I teach middle school, and we just had Back To School Night last week. Basically, I had groups of parents come into my room for ten minute sessions where I pretty much just talked about the class and what the kids are learning and how to support them at home.

Two mothers in the room acted exactly like their daughters. Both were easily over thirty, maybe pushing forty. Right when they came in, they turned two desks to face each other just like friends do when they enter a classroom. They spoke over me and giggled the entire time and showed each other TikTok videos. Clearly didn’t listen to a word I said or care in the slightest. You might have guessed, but both of their daughters are failing.

Strangest part, one of the students came up to me the following morning and said: “My mom says she really likes you.”

No Timmy, Circe didn't tell Odysseus he had to visit "the gift shop" before returning to Ithaca.

I'm the special ed resource teacher and was pushing into a 6th grade classroom. As I mentioned in my previous post, I work at a PK-6;school in NC. The regular ed teacher stepped out for a few minutes to make copies, so I was watching the class.

A brand-new 6th grader reached into his backpack, pulled out a pocketknife, and started showing another kid.

I saw it, immediately told him to put it down, got the other students away from him, and called administration.

My principal somehow turned that into ME being the problem.

She pulled me into her office and began screaming about how I was “responsible for that classroom” and how a student should never have been able to pull out a knife under my supervision.

I defended myself, and rightly so, saying, “What exactly do you mean ‘able to’? He reached into his own backpack and pulled it out. Am I supposed to have X-ray vision?”

She then accused me of sarcasm and making excuses.

I tried to explain again.

She interrupted me AGAIN like she usually does.

So I rightfully raised my voice right back at her.

I said, “NO. You are going to let me finish this time. I was covering that class for a few minutes while the teacher made copies. That child reached into his backpack and pulled something out with absolutely no warning. I saw it, I stopped it, and I called administration. Unless you expected me to search every backpack before she walked out of the room, tell me what the hell you expected me to do.”

She screamed, “DO NOT RAISE YOUR VOICE AT ME.”

I yelled back, “THEN STOP RAISING YOURS AT ME.”

Then I told her exactly what I’ve wanted to tell her for months.

“You talk to everybody in this building like we’re stupid. You interrupt people, embarrass people in meetings, and the second anybody pushes back, suddenly they’re ‘disrespectful.’ You were a teacher once. You have completely forgotten where you came from. And if this is how you think leadership works, you should not be a principal.”

She completely lost it.

She regarded me as was "insubordinate" and said, “I don’t give a damn about the SPED shortage. I will write you the fuck up and make sure you never get another teaching job.”

I said, “There it is. You’re threatening somebody’s entire career because they finally stood up to you. And you wonder why people don’t respect you?”

That REALLY set her off.

I finally stood up and told her, “I’m done. You will not scream at me, threaten me, and then call me disrespectful because I defend myself. I’m not meeting with you alone again.”

This is the SAME principal from my last post who lost her mind because another staff member said, “Can I finish speaking?”

Now I understand completely.

She doesn’t want people to respect her. She wants people to be afraid to challenge her.

And during dismissal she kept glaring at me. Like every single time I looked over, she was staring directly at me. She didn’t say anything, but after earlier today it felt very intentional.

I’m documenting everything now because I am completely done with this woman.

Here's the link to my last post giving you more context about the culture of fear and intimidation my principal has created: https://www.reddit.com/r/Teachers/s/76efXdVfHy

So I just saw the news about the recent shooting in Bend, Oregon. A 16 year-old boy entered an elementary school with a gun, and committed a shooting there. 3 pre-teen children and a teacher lost their lives. 2 other people, one of them a student, are still critically injured. Thankfully a father who was a bystander there was carrying his gun, and he shot the shooter to stop him from doing further damage.

Seeing news about school shootings, specially where most victims are children, breaks my heart. I'm sure that teacher who died yesterday was thinking about how he could make their students learn better, grading his students, and fulfilling his duties as a teacher. I don't think it crossed into their mind that day that some crazy teenager was gonna break into the elementary school to shoot students and teachers.

Now 4 people are gone, and the only thing we can hope is for the recovery of those who are injured, and wish strength to the families of those lost because losing someone like this is something indescribable.

