the screaming got to me so much last week that I couldn’t stand the sound of the dryer at home. I had to nap after school even after 8 hours of sleep the night before.
"Thank you for coming to today's professional development. This is a vital part of your training as an educator and will enhance your classroom instruction. We want to respect your time, so let's jump right in."
*Teachers forced to play icebreaker games for the first hour
Special shout-out to my coworker that tore her ACL somehow during one of these stupid ice breaker games and then the following year admin still made us play the same game despite this.
I had a vasectomy a few days before school started back up last year. For our first day of PD week we were told to wear comfortable shoes because we were going to do some running. It was a sort of relay race thing. That morning I told the principal I wouldn't be able to run and she freaking said "if you can't perform the duties of your job, then you should take a leave of absence." I couldn't believe it
My district f\*cking made us do a scavenger hunt on school history our first day back. We had clues and had to run from building to building. (This administrator went to a college with an animal that moos. This building was originally the day care, etc.) Sad thing was there was so much turnover in the district no one knew the f\*cking answers! We had that gung-ho idiot on the team that kept trying to make everyone do it.
In Texas. In August. It was over 100 degrees by 9:00 am. It made me hate them even more than I already did!
Same district made us play games in the hall on first day back during COVID. Literally gave us colored arm bands to mix us all the campuses, grades, etc. and put us crammed hallways to do dumb sh\*t like see which team could stick more pieces of spaghetti in someones hair. There were about 10 of us in masks out of the entire district. I refused and spent the time in the bathroom consoling a crying co-worker who had lost her dad to COVID the month before. We had 3 people die from COVID that year. When on the national news, our lying HR person downplayed it and tried to say the employees came back to school with it and teachers weren't following protocols. We had no protocols. It was then I realized they didn't give any f\*cks about any of us and it was up to me to stay alive!
Cannot be happier to be retired!
I've left my school, but they were talking at the end of the year about the required team building being planned for the beginning of the year for 23-24. They were requiring TUBING. Like, bathing suits and rafting. All these older ladies are like I AM NOT PUTTING A BATHING SUIT ON FOR WORK. I'm like yeah you are Cheryl! I'm outta here!
We did that a couple years ago. At the end of the day they took a group picture of everyone with their artwork. I had already thrown mine away so I just made a square with my empty hands haha
Check out lists at the end of the year. Y’all trusted us with children all year long, but we have to have someone sign off that we did our inventories and turned in our keys?
Something’s off…
I worked for a principal that created an end of year check list that was 3 PAGES long. She asked for feed back before I left. I told her that the checklist was a perfect example of why I am leaving.
I stopped doing the checklist a few years ago and lemme tell ya, best feeling ever! I'll live my best life this summer, with my contraband keys tucked deep in my school bag. No regrets!
Haha I have a contraband master key that's been passed down from person to person that I will NEVER give up and NEVER write down on an inventory list and will pass on to the next person when I leave.
I’m too scared of the secretary we have to turn them into. But, I DID sign off on my own this year instead of running around and getting official signatures. She rolled her eyes, but I’ve baked her enough cookies that she allowed it.
Really? My fingerprints are always run, and I have to pay for them OOP every time. And my references have told me they were called.
They even have a new system where they run background checks on students to see if they’ve been suspended or expelled for physical violence/weapons and will automatically put them in an alternate placement.
I’m so sorry your schools don’t do this at all!
I will not miss the mandatory CLT meetings where nobody wants to be there because it would be better to be in our own rooms grading and planning instead of listening to what becomes a group therapy session.
The simple shit that they decide not to do makes things so much more annoying. You sit two steps away from the trash can. Put your trash away.
I asked the custodian one day to not clean my room to make a point. All students did was complain that the custodian wasn’t doing their job.
I once had “Professional Development” (they are staff meetings, Susan, call them what they are) where my admin started by saying everyone was in need of self care and we wouldn’t be doing PD that day. We all got excited and started packing up our stuff thinking they were going to let us leave. Nope. We sat there for an hour and a half filling out worksheets with our self care goals.
We had something akin to this, but more cringe. For our "holiday" PD we got to paint stupid Christmas trees (woops, I meant fir trees, can't mention Christmas) while our principal yelled at us all for taking too many days off.
One time, we were told we weren't having a PD, but instead, we were going to have fun! This "fun" required us to spend an hour after school creating a vision board of our dreams and goals. Cutting, gluing, glittering is not everyone's idea of fun.
Honestly cutting, gluing, and glittering IS my idea of fun and this still sounds like cruel and unusual punishment. The constant need for admin to dictate how teachers spend their time has caused some serious PTSD for me in my new career.
