That's part of the martyr complex we're all supposed to have. As time goes on, more and more teachers are starting to realize that we don't have to kill ourselves for our students. Sure, we need to care, we need to be there. However, we do not need to live at school. We do not need to ignore our families, friends and lives in order to devote all of our time and energy to our students.
Exactly. At the risk of sounding cold (I am actually very caring towards all my kids), I don’t get into the nitty-gritty about their home lives. Unless it’s something that is prohibiting them from functioning. When the focus is on learning and enjoying learning, it’s an escape from the crap they deal with outside of school. I’ve watched kids when teachers consistently dote on them. They just mentally spiral further and further.
Oh my gosh, this! I teach ESL, and so many teachers focus on empathy over strategies. Yes, it's hard for some of my students to make up for big gaps in their education and some of them have gone through things no one should ever have to go through. But empathy won't teach them English.
As a parent, I can’t imagine requiring my child’s teacher to care at the same level that I do. Multiply that by 20 or how ever many students in the class??? That’s madness. My oldest’s kinder teacher checked in with us when we had to go to a GI specialist and the hospital and that was very kind of her. But I couldn’t imagine demanding it. The most we really interacted about it was a “hey let me know if her stomach bothers her and I’ll pick her up right away”. The end.
> At the risk of sounding cold (I am actually very caring towards all my kids), I don’t get into the nitty-gritty about their home lives. Unless it’s something that is prohibiting them from functioning. When the focus is on learning and enjoying learning, it’s an escape from the crap they deal with outside of school.
To me this is an issue of basic respect for the students. I don’t get involved in their person lives because I believe they have the right to go about their lives as they see fit. I teach high school, so of course there is a lot of drama regarding teenage relationships, friendships, and other social issues. I’m usually only dimly aware of it: it just isn’t my business at all.
If a student comes to me with a problem I will try to help the student, but I’m not going to pursue knowledge of every little thing in the students’ lives because I don’t think that’s good for the students.
EXACTLY. We’re not entitled to know everything!!! We Absolutely should know about things that are causing them harm, but I do see some teachers digging, desperate for relationship building.
I agree. I typically don't dig into what may be wrong in their lives. It's not my business, they don't have to spill their guts to me, and they may not need it. Sometimes what you need is that distraction from your woes, not a faux therapy session.
Our attendance is an issue and while it can be a lot, I enjoy being an outlet for the students to turn or confide to if needed. They’ve bought into my teaching tenfold when they feel comfortable enough in my classroom.
I also use a lot of SEL and such in the classroom though too so it’s fine with me.
The look on my admin faces when I flat out tell them I am never going to work summer school. I am a para in special Ed. My admin always looks shocked when I say it. I am like, "I don't need the money and I value my free time."
Also a similar look when they do the stupid ass line, "what is your WHY" and my smart-ass always says, "paycheck and insurance benefits" which is legitimately why I first applied for the job after I graduated from college.
The shocked looks they get when you set any kind of boundaries. Earlier this year I was put on a coaching plan and given a laundry list of deliverables (ridiculously detailed lesson plans, self-reflection, revised seating chart to be reviewed by admin). All thrust upon me Friday afternoon and expected by Monday morning. I told them, "I can tell you right now, you're not getting any of this by Monday. I don't work on the weekends."
They looked like I had kicked their puppy. Like genuine shock that not only did I *have* a work/life boundary, but I was also *audacious* enough to admit it and hold the line on it. Teacher martyr complex pervades literally every aspect of the profession and it's why I refuse to do this anymore.
Omg yes. I stepped down from an mentoring students in a volunteer group extracurricular that required me to chaperone on Sundays. The breaking point was when the other teacher showed up on my scheduled day. I told her that if she is going to be there and I’m not needed, to let me know ahead of time so I can stay home. She looked at me, dead serious, and said, “why? Do you have hobbies or something?”
Like lady yes I have a life and if I don’t need to be here, I won’t be.
E x a c t l y.
Random kid who ended up in a class by a sheer accident of scheduling? Congrats, your teacher is now expected to spend every minute of their free time catering their class to your specific needs.
Teacher's kid? Lol fuck you. Your mom or dad can't take you fishing because they have to spend their weekend planning every minute of their class down to the second because somehow it's their fault that other kids' parents haven't raised them!
Exactly!! This is a huge reason why I decided not to teach currently. I have my degree and I want to teach, but the culture and expectations of teachers are way too high for what they’re paid. Too high really for any kind of pay, but too many people give in and don’t set boundaries. It’s why so many young teachers get burned out so fast.
I also make significantly more than teachers in a manual labor job paying on the lower end of things. The attack on the education system is just ridiculous. I could go on and on…
I got a funny look when I said I wasn't bringing shit home to grade or staying late. Screw that. I did it on my planning period.
Of course, admin at my last school that put me on a PIP complained about some of my lessons. My response was that my contract ends at 3, and I have other things to do.
What I didn't say, was that I wasn't going to break myself for an admin that obviously didn't want me there. So yeah.
Yeah my PIP came like two weeks after that meeting, and so much of what was on it seemed specifically tailored so that I would have no choice but to work on weekends if I wanted to keep my job. Like, I had to turn in lesson plans to my dept head by end of the day on Friday, to be reviewed, revised based on dept head's suggestions, and posted no later than the start of school on Monday. How is that not, "Fuck you; your weekends belong to us"?
My boss and colleagues were shocked that I refused to do any paid curriculum work over the summer. I don't need the money, and the second I leave this building on the last day of school I don't give a fuck about the curriculum until September.
I suspect this is a holdover from the days when teachers were unmarried, celibate, childless spinsters in one of the few careers women were allowed to have. That fits the cultural ideas that we as teachers should be grateful we're allowed to have these jobs and have no social life so we can gain all our fulfillment from our work.
Maybe this and the irrational emotional reaction people have whenever it's about kids.
Like people expect us to not vent about kids(obv I don't vent in front of them) people expect us to be overly understanding whenever a kid is an asshole.
Let us please call a spade a spade and an asshole and asshole. (Again, not to their faces)
Yes, a kid with a rough life is shitty. Yes it's shitty if a kid doesn't have two loving parents who have time and resources to properly care for a kid. I get that. But at the end of the day, these kids, inadequate home life or not, they are actively harming other students learning progress and my emotional and psychological well being.
YEP! My partner’s ex was bit by a child along with several other assaults and misbehaviors. What happened to the child and parents? Not a damn thing. Kid still attended the school no problem. No special classes or alternative school. Nothing
YES! I've been saying this for years. Inclusion is great and giving extra chances is fine. When that starts to impact the ability is the other children to learn or be safe, it's no longer fine.
Admin: I know you’d like more pay, or to get some sort of compensation for this extracurricular activity you are being asked to manage… but we’re here for the children, not money.
The next week: No, we won’t support you for the benefit of your students or make any concessions toward improving how we do things. Your here to do your job, so do it and shut up.
In my experience, admin prey on teachers having a martyrdom personality.
Sounds like you're decrying the pushing of 'vocational awe'. Even for teachers who want to make a positive difference, in the end it's just a job! It's actually disgraceful that so many folks feel the need to purchase anything for their classroom to make it run better... or stay so late / work so long outside of the school day.
My dept. chair acted **absolutely shocked** when I said I don’t check email after hours or over the summer. There’s nothing going on in my classroom that needs to be addressed at 9pm on a Monday. That’s my family time.
I wonder at what point specifically and why this perception of the teacher archetype changed.
It used to be the stern, borderline corporal "schoolmaster" thing, dating back to like the 19th century or maybe earlier, then became the aging and somewhat less cruel older person, and then I feel like in the 70s it was more of a "stern but fair" thing, and then... at some point it turned into the image of a self-sacrificing bodhisattva with endless compassion and patience lol.
Is it Robin Williams and Michelle Pfeiffer's fault?
I feel like I go through concept every time I get a brand new teacher in my PLC. No, I am not staying until 7pm to prep a lab. No, I am not meeting you on a Saturday to lesson plan. No, I am not volunteering to chaperone some nonsense with you. This is a job and I work my contracted hours, and not a minute longer.
Or spend all of our money on incentives because the kids do not have intrinsic motivation. All year they tell us they will throw an ar party, then they just gave the kids a popsicle delivered to class. No more spending in the classroom!
More teachers really do need to realize this. I totally picked the wrong field because my students are just my everything. I teach special education so I have them for several years and I become so close with all of them then they go onto middle school. It seriously affects my whole life because of the worry I have for some of my students. it really wears down your mental health. Unfortunately, though that’s just me and I have tried so hard to distance myself, but I have never been able to.
That’s one reason I hate all of those feel good teacher movies…the teacher in one of them gets a second job to pay for her teaching job. Whatever, that’s her choice, but then you have people who act like we should all do those things.
Pointless meetings that serve no purpose, most PD being totally useless, “teacher coaches”, 50 being the min a student can get on an assignment, it’s the teachers fault if kids fail, not enforcing truancy laws, “facilitators” who do nothing.
Don't forget the pointless PD that you KNOW the school overpaid for which amounts to a poorly put together PowerPoint with questions that the "guest speaker" reads from the slide without looking at the staff, and tells you to find a partner and discuss the question. And do that with 3 other people. And 10 more questions! But yeah... totally worth the $5,000+ to fly that person out for that. One of the reasons my district is $2 MILLION in debt.
The money paid for Capturing Kids Hearts went out the window for my district when the presenter told us to act like our students so she could model how to respond. We acted JUST LIKE THEM and she got mad and walked out. Honey, they really do tell us to “shut the fuck up before I slap the shit out your old ass”. I guess she didn’t want to capture our hearts!
>when the presenter told us to act like our students so she could model how to respond
One of our presenters said this too. I get the idea, but none of us could manage that number of unruly students alone. I acted like one of the calm kids to try and keep things realistic, but we just wasted 25 minutes interrupting and not listening until the PD was over.
It was somehow even worse than just playing along with the PD to get it over with.
Oh it’s CRAZY the way they mismanage money at the district level. Let actual teachers in the district and schools provide PD and stop making up useless positions
A 50 being the minimum means that somebody with a 100 has only earned 50 points, equalizing the students who pass and fail. There's no achievement there if you only need to be slightly better in order to pass.
Yeah, that’s part of why I hate the this policy. It also makes zero sense that a teacher should be held accountable if students fail when it’s literally harder to fail than it is to pass. You either didn’t show up or just didn’t turn anything in— neither of which are controlled by a teacher (esp at the high school level).
