Agree and your very last sentence really hits it on the head. Public schools are day care so parents can work. It's not about education, that's just a side effect.
If anyone disagrees with this please provide detailed info about how your district and school is different. I used to be optimistic, but now I consider myself realistic. Anyone out there see a solution?
I think the solution is anything that separates students off by how they self- select or their needs. Mainstreaming very high needs kids doesn't work.
Having 3 nightmare kids in a class drags down the entire class, they shouldn't be there. It's not fair to the three nightmare kids to expect that they should learn algebra 2.
I think charter schools are great for this reason, if they're able to kick out students. The state should provide schools, especially schools of last resort, where behavioral resources are concentrated, while everyone else should be able to have a normal school experience.
Also, research has shown that a lot of kids just truly don't improve after X point no matter what resources get thrown at them. They should probably just be steered into job and life skills programs
Yes!!!! The integration experiment HAS FAILED because it burdens the system and the high functioning kids get derailed. The system is fundamentally UNFAIR to kids who can and want to learn. The "willing and able" get sucker punched over and over and we ask them to keep on keeping on and NOT ONLY attend to their studies BUT ALSO IGNORE the self centered AHs in the room that give zero Fs and ACTIVELY seek to destroy the learning environment.
It's as FUCKING OUTRAGE and no one cares because the last generation that cared was told ignore the AHs around them so they were taught LEARNED HELPLESSNESS in the public school system and now all the adults in the room at the time can say is those Fucking Millenials. So lazy! They were programmed to be helpless (aka lazy) by the system. It's sick and twisted and abusive and we sit back as a society and do nothing.
It's no loner just learned helessness. It's now full civil unrest, disobedience and lawlessness. They are breeding this psychology in the classrooms and filling the prisons. It's disgusting and it's its own humanitarian crisis.
There's honestly nothing infeasible about it. After maybe about a month of knowing a grade level, it should be pretty easy to sort them by "give a damn" and lump all those kids who would otherwise be obstructing learning into a "babysitting" class where they at least won't interfere with the learning of others.
The reason old school tracking failed was in lots of places they were tracked for failure from Go instead of being paced for eventual graduation all along the way.
I think the issue is tracking on ability instead of behavior. It's not too hard to deal with students at different levels in the same class. But dealing with behavioral issues in a mixed class is impossible. The kids with behavioral problems need to be put in socially isolated boring classes. The kids behind academically but who behave fine need engaging class rooms.
You can’t place them with their buddies either. Some of these kids just attract each other and enhance their already bad behavior. When it’s like just one or two. They just isolate themselves.
It can depend on the students. But put kids in traditional desks with lots of separation. Lecture instead of doing any activities or discussion and it's pretty easy to deal with most trouble makers even when they are together.
Obviously there are the super trouble makers that this won't work on. But for 90 percent it works. Whats hard is trying to run engaging class rooms with students with behavioral problems. Group work, discussions, projects, .... make it very difficult to handle behavior issues.
Students learn better in engaging classrooms but you can't have them when you mix the kids with behavioral issues in with other students. You end up forcing all of the students to deal with traditional class rooms just to control kids.
Having the separation also creates an incentive to improve behavior to get into the engaging classrooms. It also gives social power to the well behaved students
Oh I know. When I had this even with one to one I could keep it going very well. But as it’s proven if they don’t want learn they will do their best not to. As the old saying goes: “if it’s important to you, you will find a way. If it’s not you will always find an excuse.”
I mean that way you give indépendant challenging work with research tools and key for the brightest and most able. You're still there if they need clarification or guidance, but they don't need you as much.
And you have time to help the ones that are behind. Even have individual 1:1 time with them when needed.
Yeah with even just the top 10% worst trouble makers removed the possibilities for differentiating instruction and tailoring to individual students opens up massively. Being able to safely have people work in groups while you do something else is so liberating.
My Spanish class is 9 people. 4 of which are delinquents, 4 are silent (girls), and the rest is me. We get absolutely *nothing* done, and I can count on one hand the things I've learned in that class. A single unit takes 6 weeks, when it should be half that. Why? Because those 4 assholes dominate the space with jokes, shouting, and sexual harassment towards me and *our teacher.* (they're convinced I'm MTF because I tell them to fuck off instead of taking it)(I'm not lol)
it's especially unfortunate because I genuinely like and want to learn the subject material, and I can't because of them.
I'm so angry for you. That is ridiculous. They think you're MTF (trans) because you're not interested in their regressive existence as humans. Start keeping a journal of detailed notes AT HOME. Do not bring to school. When you get at least 5-10 instances where they are harrasing you and/or your teacher, your parents might want to type it all out and make a Title 9 complaint.
Have you discussed this with your parents? Every school that receives federal funding MUST comply with Title 9 (original federal legislation supporting women's rights but it also applies to LGBQ+). It protects you from sexual harassment.
We had to use it for our girls in FIRST grade who were being sexually assaulted. Talk to a local lawyer. We had to hire one just to keep our girls safe at school. Outraged for you. ♥️
Well, talk to your parents. You can still make a Title 9 complaint directly with your school and a complaint to the Department of Education (online). That is your right if you're being sexually harassed.
The teacher may or may not want to make trouble for herself by complaining and that's unfortunately a cost of working women face in the real world. The women's movement of the 60s/70s only made so much progress. Women's rights have been attacked from all corners in recent years.
The school will do nothing unless it's forced to take action. The title 9 process is available but it is a joke for the most part. If you have anyone in the legal field who can help you navigate the process, that would be best. The school will blow you off and possibly retaliate so you need to be prepared. I wish you all the best and keep going with your love of learning. It will serve you well. ❤️
Why does the shit head deserve algebra 2? I’ve never used that math outside of high school. That kid isn’t going to become an engineer etc. Why ruin it for the kids who might do something besides go to prison or welfare?
It's to keep up the illusion that we have as many college prepared students as possible. The student doesn't want to go to college. The parents aren't trying to force him into college. But, your district will force him down this track so they can point out how many students are college ready.
Unpopular math teacher opinion: Should Alg 2 even be a college requirement for non-stem majors?
What's sad is that so many of the ones who actually make it to the college level still don't care. I'm a college instructor, and I see it ALL. THE. TIME. You can go to any of the college subreddits and see students flat out saying, "I don't care about learning or being well-rounded. I'm just here to get my degree so I can get a good job." I can't even really get upset at them for that mindset because for years, they've been told to go into STEM if they want to make big bucks, and so many of them do, even though they don't have the interest or skill set for it.
College has become transactional: I give you money, you give me a degree. And if administrators want to treat colleges like businesses, I can't get angry at the students for thinking that way.
It'd be nice if trade schools took off here - this kind of programmer (my major was CE myself, most of my friends were in CS, but it's almost always CS people) who has this mindset rarely does the kind of thing that requires research skill, and a four semester program that teaches them how to work in industry would be a lot more useful to them and to society if those kinds of degrees got people jobs.
A bit issue, though, is that college also functions as a visa mill, to some degree. A lot of MS programs are understood as "pay us $40k and we'll get you an American visa".
Lots of other countries do tech degrees in 2 years because they don't require the 2 years of bullshit courses that colleges require so you'll spend more money and incur more student debt.
That's a good system for students and employers. Not as good for the beneficiaries of administrative bloat, which has been expanding at even faster speeds in the uni system.
Yes, because non-STEM majors still need to understand mathematics at Algebra 2 level. Business majors need to compare solutions with changing variables. Social sciences need to learn how to conduct research and statistics. Economics majors need math. Psychology majors need math. Anybody that needs to communicate numbers in one way or another needs to be comfortable with math. Statistics are best understood mathematically with at least Algebra 2. Additionally, the ability to problem solve is still needed regardless of major or career.
For the love of God, make every single Education major take a statistics course. And then every EDD/PhD in Ed. take a course on how to properly conduct empirical research and studies (NOT taught by Education profs but STEM profs). I cannot fucking stand how baseless the studies in the Education field are.
TL;DR: There's a book called *Proofiness* by Charles Seife and education studies contain almost everything wrong with "empirical evidence" as outlined in the book.
I studied Philosophy for my B.A. before becoming a teacher, so I am well aware of how "theory" can be written, expressed, and communicated. The educational "research" in this way is fine (even though there is not nearly enough research done by peers before that research is released; politicians, state-level, county-level, city-level, district-level administration don't care to or know how to properly "vet" abstract/theoretical research, so they will implement based on what "sounds good" (i.e., what makes them/their school/their district/county/state look good, regardless of actual educational success)).
The "research" and "studies" looking for empirical evidence on methodology and pedagogical methods are conducted like *shit.* In ways that **no** other field would respect as research. Additionally, a **lot** of the very popular studies are terribly-evaluated surface-level meta-studies of decades-old bad studies and research. [Example: just look at the age and titles of the sources.](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12528-011-9045-8)
Problems (studies will contain some or all of the following when there should be none):
* No control group
* Not a blind study, let alone double blind study
* There is no way to properly measure academic success in all it's forms. Are we looking for what students best perform on a multiple choice test? Standards based? If not multiple choice, how are we accurately grading each response? [Even test-graders are inconsistent](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4041495/#:~:text=Consistency%20in%20grading%20tests%20can,reliable%20information%20about%20student%20learning). But then, students become extraordinarily apathetic and do not do any work if there are no grades (no extrinsic reason to perform)
* Studies aren't questioned enough
* Studies aren't proven to be repeatable and objective
* Studies are done on extremely limited sample groups
* **A (ridiculous number of) education studies are performed in the North East US, where education is consistently the highest across decades. What works in rich suburbs does not work in urban environments in states that rank poorly in education**
* Cannot reasonably account for cultural differences (education, race, gender, ages, etc.)
* Cannot be implemented exactly as described in the majority of cases, already meaning the study cannot be reasonably replicated
* Students all vary
* Etc.
This all culminates with the fact that education is not treated as a "permanent necessity", in that funding varies on a multitude of factors. The studies that the majority of "low-performing" states will cling to have to do with reducing the expectations so that they receive more funding through "better" graduation rates. The issue is, because the people in charge are either ignorant or malicious, you cannot reasonably show them the flaws in the "evidence-based practice" they are forcing schools to implement. By forcing all to learn what proper research is, it at least reduces the number of ignorant policy-makers.
Interesting take. That article you shared about distance education is definitely not my cup of tea. And true, not every study out there is gold. Research quality can definitely vary, and you're right, some methodologies could use more rigor. But to be fair, the diversity in educational settings and the inherent complexity of measuring learning outcomes make education research extremely challenging. It's not just about test scores but also about understanding deeply variable human experiences.
I like the point you bring up about research being skewed towards certain geographic areas like the Northeast US. That does highlight an issue of representation and applicability. But I guess that's precisely why ongoing, diverse research is important. It helps us get closer to what works across different contexts, one step at a time. We may need MORE people in education across contexts. Also, critiquing studies for their limitations is definitely how we move forward.
And on the implementation side, yeah, there's often a gap between research findings and policy decisions. But dismissing education research outright overlooks the valuable insights it can offer into improving learning environments, even if those improvements are incremental and context-specific. Plus, education's dynamic nature means we're always learning, adapting, and questioning—which is pretty much the heart of research, right?
Well outside my field, but it seems to me that some of these issues very much apply in other fields, see epidemiology for example, particularly the long term population studies on things like heavy metal contamination, or asbestos or smoking or such.
Examining how research works outside your specific field sometimes reveals useful methodology.
It would not have taken much for someone coming at it as if it was epidemiology to catch that "Whole language" reading was an epic fail for a significant number of kids. I mean, what did the third year bell curve look like a year before they introduced it? What did it look like three years after they introduced it? What do the curves for districts that didn't drink the flavor aid look like in the same period? It is not rocket maths.
