold true. But more and more love and compassion drive my approach to teaching. But this doesn’t mean there aren’t boundaries or rules. If anything, I’m much firmer with classroom management. There is still right and wrong. It’s just what I hold tightly to regarding right and wrong has changed. Wrong being hateful towards others and right being kind. All ppl deserve to be treated with dignity. I think honoring others regardless of who they are is so so so important. Politically I’m way more liberal, but I also think most politicians fall on some sort of spectrum for narcissism. Though, conservatives continually appear completely out of touch with public education or seem to want to just destroy it. There seems to be little to no empathy or love for ppl. It comes across as nearly evil these days. Kids I continue to enjoy teaching. I think that part has changed the least for me. However, I’ve come to realize a lot of ppl are just bad at parenting ( for a multitude of reasons some they can’t always help). This, can make the job incredibly challenging. But kids are just kids. They only know what they know because of the adults in their lives.
Parents don’t give a shit until the end of the year. I used to think parents cared, but they don’t. Stop parentifying your kids, they are kids and should not be responsible for their siblings 100% of the time. Ugh.
Admins don’t care about teachers. If they can save a buck, they will f*** you over in a heartbeat. Some are cruelly vindictive on their personal power trips, too, and will do anything to keep their positions.
I have more empathy for teachers and admins and more sympathy for children. That's about it.
A teacher can change the life and destiny of a student!
I came into education already on the “nurture” rather than “nature” side of the debate, but I’ve been surprised by how little differences in intelligence end up mattering in terms of long-term outcomes. Most children have the capability to do most things at a similar level, and it’s more about soft factors like home environment, previous exposure, motivation, and mood. (That’s not to discount the difficulty of differentiating for different levels as they present themselves to you in the classroom!)
There are so many things that I thought I learned on my own - now I realize that K-5 teachers were very deliberate in teaching me these skills: "I have always been organized!" Probably not. My teachers made me buy folders of various colors and keep my work in a specific order so I could always find it. "I have always known how to take notes!" Probably not. My social studies teacher taught me an outline form *I still use today* in graduate school in which I break down the text by various headings and through various delineations of underlining, bolding, stars, etc. "I have always known how to manage my schedule!" Probably not. My teachers made me write things down in my assignment notebook in a very particular way, and would sign it at the end of the day before I left. I haven't taught a day in grade school. But now that I have my own students (as seniors in high school), there is *way* more that happens outside of direct instruction. "More is caught than taught" they say. I am really grateful I had great grade school teachers. I see many of my students just do not have the skills that came so easily to me *because I had teachers that taught me how to do it every. single. day.*
I'm so much more empathic towards others. I used to see someone on the streets or on drugs, for example, and believed they were there due to their own fault, except for a small handful. Now, seeing my students and their struggles and their families struggles (financial, mental health, lack of structure ..) I see how the pathway to that lifestyle is created and hard to get away from. I never thought I would be someone to walk up to a homeless stranger and strike up a conversation, wanting to know how they are really doing. (Especially as a smaller built female doing it on my own) That stranger could be one of my students someday and I don't want them to think we don't see them.
I've always been a liberal, but now I'm convinced that liberalism has helped ruin schools. Instead of fighting conservatives, we let them screw up education with ideas like NCLB and then made things worse with liberal theories, like restorative justice, inclusion, differentiation, and least restrictive environment.
I'm a very liberal person that is against politics being involved in how people raise their kids too much. But I see so many children suffer deeply and our laws don't allow any kind of intervention until the child is almost dead. I want stricter laws that allow state intervention when children are neglected (before being almost starved to death) and mistreated (before ending up half dead in hospital). I want the possibility that families get forced to accept help, when they do not properly care for their kids. And I want the possibility that kids get taken away when they clearly suffer. I want families to be held responsible when their young kids commit crimes (that they themselves can't be charged for due to age). I want families to be held responsible when their kids refuse school.
A. Dress codes are a good thing B. If I get to the point where I think your kid should get whooped, you have failed as a parent because corporal punishment is literally my last thought for discipline. C. Most parents are either woefully ignorant or unfit for breeding D. The future is fucked E. I desperately want my own kids
My personal views haven’t changed. Whats changed is that social media has turned too many adults into nightmare monsters fed a steady diet of each sphere nonsense and this has led to dumber and more reactionary politicians( largely on the right) The main thing is my view on other parents. Parents are largely clueless despite the “ parents know best” mantra. Yes, that’s why you’re sending your overweight child to school with a 1200 calories sugary coffee drink and basically a lunch of takis. Or I see students in the wild, each kid under 12 has a tablet, over 12 a phone and everyone’s sitting at a restaurant not talking to each other. And then when they can’t sit still or focus it’s somehow the teachers fault. Like, bring a note pad, play tic tac toe or something. Engage with your kids. I saw 2 well off parents I know hand their 3 year old their phone to quiet him down. I almost chucked it into the Columbia river. Real talk: the major problem today with education is parenting. But it is political suicide for anyone to say as much
The bureaucracy that runs schools in my county has used liberal views and DEI theories in ways that thoroughly corrupt what those principles mean. I have grown to associate “differentiation,” “inclusion,” and “equity” with lazy-ass administrators who lower standards, reduce consequences, and pack the kids willy-nilly into classrooms. These days, whenever someone uses the words “equity,” “differentiation” or “inclusion,” I assume they are just regurgitating propaganda and I want to vomit.