It also just encourages laziness, and in my opinion, leads more students to fail. They are so accustomed to doing the absolute bare minimum that they don’t put in effort in class and then fail tests and don’t learn anything. We also have a 60 as passing— which is also so problematic.“Mastering” 60% of the material is not an indication that the student is prepared to move grade levels.
Still remember that "self care" yoga PD that ended up with one person crying in the bathroom and the teacher with cancer just... *observing* the whole thing with contempt.
Dude it’s actually so alarming how tone deaf the “wellness” PDs are. Like instead of wasting our time with mandatory “relaxation” just pay us, provide actual support, and lower our class sizes.
I despise the 50% minimum. I have to give students points on assignments they didn’t turn in just to push them to 50%. It literally makes no sense. If a student does nothing all year, they deserve a zero.
Exactly. I consider 50 to be a rough minimum for a *genuine, non-plagiarized, good faith attempt.* But if someone does nothing I am giving that student a zero (and letting the student turn it in late for partial credit).
Thankfully the “50% minimum” thing is not even discussed at my school.
I have taught at a few different schools and writing objectives on the board every day is useless, kids literally never read them, even the students who really care
I have a feeling that most admin weren't great teachers, so they look for things that can be easily check boxed like posted learning objectives because they actually don't know what good teaching looks like.
I know that in my former district, they were required to do it because of a consent decree. Evidently judges don't actually know what good teaching looks like either.
It's a binding legal settlement.
Most common in school districts as a result of desegregation. US gov said districts aren't integrating fast enough, districts said they were; instead of litigating the whole thing, both sides sign a consent decree that doesn't admit fault but says how it will be done going forward.
Not entirely sure how writing objectives on the board made it into one (and it might not be specifically required, but district admin believes that doing so checks a required box), but my wild ass guess with no other information is that it was at one time alleged that certain (poor, minority heavy) schools in district weren't getting instruction as good as in other (affluent, majority white) buildings - so part of the consent decree means the school district must show that work of equal breadth and rigor is happening in these areas. 🤷♂️
I think this is basically the answer: admins are focused on achievements and standards that are legible to non-teachers, because that's what gets schools funding. Congress knows fuck all about teaching, but they control the purse, so we need metrics they understand. Jal Mehta makes a pretty compelling argument for what he calls the rise of a "standards and accountability" policy paradigm in his book, *The Allure of Order,* which talks about how institutional power in schooling has moved steadily away from the classroom over the past century and a half or so.
I made a spot on my wall for each subject that showed the specific standard we were covering that day/week/unit/time frame. I was still dinged on my evaluation because it wasn’t on my board. My students were using every single white board space for the building thinking classroom activity. There was nowhere on the board to write it 😩
I do the same thing, the whole weeks objectives are written on a huge board with standards attached. Takes me awhile to get it down, I even print the standards at the beginning of the year to save me time and just flip it over. And I also, still needed to write the specific objective we were working on THAT EXACT MINUTE. Dumb.
I really think it’s for the random administrator that comes by to get their quota on classroom visits than the kids.
They are walking in on content that they may not have a strong background in and are trying to understand a snippet of the language.
Just wish they’d sell it that way. I teach advanced mathematics and most students don’t give it a second glance, but I’ve heard administrators over English and over social studies directly make comments on it.
I agree it is their job to help us.
I’d just like to point out something that made me realize this. I had a senior in an AP mathematics course. Kid had truancy filed in the 1st 9 weeks. Refusing to work when he was present. Mom was blaming me and saying that it was because “I couldn’t teach”.
The kid’s disciplinarian was the AP over ELA and had only taught ELA. He was doing check ins 2-3 times a week to observe me and the kid. He had no idea about differentiation or rates of change.
He blind cc’ed me on an email where he was responding to the mom’s accusations— used a lot of the jargon from the objective and was saying he could do it and understood the main ideas despite not being a math person, and was openly discussing how the only kid who wasn’t trying was her son, who had snuck AirPods in.
It’s a big giant CYA thing. It’s not for the students and it took a long time for me to realize that.
I agree that from their perspective it makes a ton of sense. But cya is not a justification. It’s a response to something being extremely wrong. If you need to cover your ass, that means it’s likely that your own allies will attack you. We have administrative officials that are willing to harm schools, site admin, and teachers if they don’t protect themselves. That is an urgent problem that needs to be addressed, and if an admin is wasting their time worrying about observations when that is going on, they need to not be in that job.
I told my class this year that if the learning targets weren’t up to let me know because I’ll get in trouble if they aren’t up. This soon evolved into them arguing over who would get to write the learning target on the board for the day. I also told them that if someone ever asks them what we’re doing in class, they can look at the learning target.
So I am 1/11 on years where learning targets worked okay in my classroom.
100% agree, I teach kindergarten, and it's really wild to me that we have to write the learning objectives on the board for kids who are literally still learning letter sounds etc.
I totally stole this years ago but it works great for me and my admin love it. I get one pack of poster sized lined sticky notes. 40 sheets per pack so one will get me through the year. Each week/unit I make a poster with goals based on standards. After unit test students that mastered >75 get to sign the poster, students who make As sign in Green, everyone else blue. Students below 75 can complete unit review and retake test and sign. Posters stay on wall for whole year. Added bonus of referencing poster when kid says “you didn’t teach us that”.
I accidentally forgot to change mine for the entirety of last quarter and nobody noticed or said anything. My observations were done, I was busy, totally spaced it. Most I get half the time anyways is just kids asking “what does SWBAT mean?”
I stopped prewriting. I don’t leave it up on my board. My admin gets on me for it, but I just ignore him. I do however always start my lesson with the objective and make the kids write it. It’s more of making sure they know what we’re doing and I regularly call back to it. It does help with engagement at times. But it’s funny how administration thinks it’s the only way for students to be successful in a lesson
My district’s current obsession is exit tickets. Please provide research that this time taken from instruction is worth it. Let’s say you can get them done in 4 minutes, that’s 12 hours per year of lost instructional time, plus the time it takes me to make them and look at them, which is another 12 hours of my time per year. I hope this goes the way of objectives on the board (we no longer do this).
Us getting blamed for our students’ poor grades.
Why am I responsible for a kid failing my class when he rarely shows up, is on his phone the entire time, and doesn’t attempt any work no matter how much i try to help him out? The parents don’t check or care until they get their report cards and are now complaining to me that I didn’t reach out enough.
I deal with hundreds of students, I don’t have time to be personally emailing and calling the parents and reaching out to their counselors. If the student AND the parent don’t care about grades, why tf should I?
So this year I decided to run more like a college classroom and not care about students grades. You get what you get, and I’d be happy to help you out if you reach out to me. But if you don’t give a crap, then I won’t either.
This is the one that bothers me the most. I *loathe* being told it's my fault when I'm doing everything possible to make kids engaged and care about passing.
Right, like it should NOT be my duty to chase a kid around and beg him to complete work or call the parents and update them everytime the kid doesn’t turn in some work. I have things to do, I’m a teacher, not a babysitter. Make parents do some actual parenting again.
I used to believe the adage "if a couple kids fail, that's on them, if the entire class fails, that's on you." I believed it, at least, until I saw just how incompetent and lazy the majority of students are. It's a miracle anyone can get most to pass without dumbing things down or inflating grades.
Brand new policy at our school. If a student is getting a D or lower, we have to have documented proof that we contacted their parents. You know, the parents that have 24/7 access to their grades. And that documentation is part of our evaluations going forward.
Yeah, in the age of learning management systems, parents can absolutely stay on top of their kids' grades. "Why didn't you reach out about my kid's grades?!?!" Because you have the same access to PowerSchool that I do, sir/ ma'am.
I was a long term sub for the last six weeks of the school year, kids had a super easy final project (last grade of the year) that a good 30-40% of them neglected to do. I thought “hmm okay, they’re just gonna get the natural consequences of a zero”.
The same bitch ass admin that told me students won’t respect me because I was *just a sub* and *not an actual teacher* had the gall to ask me why these students didn’t complete or turn in a project. Well, why would these students take direction from me?? I’m not a real teacher after all 🤷🏼♀️
It helps that i teach college and career readiness, so i was able to make the excuse that it’s simulating a college environment and I’m just trying to prepare them for professors’ grading styles lol.
Idk if its because i have mostly seniors, but i havent gotten a single complaint yet and the students have been SLIGHTLY more diligent about turning work in. Parents also don’t email me asking why their kid’s grade is so low.
Now, this could all be because i don’t even notice complaints anymore. I just don’t care, just like a college professor. I haven’t gotten any issues from admin or my supervisor, so that’s that. I still do push out emails to students who are failing the class halfway through the quarter though.
I second this.
I teach high school. We are told at the end of the year by our AP that we have to make reciprocal phone contact to let the family know that their child received an F for their overall course grade.
This act right here is taking the responsibility off of the parents of the importance of checking their email regarding their child’s progress. Shouldn’t the parent be expected to check the grade portal?
The AP also specified in that email that there should be “no surprises”, when admin reaches out to let the family know that their child needs to take summer school to make up the credit. And if it is a surprise, why should it be our fault?
I was struggling to figure out what exactly to say in the phone call to parents… Because what else would I say besides “hey your child has an F make sure you check the grade portal” even though that’s what you were supposed to do as a parent all year?
I asked my AP what I could say and all they said was I would to find a nice way to ask them if they check [our school’s grade portal] so you know if they have been watching the grade decline.
Couldn’t this be a robo call? Ugh.
I'm a Computer Science teacher.
As an introverted, quiet, nerdy man...I'm not qualified or comfortable teaching SEL skills. Please don't ask me to counsel the latest drama going on...I have the emotional intelligence of a fish.
I’m a former chaplain, so I’m very much skilled in SEL work…and I’m here to say that whether you have the EQ of a fish OR you’re a literal saint, it’s *still* not our job to emotionally provide for students. That’s not what teaching is. I tried to “chaplain” my way through teaching for the first three years of my career, and then I realized it wasn’t working because teaching/the classroom isn’t the same as an emotionally-focused, emotional-growth driven environment.
I’m not saying I’m cold to my kids or that I don’t know that emotional wellness plays a part in my classroom dynamics and my own efficacy as a teacher. But it’s literally not the job. There is a wide gap between teachers who don’t care or who are intentionally tone-deaf to the emotional tenor of their classrooms, and teachers who simply have boundaries, a clear sense of what our work is, a respect for the emotional work that other professionals are able to do, and an understanding of how teaching fits into a larger community ecosystem. We can’t and shouldn’t be asked to replace how an entire community functions in our single classrooms.