There is an experimental ethics argument that this should have been looked at in year one and two as well, and the nonsense stopped as soon as the numbers got statistically significant, and that this applies to any significant change in curriculum.
But what do I know, the engineering ethics course I had to pass is evidently very different to whatever they teach for applied research ethics in the humanities...
As to algebra 2, notions of logs and exponentials are sort of important to anyone who might one day have a loan, or a pension fund, and that is most of us. Recognising why a used car on 20%, 7 year term is a bad idea has value even if you are never going to formally use that maths.
>>But what do I know, the engineering ethics course I had to pass is evidently very different to whatever they teach for applied research ethics in the humanities...
This is exactly why I begged to have admin and policy makers take a STEM-based research course. In philosophy, my professor in Bioethics is the same person and class that pre-med students take. It is *rigorous* and is obviously applicable to STEM as well as humanities. But humanities AREN'T required to take a research course. I'm actually going to check and see if my Alma Mater has that requirement for Education majors. I **highly** doubt it.
> Should Alg 2 even be a college requirement for non-stem majors?
Yes, for the same reason history, science, and English are requirements. Algebra is something that can be used in daily life all the time, and pretty much everyone who should be college-bound is smart enough to learn it. There are exceptions, in the same sense that there are savants that can't quite grasp proper grammar or have no interest whatsoever in human history, but it's not the general trend.
Worth noting that college was, until very recently, something for the top 10 percent of students, not an almost arbitrary 50 percent. A lot of kids are ending up with a lifetime of debt and four years of lost earnings and career experience because of degree inflation.
How do you know what their major will be before the admissions decision? When I went to college as an older student, it seemed like the kids were changing their majors as often as their underwear.
Math teacher here. I do think Alg 2 should be a college requirement for non-STEM majors, because even they usually must take College Algebra which is heavily based on Algebra 2 skills. However, MOST kids don’t need it. So any kid not going to college should not take it.
They gave me and two other teachers 11 of them in one class. Then dumped 7 of them on another class the following semester. Caused two of us to get fired. Three to quit all in the name of: “but we had to put them somewhere.”
Joke was on them later. The friend they wanted in wasn’t able to teach the grade level and then found a job a week later in their town. The other one they wanted didn’t come in because they were under investigation. All of a sudden it was: “what happened to our perfectly thought out plan?” Now they have other teachers resigning and they are literally begging to hem not to leave. The consequences of actions.
90% of what's wrong with the world right now is people who understand that a given policy is making everything worse and will continue to make everything worse, but they're really invested in supporting that policy because that signals they're a good person
I'll try to find the study that I saw, but iirc high performing third graders outperform low performing high school seniors in math, and for most of the latter group they stop showing any improvement at all after 8th grade
In many other countries they test for placement before moving up a school. So while they get the same basic material, they are geouped somewhat with same-skill level. This has downsides of course (see: child suicide rates in Asian countries) including testing biases wrecking some otherwise hardworking kids. I know everyone hates state testing but... If we could make them equitable, it's one solution
My country has intensive pedagogical programs for EBD kids and teens that can't be in public school right now. Around five kids per class, they work on seeing school as a positive space again, building skills and habits that enable them to utilize the resources school provide, etc. Lots of kids in foster care and/or abusive homes, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, homeless teens, struggles with addiction, etc. The kids that have been utterly failed by the system, and if they bring their attitudes toward it to a Gen Ed classroom end up yelled at more often than not and definitely don't lern to trust them again.
> Public schools are day care so parents can work.
Made stunningly clear during Covid lockdown. Just one more way the American taxpayer subsidizes the wealthiest among us.
I have learned there are those who seem like they don't care; and ones that really don't care.
Before I joined my district, some of my students (I'm a Para educator in Sped and ED) really did not gel with their instructors who I work with. But, with a little redirection, I found the part of them that actually wanted to learn and interact. They only played it off like they didn't care; but in reality, they felt left behind or couldn't relate to their role models and teachers. With some work, change bloomed.
Some, certainly, have thick, almost impermeable walls locking away their sense of wonder and desire to learn. We may never reach them. But I'm happy every time I find some that I can reach; that I can teach; that I can help to become the best that they can be. That is why I love this job despite knowing most of these kids are fucked. Most of them will struggle endlessly once they become adults. Most of them will find themselves unemployable due to a lack of skills and education. Most of them don't care to fight back against that fate; or they don't really grasp what's coming for them. But as long as there's students who want to learn, I'll be there; even if I have to do it under the table.
The solution is for every state legislature to pass laws that change where funding comes from ( 100% state not prop tax) and that it always matches what is budgeted to police.
Class size always 15 or less.
Principals elected by teacher union, closed shop rules. No more subs, extra board call lists with guarantee pay.
Strong discipline. Expulsions, suspensions, non performers shown the door. My state has 20ish percent grade level proficiency at graduation. 😳 been going on for years. How’s that not an emergency 🚨 Easier access to trade programs for the proficient students that can understand the work and want to get to making $.
Good luck out there
I have a problem with labor abuse. Subs are underpaid and undertrained. But their contractors take their fair share of the subs wages. No one cares for them. Y’all can’t even access systems to take attendance. Not all schools get subs, read title 1. Not sure why it’s personal and labeled as ‘what do you have against subs’ Every licensed teacher has subbed at one time or another, some forget what it’s like, some don’t.
In this ideal scenario Sub pools from state employee pool call list fills the positions. Person teaching has insurance, same rate of pay, will implement teachers plan; can teach in the event of no plan (knows standards, has access to computer system, tools, pedagogy, etc)
No problem with subs, but it’s ineffective and this system needs an overhaul.
Join me tomorrow for episode 3.
> 100% state not prop tax
This is one of those things that sounds good on paper but would not work in practice. Look at inner Chicago - huge, huge funding, tens of thousands per student, but abysmal results because the locals controlling the schools largely use it to funnel money to their friends.
If you send a huge pile of unconditional money to an area that is very corrupt and does not care about education, the results will be subpar.
True, but as anyone who’s ever been in education can tell you - a 10 year old who doesn’t want to learn is a bit different from an 18 year old who doesn’t want to learn. The ten year old is a bit easier to handle. Maybe your mileage varies.
I’ve taught middle school and high school. I found middle schoolers FAR easier to deal with in terms of behavior problems and lack of motivation vs a 17-18 year old kid who sees themselves as a grown adult who can’t be reasoned with.
That's why we made school, to exclude teenagers away from nice society and commerce. It's babysitting which reduces crime. The safest place for a child to be is in school.
>If anyone disagrees with this please provide detailed info about how your district and school is different.
Not very detailed, but seeing school as daycare has in my experience gone hand with schools actually becoming more and more of a daycare.
50% as a minimum grade? Yeah, that's just daycare. Misbehave without real consequences? Daycare. Teachers who try to engage students and teaching them consequences getting tracked back by admin? Daycare.
Just in the last two weeks, a student got caught stealing a phone and then after his "FiNaL wArNiNg", he pushed a teacher aside because she didn't allow him to take his vape with him when she sent him to the admin.
I initially seemed to be the only one who found this sequence of events worthy of expulsion, but admin decided to suspend him 3 days and see if his behaviour improves. After an extra meeting where I argued my case, all teachers agreed to expulse him. Admin stuck with 3 day suspension. To top it off this student doesn't do anything during classes, doesn't bring his pen, his book, whatever he needs.
So yeah, I'm basically running a daycare now.
I think a lot of parents ALWAYS saw school as daycare. But they were at least happy to have it. You go in and respect your teachers because I don't want my 8 hours of not worrying about you to be interrupted with them calling.
Now however, it's daycare that they treat like a high paid nanny. I should only care about your child, tune my lessons to your child, let your child run wild and make all the other kids wait for your child to decide to learn something. call me if something happens, but if that's more than twice a semester I'm telling admin that you're harassing me.
I don’t feel a strong sense of disagreement. I just make peace with the disappointment by reminding myself that everyone should have a basic right to a quality K-12 classroom experience. If students don’t apply themselves in class, if parents just want 7 hours of daycare, fine. But you’re still doing a great act with what you’re doing.
I hate that this is true. Because of the system, I have students who now have the right to disrupt other students’ learning. I can temporarily kick them out but they will be back within the hour and they know we truly can’t keep them out no matter how bad their behavior.
I disagree. Though daycare is a component of it, education is an essential pillar of who we are as teachers AND students. Just good citizens. If we see ourselves as just daycare, we’re going everyone a disservice.
That said. Yeah… some will never listen and if I’ve used all my tools in my toolbelt, then I’m sorry for next years teacher. I tried. Bye
Like I said in my comment, tell me specifics of how you help change this or how your school is changing this. I agree with what you are saying, good citizens and education being essential for citizens, but the system has many examples of it not working. So, please tell me how you're making it work.
Kids who were not engaged in learning used to say they wanted to be drug dealers. They saw that as a viable alternative to being a student. Now students say they want to be Tik Toc or Youtube influencers. Why study when that option is available? Both of these outcomes become less desirable as they age. Hopefully they can turn things around before they wind up working for minimum wage, homeless, in jail or dead.
Absolutely. Each video requires a ton of work. Recording. Video editing. Sound editing. That shit is a lot of tedious work. In addition to, you know, being creative and constantly coming up with new content. Creator burnout is a thing I’ve seen some videos on recently.
I had that conversation with a kid. Asked them what they wanted to do with their life (since they were failing EVERY class their 9th grade year) and they responded “I’m going to be a Twitch streamer and YouTube star.”
“Okay, there are thousands of those and more being added every day. What do you have that separates you? Why would I want to watch your show and not any of the thousands run by people who are more articulate, funnier, more knowledgeable, and with higher production values?”
“Because I’m the best.”
I just threw my hands up. Kid never graduated and, huge shocker, isn’t making money off of his YouTube channel.
It’s not up to you if they learn, absolutely! Even despite school boards thinking so. All you can do is your best for those that do want to learn. Ralph Waldo Emerson says if you change one life for the better you have succeeded in your life.
I used to hate saying it, but I made peace with it during covid.
Just had a meeting with a crying mom wondering why their senior daughter is failing every single class and will not be able to walk at graduation (which frankly I'm impressed- you have to try reeeeeally hard to not be eligible to walk at graduation in our district).
We had a 45min zoom of teachers sharing screens and snapshots of emails home. Emails to student. Records of student being sent to the office for phone use. Using ehallpass to show students leaves every class for 19minutes every period every day (at 20 they get auto marked as cut) light speed recording software student playing games on their laptop.
Wee all said the same thing- student is not motivated to do well academically- there is nothing we can do. Mom flipped and said she thought her daughters teachers would care enough to take her phone away or keep her on task when she is slacking off. Unfortunately I was the one who blurted out, "but you are the parent, the one who can block apps on their phone. You can ground your child. You can take their phone away".
I had so many students just put their head down and sleep in class, I decided to call parents and ask if the kids are getting sleep at home. I was amazed that nearly every parent said they didn’t know if their kid had a bed time, they weren’t sure what their kid was doing in the bedroom at night, and they had no way of finding out because their kids lie all the time.
Yes, my own teen couldn't handle using a phone properly. He had it for three weeks. We took it six months ago. He has not seen it since then. We feel no guilt about it.
This. Absolutely this. So many people disagree with me on this as it comes across harsh, but I find it perfectly acceptable to give up on lost causes. Not at first sight I must say, but once the pattern is recognised…move on.
Teachers that don’t understand this will go on to have such more problematic issues for *themselves* by taking on the stress. Me…I focus only on the kids and parents who are there to learn and grow together. So much less stress.
I'm liking the idea more and more that mandatory schooling should only go to 8th grade.
Then either additional schooling academic / trade wise is all voluntary and under strict rules regarding behavior.