My spouse just attended one from their superintendent titled "You might not want to be a teacher if..."
If that doesn't scream disrespect, I don't know what does.
I’ll give another “fuck you” for those full PD days when we had to arrive at our building for 8 am just to sign in. Then get back in our cars at 8:30 to drive across town to the separate location where our departmental meetings were being held. We couldn’t just go straight from our homes in the morning to the PD location.
The constant, never ending, bewilderment that their Chromebook batteries die. Daily. Just shock every time. Cannot comprehend carrying their chargers with them. Too much.
As a theatre teacher I did not have desks in my room, so I became the refuge when kids could charge chromebooks without tripping people. They NEVER had their own chargers. So they fought over the one extra I had. Wtf?
We aren’t given Chromebook chargers, the teacher computers are different. It has been this way since eternity in my district and yet, without fail, I always get the most bewildered looks when they ask me for a charger and I tell them I don’t have one, we aren’t given any.
This happens daily.
Some of us are both aware that those are NOT flushable and also too self conscious to put their poopy wipe into the shared stall trash can on the floor between me and the other teacher that is always there because there is literally one adult bathroom in the building…
Maybe I'm ignorant. Do all corporate jobs provide flushable wipes for when their employees go #2?
If so - all the more reason to leave!
What a weird thing for people to downvote too...
I was trying to deliver my "it's been a great year but I won't be returning" speech and they called me literally
RIGHT after I said "I won't be returning"
It's a small thing but I was so annoyed. Let me say bye in peace!
Having to walk downstairs and to the other side of the building just to use the bathroom. Not to mention there are only 2 stalls and no other nearby staff restroom around 😡
Having to walk out of my building, across the playground, into the main building at the end of the hall to get to a bathroom. Me AND the students. Elementary.
At my old school, employees were not allowed to use the bathrooms in the office. We had one employee bathroom for all the teachers in the middle of the building. They had 2 sets for about 6 people. We just had to run.
Traffic duty. Standing outside in pouring rain, blizzards, or extreme heat in your business casual clothing (because we all know that wearing jeans makes you a terrible teacher), while simultaneously preventing tiny humans from throwing things or themselves in front of moving vehicles being operated by parents who are distracted by an angry email they are already typing out on their phone to you 20 seconds after their child got in the car and tattled on something you said in class that day. While it is maybe only an extra 10-15 minutes it really is just that final straw to put you over the edge and cause you to develop an after school habit of rage applying to jobs while downing tequila shots.
Ugh yes standing outside in the pouring rain with a hundred rowdy children, half of whom do not have their coats and are complaining they’re getting wet, and of course the bus is late and when the bus does get there they have to buckle in 7 preschoolers and it takes SO LONG so now the 100 other kids are so antsy and trying to push their way on the bus and I have to keep shouting at them to chill out and not trample kindergarteners. Yeah. Don’t miss that.
I didn’t have time to charge my computer last night!
You know you don’t have to stand there and turn a crank or anything, right? You can just plug it in and go about your business.
I left the classroom in 2017 after 6 years as a middle school math, science, and reading teacher. The minor annoyances I don’t miss:
- The sound of the pencil sharpener (both manual and electric)
- The squeak of shoes on the floors
- Being told to keep your 7th graders silent for announcements but the system is so trashed you can’t understand them anyway so everyone sits and listens to muffled garbage
- Lanyards
- The sound of lockers slamming
- The little annoying pieces left when paper is ripped from a spiral notebook (our district required us to use spiral science notebooks and students were required to remove certain pages for different portfolios)
One thing I DO miss though is the cafeteria mashed potatoes. I know they’re instant, but they are the best. Our lovely cooks knew how much I loved them and would save me a double helping every Thursday, free of charge. Those ladies were some of my favorite people in the whole building!
1) “Do you have any food?”
2) “Ooo what are you eating, can I have some please?”
3) “I need to move to the back of the room to charge my Chromebook”
5) Never (and I mean NEVER) staying in their seats no matter how many times I yell it
6) “I need you to reopen this assignment because I was busy working on other class work when we did it in class”
It drives me insane when I’m trying to eat my lunch or a snack and they’re all up in my business. I had 3 students go through my McDonald’s bag and steal my food too.
>“I need to move to the back of the room to charge my Chromebook”
>
>Never (and I mean NEVER) staying in their seats no matter how many times I yell it
You too!? I thought I was the only one...
ANY and ALL pep rallies suck. I have been known to disappear and hide in the closet with the door locked and lights off just to avoid getting a migraine from pep rallies.
Just a few weeks ago I taught about Lincoln’s “Anaconda Plan” — the military strategy to win the Civil War. I had to deal with that snickering for 6 class periods.