A thought about someone committing a shooting in the school I work in rarely crosses my mind. I'm most of the time worried about planning the learning material for my students, grading assignments, and making sure my students learn and behave in class. I never want to worry about someone doing a heinous act in the school I work in.

I once heard 2 students in my class ages 14 who were making jokes about committing school shootings using the "skills" they've learned in shooting video games, and I told these students that it isn't funny to joke about such things because it's something I never want any teacher, student, or parent to go through. They said they knew school shootings are wrong and would never do that, but that they found grace on making jokes about school shootings and recreating their games in real life. I shut any student up who dares to make edgy jokes about killings.

I pray nothing ever like this ever happens to me or any of my students or fellow teachers. I also hope no teacher ever suffers this, but unfortunately unexpected bad things happen because of evil people. I wish blessings on anyone who reads this.

So, for context: I ended up in a gig where I mostly teach high schoolers how to code. In this economy, I figured I'd take what I could get since it's better than nothing.

I don't take things personally, but goddamn 😂 Trying to get them to do things independently, even after I've repeated the same instructions ten times, is like asking for a miracle.

The majority of them have one AirPod in while supposedly "listening" in class. Nobody takes notes, so it's almost like they have weekly amnesia. They want the answers but won't bother working through the solutions themselves, so there's barely any actual learning happening. And some kids are straight-up on Snapchat calls during class when they're supposed to be doing their tasks. (Snapchat's still a thing??? Really???)

I get that teenagers have their own issues, but I genuinely don't remember being that carefree at their age. Honestly, I'm just glad my boss isn't a bully and actually understands that we're dealing with a completely different generation and classroom environment.

At this point, I'll collect my pay and try to chill, although I do wonder how some of these kids are going to navigate adulthood 🤹 ⁱ'ᵐ ˢᶜᵃʳᵉᵈ ⁿᵍˡ

On the other hand: seriously, bless those of you who have the patience and dedication to make a career out of teaching!! It's not for everyone and you guys deserve better pay 100%

And their children are also the least likely to do the homework.

Almost all of the homework my coworkers and I assign is just leftover classwork. It's only leftover because the students wasted their class time. The well-behaved students never seem to have homework, because there's more than enough time to get everything done in class. It's the students who waste their time--usually by disrupting the students around them--who end up with the most homework. And it's those students' parents who complain about the homework.

And those same students usually don't do the homework anyway.

"Please excuse my child from last night's homework. He said he had two hours' worth of homework, but we didn't get home from travel football until 10pm, and he needed to sleep."

That "two hours' worth of homework" is the accumulated classwork of 20 wasted minutes per class, for six classes per day. His classmates who use their class time wisely had no homework. And today's classwork just builds off of yesterday's work. So now he can't do today's classwork. So it will just become more homework for him.

Today while monitoring student computer use I witnessed a student having a “conversation” with chatGPT in which it was giving him responses with strong positive reinforcement to drop out of high school. It was agreeing with him (while calling him Big Dawg) that truancy laws are unnecessary and that if he just goes to school and that the school ultimately just wants him to attend for funding purposes. It dove into strategies in which he could just show up and serve as a “warm body” (put his head down and refuse to engage with his classes) until he was of legal age to drop out. Needless to say we had a discussion on how chatGPT/ LLMs function and he was also referred to our family service liaison. Our town is the site of a future 400 acre data center that is supposed by the school board because we will get “monetary kickbacks” and the district in general seems to be all in on AI 🙃

Today was the second day of Fall Break, and I got a call from my AP. Right off the bat, I knew this wasn’t good. We’ve been working on a project together to help another teacher who has been having mental health issues, so I figured that was what the call would be about.

But she told me a student I taught last year died by suicide last night. He was in 9th grade this year, and I loved having him in my class last year. He was a bright kid with a great sense of humor and an even better taste in music. He was one of those kids who made your day better just by being in class. Out of all the students I taught last year, he was the last I would expect to be struggling.

This is the first student I’ve had who has died, and it’s tearing me up. I’m trying to keep my mind off it, relax over break, and enjoy the time with family that we’re visiting, but that student is all I can think of. I wish I had the opportunity to tell him how much he brightened up my day each day when I was going through a difficult time.