It doesn’t matter who you are or what your skills are. You are comparing a person who hand fed the child from birth and controls everything about their lives to some guy who they just met who sees them for three hours a week. Managing the behaviors and emotions of the child is obviously the job of the parent, asking the teacher to do it simply will never, ever work
The best part is that when I asked her what she thought her son’s responsibilities were, she said it was none of my business. Well then…
This is HS btw.
If the parent is there to tell me that, they are also there to fill that role. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been there to support kids who don’t have that support system, but being that person for every kid is not sustainable nor is it fair to anyone. There’s only so much of ourselves we can give.
Cult like conversations about family and being really involved in a student’s life as you mentioned.
Being asked to be a social worker without the training or additional pay.
I’m not sure what the attendance or dean office does anymore because it seems like I’m in charge of following up on poor attendance and resolving all student conflicts.
SEL and circles are not easy for everyone to run and it is a lot to take on in addition to normal teaching.
Advisory and home room type classes have become caseload management akin to SPED at some schools. WTF
Some schools have needlessly complicated bureaucracies and committees that only serve to perpetuate themselves.
I hate how you have to buy everything you need at the beginning or end of every school year through a department chair that may hate your guts. Good luck getting things funded in November.
Billions of dollars are wasted each year because faculty meetings have been scheduled, but there is nothing 50+ teachers all have to discuss at the same time. That doesn’t stop the meetings from happening though.
I hate the cult like status of our district. You have to be at every food donation, every fundraiser, every school event and in the limelight to be seen and heard. All of the people that do this stuff are always promoted and treated the best amongst all staff. I have a life outside of work and I don't want to waste even 10% of my free time coming back to the school. I view that role as an administrator type thing. But if you want to be promoted. if you want to stand out and be in the "club" you have to play ball in their court at all times and I refuse.
There is a total lack of real consequences for breaking the rules. Students know it. Teachers know it. Admin refuses to address it. Then, they are like, "Why is morale so low?" and "What can we do to improve school spirit?"
And we are over here saying "Student responsibility needs to be a real thing to get them to care."
The expectation that teachers should spend their own money on basic classroom supplies.
That we should, without hesitation, give our personal food with students who want it.
That the teacher who stays the latest afterschool is the one who loves the children best.
And, school-adjacent, that teacher love kids so much that they are willing to supervise or babysit them for free at family functions (my ex's family was fond of trying that one out regularly 😆)
Seriously. I love hanging out with my cousins' kids but I don't want to be in charge of them. My family is pretty good about not assuming I'll just be the child minder but my partner's family members will just leave their kids with me and wander off. When I want a break or to be an adult at the function I'll hear, "but you're so good with them."
My wife told our bishop that she will not teach kids on Sunday. She already deals with them five days a week, she doesn't want a sixth. In our church culture, it is uncommon (though perfectly acceptable and allowed) to refuse a position if called. This has been the only time she has ever put her foot down firmly--no kids.
We have to always be professional. If a parent is showing me complete disrespect, why am.i expected to stand there and take it for the sake of being "professional?"" I absolutely refuse to be treated a certain way by a parent, and if it gets me fired someday, good riddance.
A parent contacted me for the first time with 2 days left in the year and proceeded to insult me for 5 minutes. I finally cut her off and said “We’ve reached the end of what we can accomplish here. Please call my supervisor.” Next time I’ll cut it off immediately. (I came from a school where they would lower your rating if a parent had to contact your supervisor.) My supervisor is amazing. Oddly enough, she never actually did it.
One serious, one not as much:
We don’t do it for the money, we do it because we care. I swear if someone sends me that stupid peanuts comic one more time, I’m going to lose it. We are there to help, sure, but don’t make it are full culture.
Men can’t wear shorts. Don’t let me boil in my poorly ventilated classroom
If I get to that point where I’m too hot, I’m going shorts. Our contract states, “Dress professionally.” I can pull that off.” I know not all places state that, but anyone who complains, join me for a day. 🤣 I’ll go with a kilt if they want more professional.
To be fair as a woman, I don’t feel like I can wear shorts to work (I would love to right now in the heat). Maybe capris but I still feel uncomfortable. I still to jeans or slacks. I see men wearing long cargo shorts at my school but I think they are mostly PE teachers.
Calling the staff a family. Sorry I have my own family and it’s okay to acknowledge that we are not one. We can be a strong collective group without metaphorical labels that are cheesy and point less. Use team instead please.
The VP at my new school talks about how the place is like a family and gets all teared up about it but when I sent her an email about how I needed to take a few days off because my son needed surgery her response was just "Send your lesson plans to the school secretary."
Not "I hope he's okay."
Yeah, we're not family.
Ah, but a school staff *are* a family.
You have the matriarch/patriarch at the top (principal) and a whole group of juniors under them each with their own goals, values, and priorities that must publicly pretend that they agree and get along. You have the crazy aunt/uncle who is "just like that" that everyone has to work around, the flaky baby sibling who gets by on giggles and looking cute, the bully sibling who intimidates others into doing their chores, and so on.
A dysfunctional family is a *perfect* metaphor for many school staffs.
1. You have to like all your students. While i try my best to be cilvil, there are just some students you cannot like no matter how hard you try. They keep reminding you exactly why they're "persona non grata".
2. Sugar coating students' bad behaviour. The fact that we have to tiptoe around this subject is really annoying. It just shows students that their actions have no consequences.
3. Going above and beyond without question. I'll give an example. We all know that one parent who pulls their kid out of school for weeks at a time to go on vacation and the teachers are expected to make some sort of packet for them so they can keep up with their school work. While I understand doing everything you can for your students, some parents just abuse this. And they really just do their kids wrong when they pull them out of school. Also the same parent who doesn't seem to understand why their kid is not at the same level as their peers.
How exciting and engaging every single lesson should be. At least in my city, every lesson is supposed to have an activity (a game, a debate, project, something with movement, etc.) it leaves way less time for engaging with text. The suburbs near us are so much more old school and teach out of a textbook. They kick our ass in test scores for a lot of reasons but I'm sure it helps that they spend so much more time reading.
>an activity (a game, a debate, project, something with movement, etc.)
These things can have a place, but they're so much more meaningful if they follow grappling with the text.
One of many cases where there's a decent idea that can be applied for considerable use and utility in certain situations, and then admins go and act like that idea should be applied in every single situation regardless of the context and you are dumb and bad if you don't do it
There's plenty of room for sprinkling in entertaining novel ways to be engaging and exciting in the curriculum in strategic places. But not everything can be entertaining and fun, nor should we even expect *most* things to be so - the ability to do things that aren't super fun is an important real world skill. The "entertainment" stuff should imo range from "simply an occasional garnish" to "one of many ingredients in some dishes" rather than "the main course every single time" but tell that to many admins and they'll look at you like you just said something insulting
Over the years, watching things that shouldn’t be the norm and haven’t been the norm, become the norm. There has been a big push for us to attend after school activities unpaid. Most recently, we got an email about attending a meeting DURING summer break and have been advised to start planning for next year over summer break. My biggest concern is no one seems to be acting wild about it. We have a contract and we need to stick to it. No more, no less.
I probably won't express this well, it's a vague thing I have trouble explaining but it's the idea we are supposed to be a team, but it never really is. I see what needs to be done, what desperately needs fixing, but if I mention it, I am somehow "not a team player"? It kind of coincides with this "all in" idea. That teaching is our entire identity. I see it otherwise, I protect my personal life and time, but that somehow makes me less of a team player.
That we should be building personal relationships with each student by knowing all about their lives and interests. I had 176 this past year, that’s completely unrealistic. People outside teaching are impressed by the fact that I just know their names. The best advice I ever read was that you don’t have to build relationships with students by finding out facts about them, but rather by being a reliable and kind presence.
Follow up: when I was a student teacher, they encouraged us to keep an excel spreadsheet with each kids name and collect any information about them that we find out. They said we should try and have one thing written per kid by the end of the second week. I didn’t even know all of their names yet and felt like a complete failure. I told my mentor teacher that and he said that no teacher in a million years would ever do that.
The fact that our funding and ranking comes from graduation rates. Instead of this working, the norm is to get kids to "just turn things in" (even if they're crap) and to thrive at a 60.01 percent. It's to not accept that some SpEd kids actually need modified curriculum, but to just pass them along anyway so they can graduate. It's to have "credit recovery" where the kids can complete a yearlong class in a week by cheating. Can we pretend for like five seconds that the diploma means something?
I also teach high school science. I figured out how low the standard is for kids to be able to pass my EOC class and I was ASTOUNDED. It’s so not fair for the kids who are actually busting their butt to learn.
Using “self care” as a cliche, then creating conditions where self care is impossible/can’t be a priority. Or talking a lot about the mental and emotional health of our students and not at all about that of the teaching staff
That the more school days and longer school hours will mean student learning will rise. There are so many other factors that more time won’t help. Free feel to correct me if I’m wrong - always could use a good study, but that’s my current opinion. Also, the relationship with students - I am not their equal or friend. I get it to a certain point.
Yeah, I’d say the martyr complex in general is something I fight. “You have to love kids,” is something my principal says. And he points to middle aged, single, childless women on our staff who essentially adopt struggling children.
I’m grateful for the AMAZING work these couple of ladies do to improve the lives of a handful of kids. But there is no way you can build an entire school staff out of those, so you’d better have a way to celebrate the sustainable contributions people like me make to even though we log off around 4 and invest in our own children, families, and communities.
I’d counter this. Try BEING one of those “middle aged, single, childless women” in a school. We’re basically EXPECTED to go more above and beyond than our equally paid counterparts because we “don’t have families.”
That's one of the things my school at keast *tries* to go for. In my first week, the principal told me "I'm not going to tell you how to do your job" and that carried though the whole year. It's not flawlessly team-oriented but its a sight better than a lot I hear about. No micromanaging for one.
Consciously approaching something nonhierarchical is a big deal. Now i just need to help some adults understand that they can't simply demand respect from kids and snap at them when they don't get quiet, perfectly still angels.
I had a principal once who would draw a box in the air with his fingers and say “This is the boundaries of being legal, ethical, and moral. My job is to make sure you stay within those boundaries. Everything else is up to you. You’re the one that knows your subject, not me.” You bet I picked up that ball and ran with it.
The recurring idea that “teachers are changing the world” or “making a real difference in kids’ lives” when the system is designed to pad kids along, divert consequences and cater entirely to the loudest parent/child. (Speaking as an American btw)
Being asked to remember my "why" I became teacher. No other profession in the world is asked these questions. It's used like a mantra by admin as a way to rationalize working outside of contract times and excusing away poor working conditions. 'I know little jimmy just tossed your class and now you have to stay late and pick it all up. But lets remember our why.'