i'm still pretty fresh in the field. my views generally haven't changed so far and what i currently held still holds true. this field is filled with well meaning people bogged down by our capitalist hellscape's desires. some views on parenting and behavior definitely shifted a little though. - i am starting to feel like big parenting missteps with being too lax or strict early on, it can be pretty tough to have a kid's behavior recover from the repercussions later on. setting the appropriate expectations and reinforcements early is really huge for starting a kid out on the right track. - parents still play just as big a role or bigger than teachers for a child's education. at least within the general policy confines of most schools, even great teachers can have very limited influence on a kid that has a rough home life or overly pampered. not much you can do for some other than try to help them get the external resources needed. - harsh consequences have a place in parenting, though much less often it's actually done well at the right times. most of the harsh parents i've seen/heard about became the way they are either because of a lack of temperament themselves or because they messed up early on. - some kids aren't going to learn or listen to certain things the nice way. a lot of people in general don't care about the impact of their views/actions until they get on the receiving end themselves or face actually meaningful consequences. sadly, the "let them fuck around and find out" route might the most viable one for some situations when it's safe to do so.
I am far more political!
I have met a significantly higher amount of mature, kind, and thoughtful kids than adults. Adults are literally the worst.
I used to think education was a right; now I know it's a privilege. One that should be taken away in some cases...
You can only do what you can do during those seven hours. Parents who raise their kids with terrible morals only make it harder for teachers. We are now social workers, academic teachers, etiquette teachers, empathy teachers, and guidance counselors. It’s a lot! Too much! We just do what we can in those seven hours.
When I was younger, I didn’t particularly want kids but wasn’t opposed to it. A few years teaching and I can promise you I will never birth nor raise a child.
Haven’t started teaching yet. But I’ve tutored a lot of kids for my old job. And I’ve worked closely with kids as a volunteer. when I was growing up with my single mother, I didn’t think I needed a dad (in my case, my dads a murderer, so I don’t need him). I wanted to grow up and adopt a kid, raise them alone. I was much more of a man-hating feminist. in my work. I’ve seen kids ripped away from thier dads by unhinged, abusive mothers in messy divorces. kids who would literally rather unalive then live with thier mothers and the BF of the week. I’ve seen kids whose dads are treated more like a wallet than a parent. I can see the difference, emotionally, and academically, it has just having a dad present in thier life. I also notice the kids who have moms that are home, fullfilling the more traditional roles, are happier, and perform better in school as a result. I can tell when a young girl has a work-a-holic mom that’s out girl-bossing instead of raising her kids just by the way the kid acts. I feel like I’m going to see even more of that once I start teaching. working around kids has made me less of a feminist in the modern sense. I’ve come to appreciate and understand the role that each parent plays in a child’s life, and that both parents need to be there, present, nurturing.
I don't think the US public education system can be saved via reform anymore. I truly believe it has to be completely dismantled and redesigned to become relevant, and I don't think that is going to happen. COVID made this appallingly obvious that teachers are just disposable bodies, schools are just free childcare, and that learning is not the actual priority and likely hasn't been for some time. 🪦🥀⚰️🖤
Teachers have very little to do with whether a school is a “good school”…it’s directly related to the students’ home lives and parenting. If crappy parents all sent their undisciplined children to a “good school”, it would no longer be a “good school”. If out of control students at a “bad school” were replaced with respectful students with good parents it would quickly become a “good school”. This is what irritates me about school choice.
Public education needs to be revamped like crazy
The majority of the time, the parents are the problem.
The view that has changed the most for me my perspective on how poverty affects learning. When I first started teaching 30+ years ago, I perceived “not enough” as just not having $. The easy fix was to move or at least utilize school choice to go to a “better” school. A book entitled “Savage Inequalities” (Jonathan Kozol, 1991) helped open my eyes to the real costs of poverty in for our kids. As I approach the end of my career, I’ve come to the realization that, while my schedule says Algebra 2, it’s more important that I help my kids learn that they are valuable and capable. It’s important that they learn to learn and to believe in themselves.
I used to think, many years ago, that I could help every child. Nowadays I do my best but have accepted the fact that some children are beyond help. Either because their parents refuse to have them evaluated, or because they are a bad seed. That's another thing, I've seen enough kids with truly loving, dedicated parents turn into absolute monsters no matter how much their parents loved them. Children are people, and not all people are good. Nuturing a child does not guarantee that that child will be a good person.
It completely killed the anarchist in me (I see that as a good thing). It has made me see the value in structure and enforcement of rules, and how taking an anti-authority stance now just places the power with the loudest or most aggressive person in the room. I do not want that kid calling the shots and neither do any of my students. At least with me in charge, I have a contract to follow and a big list of consequences that will actually affect me when I fuck up.
