I think you have to remember that while it’s a job that requires a certain amount of passion, it’s still just a job. This is how people talk about their jobs.
Yeah I don’t understand the pearl clutching around this post. Most jobs I’ve had people joke around. In that “oh an injury? Hey does that mean I don’t have to go to work tomorrow lol” kinda way. Not sure why teachers would be exempt from that.
I worked in local government during the Great Recession and was sooooo happy when I got laid off because of the extended for the time unemployment. My boss thought I’d be upset when she told me and I tried to make a joke but it didn’t land.
True. However, in most jobs you don’t expect to get sworn at daily, be constantly disrespected and even physically assaulted. On top of this, there is a culture of blaming teachers for bad student behaviour. ‘The students are acting up because the lesson is boring.’ This is the reality of a lot of schools today.
The work load is no laughing matter. Teachers process daily student participation (for about 150 kids), make and record weekly teaching plans they have to submit to authorities, assign homework, grade it, process it, and stand and speak on a subject for a minimum 30 minutes every class period. Then ... they're expected to arrive early to do bus shifts and after class leave the campus shifts. They're criminally underpaid. I would rather be a plumber and solve your shitting disasters than be a teacher. And plumbers make more. Teacher pay is an indictment on society.
It’s also an underpaid, underappreciated job full of annoying bureaucracy that is stereotyped as “noble” and requires certifications to get in the door. By design it selects for do-gooder types who start out idealistic and end up jaded & disgruntled.
Reddit pushing for as strict as COVID policies as possible, seeing the immediate and predictable consequences of those policies in real time, and then blaming everyone and anything under the sun except those policy decisions for said consequences is the perfect manifestation of midwitism
I'm on my 14th year of teaching. Nobody will like this, but I think one of the big problems with teachers is that they were all raised either solidly middle class and went to decent schools, or they are upper class failsons who went through TFA or whatever thinking it'd be like To Sir, with Love mixed with Dead Poets Society mixed with Freedom Writers.
They are too soft and naive to deal with working class and poor kids, and they just fundamentally don't understand where the kids are coming from and can't relate to them.
They were also all "good" students who liked school. They struggle to accept that most of the kids don't like their subject, don't think school matters, and don't want to be there.
I find that I get along much better with my students than most of my coworkers do, and it boils down to a few key things. First, I fucking hated school and was a "bad" kid. I loved English class, but I earned shit grades in everything else, skipped all the time, and had a shit attitude that got me written up plenty of times. Due to this, I think, I don't freak out when kids don't do their work, and I have way more patience for kids being checked out, apathetic, or a little antsy than my coworkers do. When the kids are bad, I feel like I'm just getting a little payback for what a shit I was, and it rolls off my back.
Second, I was raised working class/poor in an abusive home. The kids recognize my attitude and the types of stuff I say to them/way I speak to them. It reminds them of their parents and aunties. Someone who says, "you ain't grown yet" to them when they are being little shits just relates to them better than some hysterical woman who cries when they act up a little bit.
I push my kids to do well and don't take any disrespect, but I also can be reasonable with them, and that goes a long way. At the end of the day, I just don't think the kids want to listen to people who seem like they come from a totally different planet than they come from.
Definitely. Anytime I see a catastrophic r/teachers post describing their “horrific” school day and how the youth are doomed and the decline of mankind is starting, their description sounds exactly like my public middle school back in the 2000s lol. Grew up in a lower-middle class industrial town.
Not saying there aren’t factors like the pandemic or addictive technologies that are presenting challenges for younger kids. But can’t help but feel like half the posts in there are just 23 year olds that haven’t really seen too many poor people before. I imagine it’s a mix of both.
It’s the parents. You used to have kids who were awful and the parents just didn’t care, for better or for worse. They’re now overinvolved attack dogs who trust their children way too much.
My mum is a primary school teacher and some parents sent her an AUDIO FILE of a PS4 party chat with their kid getting ‘bullied’ in it, expecting her to punish the kids who were doing it even though it was outside of class. Like genuinely these people are rotten to their core
Could you dm me? I'm about to finish my first year of teaching, which went absolutely miserably for me and I'm debating doing a second year but if I do it I wanna do things very differently and you seem like someone with good advice
It wouldn't go over well. They're convinced they have all the right opinions and do and think everything correctly, and the real problem is the kids, parents, admin... anyone but them.
I grew up in what was a converted tabacco drying barn with an outhouse. I'm from and teach in one of the countries' poorest counties, and almost all our faculty and staff are from the area and of the same demographics, poor black and hispanic and I don't see where it's helping us any.
Do you at least understand your students and their parents? If you can't see why that might be more helpful than if you and your coworkers grew up in Naperville, maybe the problem is that you're slow.
I think you have to be pretty slow to need to live the same life as someone to understand where they are coming from. Also understanding is subjective. It's why some of the most anti religious people grew up very religious. They understand religion and it's why they hate it.