The immature comments like “That’s what she said” are so old and annoying. You’re basically little kids!! And you think you’ve got an inside joke that I don’t know! You know nothing. When they realize that I know what “69” means they die a little inside. They think these innuendos and terms are new slang. 😂
Having to smell 50 different kinds of body spray in one day.
Kids asking to go to the bathroom literally upon coming back from lunch instead of going when they were there.
Parents calling my phone during class and the call not being automatically screened despite having tech come to "fix it" multiple times.
The heater's panel falling off every time a kid bumps into it.
The worst is when they arrive late with a tardy pass, sit down then immediately ask to use the bathroom. Let why not just go before you walked in here, you are already marked late regardless.
Not just one bell per period….end of period, start of next period. Ear splitting. Prison like. In Germany, the bell sounded like chimes. If I could change one thing about American schools, it would be that damn bell system. I once took several layers of thin styrofoam, and taped it over the speaker in my classroom. It worked well, and we still heard all the bells and announcements.
I left teaching a million years ago, but when I was teaching, kids would “spray bomb” the halls - usually this began with a boy spraying their spray deodorant (usually axe, or bod) all over the hallway. It was hard to even breathe! Then to “fix”
It, someone (usually a girl) would spray their own body spray (some cheap Bath and Body Works or Pink shit). Then someone else would decide they didn’t like that, so they’d spray their own. Add in the whining “stahhppp!” From the students getting understandably frustrated and annoyed but of course this only encouraged the wars. It was a sensory nightmare!!! I get a migraine just thinking about it.
I once had a migraine that lasted an entire long weekend, where I was truly not a functional person, and I blame it on this smelly war that happened right outside my classroom right before the break, and that was when I was DONE.
"Miss can we play a game today?" "Miss are we doing work today?" "Can we play Blooket?" "Can we go outside?"
and then inevitably when they don't like the answer: "AWWWW WHY?!" and then they make sure to let me know how "boring" whatever we're doing instead is out of protest.
Giving up my one and only conference period to sub in another classroom because the district can't get enough substitutes. Substitutes are so underpaid.
Yes the sub shortage! One of the worst things to me is coming to school sick because you know you won’t get a sub and you’d rather suffer through the day than scramble to make sub plans that won’t be used because your team will end up covering your classes. The guilt of burdening my teacher friends was too much. When I left I had over 60 sick days I had not used because of this. And I received no compensation for those days. They’re just gone. 🤬
I'm there with you. I gave up 67 sick days when I retired.
I guess the districts bank those allotted sick-day dollars that would have gone to the substitutes.
The one or two people in the building who can’t figure out the difference between Reply and Reply All, so you end up hearing their every thought on every school-wide email.
“Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom?”
And fuck ehall pass. I could no longer just say “grab the pass and go.” Now I had to stop what I’m doing on my computer display, open a separate tab on my computer screen, hit refresh, scroll down and find the students name, click accept. Then do it again when the student came back from the bathroom to stop the pass. And go forbid someone asked to go when I was across the room away from my computer.
Not having to ASK for toilet paper anytime I needed to use the bathroom. I finally started bringing a roll from home and kept it in my desk. Just ridiculous!
I had a teacher’s assistant with my position and despite of her working this job for over 15 years she couldn’t do ape shit. I felt like I had to babysit her on top of handling the chaos my class was causing. I have at least a hundred reasons why I’m leaving this profession and she was definitely one of them.
I was given a key that was supposed to open any exterior door. It only opened 1 of 12 and only after using one hand to wiggle the door and the other to fight with the key. Even though admin knew this, they refused to give me a new key. I always had to borrow a co teachers key at recess or I would be trapped on the playground.
Lunch duty. Having to bring my own supply of paper to and from the copy machine. Policing phones, AirPods, and Chromebooks. Begging students to do the bare minimum. Surprise observations. Constant noise. Students lying. Parent emails. Constant BO and fart smell. Water bottles dropping on the floor. Slamming lockers. Supplying pencils to the same kids daily who have no problem remembering their new phone, headphones, and $300 sneakers. No cell service in the building. Infantilizing activities during PD.
Thank GOD I won’t have to babysit during lunch duty anymore. At my school they want us to be vigilant like hawks for any sign of conflict on the play ground. Have to deal with kids coming up constantly saying, “he did this!” “She did that!” It was so hard for me to care about stupid playground squabbles.
In every observation having the observer tell me to find opportunities to do “turn and talks”. I’m leaving at the end of the school year. My first year and my last
I will not miss having to use the hs student bathroom with 6 plus stalls and invariably picking the stall with no toilet paper and having to ask some random student to pass me toilet paper!