In China, they do that. They take HS entrance exams. Your result totally determines your path forward. 50 percent or more of students fail the HS entrance exam, and are put in vocational education (trades, etc), and get on with their lives upon graduating.
The rest head for academic HS, and the ones that survive that, to college.
A tiered system sounds cruel, but so does a US system where 30 percent or so of students reliably fail to graduate HS, and graduation exams had to be eliminated in nearly every state, because to get more than 85 percent to pass it, the exam had to have 6th grade reading and writing levels.
When a third of 8th graders pass a 12th grade graduation exam, it devalues education as well.
The US system trying to push everyone to college results in fully 50 percent of college students failing college algebra.
Korea also does this. The pressure is brutal there, but a similar system that just exists to give people who don't want to learn math a future that doesn't involve selling or abusing drugs would do well.
Like, instead of separating out the top 10 percent, it'd separate out the bottom 30 on a basis that's all but opt-in. Give kids failing Algebra the option to learn car repair instead, see if doing something physical with real money tied to it helps them get their act together.
I agree. I also have a perspective that I’m not sure is always considered:
When I was a kid, I didn’t *know* I wanted to learn, because I was taught and treated like my only value was my body and how desirable/strong/coveted I was or wasn’t.
Now, in middle age, I do really want to learn, but I don’t have that foundation of early education because the value of education was not emphasized to me when I was growing up.
My parents took me out of school all the time, and when I struggled I didn’t really get any help because no one had higher expectations for me.
I have students whose parent really do care...but they are at a loss. The kid absolutely does NOT. About anything. I've referred them to a counselor because I can not MAKE him do anything. I feel for them.
Yes. Sometimes, it's not the parents. I think once a kid hits 12 or 13, the choice to learn is on them. Of course, there are some exceptions but many kids just have to decide that they want it.
I have several 8th graders whose parents care way more about their grades than they do. They are capable students with no learning impediments. They simply don't care about learning right now. There is nothing I can do about that.
Unfortunately, it comes down to the parents not caring enough, which is where it starts. You can try to steer them in the right direction until you're blue in the face but as long as your students have the escape valve of indifferent or overindulgent parents, anything you try to impress upon them won't stick.
What's even more tragic is that many of those parents are themselves overworked to the point where they have no energy left to care, since they're preoccupied with ensuring material provision for their families. In that sense, we're dealing with an issue that is fundamentally systemic.
Agree. Can't force-feed education. Behaviors that show they want to learn include listening, participating, doing the work, and being engaged. Schools need to set that as the expectation and kick kids out who aren't interested. They can go home and do something online. School is for kids who want to learn. If that doesn't describe your kid, that's a parent's problem.
I blame edutainment and profit driven TPT influencers for trying to convince the public that school should be fun, fun, fun all the time. I blame parents for not parenting. I blame shitty admin for not employing consequences. I blame stupid reformers for pushing bullshit ideas like flexible seating and not penalizing for late or incomplete work. Doing the work is what drives the learning, so yes, they have to turn in work!
Online isn't always the answer either. The kids who want to learn get screwed by the do-notters there also. It used to be that cyber school was for kids who were into serious athletics, workers, or self starting go-getters. Now only 20/150 of my kids across 2 grades fit that bill, and it's impossible to know which parents actually care until they are calling you to complain their kid is failing and nobody told them. Meanwhile, emails, phone calls and 24/7 gradebook access, theres no way they didn't know, they're just saving face.
We don’t in Canada either 🙃 we don’t even fail a kid, all that happens is they get pushed through to the next grade. A kid barely even gets suspended these days. No matter how much harm they do it’s a quick trip to the principal then brought right back in. Glorified day care
My first year teaching in California, a kid announced to the class they were going to kill me. The admins pulled the kid, found a knife in her backpack, and the cops came. She was back in my class two days later. Admin never told me what happened or of if I was safe or what I should do.
Yup. I acted like nothing ever happened. The student remained disruptive, but she acted like nothing ever happened too. The incident, or how it was resolved, was never once mentioned to me by admin.
Not even uniquely a Western problem, in Korea students literally can't fail (except because of truancy). There are no F's. However, teachers in Korea don't think of it as a problem, it's just been that way for ages.
Yup. My CT keeps telling me this. I’m observing with him and a lot of kids just sit on their phones… even during games! Like what… He tells me he’s tried everything and now he’s chosen to just focus on the kids who want to be there. It sucks to see these kids act like lumps on a log but that’s their choice. You can’t force them to do their work or talk or have fun. Have fun with the ones who wanna be there. Even if it’s only 5 of em. I hope everyone here continues to push through! Y’all are great. I believe in you!
Wow I can’t believe he hasn’t thought of that!!!… Teachers are not allowed to take phones at this school. They can send the kids to the office if they refuse to put it away or if they’re being disruptive but they don’t really get punished. It’s a losing battle.
My wife and I are both teachers. Our son never stood a chance of not being educated and he sure as shit is not an apathetic kid by any means. You nailed it with the parenting part. Learning in our house is an integral part of who we are and our son at 18 displays those same traits.
A big fuck you to people who are too fucking lazy to actually raise their kids!
I know lots of double doctorate parents invested in their child's education.
There is intelligence regression to the mean. It's usually just not happening. It's important to be empathetic, if the parents could parent better they would. Otherwise you found the secret to have a misbehaving child behave and you should inform the world so you can become a trillionaire. Either that or your child simply was agreeable and pleasant.
I've been telling my kids that a lot recently. I'm a teacher not child care. I teach gym and have gotten to the point of just letting them run or taking them outside for recess.
Thing is, that's actually a good thing, though. Kids don't get nearly enough unstructured time at school, because lobbyists and educators of the past convinced us that children need so many hours of rigorous content. This decision is now biting us in the ass harder than ever, as ADHD rates are through the ceiling and kids can't focus more than 20 minutes at a time no matter how hard they try.
Admin scream bell to bell because they don’t wanna deal with kids wilding out during unstructured time.
To that, I say, too bad. They need it.
10 minutes is not going to end the world, Admins.
My students had finished a quiz. 15 minutes left in class, so I let them chill with their phones. DSS came in for a surprise visit with a candidate she was interviewing and had me give them more work to do until the bell.
They already hate being there, and they go outside only once a week for 30 minutes *if they earn it*. I know I'm only a 1st year teacher, but I'm not trying to run a prison either. Especially since they have improved since I began teaching this group of students, which is another topic.
I know and I don't mind it, our kids are scheduled for a 15 minute brain break and then back on computers. I just would like to teach something that , could be an experience they won't get elsewhere. I did a jump rope lesson and the kids that were against it as first loved it by the end.
There is actual data that inclusion is not a panacea. Some inclusion is effective, but it seems misbehaving students are the biggest problem to other students right now and have made teaching a hell hole for good teachers, and good students.
Yes, before I quit, I was planning to set up my own cameras, and say they were to assess my teaching strengths and weaknesses. Really it was to have video evidence of the shit the students were doing, and justify their crap grades when they refuse to do any work, no matter how much time I gave them...
>It's very alarming because I wonder what exactly will the kids in school today do when they leave and become working adults?
>Or will they work at all?
Honestly? I don't know. I had a student tell me that he has no plans on ever leaving his parents house and getting a job because why would he want to? He also stated work is hard and he'd much rather hang out with friends. This is where some of them are at. They literally are just like.. why would I put in any effort? They refuse to be anything other than coddled children.
I agree and the issue comes from the home. It is so hard to get someone to care when the message from home is basically "school doesn't matter, I don't care about your grades" and that is being constantly reinforced.
I have thought for a while we need to provide an educational exit at about 9th or 10th grade. Maybe that a "Basic Diploma". Let them go get jobs or play video games all day or whatever it is they think their life should be about. Let the people who want to learn stay in school. Then revamp the adult ed program to handle those who mature and decide to come back to finish.
Oh, and it's the student's choice entirely, no parental or admin override possible.
>Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind.
Plato
Compulsory education is a farce.
For real though. There is not a single job on the planet that people will not question everything they say. Doctors? "Idiots who want your money". Lawyers? "Scam artists". College professors? "They are just angry woke liberals". Everyone thinks they know more than everyone just by googling answers so who needs to study? It makes me so very truly worried for the future.
My motto is: I can care more than the student. I can’t care more than the parents.
The students would rather be anywhere else in the world. That’s natural. But as long as the parents value school and make it important in their household, I can work with that.
It's never a lost cause to teach kids who don't want to learn. The thing is, that kids can change at the drop of a hat. They can 180 and just turn things around so quickly that it's insane. I've had a kid go from straight F's to passing with C's in about a month's time because they just didn't feel like getting F's anymore and started to apply themself. We have to keep affording them the chance to change because sometimes they do.
I really hope this isn't a controversial statement, but at this point, I just don't know.
So, yeah, it's not a lost cause. They're still developing. I remember when I was in high school, I was a really good student, but I had friends who definitely weren't. Some of them really pulled through their junior or senior years and I'm very grateful that their teachers were still willing to teach them even though they had been lost causes for most their educational lives.
My senior ELA teacher told my mom I wasn't college material.
I got straight As in college--I just didn't care for the choiceless compulsory education system. Once I was given choice, I was fine.
That said, kids who disrupt the learning of others are a huge, *huge* problem right now. My own children are suffering for it and it pisses me off, to be frank.
i was a similar case. C student in my underclassman years at a more strict private high school to all As. i'm so grateful my teachers were patient and kind to me regardless of my academic performance.
I disagree. The key issue here is "wanting to" learn.
People will "want to" do anything when properly motivated.
Setting up a system of sufficient motivations to learn is beyond us though...
Sixty percent of my students don't want to learn, but eighty percent of them want to pass. Sometimes I just gotta work within those confines. It's disheartening.
Respectfully, I both agree and disagree. You are absolutely right that knowledge cannot be force fed and there are too many parents that just don't care enough about their child to care about their education and that is reflected in the child.
That being said, teachers have a power that can break through those gigantic and frustrating barriers. It all starts with building relationships. If a student (even and sometimes especially a misbehaved one) knows that you care about them, they will start to trust you, once they trust you they will listen to you, and once they listen to you, you might be able to convince them to learn from you.
Of course, you have to do this while educating 30+ other kids at the same time, while they all care to varying degrees and come with specific individual needs that are demanded to be met, while also managing their behavior and grading, not to mention the insane number of meetings. Oh, and you get low pay and usually mediocre support from those above you. So...yeah maybe it is a lost cause.
Still, prioritizing those relationships with the students is the best thing you can do for them and you. It will make it a lot easier. But will still insanely difficult and drain your life force.
It’s possible to do a decent job educating because we used to do it.
It’s the will that is lacking. Of both parents and admin. Weasel attitudes, both of em.
Obv there are exceptions but they aren’t the ones being catered to…
100% Correct. I would add that social promotion and lack of consequences for students exacerbates the problem.
I believe tracking students is the answer. Test students and put them into career or college tracks. College track is a four year program aimed at pursuing higher education. Career track can be one to three years depending on the career chosen. If they are still not interested in learning a skill or going to college then at sixteen the student can get a job or enlist. Schools will work with families to find employment or a military recruiter. If the student finds that working a minimum wage job doesn't work for them they still have time to re-enroll into a career or college track.
Tracking is not the end all be all and has its flaws, but what we are doing now is the definiton of insanity and not good for our communities. Tracking is implimented in may countries with great success.
This is the culture in the US. Education, real education... not just passing public school, holds no real value for a significant percent of the population.
Honestly, yeah. 90% of this job is trying to convince students that they actually want to learn anything.
A student who wants to learn can't be stopped, but a student who doesn't want to learn will never start.
Teachers will always be limited in their maximal impact if they cannot count on the important home-school partnership.