I know the statistics surrounding suicide and the age group I teach, so I know this won’t be the last time I’ll have to attend the funeral of a student who died by suicide. I don’t know how I’m supposed to go back to class Wednesday after the grief counselors address it with my classes (I have a sub the first day back from break, so admin is having a counselor come read the school’s statement to my class). Do I talk about it when I’m back or just move on? I want the kids who are struggling and hurting to know that their lives are precious and worth living, even if they are hard. I want them to know if they feel uncared for or unloved that I care about them and love them and that if they are having similar feelings, they can come to me, I will ensure they get the help they need with the correct people. I just… don’t want any more of my students to die this way. This isn’t the first suicide my school has had, but it’s the first one of my students. I don’t know how to best proceed forward. Does anyone have any advice?

I work for a very large district.

"We have to do the best with what we have" is how my literacy coach explains it.

In past districts, we had access to Pearson item banks. They weren't perfect and this was pre-AI so maybe they've changed, but I'm gobsmacked that my district has no ELA item bank. It's all just AI. Allegedly there is a protocol they run the generated items through, but I've run into several items egregious enough over the last two assessments to reach out to the assessment department and submit a complaint about item alignment.

Then they make us sit in PLCs twice a week to review the data we've gathered. AKA, how students performed on these generated items. What does this data actually tell us? What are we measuring?

The distractors are terrible, often just factually wrong, and don't require the actual skill the standard is supposed to address. A kid can read the passage and just process of elimination their way to a correct answer. The questions all follow a similar pattern. I wish I could provide examples but I don't want to identify myself too clearly.

Our assessment department, our ELA program specialist... Certainly, these are our brightest and best? We should trust that they will maintain assessment item integrity/alignment through their AI usage?

I’m kind of in a bad space right now and really just need to rant. I have had a year. This is my second year at this school. Last year was lovely and I felt like I was making a difference. The violent kids I had last year were really manageable besides one but he kind of just stopped showing up when his “girlfriend” dumped him (they’re like 11 mind you). Now to preface our school does serve a lot of behaviourally challenged children as we literally have behavioural specialists and a classroom just for specifically violent students to try an integrate them back into a normal classroom while also teaching them the proper skills to succeed around others and still learn… I don’t feel it’s that beneficial personally. I had multiple students last year that were part of the program and I don’t feel they were any better humans from it, they just lied their way into making them believe they could return to the gen ed classroom.

This year I was given quite a few students who clearly are very aggressive and need more support than I can provide. Including one that never had aggressive tendencies until his year suddenly. Clearly something has happened outside of school we don’t know about but he’s become extremely violent towards his peers. It’s basically been an everyday thing, if it’s not him it’s “Jeff” or “Steven” or “Mark” or so on. It never ends. Literally Tuesday a parent just didn’t pick up her fucking child because she didn’t want to. Her kid sat outside/inside the school for FIVE HOURS before she showed up only because the police called her and made her pick up her son. wtf is wrong with people!!!

Then today we were having what is say was a pretty tame period playing a computer game as a class. Gimkit. I’ve used this before as a reward and study tool. They have a math test Monday, we were reviewing while also playing, and then tomorrow they’ll complete the actual review. But suddenly “Mark” gets upset that “Steven” is “taunting him” in the game and he gets up and starts choking Steven out. So the EA goes to get help. I get Mark to stop. Before I can even handle anything else, Steven just starts destroying the entire room. Like grabbing chairs and textbooks and laptops and smashing everything as hard as possible, swinging it around, screaming at the top of his lungs (which, sort of impressive after you were literally just chocked out gasping for breath). I can’t even try to stop him as I have to evacuate the other students for their safety. Admin arrives and I guess must eventually get him to stop but even when I returned he was punching tables and pillows and breathing like a maniac. And what’s the solution to this? Let’s take him outside and get him some fresh air.

Are you fucking serious?

My room is destroyed. An entire cart of Chromebooks is probably destroyed. While nothing of mine that I bought from my own money is destroyed the room needs to be put back together. Nope, you’re still expected to be at staff meeting. Absolutely fucking not. I made my students clean it best they could including the glass like I’m not staying until midnight I did not deserve this! So I left the second our staff meeting was done even though I knew admin wanted to speak to me about what happened but I said fuck that and went home and immediately once I got home texted I think I have a head cold and will be booking a sub for tomorrow. Their response? “You still need to reach out to parents about what occurred today.” Like are you serious? No apology, no “this won’t happen again” bullshit line or anything! The kids were terrified! Not like their parents will care, they’ll blame me too!