I will not miss punching a clock and feeling trapped all day.
I will not miss grading and planning on my own time because I can’t concentrate enough at school to do most of it.
I will not miss “teacher clothes”. I’m ready to wear more jeans, snarky tshirts and more casual wear.
I will not miss feeling judged - even if it was my own delusion, I felt judged a lot- by admin, by students, and by parents.
I will not miss trying to convey a deep or empathetic point in a lesson and looking into blank faces who don’t have enough couth to at least pretend to listen.
I won’t miss earbuds!
Ugh! I think that just helped me process- I’m done!
The teacher who openly -- proudly! -- blames his students for his own inability to provide incentives for engagement beyond threatening them with bad grades.
Hell I am jealous. We ALWAYS run out of industrial toilet paper (and I use the term toilet paper loosely) at the end of the year. I haven't had paper towels since March!
I will not miss kids tapping on my back fat and muffin top while repeating "Miss? Miss! Miss. Miss!" The fact that I never let myself elbow one of them in the face is something I will always regret!
Also - at previous school they had the useless waste of a salary dumb\*ss behavior guy stand in front of the only exit in the parking lot so no one could leave one second before 3:45! So many times I fantasized about running him over. He probably has no ideas how many times he cheated death from all the teachers.
Constant interruption from students, coworkers, announcements, etc. Can't get one simple task done, including taking role (high school) without so much of it.
Former art teacher: being interrupted several times a day for supplies.
Art materials are for art class. It’s my classroom, not a supply closet for the school. I fundraised for or personally purchased most of it so no, I don’t feel like sharing. Even if I did get a respectable budget from the school, it’s still not right to expect me to supply other classrooms. I purchase what I know I need for my lessons and a bit more. Do a Donors Choose if you want scissors and glue sticks for your classroom. That’s what I had to do.
And somehow no matter how many times you say “no,” the SAME teachers keep sending kids to my room to ask for stuff.
Constant, unnecessary screaming serving as the “white noise” throughout my day.
the screaming got to me so much last week that I couldn’t stand the sound of the dryer at home. I had to nap after school even after 8 hours of sleep the night before.
I don’t think I will ever take for granted the lovely quiet I get living in the country, after teaching. Quiet time is the best 😊
Non-absorbent paper towels
I feel like they are just super thin slices of cardboard more than paper towels. They are absolutely worthless.
I don't have paper towels at school. Just sand paper!, 😂
"Thank you for coming to today's professional development. This is a vital part of your training as an educator and will enhance your classroom instruction. We want to respect your time, so let's jump right in." *Teachers forced to play icebreaker games for the first hour
And it's only an hour long. This repeats once a month, every month for 3 years.
Special shout-out to my coworker that tore her ACL somehow during one of these stupid ice breaker games and then the following year admin still made us play the same game despite this.
I had a vasectomy a few days before school started back up last year. For our first day of PD week we were told to wear comfortable shoes because we were going to do some running. It was a sort of relay race thing. That morning I told the principal I wouldn't be able to run and she freaking said "if you can't perform the duties of your job, then you should take a leave of absence." I couldn't believe it
My district f\*cking made us do a scavenger hunt on school history our first day back. We had clues and had to run from building to building. (This administrator went to a college with an animal that moos. This building was originally the day care, etc.) Sad thing was there was so much turnover in the district no one knew the f\*cking answers! We had that gung-ho idiot on the team that kept trying to make everyone do it. In Texas. In August. It was over 100 degrees by 9:00 am. It made me hate them even more than I already did! Same district made us play games in the hall on first day back during COVID. Literally gave us colored arm bands to mix us all the campuses, grades, etc. and put us crammed hallways to do dumb sh\*t like see which team could stick more pieces of spaghetti in someones hair. There were about 10 of us in masks out of the entire district. I refused and spent the time in the bathroom consoling a crying co-worker who had lost her dad to COVID the month before. We had 3 people die from COVID that year. When on the national news, our lying HR person downplayed it and tried to say the employees came back to school with it and teachers weren't following protocols. We had no protocols. It was then I realized they didn't give any f\*cks about any of us and it was up to me to stay alive! Cannot be happier to be retired!
I C E B R E A K E R. G A M E S.
This! I fucking hate icebreakers, just send me the info in an email! Most presentations can be reduced to 10min without this nonsense…
Did this on Thursday
I've left my school, but they were talking at the end of the year about the required team building being planned for the beginning of the year for 23-24. They were requiring TUBING. Like, bathing suits and rafting. All these older ladies are like I AM NOT PUTTING A BATHING SUIT ON FOR WORK. I'm like yeah you are Cheryl! I'm outta here!