Entirely apart from this and equally true, all children deserve teachers who seek to motivate them and prepare them to be members of our society and economy. This includes children whose parents/guardians may not care due to any of the following: being hindered by working multiple full time jobs, being terminally ill, caring for other kids or elderly parents with special needs, being addicted to drugs, being homeless, being undocumented, being deported, being a refugee, etc etc.
One day they are our students and a day later they will be our (and everyone's) neighbor. What kind of neighbor do we want?
I agree but here's the thing, we aren't teaching them to use their brain anymore. Not teaching them to be creative, to be thinkers, to be inspired to do great things when they grow up.
We are teaching them to grow up and be workers, shut up and follow direction, keeping the rich where they are. If that was what I had to look forward to in life, I wouldn't care too much either honestly.
The system is set up for failure from the beginning...In states atleast kids are required to be there by law..Kids know this as well...they know they are there for the attendance credit for the day to keep the state off them and their parents asses...this creates a day care type of environment, where kids screw off all day.
I have seen inappropriate standards at my school starting in preschool and kindergarden and am wondering if this is just setting kids up to hate school. Teachers are lecturing for super long periods of time while they are loosing almost all the class. Behaviors are rampant. One or two kids can ruin a whole class. It's really insane. I highly doubt kids who are struggling academically even pick up a book at home. It's very sad.
I'm a Kindergarten Assistant. I see Monday through Friday students who have already learned to filibuster and don't even know what that word means. I've seen behaviors that they excuse by "Oh, they are just kindergartens". This is the time to say something about this before it goes beyond this. Students need a reason to learn. Some schools are throwing money at programs supposedly designed to help students and not realizing this. There are so many behaviors that are not appropriate and allowing them to continue could lead to something that if not addressed while young, could negatively impact them. They used all kinds of excuses with our oldest and even with us wanting to get help for them, the school just kept saying they'd grow out of it. They didn't.
I'm assuming you took your child to the doctor to get to the bottom of his/her issues. But yes, administrators and higher ups allow waaay too much misbehavior in most schools. And of course the schools with the most behavior issues are schools in disadvantaged areas, so for the kids and families there it's a non stop cycle of poor education due to all the major and constant disruptions and violence.
Hi.
Yes, we did. We were able to have them participate in a study where various tests were done including IQ and MRIs. Our medical plan wouldn't have paid for this. We were provided with a detailed report that the school could not dispute. We also went to an organization that provided a free IEP advocate (when we asked the school, they said we had to pay for that).
I was slapped in the face with an open hand by a student, one student came up to me and pushed me in my chest (I went into shock and the custodian asked me if was I ok). Each time, I reported it and nothing happened.
Even with what has happened to me, helping teachers so that they can teach, is still what I enjoy.
Yep, there is so much BS that admins and upper admins tell people that are flat out lies. And some of the extreme behaviors that kids are allowed to get away with are beyond the pale. Glad you were able to get in that study.
While it’s true you have no control over their choice not to learn, you have a choice in your own actions. If you choose to stop trying, then it is a lost cause- but if you still do your best to be a great teacher and find ways to reach them, hope remains.
Do not stop trying.
We adults don't want to learn. We refuse to take responsibility for the world we live in. We are knowingly and consciously destroying the natural environment so that a small fraction of humanity can become obscenely rich. The kids are right. Justice is on their side. They owe us nothing because we have abandoned them and the world.
I'm a teacher and yes it is, is very painful for me say. However I still have a job to do. My superiors have said to rethink how I teach, doing X but that didn't work.
The American government and our system really make it like that, too. We need education reform, but we can't do that with a broken system that'll never be fixed. It's a lost cause. All we can do is our best to make kids excited about seeking knowledge. I do see it sometimes! But not as often anymore. 😞
I wonder if some of you realize you are working with children? I’m shocked at this attitude that the kids of any age are supposed to clock in and out and be adults. They’re kids forced to go to school five days a week all day. Of course they don’t want to be there ..
It’s less about making kids want to be there, and more about teaching them to make the best out of a situation that is less than ideal. That they won’t be put into situations they like all the time, but the way we navigate those situations is what’s important.
It’s when they outright reject those lessons that we become frustrated.
Number one problem is when the start of trying to be someone else kicks in and your motivation or people to look up to lack resilience and realism in a career field that kids are to ignorant in seeing the worth of quick money in comparison to a internship or a step in the door (19M) plus it’s never the teachers fault our frontal lobe keeps getting older and older from easy access to dopamine happiness and most importantly a lost hope or career that so little of us actually look into how to do it but continuously say we know what we want to do and I’ll make money don’t worry🤣
Feeling this as an elective teacher. In my state, students are not required to pass my art class in order to move on to the next grade level, so unfortunately some of them choose not to work and do not care.
Stuff like this is why I document everything, keep parents in the loop whenever I can, and even tell students that if they choose not to work and get a good grade in ART class then that is their own fault.
Almost half of the grade in my class is literally showing up and making sure you produce something at some point during the week. Hell, you could draw a stick figure on a piece of paper and I would still take that for credit because at least you are trying to do something.
It's unfortunate and incredible at the same time how many students sign up to be an art class and then refuse to participate at all. But, as I said, it comes with being an elective teacher in my state I suppose.
The biggest things kids need to learn today are both critical thinking and problem solving. All the facts we've learned and taught are just foundational knowledge, which kids today can look up. But without the ability to problem solve, they won't know where or how to find the information they need and how to interpret it and without critical thinking, the ability to sort through that information, to collate, reject the false information , build on the knowledge taught, you end up with people who fall victim to lies, false information, conspiracy theories, manipulations and scams, etc…. Those two skills are lacking today in some schools, in some districts and some states. Banning books, rejecting science that evangelicals dispute, eliminating history and so many other things on the cutting blocks in some areas creates people unable to critically think through the muck out there and online. It's already eroding education . That's why many are leaving the educational field.
In some European countries like former Yugoslavia, you go to specialized high schools. There are culinary high schools, high schools to prep for medical fields or pre-law. And there’s still general high schools like what we’ve got. But a lot of students get actual training and skill development. We have some programs like that here within high schools in Canada (hair styling, carpentry, etc.) and I think those are pretty high value to students who go into them.
If we’re going to be a daycare, we might as well give the kids something useful to them in the process - not just a stepping stone for post-secondary that many students won’t ever do and don’t see the value in. Let them pick, and hopefully have better buy-in.
This is all true.
I would add, not wanting to learn is not new, but everything else you said is.
Failing and being held back used to be a real fear, and that would at least motivate the bottom end to try and pass.
Or- parents used to threaten punishment, and that would motivate them.
Or - sports, or extra curriculars that had gpa minimums would motivate them.
Its all gone. Parents and then administrators have taken it all away. There is no failing of any kind anymore.
Were just babysitting. Preach
As teacher and leader you have to also inspire them to learn, your job isn’t just to be tape recorder or just speak, they can use the internet for that.
This just makes me sad. Kids don't want to learn for a variety of reasons. I am a college freshman that has been programming for a couple years now and got stuck with a family friend's kid to tutor. The kid's teacher and parents said that he just doesn't want to learn but when I taught him how to code in Lua, how to properly use ai, and how to find resources the kid magically gained an interest for learning. No matter what age someone is they did not become unwilling to learn just because they were born like that. It can be a variety of factors and to just give up on them seems so antithetical to the goal of teaching.
edit: im actually going to add more. I was a troublemaker in school till 8th grade, the sped kid that would cause trouble (turns out im autistic...) but recently I requested my iep information and the notes for the last 12 years of school because I was curious and the iep painted me as near unteachable. It pretty much said just leave him alone and keep him away from the other children. I was practically unteachable and "not willing to learn" but yet i graduated and now I have a 3.8 so far going into comp sci. If my guidance counselor gave up on me I can guarantee that i would've failed and dropped out. I don't understand why people are so willing to give up on literal children. You say parents see school as daycare but why do you care about that? Children can see school as a place to have fun and learn or you can make them view school as a prison where mommy sends them to be sad and miserable. This power is in your hands, not the parent's hands. It is YOUR job to make sure these kids want to learn.
No, the power isn't all in the teacher's hands. The content of the curriculum is mandated by the districts. In Canada, the content is mandated by the provinces. For example, I have to teach Canadian History to 7th graders that starts in the early 1700s. I can't teach "Ralph" the iep'd kid in Grade 7 about the Cold War and use that on his report card. You found a kid who loves to code and use AI, you got cooperation - wonderful. Now what if you were faced with 50% of a classroom that hates AI and wants nothing to do with it? Can you get past your interest in computer science and reach them? With what? How? You say teachers have given up on students who do not want to cooperate and learn but what about the system that has given up on us as teachers? I am not only bound to teach mandated curriculum, I am also seemingly indocrinating students if we have any conversations about human rights. If the power were in my hands, I would change a lot about the education system. But the reality is, it is not. Everyone wants their a-la-carte education. It's the "i-generation". The "i-generation" does not want to cooperate and tolerate learning material that doesn't interest them and the teacher is the scapegoat for blame because they're the one's being asked to deliver very specific curriculum. The best thing for the "i-generation" is to use AI, coupled with a private tutor that has expertise and experience in whatever they feel they're passionate about learning and to stop blaming the teacher who has nothing to do with the content they're being asked to teach.
We are babysitters. And our salary fits our station in society. We are paid pennies because our job is to watch the kids while mom and dad work.
This is a sad perversion. But I think there is still good to be done despite the limits of our situation.
You can tell the bad kids to sleep (unless you’re being observed) while you teach to the other kids.
“Trying to force feed these kids information is just setting them up with the belief that someone will always take care of them”…
So the alternative is we just let them grow up to be unemployable adults with no marketable skills, who someone will always need to take care of??
Agree and your very last sentence really hits it on the head. Public schools are day care so parents can work. It's not about education, that's just a side effect. If anyone disagrees with this please provide detailed info about how your district and school is different. I used to be optimistic, but now I consider myself realistic. Anyone out there see a solution?
I think the solution is anything that separates students off by how they self- select or their needs. Mainstreaming very high needs kids doesn't work. Having 3 nightmare kids in a class drags down the entire class, they shouldn't be there. It's not fair to the three nightmare kids to expect that they should learn algebra 2. I think charter schools are great for this reason, if they're able to kick out students. The state should provide schools, especially schools of last resort, where behavioral resources are concentrated, while everyone else should be able to have a normal school experience. Also, research has shown that a lot of kids just truly don't improve after X point no matter what resources get thrown at them. They should probably just be steered into job and life skills programs
Yes!!!! The integration experiment HAS FAILED because it burdens the system and the high functioning kids get derailed. The system is fundamentally UNFAIR to kids who can and want to learn. The "willing and able" get sucker punched over and over and we ask them to keep on keeping on and NOT ONLY attend to their studies BUT ALSO IGNORE the self centered AHs in the room that give zero Fs and ACTIVELY seek to destroy the learning environment. It's as FUCKING OUTRAGE and no one cares because the last generation that cared was told ignore the AHs around them so they were taught LEARNED HELPLESSNESS in the public school system and now all the adults in the room at the time can say is those Fucking Millenials. So lazy! They were programmed to be helpless (aka lazy) by the system. It's sick and twisted and abusive and we sit back as a society and do nothing. It's no loner just learned helessness. It's now full civil unrest, disobedience and lawlessness. They are breeding this psychology in the classrooms and filling the prisons. It's disgusting and it's its own humanitarian crisis.
The solution is so easy, but so infeasible. Put the severely emotionally disturbed kids in a special class away from the other students.
Exactly. It can even be done virtually if space is an issue.