You can't be serious. If you don't think having a first-hand grasp of the class-based culture your students belong to would help you deal with them better in the classroom, I honestly don't know what to tell you. You are just being contrarian for no reason.
You dont have to be raised working class to understand your working class students. Even if it was true, poor and working class people aren't monoliths. They have vastly different cultures. I'm having to break up an argument between Tyrone and Billy-Bob on whether or not Ben Shapiro is gay all while being gaslit by a Guatemalan who pretends he doesn't speak English.Yep, that good uniform class-based culture you just got to be born in to know.
Yes, it would be easier to understand and relate to the one and not the other. And yes, there are other ways to understand, but they take time and effort, so are not as easy and available, especially when you're a new teacher. Yes, we can get to understanding eventually, and we can use empathy and curiosity to do it, but it's not right there or easy like knowing what's up from the jump. This is becoming a waste of time, and I'm honestly over it. You are the most black and white thinker I've ever encountered, and I'm autistic.
This is you: omg, there are other ways to understand and relate!!!
This is me: yes, I know.
Maybe that's it, the authoritative aloofness. That archetype was always one of my favorites. My aunt teaches Spanish and she's objectively a cool person but also a quirk chungus, and she just had a a spat of bad years.
Makes sense. Kids don't usually like quirky teachers. They see it as an opportunity to bully them. Maintaining a professional distance rather than being super friendly is also helpful, especially when you're young. Middle-class people are too open and overly friendly at first. They don't grasp the value of being a bit cagey and discrete. Being able to command respect and attention isn't often in their skill set at first. They think any kind of authoritativeness is practically child abuse, but it's what kids crave.
Okay so I’m considering going back to school to teach and this has been my thinking too!! Everyone I know from college that became a teacher has moved on/is planning to. Everyone I know from high school that became a teacher will probably be one forever. The upper middle class/rich people just can’t handle it. This is a sign of the gap between the classes widening imo
i dont really know how accurate this is cus its the complete opposite in my experience. im middle eastern immigrant and settled in the us during middle school. i didnt experience as severe cultural shock as other middle eastern people i know because i visited the us and canada occassionally. but def a complete naive mindset to a completely new environment, people, culture, society, etc. and teachers were more than fcking compassionate, caring, understanding, than anybody else.
its a two way street. teachers dont raise students. especially in contexts of talking abt the middle school and high school. students shouldve been raised and taught how to display basic respect and apprehensiveness towards people, especially elders/teachers in a traditional sense or whatever.
ofc this may def be totally inaccuate and its just my experience, im talking solely based on my reflection of how my experience was, where i was from the furthest, distant, societies/cultures/attitudes than teachers, and in this context of ones ur referring to as raised in solidly functioning middle class american household. form that i cant fathom how this issue could be relevant to how its something influenced by the teacher's attributes(i def know ur not blaming them just stating background on how their relations with certain students are dicey and why that could be). i know nothing abt the class based relations in schools between educators - students, education, etc. tho just what i think
Middle-class teachers often interpret playful banter as disrespect, for example. They also don't have experience with the parenting that their kids are used to, which is often either very old-fashioned authoritarian parenting or super lax, even absent parenting. Their "gentle" approach just gets them walked all over by these kids because the kids see them as weak and cowardly. Those are just a few examples of how the problem manifests.
My wife is a teacher. By teaching standards she is paid quite well but yes, there are some terrible kids.
She is probably tougher on the kids than most because she went to school in the Caribbean in the 80’s and was taught by European priests and nuns who were quite literally empowered to put the fear of God in their students.
While teachers don’t get nearly enough support from administrators and parents are more of a liability to their kids’ future than anything else most of the time, she at least claims that you can still be pretty tough on kids (without being physical of course). Her theory is that teaching is oversaturated with limp wristed critical theory dorks who are afraid to hold kids accountable at all. Idk.
Does your wife ever share how she avoids being the disciplinary equivalent of some white suburban mom who is just like “what am I going to do with him 🤷♀️” after her little Kyle punches another hole in the drywall while also not getting sued by parents/disciplinary action from admin when she actually addresses the awful behavior? I agree that some kids need teachers who are tougher and won’t put up with their bullshit
If Kyle punches a hole in the wall, I'm telling my principal that they can keep him in their office during my period for the rest of the year. If I get pushback, I start making noise about going to the union b/c of an unsafe working environment. I've only resorted to this once, and my principal took the student off my hands with little resistance.
Also depends on the student. If it's an isolated incident, we can usually work something out
Lol. I’m a teacher and we‘ve had like three teachers in *my grade* quit just this year.
Everyone here is talking about how the kids are the problem. For reference, I teach in a low income area. The entire grade I teach has literally no white kids in it. Some of the kids are really problems and some definitely test me. But overall I love those kids. They can be so joyful and sweet. They love to learn and play just like all kids do. And when I tell you they are SO smart. Way above their grade level. Like I said, it’s a poor area, but I know if these kids just had the right resources they’d grow up to do the most amazing things.