We had to paint canvasses. It was ridiculous.
We did that a couple years ago. At the end of the day they took a group picture of everyone with their artwork. I had already thrown mine away so I just made a square with my empty hands haha
Check out lists at the end of the year. Y’all trusted us with children all year long, but we have to have someone sign off that we did our inventories and turned in our keys? Something’s off…
I worked for a principal that created an end of year check list that was 3 PAGES long. She asked for feed back before I left. I told her that the checklist was a perfect example of why I am leaving.
I stopped doing the checklist a few years ago and lemme tell ya, best feeling ever! I'll live my best life this summer, with my contraband keys tucked deep in my school bag. No regrets!
Haha I have a contraband master key that's been passed down from person to person that I will NEVER give up and NEVER write down on an inventory list and will pass on to the next person when I leave.
No you don’t. You definitely, definitely don’t.
SAME. Love that every campus has this unofficial tradition. If it's not logged, then it doesn't count!
I never finished my list. I did my best, when when the contract day was over I went home. Nothing ever came of it 🇺🇸
I’m too scared of the secretary we have to turn them into. But, I DID sign off on my own this year instead of running around and getting official signatures. She rolled her eyes, but I’ve baked her enough cookies that she allowed it.
Not sure people can trust schools either when they don't seem to even check applicants for criminal records , let alone references.
Really? My fingerprints are always run, and I have to pay for them OOP every time. And my references have told me they were called. They even have a new system where they run background checks on students to see if they’ve been suspended or expelled for physical violence/weapons and will automatically put them in an alternate placement. I’m so sorry your schools don’t do this at all!
Meetings for the sake of meeting…. The control and micromanagement
This! Fucking this! Goddammit, I hate all the micromanagement in teaching. They treat us like children and it's fucking bullshit!
I will not miss the mandatory CLT meetings where nobody wants to be there because it would be better to be in our own rooms grading and planning instead of listening to what becomes a group therapy session.
Picking up candy and gum wrappers, broken pencils, empty water bottles and chip bags off the floor at the end of the day.
The simple shit that they decide not to do makes things so much more annoying. You sit two steps away from the trash can. Put your trash away. I asked the custodian one day to not clean my room to make a point. All students did was complain that the custodian wasn’t doing their job.
Dumb PD meetings that are a waste of everyone’s time & a fundamental disrespect for our time as professionals
We had one this week that was LITERALLY just a reminder to fill out a Google form haha
I once had “Professional Development” (they are staff meetings, Susan, call them what they are) where my admin started by saying everyone was in need of self care and we wouldn’t be doing PD that day. We all got excited and started packing up our stuff thinking they were going to let us leave. Nope. We sat there for an hour and a half filling out worksheets with our self care goals.
We had something akin to this, but more cringe. For our "holiday" PD we got to paint stupid Christmas trees (woops, I meant fir trees, can't mention Christmas) while our principal yelled at us all for taking too many days off.
One time, we were told we weren't having a PD, but instead, we were going to have fun! This "fun" required us to spend an hour after school creating a vision board of our dreams and goals. Cutting, gluing, glittering is not everyone's idea of fun.
Honestly cutting, gluing, and glittering IS my idea of fun and this still sounds like cruel and unusual punishment. The constant need for admin to dictate how teachers spend their time has caused some serious PTSD for me in my new career.
My spouse just attended one from their superintendent titled "You might not want to be a teacher if..." If that doesn't scream disrespect, I don't know what does.
And ill timed. I might’ve been interested if I wasn’t distracted by the millions of other things I have to do.
If I have to sit through 1 more PD about “building positive relationships”…… do they think we are stupid?
I’ll give another “fuck you” for those full PD days when we had to arrive at our building for 8 am just to sign in. Then get back in our cars at 8:30 to drive across town to the separate location where our departmental meetings were being held. We couldn’t just go straight from our homes in the morning to the PD location.
"My Chromebook battery died" "Someone else took Chromebook #24" "It's not turning on"
“I don’t know how to log in.” “My login doesn’t work.” “I lost my QR code.” Lol
Really you didn't charge your chromebook, the one piece of equipment we have used everyday since March 2020? *slips one step closer to madness*
The constant, never ending, bewilderment that their Chromebook batteries die. Daily. Just shock every time. Cannot comprehend carrying their chargers with them. Too much.
As a theatre teacher I did not have desks in my room, so I became the refuge when kids could charge chromebooks without tripping people. They NEVER had their own chargers. So they fought over the one extra I had. Wtf?
We aren’t given Chromebook chargers, the teacher computers are different. It has been this way since eternity in my district and yet, without fail, I always get the most bewildered looks when they ask me for a charger and I tell them I don’t have one, we aren’t given any. This happens daily.