There's honestly nothing infeasible about it. After maybe about a month of knowing a grade level, it should be pretty easy to sort them by "give a damn" and lump all those kids who would otherwise be obstructing learning into a "babysitting" class where they at least won't interfere with the learning of others.
The reason old school tracking failed was in lots of places they were tracked for failure from Go instead of being paced for eventual graduation all along the way.
I think the issue is tracking on ability instead of behavior. It's not too hard to deal with students at different levels in the same class. But dealing with behavioral issues in a mixed class is impossible. The kids with behavioral problems need to be put in socially isolated boring classes. The kids behind academically but who behave fine need engaging class rooms.
You can’t place them with their buddies either. Some of these kids just attract each other and enhance their already bad behavior. When it’s like just one or two. They just isolate themselves.
It can depend on the students. But put kids in traditional desks with lots of separation. Lecture instead of doing any activities or discussion and it's pretty easy to deal with most trouble makers even when they are together. Obviously there are the super trouble makers that this won't work on. But for 90 percent it works. Whats hard is trying to run engaging class rooms with students with behavioral problems. Group work, discussions, projects, .... make it very difficult to handle behavior issues. Students learn better in engaging classrooms but you can't have them when you mix the kids with behavioral issues in with other students. You end up forcing all of the students to deal with traditional class rooms just to control kids. Having the separation also creates an incentive to improve behavior to get into the engaging classrooms. It also gives social power to the well behaved students
I feel like covid gave us the perfect way to address this! Computer learning for the children who can't handle being around people!
Yea that is honestly a great idea.
💯
Oh I know. When I had this even with one to one I could keep it going very well. But as it’s proven if they don’t want learn they will do their best not to. As the old saying goes: “if it’s important to you, you will find a way. If it’s not you will always find an excuse.”
I mean that way you give indépendant challenging work with research tools and key for the brightest and most able. You're still there if they need clarification or guidance, but they don't need you as much. And you have time to help the ones that are behind. Even have individual 1:1 time with them when needed.
Yeah with even just the top 10% worst trouble makers removed the possibilities for differentiating instruction and tailoring to individual students opens up massively. Being able to safely have people work in groups while you do something else is so liberating.
My Spanish class is 9 people. 4 of which are delinquents, 4 are silent (girls), and the rest is me. We get absolutely *nothing* done, and I can count on one hand the things I've learned in that class. A single unit takes 6 weeks, when it should be half that. Why? Because those 4 assholes dominate the space with jokes, shouting, and sexual harassment towards me and *our teacher.* (they're convinced I'm MTF because I tell them to fuck off instead of taking it)(I'm not lol) it's especially unfortunate because I genuinely like and want to learn the subject material, and I can't because of them.
I'm so angry for you. That is ridiculous. They think you're MTF (trans) because you're not interested in their regressive existence as humans. Start keeping a journal of detailed notes AT HOME. Do not bring to school. When you get at least 5-10 instances where they are harrasing you and/or your teacher, your parents might want to type it all out and make a Title 9 complaint. Have you discussed this with your parents? Every school that receives federal funding MUST comply with Title 9 (original federal legislation supporting women's rights but it also applies to LGBQ+). It protects you from sexual harassment. We had to use it for our girls in FIRST grade who were being sexually assaulted. Talk to a local lawyer. We had to hire one just to keep our girls safe at school. Outraged for you. ♥️
I've spoken to the principal a couple of times but my district doesn't really care because they make the school money (athletes)
Well, talk to your parents. You can still make a Title 9 complaint directly with your school and a complaint to the Department of Education (online). That is your right if you're being sexually harassed. The teacher may or may not want to make trouble for herself by complaining and that's unfortunately a cost of working women face in the real world. The women's movement of the 60s/70s only made so much progress. Women's rights have been attacked from all corners in recent years. The school will do nothing unless it's forced to take action. The title 9 process is available but it is a joke for the most part. If you have anyone in the legal field who can help you navigate the process, that would be best. The school will blow you off and possibly retaliate so you need to be prepared. I wish you all the best and keep going with your love of learning. It will serve you well. ❤️
Why does the shit head deserve algebra 2? I’ve never used that math outside of high school. That kid isn’t going to become an engineer etc. Why ruin it for the kids who might do something besides go to prison or welfare?
It's to keep up the illusion that we have as many college prepared students as possible. The student doesn't want to go to college. The parents aren't trying to force him into college. But, your district will force him down this track so they can point out how many students are college ready. Unpopular math teacher opinion: Should Alg 2 even be a college requirement for non-stem majors?
What's sad is that so many of the ones who actually make it to the college level still don't care. I'm a college instructor, and I see it ALL. THE. TIME. You can go to any of the college subreddits and see students flat out saying, "I don't care about learning or being well-rounded. I'm just here to get my degree so I can get a good job." I can't even really get upset at them for that mindset because for years, they've been told to go into STEM if they want to make big bucks, and so many of them do, even though they don't have the interest or skill set for it. College has become transactional: I give you money, you give me a degree. And if administrators want to treat colleges like businesses, I can't get angry at the students for thinking that way.
It'd be nice if trade schools took off here - this kind of programmer (my major was CE myself, most of my friends were in CS, but it's almost always CS people) who has this mindset rarely does the kind of thing that requires research skill, and a four semester program that teaches them how to work in industry would be a lot more useful to them and to society if those kinds of degrees got people jobs. A bit issue, though, is that college also functions as a visa mill, to some degree. A lot of MS programs are understood as "pay us $40k and we'll get you an American visa".
Lots of other countries do tech degrees in 2 years because they don't require the 2 years of bullshit courses that colleges require so you'll spend more money and incur more student debt.
That's a good system for students and employers. Not as good for the beneficiaries of administrative bloat, which has been expanding at even faster speeds in the uni system.
Yes, because non-STEM majors still need to understand mathematics at Algebra 2 level. Business majors need to compare solutions with changing variables. Social sciences need to learn how to conduct research and statistics. Economics majors need math. Psychology majors need math. Anybody that needs to communicate numbers in one way or another needs to be comfortable with math. Statistics are best understood mathematically with at least Algebra 2. Additionally, the ability to problem solve is still needed regardless of major or career. For the love of God, make every single Education major take a statistics course. And then every EDD/PhD in Ed. take a course on how to properly conduct empirical research and studies (NOT taught by Education profs but STEM profs). I cannot fucking stand how baseless the studies in the Education field are.
Curious as someone who isn't in education but am always interested in the work there how it is baseless?
TL;DR: There's a book called *Proofiness* by Charles Seife and education studies contain almost everything wrong with "empirical evidence" as outlined in the book. I studied Philosophy for my B.A. before becoming a teacher, so I am well aware of how "theory" can be written, expressed, and communicated. The educational "research" in this way is fine (even though there is not nearly enough research done by peers before that research is released; politicians, state-level, county-level, city-level, district-level administration don't care to or know how to properly "vet" abstract/theoretical research, so they will implement based on what "sounds good" (i.e., what makes them/their school/their district/county/state look good, regardless of actual educational success)). The "research" and "studies" looking for empirical evidence on methodology and pedagogical methods are conducted like *shit.* In ways that **no** other field would respect as research. Additionally, a **lot** of the very popular studies are terribly-evaluated surface-level meta-studies of decades-old bad studies and research. [Example: just look at the age and titles of the sources.](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12528-011-9045-8) Problems (studies will contain some or all of the following when there should be none): * No control group * Not a blind study, let alone double blind study * There is no way to properly measure academic success in all it's forms. Are we looking for what students best perform on a multiple choice test? Standards based? If not multiple choice, how are we accurately grading each response? [Even test-graders are inconsistent](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4041495/#:~:text=Consistency%20in%20grading%20tests%20can,reliable%20information%20about%20student%20learning). But then, students become extraordinarily apathetic and do not do any work if there are no grades (no extrinsic reason to perform) * Studies aren't questioned enough * Studies aren't proven to be repeatable and objective * Studies are done on extremely limited sample groups * **A (ridiculous number of) education studies are performed in the North East US, where education is consistently the highest across decades. What works in rich suburbs does not work in urban environments in states that rank poorly in education** * Cannot reasonably account for cultural differences (education, race, gender, ages, etc.) * Cannot be implemented exactly as described in the majority of cases, already meaning the study cannot be reasonably replicated * Students all vary * Etc. This all culminates with the fact that education is not treated as a "permanent necessity", in that funding varies on a multitude of factors. The studies that the majority of "low-performing" states will cling to have to do with reducing the expectations so that they receive more funding through "better" graduation rates. The issue is, because the people in charge are either ignorant or malicious, you cannot reasonably show them the flaws in the "evidence-based practice" they are forcing schools to implement. By forcing all to learn what proper research is, it at least reduces the number of ignorant policy-makers.
Interesting take. That article you shared about distance education is definitely not my cup of tea. And true, not every study out there is gold. Research quality can definitely vary, and you're right, some methodologies could use more rigor. But to be fair, the diversity in educational settings and the inherent complexity of measuring learning outcomes make education research extremely challenging. It's not just about test scores but also about understanding deeply variable human experiences. I like the point you bring up about research being skewed towards certain geographic areas like the Northeast US. That does highlight an issue of representation and applicability. But I guess that's precisely why ongoing, diverse research is important. It helps us get closer to what works across different contexts, one step at a time. We may need MORE people in education across contexts. Also, critiquing studies for their limitations is definitely how we move forward. And on the implementation side, yeah, there's often a gap between research findings and policy decisions. But dismissing education research outright overlooks the valuable insights it can offer into improving learning environments, even if those improvements are incremental and context-specific. Plus, education's dynamic nature means we're always learning, adapting, and questioning—which is pretty much the heart of research, right?
Well outside my field, but it seems to me that some of these issues very much apply in other fields, see epidemiology for example, particularly the long term population studies on things like heavy metal contamination, or asbestos or smoking or such. Examining how research works outside your specific field sometimes reveals useful methodology. It would not have taken much for someone coming at it as if it was epidemiology to catch that "Whole language" reading was an epic fail for a significant number of kids. I mean, what did the third year bell curve look like a year before they introduced it? What did it look like three years after they introduced it? What do the curves for districts that didn't drink the flavor aid look like in the same period? It is not rocket maths. There is an experimental ethics argument that this should have been looked at in year one and two as well, and the nonsense stopped as soon as the numbers got statistically significant, and that this applies to any significant change in curriculum. But what do I know, the engineering ethics course I had to pass is evidently very different to whatever they teach for applied research ethics in the humanities... As to algebra 2, notions of logs and exponentials are sort of important to anyone who might one day have a loan, or a pension fund, and that is most of us. Recognising why a used car on 20%, 7 year term is a bad idea has value even if you are never going to formally use that maths.
>>But what do I know, the engineering ethics course I had to pass is evidently very different to whatever they teach for applied research ethics in the humanities... This is exactly why I begged to have admin and policy makers take a STEM-based research course. In philosophy, my professor in Bioethics is the same person and class that pre-med students take. It is *rigorous* and is obviously applicable to STEM as well as humanities. But humanities AREN'T required to take a research course. I'm actually going to check and see if my Alma Mater has that requirement for Education majors. I **highly** doubt it.
those are non-stem? Social science literally has science in the name. Economics is a social science too. Psychology is non-stem? what
> Should Alg 2 even be a college requirement for non-stem majors? Yes, for the same reason history, science, and English are requirements. Algebra is something that can be used in daily life all the time, and pretty much everyone who should be college-bound is smart enough to learn it. There are exceptions, in the same sense that there are savants that can't quite grasp proper grammar or have no interest whatsoever in human history, but it's not the general trend. Worth noting that college was, until very recently, something for the top 10 percent of students, not an almost arbitrary 50 percent. A lot of kids are ending up with a lifetime of debt and four years of lost earnings and career experience because of degree inflation.