I'm a first year teacher. My son is in 1st grade on the other side of the school. I can't sleep.

At dismissal I got the notification about the Oregon murders that happened today. While putting my profoundly disabled students on the bus my watch told me 3 kids were gunned down.

And now I go back to school tomorrow and... Teach math?

How do we do this without worrying ourselves sick? How do I protect my students AND make sure my son isn't taken out of the school in a body bag? How do we stay sane in this awful disaster we've created?

OK, I'm at a loss here. Usually, I can deal with my student's random numbskullery with grace, but this one just seems...odd. I have a student, senior girl, who meows at me when she comes into class. Kind of quietly, but it's always there. Being a responsible 50+ teacher I Googled it. Nothing. Does anyone know if there's any meaning behind it, or is my student just an oddball?

Edit: Ok, to be clear, she isn't neurodivergent (any more than your average high schooler) and doesn't have Tourette's. She is also not a furry or identifying as a cat. She's just a kid with friends and her own thing going on. I thought about meowing back, but I wasn't sure if meant anything so I'm not going to do that. I think the majority of you are right, that I have a goofy kid on my hands. I can deal with that.

Sold A Story Season 2

“In Sold a Story's second season, Emily Hanford investigates what happened to Direct Instruction — and why deeply held beliefs about education often triumph over evidence.”

So what we have been screaming about FOR YEARS.

I predict that the pendulum is going to swing too hard in the opposite direction as it always does, but for now I am going to enjoy the high that comes from finally fucking feeling seen.

Our district has a strict policy against parents working at the same school their children attend.
I started working as a lunch aide at my daughter’s school when she was in 1st grade. At the time, the district made an exception to the policy because they really needed to fill the position. I ended up loving the experience so much that it inspired me to pursue a teaching degree!
Now that I’m preparing for student teaching, I was really hoping to be placed at that same school for several reasons, but the biggest is logistics. I’m the only parent available to get my daughter to her bus stop in the morning (8:35 a.m.), and if she misses the bus, I’m also the only one who can drive her to school. Being placed at her school would make managing those responsibilities so much easier.
I know I’ll have to figure something out because policy is policy, but I’m genuinely curious about the reasoning behind it. None of the surrounding districts seem to have this restriction, and what makes it even more frustrating is that my best friend, who teaches in the next town over, actually has her own daughter in her classroom this year!
I’m not necessarily arguing that the policy should be eliminated, but I would love to understand why our district feels it’s necessary when neighboring districts seem to manage just fine without it.
Does anyone else’s district have a similar policy? If so, do you know the reasoning behind it?

I have one of those red-yellow-green light-up things. Voice level 0, voice level 1, all the way up to voice level 4 for presentations. I have used it maybe four times this year before giving up.

The kids do not care. They see the red light and keep talking. They see me switch it to yellow and keep talking. I say "we're at voice level 0" and they look at me, nod, and keep talking. I have tried making it a game, tried consequences, tried the whole "this is for you to self monitor" speech. Nothing.

I walked into a colleague's room during their prep and saw they had the same chart, same brand, still in the packaging. They said they unboxed it, looked at their roster, and put it in a drawer. We both laughed but it was that tired laugh.

I think the chart works in classrooms where kids already know how to regulate. I do not have one of those classrooms this year. The chart is now just a colorful thing on the wall that admin can point to and say I have established routines.

With all the usual doomer-posting that happens here I thought it would be a good opportunity to post some positivity. I'm on my 3rd year teaching elementary music and band. I absolutely love it and I'm having a great time. The school is small, I have good relationships with my students and my band program is growing. I do have days where I feel exhausted and stressed but I genuinely feel like I wouldn't rather be doing anything else. Anyone else have some positivity to spread?

I'm a first year teacher English teacher in 6th grade. Our school has an extra period for kids to get support in subjects they struggle with. It isn't an awful system, but it does mean I have an extra prep with kids who have a host of behavioral issues because they are struggling.

The class hasn't been bad, but every time I have handed them something to read they complain. Whatever, you're going to read it kiddo. These have been stories like "An Entire Summer in a Day," or Tupac's "The Rose That Grew From Concrete," high interest and different from what we get to read in our normal class.