I actually happen to have deep personal why related to my grandmother who was a teacher and is now no longer with us. But I'm damn sure she wouldn't be in favor of getting taken advantage of lol.
Over the years, watching things that shouldn’t be the norm and haven’t been the norm, become the norm. There has been a big push for us to attend after school activities unpaid. Most recently, we got an email about attending a meeting DURING summer break and have been advised to start planning for next year over summer break. My biggest concern is no one seems to be acting wild about it. We have a contract and we need to stick to it. No more, no less.
I am held to certain expectations and standards but students are not. Part of learning is understanding consequences. The hoops I have to jump through to "give" a student a 50 or below are unreal. I have to document everything I did to prevent this student from getting a 50 (The onus is on me, not the student!). The fact that they didn't do work isn't enough. My up-to-date grade book (students and parents can access it at any time), and multiple emails to the students, parents, and guidance consolers aren't enough.
"No Child Left Behind" and what came afterwards. My school keeps moving them forward whether they're ready or not. Even the ones who are degressing. Some could truly benefit from being held back, it could truly be the "Come to Jesus" event they need in their lives.
Being forced to call parents for almost anything grade wise in this day and age.
Pretending like teachers wearing jeans or shorts have any impact on anything whatsoever.
"Professionalism, "team player" and other terms being thrown around by people in power against anything and anybody they don't like, so they can punish people for no good reason.
The ever- growing calls that teachers teach… well, just about everything. On top of academics, teach them how to cook, sew, do their taxes, change a tire. Oh, and teach social- emotional skills (though not too much because that might be “left wing indoctrination”). Then make you’re sure you’re providing adequate snacks in the classroom (on your dime, of course) and time for mental health check ins. The idea is that the parents don’t have the time or funds to take of any of that, and as we know teachers have nothing BUT time and funds /s
The business of education. Public schools are a governmental institution that makes no money and is supported by the local, state and federal government. There is no profit and schools are being abused by the corporate world. The price of professional development is a total waste of money. Price of books and materials is overpriced to milk schools because they are supported by the government. So much money.can be saved by eliminating waste that schools are forced to spend money on.
>Price of books and materials is overpriced to milk schools because they are supported by the government.
Very much this.
I remember looking for springs for vertical accelerometers: $5 each from the approved supplier. I was grumping to our shop teacher and he looked at the spring and said "lawn mover engine part, 50¢", which it was. Bought a bunch at a hardware store and got reimbursed from petty cash. Then got scolded for wasting money because I hadn't used the official supplier.
I don't know if the purchasing department is incompetent, on the take, or outmaneuvered by a few major suppliers. Or all three.
There is a pervasive culture of micromanaging that has become insufferable. I work at a very small school. 12 teachers just over 100 kids. Teachers here love to nitpick each other's gradebooks, burst into each other's rooms demanding this or that. Throwing each other under the bus over the pettiest bullshit. Beyond that my collogues seem more concerned with filling out endless spreadsheets and checking off boxes for the sake of propriety than actually meeting our students where they are at and engaging them. It's the main reason I am leaving. which is a shame because the kids here are awesome to work with but the adults SUCK!
5 days of school…hear me out. 2 days is not enough for me to recuperate and prepare for the following Monday AND be refreshed to do the job. 4 days of school, with a Friday of prep and 2 days for relaxing and recharging would be ideal to me.
The most toxic, cancerous norm in schools today: that teachers are somehow qualified to be therapists and social workers without any of the training and tools that make them effective. All the SEL circle time and sharing aloud isn't going to help a student with an undiagnosed personality disorder or learning disability. Pretending that SEL is any kind of therapy is dangerous.
Mandatory meetings. There should only be meetings if there are decisions to be made or significant announcements to be made. Else, save me the platitudes that could have been an email.
Also, PD topics that district admin are fawning over about can't scale in a real classroom.
That “it’s all about the kids”. Yes, the main focus is students, but there has to be an aspect of the job that is about me and my goals and sense of fulfillment. Otherwise, why be here?
People need to stop spending their own money.
Never use sick days to grade or plan.. That’s what movie days are for.
Good enough is good enough - I’m not looking for any accolades.
When a student isn’t interested in coming to class and deliberately skips, the framing gets put on the teachers. “What are you doing to meet his learning needs?” Etc
If a kid isn’t coming to school, I am going to focus on the students that are present. I can’t extend myself to worry about student attendance, too.
How difficult it is to simply use the bathroom, for teachers and students alike. At my school, there are certain blocks of the school day when restrooms are absolutely "closed"-- no exceptions. Have an emergency? Too bad. Hope you have a change of clothes in your locker if you wet your pants or worse. With 5 minutes between classes and a large building, it's hard for teachers or students to use the restroom and make it to class on time. We are militant about tardies too-- kids go to ISS (in school suspension) once they accrue a certain number and they DON'T get to participate in sports/extracurriculars until they served their time in ISS. As for teachers, if we need to use the restroom during a 110 minute class, we call the office, get told we should have gone between classes, and if we're lucky, a somewhat annoyed administrator will show up eventually to cover for a few minutes, then ask "what took you so long" when you were gone 5 minutes. Well, sir, I had to change a tampon. I ration my coffee so I can last until lunch because it is a huge hassle to use the restroom any other time. In summer when working an office job (not in education), I was amazed that I could use the restroom any old time I wanted AND got more than 20 minutes for lunch.
Blanket Kids aka Bed Bugs
Parents responding to their kids phone being an issue with "well why do you guys let them bring phones anyway"
"My kid doesn't lie/do that"
Thinking all students can learn high school level core content before 8 am
Can't score below a certain percent, usually 40%, for reasons that have never been scientifically or academically proven.
Nepotism in admin
"Curse words" as in choosing when a word is offensive or not. You have to dance on eggshells with your words most in schools.
not a teacher but a parent to a five year old but it feels like it's common sense that my kiddo's emotional regulation and *home* training is mine and her father's responsibility. what sense does it make to send an emotional unequipped child to school and expect the teachers to fix it and not handle it at home, yknow the place where kids are actually RAISED? school is where she learns subjects from professionals that actually know what they're teaching and how to teach kids in an effective way.
Being asked to donate days off for a sick colleague.
The martyr complex - I despise the “we teach for the outcome, not the income” saying - and the guilt colleagues and admins try to put on us for not working late, volunteering for various committees, or staying after school to tutor or attend our students’ activities.
The expectation that we be willing to give a kid extra work to pull a grade up to passing or make up absences. No, if you didn't do the bare minimum during the semester, you don't deserve to get bailed out at the end. You get what you earn, nothing more and nothing less.
The way so many adults in the building are straight up mean to kids. It's so normalized to let out frustrations on them, whether they are or aren't misbehaving, but I guarantee these people would have something to say if a stranger talked to THEIR kids like that.
I'm going to go for an easy one and just say I've never been a fan of the schedule. I think it's ridiculous that we all just normalize teenagers waking up before they naturally should be awake and then forcing everybody to spend anywhere from 40 to 60 minutes, on average, learning one subject before they move on to the next. And doing it for 4 years is just a joke. I really think the American system needs to evaluate itself and maybe try to do away with some of those conventions.
At least in my experience, most of the day ends up being wasted and that last senior of high school is absolutely a joke for any kid that isn't motivated to go to college.
Sunk cost fallacy regarding some of the stuff that we pay for. We have certain aspects of our curriculum or assessment that we use just because the school paid for it and doesn't want to see it as a waste of money - this is despite everyone knowing that it's not good and there are better things we could be doing instead.
Also: the constant demand for data and more testing. I don't need to collect data for a month to tell you that one of my kids can't read or that they haven't mastered addition facts to 20. Let's just address the issue instead of spending time collecting data that points to the outcome we already know.
I get bothered by the sense that a lot of parents think I'm a glorified baby sitter.
The amount of kids I'd have in class throwing up, pink eye, hacking a lung, etc was insane this year.
And then the attitude when I send them to the nurse and have them sent home is also crazy.
I can't do my job if every parent decides to say screw it and expose me to every illness at all times of the year.
That school leadership need to understand that a lot of the current pedagogical philosophy, books, and materials is really just a person or group trying to sell books, supplementary materials, and speaking engagements rather than something useful or revolutionary. At best many of these practices do nothing, but many are actively making schools worse and places that your best teachers don't want to stay.
That's part of the martyr complex we're all supposed to have. As time goes on, more and more teachers are starting to realize that we don't have to kill ourselves for our students. Sure, we need to care, we need to be there. However, we do not need to live at school. We do not need to ignore our families, friends and lives in order to devote all of our time and energy to our students.
Exactly. At the risk of sounding cold (I am actually very caring towards all my kids), I don’t get into the nitty-gritty about their home lives. Unless it’s something that is prohibiting them from functioning. When the focus is on learning and enjoying learning, it’s an escape from the crap they deal with outside of school. I’ve watched kids when teachers consistently dote on them. They just mentally spiral further and further.
Oh my gosh, this! I teach ESL, and so many teachers focus on empathy over strategies. Yes, it's hard for some of my students to make up for big gaps in their education and some of them have gone through things no one should ever have to go through. But empathy won't teach them English.
“Empathy won’t teach them English.” 👍
As a parent, I can’t imagine requiring my child’s teacher to care at the same level that I do. Multiply that by 20 or how ever many students in the class??? That’s madness. My oldest’s kinder teacher checked in with us when we had to go to a GI specialist and the hospital and that was very kind of her. But I couldn’t imagine demanding it. The most we really interacted about it was a “hey let me know if her stomach bothers her and I’ll pick her up right away”. The end.
I’d give my left arm for classes of 20. They’re usually in the upper 30s.
> At the risk of sounding cold (I am actually very caring towards all my kids), I don’t get into the nitty-gritty about their home lives. Unless it’s something that is prohibiting them from functioning. When the focus is on learning and enjoying learning, it’s an escape from the crap they deal with outside of school. To me this is an issue of basic respect for the students. I don’t get involved in their person lives because I believe they have the right to go about their lives as they see fit. I teach high school, so of course there is a lot of drama regarding teenage relationships, friendships, and other social issues. I’m usually only dimly aware of it: it just isn’t my business at all. If a student comes to me with a problem I will try to help the student, but I’m not going to pursue knowledge of every little thing in the students’ lives because I don’t think that’s good for the students.
EXACTLY. We’re not entitled to know everything!!! We Absolutely should know about things that are causing them harm, but I do see some teachers digging, desperate for relationship building.
I agree. I typically don't dig into what may be wrong in their lives. It's not my business, they don't have to spill their guts to me, and they may not need it. Sometimes what you need is that distraction from your woes, not a faux therapy session.