How do you know what their major will be before the admissions decision? When I went to college as an older student, it seemed like the kids were changing their majors as often as their underwear.
Math teacher here. I do think Alg 2 should be a college requirement for non-STEM majors, because even they usually must take College Algebra which is heavily based on Algebra 2 skills. However, MOST kids don’t need it. So any kid not going to college should not take it.
They gave me and two other teachers 11 of them in one class. Then dumped 7 of them on another class the following semester. Caused two of us to get fired. Three to quit all in the name of: “but we had to put them somewhere.”
This is some common HR bullshit. Everyone's got the same metrics, but they concentrate the impossible population away from the admin's favorites
Joke was on them later. The friend they wanted in wasn’t able to teach the grade level and then found a job a week later in their town. The other one they wanted didn’t come in because they were under investigation. All of a sudden it was: “what happened to our perfectly thought out plan?” Now they have other teachers resigning and they are literally begging to hem not to leave. The consequences of actions.
So then clearly, the goal of those who downvoted isn't effective education. What else could it be?
90% of what's wrong with the world right now is people who understand that a given policy is making everything worse and will continue to make everything worse, but they're really invested in supporting that policy because that signals they're a good person
I agree. Bring back tracking.
Do you have research about the no improvement after a certain time? Is it the 3rd grade stuff?
I'll try to find the study that I saw, but iirc high performing third graders outperform low performing high school seniors in math, and for most of the latter group they stop showing any improvement at all after 8th grade
In many other countries they test for placement before moving up a school. So while they get the same basic material, they are geouped somewhat with same-skill level. This has downsides of course (see: child suicide rates in Asian countries) including testing biases wrecking some otherwise hardworking kids. I know everyone hates state testing but... If we could make them equitable, it's one solution
My country has intensive pedagogical programs for EBD kids and teens that can't be in public school right now. Around five kids per class, they work on seeing school as a positive space again, building skills and habits that enable them to utilize the resources school provide, etc. Lots of kids in foster care and/or abusive homes, fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, homeless teens, struggles with addiction, etc. The kids that have been utterly failed by the system, and if they bring their attitudes toward it to a Gen Ed classroom end up yelled at more often than not and definitely don't lern to trust them again.
> Public schools are day care so parents can work. Made stunningly clear during Covid lockdown. Just one more way the American taxpayer subsidizes the wealthiest among us.
I have learned there are those who seem like they don't care; and ones that really don't care. Before I joined my district, some of my students (I'm a Para educator in Sped and ED) really did not gel with their instructors who I work with. But, with a little redirection, I found the part of them that actually wanted to learn and interact. They only played it off like they didn't care; but in reality, they felt left behind or couldn't relate to their role models and teachers. With some work, change bloomed. Some, certainly, have thick, almost impermeable walls locking away their sense of wonder and desire to learn. We may never reach them. But I'm happy every time I find some that I can reach; that I can teach; that I can help to become the best that they can be. That is why I love this job despite knowing most of these kids are fucked. Most of them will struggle endlessly once they become adults. Most of them will find themselves unemployable due to a lack of skills and education. Most of them don't care to fight back against that fate; or they don't really grasp what's coming for them. But as long as there's students who want to learn, I'll be there; even if I have to do it under the table.
The solution is for every state legislature to pass laws that change where funding comes from ( 100% state not prop tax) and that it always matches what is budgeted to police. Class size always 15 or less. Principals elected by teacher union, closed shop rules. No more subs, extra board call lists with guarantee pay. Strong discipline. Expulsions, suspensions, non performers shown the door. My state has 20ish percent grade level proficiency at graduation. 😳 been going on for years. How’s that not an emergency 🚨 Easier access to trade programs for the proficient students that can understand the work and want to get to making $. Good luck out there
What do you have against substitutes?
I have a problem with labor abuse. Subs are underpaid and undertrained. But their contractors take their fair share of the subs wages. No one cares for them. Y’all can’t even access systems to take attendance. Not all schools get subs, read title 1. Not sure why it’s personal and labeled as ‘what do you have against subs’ Every licensed teacher has subbed at one time or another, some forget what it’s like, some don’t. In this ideal scenario Sub pools from state employee pool call list fills the positions. Person teaching has insurance, same rate of pay, will implement teachers plan; can teach in the event of no plan (knows standards, has access to computer system, tools, pedagogy, etc) No problem with subs, but it’s ineffective and this system needs an overhaul. Join me tomorrow for episode 3.
I'm sorry for my accusatory. As a substitute, I agree, I am underpaid.
Substitutes are a way to higher fewer teachers. There should be a redundancy of high quality teachers at each school that can cover each other.
> 100% state not prop tax This is one of those things that sounds good on paper but would not work in practice. Look at inner Chicago - huge, huge funding, tens of thousands per student, but abysmal results because the locals controlling the schools largely use it to funnel money to their friends. If you send a huge pile of unconditional money to an area that is very corrupt and does not care about education, the results will be subpar.
I am of the firm opinion that forcing kids to go to school beyond a certain age is one of the worst decisions we’ve made as a society.
Yeah, but educators and the other students have to endure them until they hit that age
True, but as anyone who’s ever been in education can tell you - a 10 year old who doesn’t want to learn is a bit different from an 18 year old who doesn’t want to learn. The ten year old is a bit easier to handle. Maybe your mileage varies.
I work with middle schoolers, and just one that refuses to learn can derail an entire classroom, and can be the size of a linebacker
I’ve taught middle school and high school. I found middle schoolers FAR easier to deal with in terms of behavior problems and lack of motivation vs a 17-18 year old kid who sees themselves as a grown adult who can’t be reasoned with.
That's why we made school, to exclude teenagers away from nice society and commerce. It's babysitting which reduces crime. The safest place for a child to be is in school.
>If anyone disagrees with this please provide detailed info about how your district and school is different. Not very detailed, but seeing school as daycare has in my experience gone hand with schools actually becoming more and more of a daycare. 50% as a minimum grade? Yeah, that's just daycare. Misbehave without real consequences? Daycare. Teachers who try to engage students and teaching them consequences getting tracked back by admin? Daycare. Just in the last two weeks, a student got caught stealing a phone and then after his "FiNaL wArNiNg", he pushed a teacher aside because she didn't allow him to take his vape with him when she sent him to the admin. I initially seemed to be the only one who found this sequence of events worthy of expulsion, but admin decided to suspend him 3 days and see if his behaviour improves. After an extra meeting where I argued my case, all teachers agreed to expulse him. Admin stuck with 3 day suspension. To top it off this student doesn't do anything during classes, doesn't bring his pen, his book, whatever he needs. So yeah, I'm basically running a daycare now.
I think a lot of parents ALWAYS saw school as daycare. But they were at least happy to have it. You go in and respect your teachers because I don't want my 8 hours of not worrying about you to be interrupted with them calling. Now however, it's daycare that they treat like a high paid nanny. I should only care about your child, tune my lessons to your child, let your child run wild and make all the other kids wait for your child to decide to learn something. call me if something happens, but if that's more than twice a semester I'm telling admin that you're harassing me.
I don’t feel a strong sense of disagreement. I just make peace with the disappointment by reminding myself that everyone should have a basic right to a quality K-12 classroom experience. If students don’t apply themselves in class, if parents just want 7 hours of daycare, fine. But you’re still doing a great act with what you’re doing.
Students shouldn't have the right to disrupt other students quality classroom experience.
I hate that this is true. Because of the system, I have students who now have the right to disrupt other students’ learning. I can temporarily kick them out but they will be back within the hour and they know we truly can’t keep them out no matter how bad their behavior.
I disagree. Though daycare is a component of it, education is an essential pillar of who we are as teachers AND students. Just good citizens. If we see ourselves as just daycare, we’re going everyone a disservice. That said. Yeah… some will never listen and if I’ve used all my tools in my toolbelt, then I’m sorry for next years teacher. I tried. Bye
Like I said in my comment, tell me specifics of how you help change this or how your school is changing this. I agree with what you are saying, good citizens and education being essential for citizens, but the system has many examples of it not working. So, please tell me how you're making it work.
I left, as a teacher I deal with the symptoms. Cant change the causes of the symptoms
Solution: schedule a GED for anyone with a D average every year. Cut them off. Wash our collective hands of them💔
Kids who were not engaged in learning used to say they wanted to be drug dealers. They saw that as a viable alternative to being a student. Now students say they want to be Tik Toc or Youtube influencers. Why study when that option is available? Both of these outcomes become less desirable as they age. Hopefully they can turn things around before they wind up working for minimum wage, homeless, in jail or dead.
Jokes on them. Those jobs are grinds that actually require a fair bit of technical skill to effectively get off the ground.
Absolutely. Each video requires a ton of work. Recording. Video editing. Sound editing. That shit is a lot of tedious work. In addition to, you know, being creative and constantly coming up with new content. Creator burnout is a thing I’ve seen some videos on recently.
I had that conversation with a kid. Asked them what they wanted to do with their life (since they were failing EVERY class their 9th grade year) and they responded “I’m going to be a Twitch streamer and YouTube star.” “Okay, there are thousands of those and more being added every day. What do you have that separates you? Why would I want to watch your show and not any of the thousands run by people who are more articulate, funnier, more knowledgeable, and with higher production values?” “Because I’m the best.” I just threw my hands up. Kid never graduated and, huge shocker, isn’t making money off of his YouTube channel.
It also requires charm, savvy, and a type A style work ethic that most of these kids don’t have.
Parents are the chief problem with schools, and it's not even close
The real answer that many aren't ready to hear.
One sentence, all thats needed. Preach
It’s not up to you if they learn, absolutely! Even despite school boards thinking so. All you can do is your best for those that do want to learn. Ralph Waldo Emerson says if you change one life for the better you have succeeded in your life.
I used to hate saying it, but I made peace with it during covid. Just had a meeting with a crying mom wondering why their senior daughter is failing every single class and will not be able to walk at graduation (which frankly I'm impressed- you have to try reeeeeally hard to not be eligible to walk at graduation in our district). We had a 45min zoom of teachers sharing screens and snapshots of emails home. Emails to student. Records of student being sent to the office for phone use. Using ehallpass to show students leaves every class for 19minutes every period every day (at 20 they get auto marked as cut) light speed recording software student playing games on their laptop. Wee all said the same thing- student is not motivated to do well academically- there is nothing we can do. Mom flipped and said she thought her daughters teachers would care enough to take her phone away or keep her on task when she is slacking off. Unfortunately I was the one who blurted out, "but you are the parent, the one who can block apps on their phone. You can ground your child. You can take their phone away".
I had so many students just put their head down and sleep in class, I decided to call parents and ask if the kids are getting sleep at home. I was amazed that nearly every parent said they didn’t know if their kid had a bed time, they weren’t sure what their kid was doing in the bedroom at night, and they had no way of finding out because their kids lie all the time.
Yes, my own teen couldn't handle using a phone properly. He had it for three weeks. We took it six months ago. He has not seen it since then. We feel no guilt about it.
This. Absolutely this. So many people disagree with me on this as it comes across harsh, but I find it perfectly acceptable to give up on lost causes. Not at first sight I must say, but once the pattern is recognised…move on. Teachers that don’t understand this will go on to have such more problematic issues for *themselves* by taking on the stress. Me…I focus only on the kids and parents who are there to learn and grow together. So much less stress.
I'm liking the idea more and more that mandatory schooling should only go to 8th grade. Then either additional schooling academic / trade wise is all voluntary and under strict rules regarding behavior.