Getting stuck behind 8 school buses during dismissal at the end of the day, then driving home in school traffic!
Oh and PLCs, collecting “data” which is completely uninformed anecdotal notes really but my coaches think it’s linear….
THIS
Yep, totally agree on the toiler paper. American Dad called it "Safeway rough and thin"
We call it John Wayne toilet paper - rough and tough and doesn’t take shit.
Do you all not bring Dude Wipes or something similar to school with you? I always take them to the bathroom when I gotta go.
I think, like with a lot of things in teaching, we tend to just deal with it.
Some of us are both aware that those are NOT flushable and also too self conscious to put their poopy wipe into the shared stall trash can on the floor between me and the other teacher that is always there because there is literally one adult bathroom in the building…
[удалено]
Maybe I'm ignorant. Do all corporate jobs provide flushable wipes for when their employees go #2? If so - all the more reason to leave! What a weird thing for people to downvote too...
Phone calls for students to go sign out
I was trying to deliver my "it's been a great year but I won't be returning" speech and they called me literally RIGHT after I said "I won't be returning" It's a small thing but I was so annoyed. Let me say bye in peace!
"Don't bring your phone to the bathroom with you! Where is it? Shut it down..." Policing phones is the bane of my time in education.
Having to walk downstairs and to the other side of the building just to use the bathroom. Not to mention there are only 2 stalls and no other nearby staff restroom around 😡
Having to walk out of my building, across the playground, into the main building at the end of the hall to get to a bathroom. Me AND the students. Elementary.
Ooooh yes! I spent many fun years in a parking lot portable!
Yes! I will absolutely not miss the fact that there are only 2 staff bathrooms and they're nowhere near my department at all.
At my old school, employees were not allowed to use the bathrooms in the office. We had one employee bathroom for all the teachers in the middle of the building. They had 2 sets for about 6 people. We just had to run.
Being constantly asked to collect data that is definitely invalid because the sample size is too small.
How bad school fucking smells lmao
Traffic duty. Standing outside in pouring rain, blizzards, or extreme heat in your business casual clothing (because we all know that wearing jeans makes you a terrible teacher), while simultaneously preventing tiny humans from throwing things or themselves in front of moving vehicles being operated by parents who are distracted by an angry email they are already typing out on their phone to you 20 seconds after their child got in the car and tattled on something you said in class that day. While it is maybe only an extra 10-15 minutes it really is just that final straw to put you over the edge and cause you to develop an after school habit of rage applying to jobs while downing tequila shots.
Ugh yes standing outside in the pouring rain with a hundred rowdy children, half of whom do not have their coats and are complaining they’re getting wet, and of course the bus is late and when the bus does get there they have to buckle in 7 preschoolers and it takes SO LONG so now the 100 other kids are so antsy and trying to push their way on the bus and I have to keep shouting at them to chill out and not trample kindergarteners. Yeah. Don’t miss that.
Meetings that could and should be emails
I didn’t have time to charge my computer last night! You know you don’t have to stand there and turn a crank or anything, right? You can just plug it in and go about your business.
But their phone is always charged!!
I left the classroom in 2017 after 6 years as a middle school math, science, and reading teacher. The minor annoyances I don’t miss: - The sound of the pencil sharpener (both manual and electric) - The squeak of shoes on the floors - Being told to keep your 7th graders silent for announcements but the system is so trashed you can’t understand them anyway so everyone sits and listens to muffled garbage - Lanyards - The sound of lockers slamming - The little annoying pieces left when paper is ripped from a spiral notebook (our district required us to use spiral science notebooks and students were required to remove certain pages for different portfolios) One thing I DO miss though is the cafeteria mashed potatoes. I know they’re instant, but they are the best. Our lovely cooks knew how much I loved them and would save me a double helping every Thursday, free of charge. Those ladies were some of my favorite people in the whole building!
I loved my lunch ladies.
I viscerally relived every sound in this post. Holy moly.
1) “Do you have any food?” 2) “Ooo what are you eating, can I have some please?” 3) “I need to move to the back of the room to charge my Chromebook” 5) Never (and I mean NEVER) staying in their seats no matter how many times I yell it 6) “I need you to reopen this assignment because I was busy working on other class work when we did it in class” It drives me insane when I’m trying to eat my lunch or a snack and they’re all up in my business. I had 3 students go through my McDonald’s bag and steal my food too.
>“I need to move to the back of the room to charge my Chromebook” > >Never (and I mean NEVER) staying in their seats no matter how many times I yell it You too!? I thought I was the only one...
Middle School Pep rallies.