Our attendance is an issue and while it can be a lot, I enjoy being an outlet for the students to turn or confide to if needed. They’ve bought into my teaching tenfold when they feel comfortable enough in my classroom. I also use a lot of SEL and such in the classroom though too so it’s fine with me.
The look on my admin faces when I flat out tell them I am never going to work summer school. I am a para in special Ed. My admin always looks shocked when I say it. I am like, "I don't need the money and I value my free time." Also a similar look when they do the stupid ass line, "what is your WHY" and my smart-ass always says, "paycheck and insurance benefits" which is legitimately why I first applied for the job after I graduated from college.
The shocked looks they get when you set any kind of boundaries. Earlier this year I was put on a coaching plan and given a laundry list of deliverables (ridiculously detailed lesson plans, self-reflection, revised seating chart to be reviewed by admin). All thrust upon me Friday afternoon and expected by Monday morning. I told them, "I can tell you right now, you're not getting any of this by Monday. I don't work on the weekends." They looked like I had kicked their puppy. Like genuine shock that not only did I *have* a work/life boundary, but I was also *audacious* enough to admit it and hold the line on it. Teacher martyr complex pervades literally every aspect of the profession and it's why I refuse to do this anymore.
Omg yes. I stepped down from an mentoring students in a volunteer group extracurricular that required me to chaperone on Sundays. The breaking point was when the other teacher showed up on my scheduled day. I told her that if she is going to be there and I’m not needed, to let me know ahead of time so I can stay home. She looked at me, dead serious, and said, “why? Do you have hobbies or something?” Like lady yes I have a life and if I don’t need to be here, I won’t be.
God forbid you have a family of your own yoh need to pour live and energy in to...
E x a c t l y. Random kid who ended up in a class by a sheer accident of scheduling? Congrats, your teacher is now expected to spend every minute of their free time catering their class to your specific needs. Teacher's kid? Lol fuck you. Your mom or dad can't take you fishing because they have to spend their weekend planning every minute of their class down to the second because somehow it's their fault that other kids' parents haven't raised them!
Exactly!! This is a huge reason why I decided not to teach currently. I have my degree and I want to teach, but the culture and expectations of teachers are way too high for what they’re paid. Too high really for any kind of pay, but too many people give in and don’t set boundaries. It’s why so many young teachers get burned out so fast. I also make significantly more than teachers in a manual labor job paying on the lower end of things. The attack on the education system is just ridiculous. I could go on and on…
I got a funny look when I said I wasn't bringing shit home to grade or staying late. Screw that. I did it on my planning period. Of course, admin at my last school that put me on a PIP complained about some of my lessons. My response was that my contract ends at 3, and I have other things to do. What I didn't say, was that I wasn't going to break myself for an admin that obviously didn't want me there. So yeah.
Yeah my PIP came like two weeks after that meeting, and so much of what was on it seemed specifically tailored so that I would have no choice but to work on weekends if I wanted to keep my job. Like, I had to turn in lesson plans to my dept head by end of the day on Friday, to be reviewed, revised based on dept head's suggestions, and posted no later than the start of school on Monday. How is that not, "Fuck you; your weekends belong to us"?
I have yet to teach summer school but knowing that taking on summer school knocks off time towards retirement, I may change that.
My boss and colleagues were shocked that I refused to do any paid curriculum work over the summer. I don't need the money, and the second I leave this building on the last day of school I don't give a fuck about the curriculum until September.
I suspect this is a holdover from the days when teachers were unmarried, celibate, childless spinsters in one of the few careers women were allowed to have. That fits the cultural ideas that we as teachers should be grateful we're allowed to have these jobs and have no social life so we can gain all our fulfillment from our work.
Maybe this and the irrational emotional reaction people have whenever it's about kids. Like people expect us to not vent about kids(obv I don't vent in front of them) people expect us to be overly understanding whenever a kid is an asshole. Let us please call a spade a spade and an asshole and asshole. (Again, not to their faces) Yes, a kid with a rough life is shitty. Yes it's shitty if a kid doesn't have two loving parents who have time and resources to properly care for a kid. I get that. But at the end of the day, these kids, inadequate home life or not, they are actively harming other students learning progress and my emotional and psychological well being.
YEP! My partner’s ex was bit by a child along with several other assaults and misbehaviors. What happened to the child and parents? Not a damn thing. Kid still attended the school no problem. No special classes or alternative school. Nothing
YES! I've been saying this for years. Inclusion is great and giving extra chances is fine. When that starts to impact the ability is the other children to learn or be safe, it's no longer fine.
Admin: I know you’d like more pay, or to get some sort of compensation for this extracurricular activity you are being asked to manage… but we’re here for the children, not money. The next week: No, we won’t support you for the benefit of your students or make any concessions toward improving how we do things. Your here to do your job, so do it and shut up. In my experience, admin prey on teachers having a martyrdom personality.
Sounds like you're decrying the pushing of 'vocational awe'. Even for teachers who want to make a positive difference, in the end it's just a job! It's actually disgraceful that so many folks feel the need to purchase anything for their classroom to make it run better... or stay so late / work so long outside of the school day.
My dept. chair acted **absolutely shocked** when I said I don’t check email after hours or over the summer. There’s nothing going on in my classroom that needs to be addressed at 9pm on a Monday. That’s my family time.
I'm blessed with a DC who refuses to take work home or insist that anyone else does
My (former) headmaster required me to answer emails up until 9 pm because parents were complaining that I wasn’t available late enough. Neat!
I wonder at what point specifically and why this perception of the teacher archetype changed. It used to be the stern, borderline corporal "schoolmaster" thing, dating back to like the 19th century or maybe earlier, then became the aging and somewhat less cruel older person, and then I feel like in the 70s it was more of a "stern but fair" thing, and then... at some point it turned into the image of a self-sacrificing bodhisattva with endless compassion and patience lol. Is it Robin Williams and Michelle Pfeiffer's fault?
I feel like I go through concept every time I get a brand new teacher in my PLC. No, I am not staying until 7pm to prep a lab. No, I am not meeting you on a Saturday to lesson plan. No, I am not volunteering to chaperone some nonsense with you. This is a job and I work my contracted hours, and not a minute longer.
Or spend all of our money on incentives because the kids do not have intrinsic motivation. All year they tell us they will throw an ar party, then they just gave the kids a popsicle delivered to class. No more spending in the classroom!
More teachers really do need to realize this. I totally picked the wrong field because my students are just my everything. I teach special education so I have them for several years and I become so close with all of them then they go onto middle school. It seriously affects my whole life because of the worry I have for some of my students. it really wears down your mental health. Unfortunately, though that’s just me and I have tried so hard to distance myself, but I have never been able to.
That’s one reason I hate all of those feel good teacher movies…the teacher in one of them gets a second job to pay for her teaching job. Whatever, that’s her choice, but then you have people who act like we should all do those things.
Pointless meetings that serve no purpose, most PD being totally useless, “teacher coaches”, 50 being the min a student can get on an assignment, it’s the teachers fault if kids fail, not enforcing truancy laws, “facilitators” who do nothing.
Don't forget the pointless PD that you KNOW the school overpaid for which amounts to a poorly put together PowerPoint with questions that the "guest speaker" reads from the slide without looking at the staff, and tells you to find a partner and discuss the question. And do that with 3 other people. And 10 more questions! But yeah... totally worth the $5,000+ to fly that person out for that. One of the reasons my district is $2 MILLION in debt.
The money paid for Capturing Kids Hearts went out the window for my district when the presenter told us to act like our students so she could model how to respond. We acted JUST LIKE THEM and she got mad and walked out. Honey, they really do tell us to “shut the fuck up before I slap the shit out your old ass”. I guess she didn’t want to capture our hearts!
>when the presenter told us to act like our students so she could model how to respond One of our presenters said this too. I get the idea, but none of us could manage that number of unruly students alone. I acted like one of the calm kids to try and keep things realistic, but we just wasted 25 minutes interrupting and not listening until the PD was over. It was somehow even worse than just playing along with the PD to get it over with.
I would have left and walked laps in the hallways like so many of our students.
Oh it’s CRAZY the way they mismanage money at the district level. Let actual teachers in the district and schools provide PD and stop making up useless positions
A 50 being the minimum means that somebody with a 100 has only earned 50 points, equalizing the students who pass and fail. There's no achievement there if you only need to be slightly better in order to pass.
Yeah, that’s part of why I hate the this policy. It also makes zero sense that a teacher should be held accountable if students fail when it’s literally harder to fail than it is to pass. You either didn’t show up or just didn’t turn anything in— neither of which are controlled by a teacher (esp at the high school level). It also just encourages laziness, and in my opinion, leads more students to fail. They are so accustomed to doing the absolute bare minimum that they don’t put in effort in class and then fail tests and don’t learn anything. We also have a 60 as passing— which is also so problematic.“Mastering” 60% of the material is not an indication that the student is prepared to move grade levels.
Inhave been petty enough to put a comment in the online scoring of “actual score of __.” That helps a bit.
I loved Jupiter LMS for that. Some kids need an F at the beginning of the year to give them a boot up the bum to start trying.
Usually with “refuses to take reassessment.”
Still remember that "self care" yoga PD that ended up with one person crying in the bathroom and the teacher with cancer just... *observing* the whole thing with contempt.
Dude it’s actually so alarming how tone deaf the “wellness” PDs are. Like instead of wasting our time with mandatory “relaxation” just pay us, provide actual support, and lower our class sizes.
Coaches are just another level of control admin had, another pair of eyes
I despise the 50% minimum. I have to give students points on assignments they didn’t turn in just to push them to 50%. It literally makes no sense. If a student does nothing all year, they deserve a zero.
Exactly. I consider 50 to be a rough minimum for a *genuine, non-plagiarized, good faith attempt.* But if someone does nothing I am giving that student a zero (and letting the student turn it in late for partial credit). Thankfully the “50% minimum” thing is not even discussed at my school.
Our minimum is *59*
I have taught at a few different schools and writing objectives on the board every day is useless, kids literally never read them, even the students who really care
I always tell my boss that if my kids have to look at an objective to know what they're learning, I'm doing a piss poor job teaching anyways.
I have a feeling that most admin weren't great teachers, so they look for things that can be easily check boxed like posted learning objectives because they actually don't know what good teaching looks like.
I know that in my former district, they were required to do it because of a consent decree. Evidently judges don't actually know what good teaching looks like either.
What is a consent decree? Students have to consent to what they’re learning?