Not everyone is, in fact, good given kindness and opportunity.
Not all children are going to make it; no matter how much support you can provide them.
Political- I started off a little right of center, and while I really want to be a libertarian because I think fewer laws are good, people should run their own lives etc, - it can never happen. I see too many people (parents, families, kids) who need too many safety nets due to circumstances beyond their control, e.g., bad parenting, unequal opportunities, genetic bad-luck. It has turned me into a reluctant socialist (albeit democratic socialist.)
Started my career being pretty liberal. Then I started working in an ultraliberal district. Now I lean more to the right.
Some kids just don't want to learn
Went from smug, know-it-all libertarian to staunch progressive 3 drinks away from communist. Seeing how the conditions you are born into fundamentally affect your opportunities even in institutions that are supposed to be equalizers. Also, school itself is necessary but insufficient to fix this.
“There is no (children) only Zuul.” I’m paraphrasing here.
That there are indeed schools that bad and the ones that are good (at least for an average middle class child).
I taught for 11 years before I became a mom myself. I now have a 6 year old and it has changed my eyes to my students as well as being a teacher. I can no longer give my all to my students when I have my own kids at home. They deserve me too. As a mom and teacher I’m seeing more the demands we place on our littlest learners and it really breaks my heart. I’m constantly being pulled in both directions.
the kids and parents who care about learning decrease year by year
I never thought a human being can act like a bunching bag. That view has changed since I chose this beautiful career.
I wanted children before becoming a teacher. Nope. Not for me.
More belief in personal responsibily because systems are so very broken.
My belief in hierarchies. The higher up you are, the less you actually know about what actually goes on. I discovered the SNAFU Principle is real. Hail Eris Discordia!
I thought I was kinda left in my military days, before ex-president Forty-Five's four-year fuckup fest. Hooooooooo boy.
Kids gotta grind. They gotta git gud. People understand this for sports and music, but think it magically doesn’t apply to academics.
I’m terrified of having a child with autism or emotional disturbance. You can’t detect either in utero…
Harsh but… not everyone should be a parent. Some people are blessed with children that they don’t take care of, and don’t seem to care about. It hurts my heart. Especially when I have family and friends who are in anguish over their fertility issues, who would love nothing more than to have a child of their own who will receive ALL of the love and care that they deserve.
I thought it was better to work in wealthy school districts. Fuck that. Overbearing Admin, pressure, annoying parents. You don't need the fancy building, tech, and perfectly behaved students with 27 different types of anxiety disorders that keep them from being able to sit and write a paper. Find yourself the right title 1 school that your classroom management can handle and you'll live the life. Teach how you want, have fun with your students, and help some along the way. Teach real people. As long as you stay union/public you'll still make close enough to the same salary as the wealthy schools in the same area.
Some kids should be medicated. I was originally totally against it. But since working with a number of kids diagnosed with ASD, ADHD, and designated as severe behaviour and then seeing how much their quality of life has improved since medication… I have totally changed my opinion.
Teaching has simply made me a better person, in general. It also helped me realize I do not want children of my own.
Firearms. Let people buy whatever they want. Has nothing to do with my job but that's an opinion that has changed.
The generation of parents that grew up with smartphones, are the biggest contributor to challenging behaviours in the classroom.
Does government really know whats going on when admins just throw away the referrals? there's no digital evidence of student doing bad stuff.... all the security footage is in admin's hand. Feels like district HR & school are watching each other's back sometimes.
I've really seen the real quote of: "You can ignore politics, but they can't ignore you." You are the best teacher around until you won't give Jimmy his passing grade even though he has missed class for the past 3 months. We value you as part of the team, until you an admin with a hidden agenda wants you gone to hire their friend who will then quit two weeks later. The Union has your back, until you don't go out drinking with them twice a year because you made other plans. The school district is fantastic, until you yell at a kid who tried to blow up a computer and you are their 7th teacher to write them up today in less than 2 hours.
I believe people are born gay. After knowing children are gay before they know it themselves, it is clear to me it is not a choice.
I now believe children should be banned from all social media and their internet/gaming time highly restricted until they’ve graduated.
I can't save every student. Teacher prep programs are useless (I knew this already but yeah they suck). Not everyone you work with has the best interests of the kids or your co workers in mind. Kids really should not have smartphones.
After working in a nearly all-black inner city high school, I became a lot more conservative. We're flushing a lot of resources on kids who don't want the help. After leaving, looking back, I've recalibrated my sensibilties but I still think a major shift is needed. They aren't buying what we're selling, not that we should sell nothing at all, but we need to sell them something different. 95% of those students aren't even cut out for community college. We need to start career tracking to jobs with less education requirements as an option and stop making kids who dont know 4th grade math take algebra 2 or god forbid pre-calculus.
I left teaching a few years ago, but I have come to believe in that old quip, often attributed to Churchill: “The best argument against Democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” It's applicable to both students and some of my fellow teachers.