For October we've been reading spooky stuff, and today I had them read along while I read "The Telltale Heart" aloud. These kids were LOCKED in. Applying their reading strategies, picking apart unknown words. I stopped to ask a question and they were ready to riot! They even wanted to read poetry afterwards and did independent analysis of "Annabelle Lee."

If this feeling came in a pill, y'all, I'd be popping them all day!

I have been in the classroom for 29 years, and I’ve noticed in recent years that some parents do not support any kind of reprimand of their child out of a private one. I do understand that there is most definitely a time and place for this, but if their child constantly disrupts or disrespects others in the room, I’m going to call them out in front of the class. I recently had a parent get hostile towards me for this very thing. Her child said something personally cruel to another student for the second time in a week. The first time , I told him that what he said was especially hurtful and he said he would never do it again. A week later, he said the same thing, to the delight of peers who were chuckling, and I called him out. His mom was very hostile towards me for ‘correcting him like that in front of the class’. I never had this issue when I first began teaching. It baffles me that parents think that their kid should never be addressed in class for behavior when their inappropriate behavior is on display for everyone.

EDIT: This is Middle School Aged.

I’m a second year hs teacher. Please tell me why parents hate is so much? The county Facebook group is going nuts! I give my all (meaning picking up extra roles and working way behind my contract hours) to this job and they think we need to give more??!! wtf!!

Has it always been like this? How do you guys separate your feelings from this shit?

I work as a co-instructor at an educational science camp for kids, and I’m not sure how to handle something I’ve noticed about one of my coworkers.
She constantly sucks on and chews her hair, repeatedly puts it in her mouth, and touches it throughout our teaching sessions. Her hair is often visibly wet from this, and she also touches shared surfaces, including the computer, afterward. I understand that this might be a stress response or just a habit, and I don’t want to make assumptions about her or embarrass her.

What concerns me is that she handles teaching materials and passes them to kids after touching her hair and mouth. Since we work with children and run hands-on activities, I’m concerned about hygiene.
There’s also a professional aspect to it. We represent an educational organization, and I feel like these habits could give students and parents a poor impression of the instructors. I know this might sound judgmental, and I don’t want to make a big deal out of someone’s personal habits, but it happens so frequently that I’ve started wondering whether I should do something about it.

I’ve already tried bringing it up gently with my coworkers, but I’m still unsure what to do next. We’re co-instructors, so I’m not her supervisor. I also don’t want to hurt her feelings or create tension between us.

Would it be unreasonable to bring this up privately with our manager? Should I leave it alone, or is it fair to raise it as a hygiene concern given that we work with kids?

I’d appreciate some outside perspectives, especially from people who’ve worked in education, summer camps, or similar environments.

The special education advocate Heather Knickerbocker occasionally crosses my feed. I think a lot of advocates are bottom-feeding scammers, but I don't hate this one. She has an education background and seems to know what she's talking about.

But today she brought up that teachers should not share with parents events that happen in the classroom, events being behavior blowups and the like. Obviously this is about protecting the privacy of the kid: don't name the kid, don't post picture of the classroom, etc. As a teacher, just advocate to administration or your union. Or something.

This leaves me with the question of what that something is. Oh, there's great administration out there, but there's also too many bad administration where the words of the teachers aren't going to do squat.

Yes, the students deserve privacy. But admin only listens to parents and a vague, pithy message home about "there was an incident in class today" is, frankly, insulting to parents who deserve classroom transparency.

I see it often advised here: inform the parents! Let their cries grease the wheel of change!

But if anything more than a cryptic note of "a student has big feelings today" exposes student privacy and administration doesn't listen to teachers, what else is there?

It just feels like "teachers should just advocate for themselves" is a lip service of a suggestion.

I have been working as a teacher at this school for three years, and I have several different roles and responsibilities. During my first two years, I noticed that one of my colleagues was putting a lot of pressure on me. She expected me to take on many tasks, but then took credit for my work.
I used to stay quiet, but this year I finally spoke up. I explained that I could not keep up with all the demands, especially because I had been given another role at the school and I am also a university student.
After that, she started criticising the quality of my lessons, even though she had never observed them. She also tried to scare me by saying that the school management would notice that I was not doing anything or was not working enough. This felt deeply unfair because I do so much for the school and have evidence of my work. She also began mocking me and saying that I was acting like a victim.
I would like to speak to the school administration, but I am afraid it could make things worse. This colleague and my manager get along very well, which makes it difficult for me to feel safe raising my concerns.
The pressure has been going on for a long time. When I finally tried to stand up for myself, I was met with ridicule and intimidation. I feel helpless and want to leave my job, but I am afraid of losing my income.