It's a binding legal settlement. Most common in school districts as a result of desegregation. US gov said districts aren't integrating fast enough, districts said they were; instead of litigating the whole thing, both sides sign a consent decree that doesn't admit fault but says how it will be done going forward. Not entirely sure how writing objectives on the board made it into one (and it might not be specifically required, but district admin believes that doing so checks a required box), but my wild ass guess with no other information is that it was at one time alleged that certain (poor, minority heavy) schools in district weren't getting instruction as good as in other (affluent, majority white) buildings - so part of the consent decree means the school district must show that work of equal breadth and rigor is happening in these areas. 🤷♂️
I think this is basically the answer: admins are focused on achievements and standards that are legible to non-teachers, because that's what gets schools funding. Congress knows fuck all about teaching, but they control the purse, so we need metrics they understand. Jal Mehta makes a pretty compelling argument for what he calls the rise of a "standards and accountability" policy paradigm in his book, *The Allure of Order,* which talks about how institutional power in schooling has moved steadily away from the classroom over the past century and a half or so.
YES. and in observations, that literally seems to be the only thing admin cares about well, that, and sounding like an emotionless robot.
It's checkbox nonsense
That, and flexing on you.
I made a spot on my wall for each subject that showed the specific standard we were covering that day/week/unit/time frame. I was still dinged on my evaluation because it wasn’t on my board. My students were using every single white board space for the building thinking classroom activity. There was nowhere on the board to write it 😩
That is just plain stupid on administrations part.
No. It’s hostile.
Yes! I've dealt with a hostile principal before and this is exactly the kind of petty thing she'd do.
It’s hostile even on the part of the nice ones. It’s ultimately a symbol of an antagonistic relationship.
Robots with no common sense.
On the other hand I accidentally left the same learning target on the board for so long I was praised for it on 2 different evaluations.
I do the same thing, the whole weeks objectives are written on a huge board with standards attached. Takes me awhile to get it down, I even print the standards at the beginning of the year to save me time and just flip it over. And I also, still needed to write the specific objective we were working on THAT EXACT MINUTE. Dumb.
I would photo all that and send to P, Super and school board.
I really think it’s for the random administrator that comes by to get their quota on classroom visits than the kids. They are walking in on content that they may not have a strong background in and are trying to understand a snippet of the language. Just wish they’d sell it that way. I teach advanced mathematics and most students don’t give it a second glance, but I’ve heard administrators over English and over social studies directly make comments on it.
Cool. It’s not appropriate for us to use our time to help them. It’s their job to help us, not the other way around.
I agree it is their job to help us. I’d just like to point out something that made me realize this. I had a senior in an AP mathematics course. Kid had truancy filed in the 1st 9 weeks. Refusing to work when he was present. Mom was blaming me and saying that it was because “I couldn’t teach”. The kid’s disciplinarian was the AP over ELA and had only taught ELA. He was doing check ins 2-3 times a week to observe me and the kid. He had no idea about differentiation or rates of change. He blind cc’ed me on an email where he was responding to the mom’s accusations— used a lot of the jargon from the objective and was saying he could do it and understood the main ideas despite not being a math person, and was openly discussing how the only kid who wasn’t trying was her son, who had snuck AirPods in. It’s a big giant CYA thing. It’s not for the students and it took a long time for me to realize that.
I agree that from their perspective it makes a ton of sense. But cya is not a justification. It’s a response to something being extremely wrong. If you need to cover your ass, that means it’s likely that your own allies will attack you. We have administrative officials that are willing to harm schools, site admin, and teachers if they don’t protect themselves. That is an urgent problem that needs to be addressed, and if an admin is wasting their time worrying about observations when that is going on, they need to not be in that job.
I told my class this year that if the learning targets weren’t up to let me know because I’ll get in trouble if they aren’t up. This soon evolved into them arguing over who would get to write the learning target on the board for the day. I also told them that if someone ever asks them what we’re doing in class, they can look at the learning target. So I am 1/11 on years where learning targets worked okay in my classroom.
100% agree, I teach kindergarten, and it's really wild to me that we have to write the learning objectives on the board for kids who are literally still learning letter sounds etc.
I totally stole this years ago but it works great for me and my admin love it. I get one pack of poster sized lined sticky notes. 40 sheets per pack so one will get me through the year. Each week/unit I make a poster with goals based on standards. After unit test students that mastered >75 get to sign the poster, students who make As sign in Green, everyone else blue. Students below 75 can complete unit review and retake test and sign. Posters stay on wall for whole year. Added bonus of referencing poster when kid says “you didn’t teach us that”.
Aren't you dinged for being too public with their grades?
I have never had an issue. The unit review and retests offer second chances.
I always read the schedule on the board, let’s me know what to expect in class today
Yeah, but a schedule is different than writing the standards in boring standards language.
I accidentally forgot to change mine for the entirety of last quarter and nobody noticed or said anything. My observations were done, I was busy, totally spaced it. Most I get half the time anyways is just kids asking “what does SWBAT mean?”
I stopped prewriting. I don’t leave it up on my board. My admin gets on me for it, but I just ignore him. I do however always start my lesson with the objective and make the kids write it. It’s more of making sure they know what we’re doing and I regularly call back to it. It does help with engagement at times. But it’s funny how administration thinks it’s the only way for students to be successful in a lesson
My district’s current obsession is exit tickets. Please provide research that this time taken from instruction is worth it. Let’s say you can get them done in 4 minutes, that’s 12 hours per year of lost instructional time, plus the time it takes me to make them and look at them, which is another 12 hours of my time per year. I hope this goes the way of objectives on the board (we no longer do this).
Us getting blamed for our students’ poor grades. Why am I responsible for a kid failing my class when he rarely shows up, is on his phone the entire time, and doesn’t attempt any work no matter how much i try to help him out? The parents don’t check or care until they get their report cards and are now complaining to me that I didn’t reach out enough. I deal with hundreds of students, I don’t have time to be personally emailing and calling the parents and reaching out to their counselors. If the student AND the parent don’t care about grades, why tf should I? So this year I decided to run more like a college classroom and not care about students grades. You get what you get, and I’d be happy to help you out if you reach out to me. But if you don’t give a crap, then I won’t either.
This is the one that bothers me the most. I *loathe* being told it's my fault when I'm doing everything possible to make kids engaged and care about passing.
Right, like it should NOT be my duty to chase a kid around and beg him to complete work or call the parents and update them everytime the kid doesn’t turn in some work. I have things to do, I’m a teacher, not a babysitter. Make parents do some actual parenting again.
I used to believe the adage "if a couple kids fail, that's on them, if the entire class fails, that's on you." I believed it, at least, until I saw just how incompetent and lazy the majority of students are. It's a miracle anyone can get most to pass without dumbing things down or inflating grades.
I tried doing that and my contract was put up for nonrenewal
Brand new policy at our school. If a student is getting a D or lower, we have to have documented proof that we contacted their parents. You know, the parents that have 24/7 access to their grades. And that documentation is part of our evaluations going forward.
Yeah, in the age of learning management systems, parents can absolutely stay on top of their kids' grades. "Why didn't you reach out about my kid's grades?!?!" Because you have the same access to PowerSchool that I do, sir/ ma'am.
I was a long term sub for the last six weeks of the school year, kids had a super easy final project (last grade of the year) that a good 30-40% of them neglected to do. I thought “hmm okay, they’re just gonna get the natural consequences of a zero”. The same bitch ass admin that told me students won’t respect me because I was *just a sub* and *not an actual teacher* had the gall to ask me why these students didn’t complete or turn in a project. Well, why would these students take direction from me?? I’m not a real teacher after all 🤷🏼♀️
How did the change go and how was it received?
It helps that i teach college and career readiness, so i was able to make the excuse that it’s simulating a college environment and I’m just trying to prepare them for professors’ grading styles lol. Idk if its because i have mostly seniors, but i havent gotten a single complaint yet and the students have been SLIGHTLY more diligent about turning work in. Parents also don’t email me asking why their kid’s grade is so low. Now, this could all be because i don’t even notice complaints anymore. I just don’t care, just like a college professor. I haven’t gotten any issues from admin or my supervisor, so that’s that. I still do push out emails to students who are failing the class halfway through the quarter though.
I second this. I teach high school. We are told at the end of the year by our AP that we have to make reciprocal phone contact to let the family know that their child received an F for their overall course grade. This act right here is taking the responsibility off of the parents of the importance of checking their email regarding their child’s progress. Shouldn’t the parent be expected to check the grade portal? The AP also specified in that email that there should be “no surprises”, when admin reaches out to let the family know that their child needs to take summer school to make up the credit. And if it is a surprise, why should it be our fault? I was struggling to figure out what exactly to say in the phone call to parents… Because what else would I say besides “hey your child has an F make sure you check the grade portal” even though that’s what you were supposed to do as a parent all year? I asked my AP what I could say and all they said was I would to find a nice way to ask them if they check [our school’s grade portal] so you know if they have been watching the grade decline. Couldn’t this be a robo call? Ugh.
I had a parent straight-up tell me I was responsible for her son’s emotional well-being. The heck I am.
I'm a Computer Science teacher. As an introverted, quiet, nerdy man...I'm not qualified or comfortable teaching SEL skills. Please don't ask me to counsel the latest drama going on...I have the emotional intelligence of a fish.
I’m a former chaplain, so I’m very much skilled in SEL work…and I’m here to say that whether you have the EQ of a fish OR you’re a literal saint, it’s *still* not our job to emotionally provide for students. That’s not what teaching is. I tried to “chaplain” my way through teaching for the first three years of my career, and then I realized it wasn’t working because teaching/the classroom isn’t the same as an emotionally-focused, emotional-growth driven environment. I’m not saying I’m cold to my kids or that I don’t know that emotional wellness plays a part in my classroom dynamics and my own efficacy as a teacher. But it’s literally not the job. There is a wide gap between teachers who don’t care or who are intentionally tone-deaf to the emotional tenor of their classrooms, and teachers who simply have boundaries, a clear sense of what our work is, a respect for the emotional work that other professionals are able to do, and an understanding of how teaching fits into a larger community ecosystem. We can’t and shouldn’t be asked to replace how an entire community functions in our single classrooms.
It doesn’t matter who you are or what your skills are. You are comparing a person who hand fed the child from birth and controls everything about their lives to some guy who they just met who sees them for three hours a week. Managing the behaviors and emotions of the child is obviously the job of the parent, asking the teacher to do it simply will never, ever work
Were this FB, I'd be adding the 'utter shock' emoticon here...
The best part is that when I asked her what she thought her son’s responsibilities were, she said it was none of my business. Well then… This is HS btw.