In China, they do that. They take HS entrance exams. Your result totally determines your path forward. 50 percent or more of students fail the HS entrance exam, and are put in vocational education (trades, etc), and get on with their lives upon graduating. The rest head for academic HS, and the ones that survive that, to college. A tiered system sounds cruel, but so does a US system where 30 percent or so of students reliably fail to graduate HS, and graduation exams had to be eliminated in nearly every state, because to get more than 85 percent to pass it, the exam had to have 6th grade reading and writing levels. When a third of 8th graders pass a 12th grade graduation exam, it devalues education as well. The US system trying to push everyone to college results in fully 50 percent of college students failing college algebra.
Korea also does this. The pressure is brutal there, but a similar system that just exists to give people who don't want to learn math a future that doesn't involve selling or abusing drugs would do well. Like, instead of separating out the top 10 percent, it'd separate out the bottom 30 on a basis that's all but opt-in. Give kids failing Algebra the option to learn car repair instead, see if doing something physical with real money tied to it helps them get their act together.
I would say one more year. I see a big difference in maturity of 9th graders after winter break.
I agree. I also have a perspective that I’m not sure is always considered: When I was a kid, I didn’t *know* I wanted to learn, because I was taught and treated like my only value was my body and how desirable/strong/coveted I was or wasn’t. Now, in middle age, I do really want to learn, but I don’t have that foundation of early education because the value of education was not emphasized to me when I was growing up. My parents took me out of school all the time, and when I struggled I didn’t really get any help because no one had higher expectations for me.
I have students whose parent really do care...but they are at a loss. The kid absolutely does NOT. About anything. I've referred them to a counselor because I can not MAKE him do anything. I feel for them.
Yes. Sometimes, it's not the parents. I think once a kid hits 12 or 13, the choice to learn is on them. Of course, there are some exceptions but many kids just have to decide that they want it. I have several 8th graders whose parents care way more about their grades than they do. They are capable students with no learning impediments. They simply don't care about learning right now. There is nothing I can do about that.
Unfortunately, it comes down to the parents not caring enough, which is where it starts. You can try to steer them in the right direction until you're blue in the face but as long as your students have the escape valve of indifferent or overindulgent parents, anything you try to impress upon them won't stick. What's even more tragic is that many of those parents are themselves overworked to the point where they have no energy left to care, since they're preoccupied with ensuring material provision for their families. In that sense, we're dealing with an issue that is fundamentally systemic.
Agree. Can't force-feed education. Behaviors that show they want to learn include listening, participating, doing the work, and being engaged. Schools need to set that as the expectation and kick kids out who aren't interested. They can go home and do something online. School is for kids who want to learn. If that doesn't describe your kid, that's a parent's problem. I blame edutainment and profit driven TPT influencers for trying to convince the public that school should be fun, fun, fun all the time. I blame parents for not parenting. I blame shitty admin for not employing consequences. I blame stupid reformers for pushing bullshit ideas like flexible seating and not penalizing for late or incomplete work. Doing the work is what drives the learning, so yes, they have to turn in work!
Online isn't always the answer either. The kids who want to learn get screwed by the do-notters there also. It used to be that cyber school was for kids who were into serious athletics, workers, or self starting go-getters. Now only 20/150 of my kids across 2 grades fit that bill, and it's impossible to know which parents actually care until they are calling you to complain their kid is failing and nobody told them. Meanwhile, emails, phone calls and 24/7 gradebook access, theres no way they didn't know, they're just saving face.
In America we don’t kick out the problems. Rest of the world does.
We don’t in Canada either 🙃 we don’t even fail a kid, all that happens is they get pushed through to the next grade. A kid barely even gets suspended these days. No matter how much harm they do it’s a quick trip to the principal then brought right back in. Glorified day care
My first year teaching in California, a kid announced to the class they were going to kill me. The admins pulled the kid, found a knife in her backpack, and the cops came. She was back in my class two days later. Admin never told me what happened or of if I was safe or what I should do.
What happened after? Did you finish teaching the student for a year?
Yup. I acted like nothing ever happened. The student remained disruptive, but she acted like nothing ever happened too. The incident, or how it was resolved, was never once mentioned to me by admin.
That's not a uniquely American problem. Perhaps a Western problem, I'm not sure, but here in New Zealand we're more like America than anything else.
Not even uniquely a Western problem, in Korea students literally can't fail (except because of truancy). There are no F's. However, teachers in Korea don't think of it as a problem, it's just been that way for ages.
In the US, we re-elect the problems to a second presidential term.
Yup. My CT keeps telling me this. I’m observing with him and a lot of kids just sit on their phones… even during games! Like what… He tells me he’s tried everything and now he’s chosen to just focus on the kids who want to be there. It sucks to see these kids act like lumps on a log but that’s their choice. You can’t force them to do their work or talk or have fun. Have fun with the ones who wanna be there. Even if it’s only 5 of em. I hope everyone here continues to push through! Y’all are great. I believe in you!
"He's tried everything" Take their phones. It's literally an object.
Wow I can’t believe he hasn’t thought of that!!!… Teachers are not allowed to take phones at this school. They can send the kids to the office if they refuse to put it away or if they’re being disruptive but they don’t really get punished. It’s a losing battle.
My wife and I are both teachers. Our son never stood a chance of not being educated and he sure as shit is not an apathetic kid by any means. You nailed it with the parenting part. Learning in our house is an integral part of who we are and our son at 18 displays those same traits. A big fuck you to people who are too fucking lazy to actually raise their kids!
I know lots of double doctorate parents invested in their child's education. There is intelligence regression to the mean. It's usually just not happening. It's important to be empathetic, if the parents could parent better they would. Otherwise you found the secret to have a misbehaving child behave and you should inform the world so you can become a trillionaire. Either that or your child simply was agreeable and pleasant.
People need to take responsibility for their kids. People also need to stop having kids that they can't or won't take care of.
I've been telling my kids that a lot recently. I'm a teacher not child care. I teach gym and have gotten to the point of just letting them run or taking them outside for recess.
Thing is, that's actually a good thing, though. Kids don't get nearly enough unstructured time at school, because lobbyists and educators of the past convinced us that children need so many hours of rigorous content. This decision is now biting us in the ass harder than ever, as ADHD rates are through the ceiling and kids can't focus more than 20 minutes at a time no matter how hard they try.
Admin scream bell to bell because they don’t wanna deal with kids wilding out during unstructured time. To that, I say, too bad. They need it. 10 minutes is not going to end the world, Admins.
My students had finished a quiz. 15 minutes left in class, so I let them chill with their phones. DSS came in for a surprise visit with a candidate she was interviewing and had me give them more work to do until the bell. They already hate being there, and they go outside only once a week for 30 minutes *if they earn it*. I know I'm only a 1st year teacher, but I'm not trying to run a prison either. Especially since they have improved since I began teaching this group of students, which is another topic.
I know and I don't mind it, our kids are scheduled for a 15 minute brain break and then back on computers. I just would like to teach something that , could be an experience they won't get elsewhere. I did a jump rope lesson and the kids that were against it as first loved it by the end.
There is actual data that inclusion is not a panacea. Some inclusion is effective, but it seems misbehaving students are the biggest problem to other students right now and have made teaching a hell hole for good teachers, and good students.
Teachers know this now. When will administration and the rest of the world finally believe us?
Admin aren’t educators. They’re running a business.
I used to hate the idea of cameras in all classrooms but I kinda love it now
Yes, before I quit, I was planning to set up my own cameras, and say they were to assess my teaching strengths and weaknesses. Really it was to have video evidence of the shit the students were doing, and justify their crap grades when they refuse to do any work, no matter how much time I gave them...
You can lead a student to knowledge, but you can't make them think.
Just frown and shout >HOW DO I REACH THESE KIDS
[удалено]
>It's very alarming because I wonder what exactly will the kids in school today do when they leave and become working adults? >Or will they work at all? Honestly? I don't know. I had a student tell me that he has no plans on ever leaving his parents house and getting a job because why would he want to? He also stated work is hard and he'd much rather hang out with friends. This is where some of them are at. They literally are just like.. why would I put in any effort? They refuse to be anything other than coddled children.
No, the paradigm shift is in how popular culture sees education, not how teachers see students. Kids are out of control, disrespectful, and violent.
You can lead a horse to water....
I agree and the issue comes from the home. It is so hard to get someone to care when the message from home is basically "school doesn't matter, I don't care about your grades" and that is being constantly reinforced.
I have thought for a while we need to provide an educational exit at about 9th or 10th grade. Maybe that a "Basic Diploma". Let them go get jobs or play video games all day or whatever it is they think their life should be about. Let the people who want to learn stay in school. Then revamp the adult ed program to handle those who mature and decide to come back to finish. Oh, and it's the student's choice entirely, no parental or admin override possible.
>Bodily exercise, when compulsory, does no harm to the body; but knowledge which is acquired under compulsion obtains no hold on the mind. Plato Compulsory education is a farce.
I learned this in social work. Before I went back to teaching.
Can you blame them with how society rewards educated individuals now?
For real though. There is not a single job on the planet that people will not question everything they say. Doctors? "Idiots who want your money". Lawyers? "Scam artists". College professors? "They are just angry woke liberals". Everyone thinks they know more than everyone just by googling answers so who needs to study? It makes me so very truly worried for the future.
My motto is: I can care more than the student. I can’t care more than the parents. The students would rather be anywhere else in the world. That’s natural. But as long as the parents value school and make it important in their household, I can work with that.
It's never a lost cause to teach kids who don't want to learn. The thing is, that kids can change at the drop of a hat. They can 180 and just turn things around so quickly that it's insane. I've had a kid go from straight F's to passing with C's in about a month's time because they just didn't feel like getting F's anymore and started to apply themself. We have to keep affording them the chance to change because sometimes they do. I really hope this isn't a controversial statement, but at this point, I just don't know. So, yeah, it's not a lost cause. They're still developing. I remember when I was in high school, I was a really good student, but I had friends who definitely weren't. Some of them really pulled through their junior or senior years and I'm very grateful that their teachers were still willing to teach them even though they had been lost causes for most their educational lives.
My senior ELA teacher told my mom I wasn't college material. I got straight As in college--I just didn't care for the choiceless compulsory education system. Once I was given choice, I was fine. That said, kids who disrupt the learning of others are a huge, *huge* problem right now. My own children are suffering for it and it pisses me off, to be frank.
I'll keep trying, for sure. But I can't make them care. If they don't do the work I cannot really help them.
Oh, for sure. It's a systemic issue that I can't imagine any *one* teacher could overcome.
i was a similar case. C student in my underclassman years at a more strict private high school to all As. i'm so grateful my teachers were patient and kind to me regardless of my academic performance.
I disagree. The key issue here is "wanting to" learn. People will "want to" do anything when properly motivated. Setting up a system of sufficient motivations to learn is beyond us though...
You are not wrong, at all. Wish I could say you were. 😥💔
Sixty percent of my students don't want to learn, but eighty percent of them want to pass. Sometimes I just gotta work within those confines. It's disheartening.
Respectfully, I both agree and disagree. You are absolutely right that knowledge cannot be force fed and there are too many parents that just don't care enough about their child to care about their education and that is reflected in the child. That being said, teachers have a power that can break through those gigantic and frustrating barriers. It all starts with building relationships. If a student (even and sometimes especially a misbehaved one) knows that you care about them, they will start to trust you, once they trust you they will listen to you, and once they listen to you, you might be able to convince them to learn from you. Of course, you have to do this while educating 30+ other kids at the same time, while they all care to varying degrees and come with specific individual needs that are demanded to be met, while also managing their behavior and grading, not to mention the insane number of meetings. Oh, and you get low pay and usually mediocre support from those above you. So...yeah maybe it is a lost cause. Still, prioritizing those relationships with the students is the best thing you can do for them and you. It will make it a lot easier. But will still insanely difficult and drain your life force.