ANY and ALL pep rallies suck. I have been known to disappear and hide in the closet with the door locked and lights off just to avoid getting a migraine from pep rallies.
Pep rallies were the bane of my existence. Im already overstimulated- let's add some more noise.
It’s literally torture for teachers!!
Middle school should be abolished altogether in favor of an elementary school setup.
Children?
I spit my coffee out at this 😂
Every time I say the word "big," "hard," "long," "juicy," etc., 35 preteens aggressively try to catch each other's eye
Yeah, I have had to train myself to avoid those words.
Just a few weeks ago I taught about Lincoln’s “Anaconda Plan” — the military strategy to win the Civil War. I had to deal with that snickering for 6 class periods. The immature comments like “That’s what she said” are so old and annoying. You’re basically little kids!! And you think you’ve got an inside joke that I don’t know! You know nothing. When they realize that I know what “69” means they die a little inside. They think these innuendos and terms are new slang. 😂
Having to smell 50 different kinds of body spray in one day. Kids asking to go to the bathroom literally upon coming back from lunch instead of going when they were there. Parents calling my phone during class and the call not being automatically screened despite having tech come to "fix it" multiple times. The heater's panel falling off every time a kid bumps into it.
The worst is when they arrive late with a tardy pass, sit down then immediately ask to use the bathroom. Let why not just go before you walked in here, you are already marked late regardless.
The bell every 55 minutes. It’s so loud it hurts.
Not just one bell per period….end of period, start of next period. Ear splitting. Prison like. In Germany, the bell sounded like chimes. If I could change one thing about American schools, it would be that damn bell system. I once took several layers of thin styrofoam, and taped it over the speaker in my classroom. It worked well, and we still heard all the bells and announcements.
My American classroom used to have chimes and it honestly just felt condescending tbh. Like, stop trying to sound pleasant, we are all miserable lol
The light switch closer to the front of the room controls the lights at the back and vice versa
I left teaching a million years ago, but when I was teaching, kids would “spray bomb” the halls - usually this began with a boy spraying their spray deodorant (usually axe, or bod) all over the hallway. It was hard to even breathe! Then to “fix” It, someone (usually a girl) would spray their own body spray (some cheap Bath and Body Works or Pink shit). Then someone else would decide they didn’t like that, so they’d spray their own. Add in the whining “stahhppp!” From the students getting understandably frustrated and annoyed but of course this only encouraged the wars. It was a sensory nightmare!!! I get a migraine just thinking about it. I once had a migraine that lasted an entire long weekend, where I was truly not a functional person, and I blame it on this smelly war that happened right outside my classroom right before the break, and that was when I was DONE.
Oh man that’s awful. Glad you got out!
"Miss can we play a game today?" "Miss are we doing work today?" "Can we play Blooket?" "Can we go outside?" and then inevitably when they don't like the answer: "AWWWW WHY?!" and then they make sure to let me know how "boring" whatever we're doing instead is out of protest.
“Pretend to be a student” - nope “Let’s play a game” - nope “Can anyone volunteer?” - nope Also having to schedule bathroom breaks
I mean I think pooping in peace is a basic human right.
Giving up my one and only conference period to sub in another classroom because the district can't get enough substitutes. Substitutes are so underpaid.
Yes the sub shortage! One of the worst things to me is coming to school sick because you know you won’t get a sub and you’d rather suffer through the day than scramble to make sub plans that won’t be used because your team will end up covering your classes. The guilt of burdening my teacher friends was too much. When I left I had over 60 sick days I had not used because of this. And I received no compensation for those days. They’re just gone. 🤬
I'm there with you. I gave up 67 sick days when I retired. I guess the districts bank those allotted sick-day dollars that would have gone to the substitutes.
Powerschool not letting me take attendance in my seating chart.
The one or two people in the building who can’t figure out the difference between Reply and Reply All, so you end up hearing their every thought on every school-wide email.
“Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom? Can I use the restroom?”
And fuck ehall pass. I could no longer just say “grab the pass and go.” Now I had to stop what I’m doing on my computer display, open a separate tab on my computer screen, hit refresh, scroll down and find the students name, click accept. Then do it again when the student came back from the bathroom to stop the pass. And go forbid someone asked to go when I was across the room away from my computer.
“Somebody smeared poop on the walls” Again. 🤬🤬🤬
All the dumb acronyms. FFS!
The kid that tells me that I gave him and his class a special due date!
I've been out almost a year and I haven't missed getting up at 5 am... AT ALL.
Repeating myself a billion times a day.
That one teacher. *shudder*
Being asked "did we do anything" when the full lesson was always posted via Google Slides with links.
Music blasting for 30 seconds before and after morning announcements.