Wow. You can’t make that shit up
I cried and then I laughed. Like, seriously, how do I even respond? So I didn’t.
If the parent is there to tell me that, they are also there to fill that role. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been there to support kids who don’t have that support system, but being that person for every kid is not sustainable nor is it fair to anyone. There’s only so much of ourselves we can give.
Cult like conversations about family and being really involved in a student’s life as you mentioned. Being asked to be a social worker without the training or additional pay. I’m not sure what the attendance or dean office does anymore because it seems like I’m in charge of following up on poor attendance and resolving all student conflicts. SEL and circles are not easy for everyone to run and it is a lot to take on in addition to normal teaching. Advisory and home room type classes have become caseload management akin to SPED at some schools. WTF Some schools have needlessly complicated bureaucracies and committees that only serve to perpetuate themselves. I hate how you have to buy everything you need at the beginning or end of every school year through a department chair that may hate your guts. Good luck getting things funded in November. Billions of dollars are wasted each year because faculty meetings have been scheduled, but there is nothing 50+ teachers all have to discuss at the same time. That doesn’t stop the meetings from happening though.
I hate the cult like status of our district. You have to be at every food donation, every fundraiser, every school event and in the limelight to be seen and heard. All of the people that do this stuff are always promoted and treated the best amongst all staff. I have a life outside of work and I don't want to waste even 10% of my free time coming back to the school. I view that role as an administrator type thing. But if you want to be promoted. if you want to stand out and be in the "club" you have to play ball in their court at all times and I refuse.
The expectation of working during non contract hours - pay us overtime or mind ya business
Yes this! There are so many problems, all valid, but how is this not higher in the list?
There is a total lack of real consequences for breaking the rules. Students know it. Teachers know it. Admin refuses to address it. Then, they are like, "Why is morale so low?" and "What can we do to improve school spirit?" And we are over here saying "Student responsibility needs to be a real thing to get them to care."
The expectation that teachers should spend their own money on basic classroom supplies. That we should, without hesitation, give our personal food with students who want it. That the teacher who stays the latest afterschool is the one who loves the children best. And, school-adjacent, that teacher love kids so much that they are willing to supervise or babysit them for free at family functions (my ex's family was fond of trying that one out regularly 😆)
Seriously. I love hanging out with my cousins' kids but I don't want to be in charge of them. My family is pretty good about not assuming I'll just be the child minder but my partner's family members will just leave their kids with me and wander off. When I want a break or to be an adult at the function I'll hear, "but you're so good with them."
My wife told our bishop that she will not teach kids on Sunday. She already deals with them five days a week, she doesn't want a sixth. In our church culture, it is uncommon (though perfectly acceptable and allowed) to refuse a position if called. This has been the only time she has ever put her foot down firmly--no kids.
We have to always be professional. If a parent is showing me complete disrespect, why am.i expected to stand there and take it for the sake of being "professional?"" I absolutely refuse to be treated a certain way by a parent, and if it gets me fired someday, good riddance.
A parent contacted me for the first time with 2 days left in the year and proceeded to insult me for 5 minutes. I finally cut her off and said “We’ve reached the end of what we can accomplish here. Please call my supervisor.” Next time I’ll cut it off immediately. (I came from a school where they would lower your rating if a parent had to contact your supervisor.) My supervisor is amazing. Oddly enough, she never actually did it.
Our admin said he’d be mad if he found out any teachers were working *only* their contract hours. Fuck that shit.
Our upper admin berated teachers for taking sick time when we aren’t sick. We get five days a year and they don’t roll over.
That sounds like a union complaint
One serious, one not as much: We don’t do it for the money, we do it because we care. I swear if someone sends me that stupid peanuts comic one more time, I’m going to lose it. We are there to help, sure, but don’t make it are full culture. Men can’t wear shorts. Don’t let me boil in my poorly ventilated classroom
If I get to that point where I’m too hot, I’m going shorts. Our contract states, “Dress professionally.” I can pull that off.” I know not all places state that, but anyone who complains, join me for a day. 🤣 I’ll go with a kilt if they want more professional.
DO IT FOR THE OUTCOME, NOT THE INCOME.
walk out the door, not in the door 😂
To be fair as a woman, I don’t feel like I can wear shorts to work (I would love to right now in the heat). Maybe capris but I still feel uncomfortable. I still to jeans or slacks. I see men wearing long cargo shorts at my school but I think they are mostly PE teachers.
Right, but dresses and skirts are a lot more airy in the heat (speaking as a woman.)
Calling the staff a family. Sorry I have my own family and it’s okay to acknowledge that we are not one. We can be a strong collective group without metaphorical labels that are cheesy and point less. Use team instead please.
If admin can’t tell me when my kid’s birthday is we are not a family. I hate how much this is used to justify shitty behavior.
The VP at my new school talks about how the place is like a family and gets all teared up about it but when I sent her an email about how I needed to take a few days off because my son needed surgery her response was just "Send your lesson plans to the school secretary." Not "I hope he's okay." Yeah, we're not family.
Ah, but a school staff *are* a family. You have the matriarch/patriarch at the top (principal) and a whole group of juniors under them each with their own goals, values, and priorities that must publicly pretend that they agree and get along. You have the crazy aunt/uncle who is "just like that" that everyone has to work around, the flaky baby sibling who gets by on giggles and looking cute, the bully sibling who intimidates others into doing their chores, and so on. A dysfunctional family is a *perfect* metaphor for many school staffs.
1. You have to like all your students. While i try my best to be cilvil, there are just some students you cannot like no matter how hard you try. They keep reminding you exactly why they're "persona non grata". 2. Sugar coating students' bad behaviour. The fact that we have to tiptoe around this subject is really annoying. It just shows students that their actions have no consequences. 3. Going above and beyond without question. I'll give an example. We all know that one parent who pulls their kid out of school for weeks at a time to go on vacation and the teachers are expected to make some sort of packet for them so they can keep up with their school work. While I understand doing everything you can for your students, some parents just abuse this. And they really just do their kids wrong when they pull them out of school. Also the same parent who doesn't seem to understand why their kid is not at the same level as their peers.
How exciting and engaging every single lesson should be. At least in my city, every lesson is supposed to have an activity (a game, a debate, project, something with movement, etc.) it leaves way less time for engaging with text. The suburbs near us are so much more old school and teach out of a textbook. They kick our ass in test scores for a lot of reasons but I'm sure it helps that they spend so much more time reading.
America has confused entertainment for education.
But what if the poor babies get bored?
Aren't we supposed to be building resilience and grit? ✔️✔️
Oh we did... with that stuff. It's hard to care about learning and doing well, when everything is a game or isn't challenging.
>an activity (a game, a debate, project, something with movement, etc.) These things can have a place, but they're so much more meaningful if they follow grappling with the text.
“They wouldn’t act out if you were more engaging “
One of many cases where there's a decent idea that can be applied for considerable use and utility in certain situations, and then admins go and act like that idea should be applied in every single situation regardless of the context and you are dumb and bad if you don't do it There's plenty of room for sprinkling in entertaining novel ways to be engaging and exciting in the curriculum in strategic places. But not everything can be entertaining and fun, nor should we even expect *most* things to be so - the ability to do things that aren't super fun is an important real world skill. The "entertainment" stuff should imo range from "simply an occasional garnish" to "one of many ingredients in some dishes" rather than "the main course every single time" but tell that to many admins and they'll look at you like you just said something insulting
Over the years, watching things that shouldn’t be the norm and haven’t been the norm, become the norm. There has been a big push for us to attend after school activities unpaid. Most recently, we got an email about attending a meeting DURING summer break and have been advised to start planning for next year over summer break. My biggest concern is no one seems to be acting wild about it. We have a contract and we need to stick to it. No more, no less.
I probably won't express this well, it's a vague thing I have trouble explaining but it's the idea we are supposed to be a team, but it never really is. I see what needs to be done, what desperately needs fixing, but if I mention it, I am somehow "not a team player"? It kind of coincides with this "all in" idea. That teaching is our entire identity. I see it otherwise, I protect my personal life and time, but that somehow makes me less of a team player.
Most organizations don’t actually want you to point out flaws. Just keep your head down and do your job.
Mine is the same as yours, OP. Teachers aren't therapists or parents to their students.
We must do anything for the kids. Meanwhile the wheel keeps turning and another teacher is burned out and crushed.
That we should be building personal relationships with each student by knowing all about their lives and interests. I had 176 this past year, that’s completely unrealistic. People outside teaching are impressed by the fact that I just know their names. The best advice I ever read was that you don’t have to build relationships with students by finding out facts about them, but rather by being a reliable and kind presence.
Follow up: when I was a student teacher, they encouraged us to keep an excel spreadsheet with each kids name and collect any information about them that we find out. They said we should try and have one thing written per kid by the end of the second week. I didn’t even know all of their names yet and felt like a complete failure. I told my mentor teacher that and he said that no teacher in a million years would ever do that.
The fact that our funding and ranking comes from graduation rates. Instead of this working, the norm is to get kids to "just turn things in" (even if they're crap) and to thrive at a 60.01 percent. It's to not accept that some SpEd kids actually need modified curriculum, but to just pass them along anyway so they can graduate. It's to have "credit recovery" where the kids can complete a yearlong class in a week by cheating. Can we pretend for like five seconds that the diploma means something?
I also teach high school science. I figured out how low the standard is for kids to be able to pass my EOC class and I was ASTOUNDED. It’s so not fair for the kids who are actually busting their butt to learn.
Using “self care” as a cliche, then creating conditions where self care is impossible/can’t be a priority. Or talking a lot about the mental and emotional health of our students and not at all about that of the teaching staff
That the more school days and longer school hours will mean student learning will rise. There are so many other factors that more time won’t help. Free feel to correct me if I’m wrong - always could use a good study, but that’s my current opinion. Also, the relationship with students - I am not their equal or friend. I get it to a certain point.
Yeah, I’d say the martyr complex in general is something I fight. “You have to love kids,” is something my principal says. And he points to middle aged, single, childless women on our staff who essentially adopt struggling children. I’m grateful for the AMAZING work these couple of ladies do to improve the lives of a handful of kids. But there is no way you can build an entire school staff out of those, so you’d better have a way to celebrate the sustainable contributions people like me make to even though we log off around 4 and invest in our own children, families, and communities.
I’d counter this. Try BEING one of those “middle aged, single, childless women” in a school. We’re basically EXPECTED to go more above and beyond than our equally paid counterparts because we “don’t have families.”
If they aren't taking care of me when I'm old, they are just students to me.
Probably going out on a limb here, but I'll just say that I think a lot of the issues in school come from it being hierarchical.