I’m 30F in TX and teaching is my second career after about 7 years in municipal government. I actually really enjoyed the community service side of local government and knew that whatever I did next, I still wanted to do something that made a difference in my community. Teaching felt like the answer.

And now I’m wondering what the heck I was thinking.

This is my first year in ANY kind of school role. I’m teaching on an emergency certificate while working through my ACP, so obviously I knew there would be a learning curve. I expected it to be hard, but I don’t think I was prepared for just how miserable these first 9 weeks would be.

I teach at a 2nd grade math at Title I school, and the behaviors are A LOT. Four of the six first grade teachers completely left the district after my current group of kids, which probably tells you something.

About half my class is girls who have now been pulled as a group by the counselor (for what can only be described as mean girl training) multiple times. All they do is bicker, call each other names, go home and tell their moms they’re being bullied, and then come back the next day as best friends. I had FIVE parents reach out directly to admin about bullying in one week. These kids will literally cry because someone looked at them funny from across the room, but then refuse to stay away from the same person they’re accusing of bullying them. I genuinely don’t even know what to do with some of it anymore because whatever the trained counselor has done has clearly not worked. The boys tend to be nice to each other but are extremely rowdy and the ones that do have behavior issues have MAJOR issues (throwing furniture, fist fights, saying they wished I was dead).

We use Bluebonnet, which splits English and math between two teachers and has us switching homerooms for the second half of the day. I have a background in finance and am comfortable with math, but this curriculum is ridiculous.

I spend pretty much ALL of my planning time and after school hours prepping for lessons because this curriculum has approximately 1,000 different manipulatives. And they’re a pain to manage with this age group. Like having to pass out 300 paper clips, (the kids started making shanks out of them). And apparently 40 minutes of “planning time” isn’t enough, because I spend a MINIMUM of 4 hours at school every weekend prepping for the following week. At least 4 hours of my weekend, at school, trying to get everything ready so I don’t completely drown the next week. This doesn’t include the multiple hours worked from home on grading and preparing slides on weeknights. The whole reason I left my previous career was because I wanted more time with my family, and now I’m spending my weekends at school instead of with my own child. That part really gets to me.

Then there are the observations from our TEA regional reps and principal. They’re CONSTANT, and it feels like all I get is a list of things I’m doing wrong without anyone actually showing me how to fix them.
I get told to work on my pacing so the lesson fits into the one-hour window the state has allotted. I’m having to stop what I’m teaching every 10 minutes to deal with some kind of behavior, and yes, some of them need extra help working through a multistep word problems when they can barely read the problem in the first place (over 40% of my kids legitimately can’t read so no they are not having the insanely complex AI conversations the state seems to think they should be having in order to finish they’re problem sets in the allotted 10 minutes..).

Now I have my first parent-teacher conferences coming up, and I’m honestly incredibly nervous about those. I’ll admit that parent communication has not been my strong suit these first 9 weeks. Out of my 22 students, I’ve probably only had meaningful communication with the parents of about a quarter of them. I wish I had done better, but between planning, behaviors, trying to keep up with the curriculum, and feeling like I’m constantly behind, it’s fallen to the bottom of the list. I know I need to work on it.

I guess I’m just trying to figure out if this is normal first-year teacher misery or if I’m in a school environment that is making an already hard job borderline impossible.

I went into teaching because I wanted to make a difference and have more time for my family. Instead, I’m miserable, constantly feel like I’m failing at my job, and spend my weekends at school preparing for the next week. I know teaching is never going to be a 9-5 job, but I genuinely don’t know how people sustain this long-term without completely burning out.

So, teachers who have been doing this for a while, does it actually get better? Is the first year just this awful, a or is it possible that I’m just in a really bad situations? I’m trying to decide if I need to give myself some grace and stick it out or if I need to seriously reconsider this career before I spend another year feeling like this.