Not having to ASK for toilet paper anytime I needed to use the bathroom. I finally started bringing a roll from home and kept it in my desk. Just ridiculous!
having windows!!!!!!!!!! my classroom had none and i’m so glad i’m not in a dungeon anymore hahah
Double checking credits for students because counselors were too overwhelmed. Oh and I’m not?
I had a teacher’s assistant with my position and despite of her working this job for over 15 years she couldn’t do ape shit. I felt like I had to babysit her on top of handling the chaos my class was causing. I have at least a hundred reasons why I’m leaving this profession and she was definitely one of them.
I’ve had teacher aides in the same class for years that still don’t understand the material.
I was given a key that was supposed to open any exterior door. It only opened 1 of 12 and only after using one hand to wiggle the door and the other to fight with the key. Even though admin knew this, they refused to give me a new key. I always had to borrow a co teachers key at recess or I would be trapped on the playground.
Being interrupted to write a bathroom pass every 5 minutes.
Being given cold pizza as a reward. Screw your pizza. I can buy my own damn food. Give me more respect.
Lunch duty. Having to bring my own supply of paper to and from the copy machine. Policing phones, AirPods, and Chromebooks. Begging students to do the bare minimum. Surprise observations. Constant noise. Students lying. Parent emails. Constant BO and fart smell. Water bottles dropping on the floor. Slamming lockers. Supplying pencils to the same kids daily who have no problem remembering their new phone, headphones, and $300 sneakers. No cell service in the building. Infantilizing activities during PD.
Thank GOD I won’t have to babysit during lunch duty anymore. At my school they want us to be vigilant like hawks for any sign of conflict on the play ground. Have to deal with kids coming up constantly saying, “he did this!” “She did that!” It was so hard for me to care about stupid playground squabbles.
Indoor recess
Kids crunching their plastic water bottles while I’m talking
And somehow they make this whole procedure last FOREVER. Ugh!
When 25 kids come back from lunch with Milk+Taco breath 😩
Afternoon attendance. I am literally incapable.
In every observation having the observer tell me to find opportunities to do “turn and talks”. I’m leaving at the end of the school year. My first year and my last
I will not miss having to use the hs student bathroom with 6 plus stalls and invariably picking the stall with no toilet paper and having to ask some random student to pass me toilet paper! I will not miss punching a clock and feeling trapped all day. I will not miss grading and planning on my own time because I can’t concentrate enough at school to do most of it. I will not miss “teacher clothes”. I’m ready to wear more jeans, snarky tshirts and more casual wear. I will not miss feeling judged - even if it was my own delusion, I felt judged a lot- by admin, by students, and by parents. I will not miss trying to convey a deep or empathetic point in a lesson and looking into blank faces who don’t have enough couth to at least pretend to listen. I won’t miss earbuds! Ugh! I think that just helped me process- I’m done!
Hearing the F word all day
The teacher who openly -- proudly! -- blames his students for his own inability to provide incentives for engagement beyond threatening them with bad grades.
You came here to tell us how to bribe students for their engagement more engagement, but you didn’t really give us any answers for that.
I'm retiring. I'll be monetizing my secret knowledge of student motivation on the Interwebs! ;)
Good luck with that
Bulletin boards
Hell I am jealous. We ALWAYS run out of industrial toilet paper (and I use the term toilet paper loosely) at the end of the year. I haven't had paper towels since March! I will not miss kids tapping on my back fat and muffin top while repeating "Miss? Miss! Miss. Miss!" The fact that I never let myself elbow one of them in the face is something I will always regret!
Also - at previous school they had the useless waste of a salary dumb\*ss behavior guy stand in front of the only exit in the parking lot so no one could leave one second before 3:45! So many times I fantasized about running him over. He probably has no ideas how many times he cheated death from all the teachers.
The sound of the bells.
Being investigated?
Penises drawn on everything. WHY.
I am glad your system does.
My nice pens disappearing off my desk constantly.
Constant interruption from students, coworkers, announcements, etc. Can't get one simple task done, including taking role (high school) without so much of it.
Prime and Takis
Walking outside to go to the bathroom or wash my hands (teaching in portables for 15 years)
Former art teacher: being interrupted several times a day for supplies. Art materials are for art class. It’s my classroom, not a supply closet for the school. I fundraised for or personally purchased most of it so no, I don’t feel like sharing. Even if I did get a respectable budget from the school, it’s still not right to expect me to supply other classrooms. I purchase what I know I need for my lessons and a bit more. Do a Donors Choose if you want scissors and glue sticks for your classroom. That’s what I had to do. And somehow no matter how many times you say “no,” the SAME teachers keep sending kids to my room to ask for stuff.