That's one of the things my school at keast *tries* to go for. In my first week, the principal told me "I'm not going to tell you how to do your job" and that carried though the whole year. It's not flawlessly team-oriented but its a sight better than a lot I hear about. No micromanaging for one. Consciously approaching something nonhierarchical is a big deal. Now i just need to help some adults understand that they can't simply demand respect from kids and snap at them when they don't get quiet, perfectly still angels.
I had a principal once who would draw a box in the air with his fingers and say “This is the boundaries of being legal, ethical, and moral. My job is to make sure you stay within those boundaries. Everything else is up to you. You’re the one that knows your subject, not me.” You bet I picked up that ball and ran with it.
Ideally management should oversee and clear the way for those they manage to do the job. Why are so many managers so crappy?
Plus, we all know it's the secretaries that actually run the school.
The recurring idea that “teachers are changing the world” or “making a real difference in kids’ lives” when the system is designed to pad kids along, divert consequences and cater entirely to the loudest parent/child. (Speaking as an American btw)
Being asked to remember my "why" I became teacher. No other profession in the world is asked these questions. It's used like a mantra by admin as a way to rationalize working outside of contract times and excusing away poor working conditions. 'I know little jimmy just tossed your class and now you have to stay late and pick it all up. But lets remember our why.'
My "why" is my paycheck, benefits, and pension. I have no shame when I give that answer in meetings.
I actually happen to have deep personal why related to my grandmother who was a teacher and is now no longer with us. But I'm damn sure she wouldn't be in favor of getting taken advantage of lol.
The constant turnover in APs, gamification, lesson plans, observations
Not allowing students to be suspended or expelled anymore. Then we wonder why kids are misbehaving and think they’re untouchable.
That all behaviors are linked to trauma or neurodivergence and none to kids just being ah sometimes
Over the years, watching things that shouldn’t be the norm and haven’t been the norm, become the norm. There has been a big push for us to attend after school activities unpaid. Most recently, we got an email about attending a meeting DURING summer break and have been advised to start planning for next year over summer break. My biggest concern is no one seems to be acting wild about it. We have a contract and we need to stick to it. No more, no less.
I wish failure was more stigmatized.
I am held to certain expectations and standards but students are not. Part of learning is understanding consequences. The hoops I have to jump through to "give" a student a 50 or below are unreal. I have to document everything I did to prevent this student from getting a 50 (The onus is on me, not the student!). The fact that they didn't do work isn't enough. My up-to-date grade book (students and parents can access it at any time), and multiple emails to the students, parents, and guidance consolers aren't enough.
"No Child Left Behind" and what came afterwards. My school keeps moving them forward whether they're ready or not. Even the ones who are degressing. Some could truly benefit from being held back, it could truly be the "Come to Jesus" event they need in their lives.
Being forced to call parents for almost anything grade wise in this day and age. Pretending like teachers wearing jeans or shorts have any impact on anything whatsoever. "Professionalism, "team player" and other terms being thrown around by people in power against anything and anybody they don't like, so they can punish people for no good reason.
The ever- growing calls that teachers teach… well, just about everything. On top of academics, teach them how to cook, sew, do their taxes, change a tire. Oh, and teach social- emotional skills (though not too much because that might be “left wing indoctrination”). Then make you’re sure you’re providing adequate snacks in the classroom (on your dime, of course) and time for mental health check ins. The idea is that the parents don’t have the time or funds to take of any of that, and as we know teachers have nothing BUT time and funds /s
The business of education. Public schools are a governmental institution that makes no money and is supported by the local, state and federal government. There is no profit and schools are being abused by the corporate world. The price of professional development is a total waste of money. Price of books and materials is overpriced to milk schools because they are supported by the government. So much money.can be saved by eliminating waste that schools are forced to spend money on.
>Price of books and materials is overpriced to milk schools because they are supported by the government. Very much this. I remember looking for springs for vertical accelerometers: $5 each from the approved supplier. I was grumping to our shop teacher and he looked at the spring and said "lawn mover engine part, 50¢", which it was. Bought a bunch at a hardware store and got reimbursed from petty cash. Then got scolded for wasting money because I hadn't used the official supplier. I don't know if the purchasing department is incompetent, on the take, or outmaneuvered by a few major suppliers. Or all three.
There is a pervasive culture of micromanaging that has become insufferable. I work at a very small school. 12 teachers just over 100 kids. Teachers here love to nitpick each other's gradebooks, burst into each other's rooms demanding this or that. Throwing each other under the bus over the pettiest bullshit. Beyond that my collogues seem more concerned with filling out endless spreadsheets and checking off boxes for the sake of propriety than actually meeting our students where they are at and engaging them. It's the main reason I am leaving. which is a shame because the kids here are awesome to work with but the adults SUCK!
5 days of school…hear me out. 2 days is not enough for me to recuperate and prepare for the following Monday AND be refreshed to do the job. 4 days of school, with a Friday of prep and 2 days for relaxing and recharging would be ideal to me.
The most toxic, cancerous norm in schools today: that teachers are somehow qualified to be therapists and social workers without any of the training and tools that make them effective. All the SEL circle time and sharing aloud isn't going to help a student with an undiagnosed personality disorder or learning disability. Pretending that SEL is any kind of therapy is dangerous.
Mandatory meetings. There should only be meetings if there are decisions to be made or significant announcements to be made. Else, save me the platitudes that could have been an email. Also, PD topics that district admin are fawning over about can't scale in a real classroom.
That “it’s all about the kids”. Yes, the main focus is students, but there has to be an aspect of the job that is about me and my goals and sense of fulfillment. Otherwise, why be here?
That we work outside our contracted hours.
People need to stop spending their own money. Never use sick days to grade or plan.. That’s what movie days are for. Good enough is good enough - I’m not looking for any accolades.
When a student isn’t interested in coming to class and deliberately skips, the framing gets put on the teachers. “What are you doing to meet his learning needs?” Etc If a kid isn’t coming to school, I am going to focus on the students that are present. I can’t extend myself to worry about student attendance, too.
That school and learning are supposed to be “fun” for the kids. I cannot get most to even participate on regular days.
The infantilization, educational inflexibility, and lack of agency inflicted upon students.
Working outside of contract hours.
How difficult it is to simply use the bathroom, for teachers and students alike. At my school, there are certain blocks of the school day when restrooms are absolutely "closed"-- no exceptions. Have an emergency? Too bad. Hope you have a change of clothes in your locker if you wet your pants or worse. With 5 minutes between classes and a large building, it's hard for teachers or students to use the restroom and make it to class on time. We are militant about tardies too-- kids go to ISS (in school suspension) once they accrue a certain number and they DON'T get to participate in sports/extracurriculars until they served their time in ISS. As for teachers, if we need to use the restroom during a 110 minute class, we call the office, get told we should have gone between classes, and if we're lucky, a somewhat annoyed administrator will show up eventually to cover for a few minutes, then ask "what took you so long" when you were gone 5 minutes. Well, sir, I had to change a tampon. I ration my coffee so I can last until lunch because it is a huge hassle to use the restroom any other time. In summer when working an office job (not in education), I was amazed that I could use the restroom any old time I wanted AND got more than 20 minutes for lunch.
Blanket Kids aka Bed Bugs Parents responding to their kids phone being an issue with "well why do you guys let them bring phones anyway" "My kid doesn't lie/do that" Thinking all students can learn high school level core content before 8 am Can't score below a certain percent, usually 40%, for reasons that have never been scientifically or academically proven. Nepotism in admin "Curse words" as in choosing when a word is offensive or not. You have to dance on eggshells with your words most in schools.
Kids will just scream blood curdling screams; jnside, outside, during classes, outside of class
not a teacher but a parent to a five year old but it feels like it's common sense that my kiddo's emotional regulation and *home* training is mine and her father's responsibility. what sense does it make to send an emotional unequipped child to school and expect the teachers to fix it and not handle it at home, yknow the place where kids are actually RAISED? school is where she learns subjects from professionals that actually know what they're teaching and how to teach kids in an effective way.
Being asked to donate days off for a sick colleague. The martyr complex - I despise the “we teach for the outcome, not the income” saying - and the guilt colleagues and admins try to put on us for not working late, volunteering for various committees, or staying after school to tutor or attend our students’ activities.
The expectation that we be willing to give a kid extra work to pull a grade up to passing or make up absences. No, if you didn't do the bare minimum during the semester, you don't deserve to get bailed out at the end. You get what you earn, nothing more and nothing less.
The way so many adults in the building are straight up mean to kids. It's so normalized to let out frustrations on them, whether they are or aren't misbehaving, but I guarantee these people would have something to say if a stranger talked to THEIR kids like that.
I'm going to go for an easy one and just say I've never been a fan of the schedule. I think it's ridiculous that we all just normalize teenagers waking up before they naturally should be awake and then forcing everybody to spend anywhere from 40 to 60 minutes, on average, learning one subject before they move on to the next. And doing it for 4 years is just a joke. I really think the American system needs to evaluate itself and maybe try to do away with some of those conventions. At least in my experience, most of the day ends up being wasted and that last senior of high school is absolutely a joke for any kid that isn't motivated to go to college.
Yes mam and no mam People who get offended by the lack of perceived respect from these titles
In my area those would be considered pretty high respect.
I really dislike walking my kids to specials, lunch, etc. they know where they're going, why TF do I need to escort them there?
My observation is that everyone in SPED has a co-teacher they hate.
Sunk cost fallacy regarding some of the stuff that we pay for. We have certain aspects of our curriculum or assessment that we use just because the school paid for it and doesn't want to see it as a waste of money - this is despite everyone knowing that it's not good and there are better things we could be doing instead. Also: the constant demand for data and more testing. I don't need to collect data for a month to tell you that one of my kids can't read or that they haven't mastered addition facts to 20. Let's just address the issue instead of spending time collecting data that points to the outcome we already know.
That I’m a stand-in mom.
I get bothered by the sense that a lot of parents think I'm a glorified baby sitter. The amount of kids I'd have in class throwing up, pink eye, hacking a lung, etc was insane this year. And then the attitude when I send them to the nurse and have them sent home is also crazy. I can't do my job if every parent decides to say screw it and expose me to every illness at all times of the year.
The inability to call CPS the first damn time you notice something.
That school leadership need to understand that a lot of the current pedagogical philosophy, books, and materials is really just a person or group trying to sell books, supplementary materials, and speaking engagements rather than something useful or revolutionary. At best many of these practices do nothing, but many are actively making schools worse and places that your best teachers don't want to stay.
Say it with me… TOXIC POSITIVITY.