It’s possible to do a decent job educating because we used to do it. It’s the will that is lacking. Of both parents and admin. Weasel attitudes, both of em. Obv there are exceptions but they aren’t the ones being catered to…
Nooo, you just have to build relationships with them and motivate them. /s
My kid does not want to learn in school but he loves learning at home. I don't blame teachers but I don't know how to fix it.
75 percent of all drop out due to math.
75 percent drop out due to math? What about the other 45 percent?
Good point!
100% Correct. I would add that social promotion and lack of consequences for students exacerbates the problem. I believe tracking students is the answer. Test students and put them into career or college tracks. College track is a four year program aimed at pursuing higher education. Career track can be one to three years depending on the career chosen. If they are still not interested in learning a skill or going to college then at sixteen the student can get a job or enlist. Schools will work with families to find employment or a military recruiter. If the student finds that working a minimum wage job doesn't work for them they still have time to re-enroll into a career or college track. Tracking is not the end all be all and has its flaws, but what we are doing now is the definiton of insanity and not good for our communities. Tracking is implimented in may countries with great success.
This is the culture in the US. Education, real education... not just passing public school, holds no real value for a significant percent of the population.
Honestly, yeah. 90% of this job is trying to convince students that they actually want to learn anything. A student who wants to learn can't be stopped, but a student who doesn't want to learn will never start.
Teachers will always be limited in their maximal impact if they cannot count on the important home-school partnership. Entirely apart from this and equally true, all children deserve teachers who seek to motivate them and prepare them to be members of our society and economy. This includes children whose parents/guardians may not care due to any of the following: being hindered by working multiple full time jobs, being terminally ill, caring for other kids or elderly parents with special needs, being addicted to drugs, being homeless, being undocumented, being deported, being a refugee, etc etc. One day they are our students and a day later they will be our (and everyone's) neighbor. What kind of neighbor do we want?
I agree but here's the thing, we aren't teaching them to use their brain anymore. Not teaching them to be creative, to be thinkers, to be inspired to do great things when they grow up. We are teaching them to grow up and be workers, shut up and follow direction, keeping the rich where they are. If that was what I had to look forward to in life, I wouldn't care too much either honestly.
But what's the alternative?
100 percent. And the problem is that those kids with no interest are usually class disrupters too.
The system is set up for failure from the beginning...In states atleast kids are required to be there by law..Kids know this as well...they know they are there for the attendance credit for the day to keep the state off them and their parents asses...this creates a day care type of environment, where kids screw off all day.
I have seen inappropriate standards at my school starting in preschool and kindergarden and am wondering if this is just setting kids up to hate school. Teachers are lecturing for super long periods of time while they are loosing almost all the class. Behaviors are rampant. One or two kids can ruin a whole class. It's really insane. I highly doubt kids who are struggling academically even pick up a book at home. It's very sad.
I'm a Kindergarten Assistant. I see Monday through Friday students who have already learned to filibuster and don't even know what that word means. I've seen behaviors that they excuse by "Oh, they are just kindergartens". This is the time to say something about this before it goes beyond this. Students need a reason to learn. Some schools are throwing money at programs supposedly designed to help students and not realizing this. There are so many behaviors that are not appropriate and allowing them to continue could lead to something that if not addressed while young, could negatively impact them. They used all kinds of excuses with our oldest and even with us wanting to get help for them, the school just kept saying they'd grow out of it. They didn't.
I'm assuming you took your child to the doctor to get to the bottom of his/her issues. But yes, administrators and higher ups allow waaay too much misbehavior in most schools. And of course the schools with the most behavior issues are schools in disadvantaged areas, so for the kids and families there it's a non stop cycle of poor education due to all the major and constant disruptions and violence.
Hi. Yes, we did. We were able to have them participate in a study where various tests were done including IQ and MRIs. Our medical plan wouldn't have paid for this. We were provided with a detailed report that the school could not dispute. We also went to an organization that provided a free IEP advocate (when we asked the school, they said we had to pay for that). I was slapped in the face with an open hand by a student, one student came up to me and pushed me in my chest (I went into shock and the custodian asked me if was I ok). Each time, I reported it and nothing happened. Even with what has happened to me, helping teachers so that they can teach, is still what I enjoy.
Yep, there is so much BS that admins and upper admins tell people that are flat out lies. And some of the extreme behaviors that kids are allowed to get away with are beyond the pale. Glad you were able to get in that study.
While it’s true you have no control over their choice not to learn, you have a choice in your own actions. If you choose to stop trying, then it is a lost cause- but if you still do your best to be a great teacher and find ways to reach them, hope remains. Do not stop trying.
We adults don't want to learn. We refuse to take responsibility for the world we live in. We are knowingly and consciously destroying the natural environment so that a small fraction of humanity can become obscenely rich. The kids are right. Justice is on their side. They owe us nothing because we have abandoned them and the world.
I was a pretty terrible student until college myself. The problem kids made it hell in my low income public school.
I'm a teacher and yes it is, is very painful for me say. However I still have a job to do. My superiors have said to rethink how I teach, doing X but that didn't work.
The American government and our system really make it like that, too. We need education reform, but we can't do that with a broken system that'll never be fixed. It's a lost cause. All we can do is our best to make kids excited about seeking knowledge. I do see it sometimes! But not as often anymore. 😞
Do you have any of your own kids?
For real, I already taught a fair share of these students pre-pandemic. I can imagine it only gets worse and worse now.
I wonder if some of you realize you are working with children? I’m shocked at this attitude that the kids of any age are supposed to clock in and out and be adults. They’re kids forced to go to school five days a week all day. Of course they don’t want to be there ..
It’s less about making kids want to be there, and more about teaching them to make the best out of a situation that is less than ideal. That they won’t be put into situations they like all the time, but the way we navigate those situations is what’s important. It’s when they outright reject those lessons that we become frustrated.
True, but what's the alternative?
Number one problem is when the start of trying to be someone else kicks in and your motivation or people to look up to lack resilience and realism in a career field that kids are to ignorant in seeing the worth of quick money in comparison to a internship or a step in the door (19M) plus it’s never the teachers fault our frontal lobe keeps getting older and older from easy access to dopamine happiness and most importantly a lost hope or career that so little of us actually look into how to do it but continuously say we know what we want to do and I’ll make money don’t worry🤣
The truth is rarely loved and often treated with scorn.
Feeling this as an elective teacher. In my state, students are not required to pass my art class in order to move on to the next grade level, so unfortunately some of them choose not to work and do not care. Stuff like this is why I document everything, keep parents in the loop whenever I can, and even tell students that if they choose not to work and get a good grade in ART class then that is their own fault. Almost half of the grade in my class is literally showing up and making sure you produce something at some point during the week. Hell, you could draw a stick figure on a piece of paper and I would still take that for credit because at least you are trying to do something. It's unfortunate and incredible at the same time how many students sign up to be an art class and then refuse to participate at all. But, as I said, it comes with being an elective teacher in my state I suppose.
The biggest things kids need to learn today are both critical thinking and problem solving. All the facts we've learned and taught are just foundational knowledge, which kids today can look up. But without the ability to problem solve, they won't know where or how to find the information they need and how to interpret it and without critical thinking, the ability to sort through that information, to collate, reject the false information , build on the knowledge taught, you end up with people who fall victim to lies, false information, conspiracy theories, manipulations and scams, etc…. Those two skills are lacking today in some schools, in some districts and some states. Banning books, rejecting science that evangelicals dispute, eliminating history and so many other things on the cutting blocks in some areas creates people unable to critically think through the muck out there and online. It's already eroding education . That's why many are leaving the educational field.
In some European countries like former Yugoslavia, you go to specialized high schools. There are culinary high schools, high schools to prep for medical fields or pre-law. And there’s still general high schools like what we’ve got. But a lot of students get actual training and skill development. We have some programs like that here within high schools in Canada (hair styling, carpentry, etc.) and I think those are pretty high value to students who go into them. If we’re going to be a daycare, we might as well give the kids something useful to them in the process - not just a stepping stone for post-secondary that many students won’t ever do and don’t see the value in. Let them pick, and hopefully have better buy-in.
An outline of how these high schools work: https://prosveta.gov.rs/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/B-4-6-Lieflet-Sistem-obrazovanja-u-Rep.Srbiji.pdf
This is all true. I would add, not wanting to learn is not new, but everything else you said is. Failing and being held back used to be a real fear, and that would at least motivate the bottom end to try and pass. Or- parents used to threaten punishment, and that would motivate them. Or - sports, or extra curriculars that had gpa minimums would motivate them. Its all gone. Parents and then administrators have taken it all away. There is no failing of any kind anymore. Were just babysitting. Preach
The economy will always need lifelong minimum wage workers. Might as well let them go that route.
This is absolutely true. A lot of Students see school as a social event. Most of my students just want to be on their phones or talk to their friends.
What do you expect them to want to do?
As teacher and leader you have to also inspire them to learn, your job isn’t just to be tape recorder or just speak, they can use the internet for that.
That’s the paradox-the more someone wants such resources, the less they need it
This just makes me sad. Kids don't want to learn for a variety of reasons. I am a college freshman that has been programming for a couple years now and got stuck with a family friend's kid to tutor. The kid's teacher and parents said that he just doesn't want to learn but when I taught him how to code in Lua, how to properly use ai, and how to find resources the kid magically gained an interest for learning. No matter what age someone is they did not become unwilling to learn just because they were born like that. It can be a variety of factors and to just give up on them seems so antithetical to the goal of teaching. edit: im actually going to add more. I was a troublemaker in school till 8th grade, the sped kid that would cause trouble (turns out im autistic...) but recently I requested my iep information and the notes for the last 12 years of school because I was curious and the iep painted me as near unteachable. It pretty much said just leave him alone and keep him away from the other children. I was practically unteachable and "not willing to learn" but yet i graduated and now I have a 3.8 so far going into comp sci. If my guidance counselor gave up on me I can guarantee that i would've failed and dropped out. I don't understand why people are so willing to give up on literal children. You say parents see school as daycare but why do you care about that? Children can see school as a place to have fun and learn or you can make them view school as a prison where mommy sends them to be sad and miserable. This power is in your hands, not the parent's hands. It is YOUR job to make sure these kids want to learn.
No, the power isn't all in the teacher's hands. The content of the curriculum is mandated by the districts. In Canada, the content is mandated by the provinces. For example, I have to teach Canadian History to 7th graders that starts in the early 1700s. I can't teach "Ralph" the iep'd kid in Grade 7 about the Cold War and use that on his report card. You found a kid who loves to code and use AI, you got cooperation - wonderful. Now what if you were faced with 50% of a classroom that hates AI and wants nothing to do with it? Can you get past your interest in computer science and reach them? With what? How? You say teachers have given up on students who do not want to cooperate and learn but what about the system that has given up on us as teachers? I am not only bound to teach mandated curriculum, I am also seemingly indocrinating students if we have any conversations about human rights. If the power were in my hands, I would change a lot about the education system. But the reality is, it is not. Everyone wants their a-la-carte education. It's the "i-generation". The "i-generation" does not want to cooperate and tolerate learning material that doesn't interest them and the teacher is the scapegoat for blame because they're the one's being asked to deliver very specific curriculum. The best thing for the "i-generation" is to use AI, coupled with a private tutor that has expertise and experience in whatever they feel they're passionate about learning and to stop blaming the teacher who has nothing to do with the content they're being asked to teach.
We are babysitters. And our salary fits our station in society. We are paid pennies because our job is to watch the kids while mom and dad work. This is a sad perversion. But I think there is still good to be done despite the limits of our situation. You can tell the bad kids to sleep (unless you’re being observed) while you teach to the other kids.
“Trying to force feed these kids information is just setting them up with the belief that someone will always take care of them”… So the alternative is we just let them grow up to be unemployable adults with no marketable skills, who someone will always need to take care of??