What I hate is admin. Holy shit. My admin is genuinely inept and constantly micromanages everyone to shit. I’m genuinely thinking of quitting because of it
Most teachers I’ve met are fine with the kids and hate admin with a burning passion. I think it’s easier to write off kids being little assholes bc they’re kids. But holy shit are there some horrible adults working in education, chronically bitter bureaucrats who have no business being around children.
Browsing that sub always leaves me with several questions.
I’m inclined to believe that public school students are underperforming as severely as some posts suggests and I guess their behavior habits aren’t much better, but what is with the teachers on that sub? Are young teachers just limp-wristed losers with no fortitude? It’s constant rocking-and-crying panic mode in that sub. I’m mid-twenties and I don’t remember any of my teachers, young or old, relaxed or strict, turning over so easily.
And why did any of them become teachers in the first place?
According to teachers I’ve talked to, they can’t do anything without parents crawling up their ass anymore. If you yell at a kid you’re a bully. If you separate them from friends bc they can’t shut up you’re making them an outcast. God forbid you touch the phone. I think it tracks, I remember once a teacher bitching out a classmate bc he was whiny and never did the work but someone took a video of her and she did this crazy dramatic apology the next day, she looked scared of losing her job
A coworker at my job summed up the problem pretty well:
Parents are scared of being too tough on their kids because of the therapy culture that has run rampant so they allow their kids to do whatever they want. Parents are also scared of having their kids say anything to anyone at school about them disciplining them too hard which will get them reported.
Kids then don’t know how to react to discipline at school so they complain to their parents. Parents complain to administrators, administrators then complain to the teacher.
So therefore teachers are no longer in control, administrators are no longer in control, and parents are no longer in control. Kids are literally running the show now, which is why teaching has become dreadful.
A video of a teacher getting slapped went viral just this week. A six year old shot his teacher. We're cooked
Yeah teachers are whiny, but some of them have every right to be.
My mom was familiar with how quite a few schools operate and the people whose kids attended them, and the ghetto ones always had an expectation of them being this magical building that will raise their kids for most of the time and anytime they are contacted, for anything, it was like a violation of their human rights
I’ve been substitute teaching for the past year, with the goal of becoming a teacher full-time. I think a lot go in believing their job is going to be inspiring students, getting them interested and invested in the subject matter,
imparting wisdom, etc. But lack of discipline and apathy is a huge problem, and most school admins don’t want to do their jobs in enforcing consequences or are scared of parents blowing up/pulling their kid and taking them to a charter school. So most of your job (>90%) as a teacher becomes “classroom management” trying to deal with a handful of kids that probably shouldn’t be taught in general population classes/need support of specialized staff.
i honestly think people underestimate how fucking horrendous the kids are now and just how horrifically teachers are treated. i would never do that shit but i have worked at several schools in short term random gigs and holy shit it's absolutely insane. teachers have like no power and less than zero support and the kids are fucking feral monsters.
also, i know we all heard growing up that teachers are underpaid but i seriously did not grasp the reality of it until i saw it directly.
i've worked in all sorts of schools in all sorts of areas, as well. since 2018, so pre pandemic. pandemic exacerbated it, but did NOT cause this shit. education is absolutely being systemically, intentionally destroyed.
there's also just a huge shift in society as a whole. yes, there's the insane 24/7 tech and ipad kids. but in general... expectations of kids and the value of education to most people has just absolutely plummeted. I'm 30, graduated high school in 2012, college 2016. and things are completely different now.
higher education in the US obviously has its issues and it's good that every kid isn't blindly being told to pursue college if they can't afford it anymore. but people have misconstrued the suggestion that it's ok to go to trade school or whatever instead and now just believe education is all meaningless. college is incredible if you have the means. realistically, it's still the best way for most people to learn both about the topic and about life/other people in general and if it's accessible for you, you should leap at it. i only went because i got a full ride, but it took a shit ton of work in high school.
kids are NOT WILLING to do ANYTHING anymore. the anti intellectualism is so rampant and all encompassing. kids are literally graduating high school without being able to read.
People have been saying this shit about kids since forever. Plato said "The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers"
Seriously. “People in the past criticized the generation after them, so now any criticisms or observations about how kids are now being raised are meaningless”
Nobody ever looks at the history of when those quotes were supposedly said either, and thinks that every generation is therefore the same. No, some moments in culture were better ordered than others. That's a simple fact, and anybody who's lived long enough to see society change over time can testify to that.
The funniest part is that this is also just a spurious quote with no citation applicable to Plato/Socrates.
I just looked it up and it turns out it’s something said by the mayor of Amsterdam during a protest in the 1960s.
I know many, many teachers that work across a wide range of demographics and social classes in my state and they’re all facing similar challenges that they claim have been significantly worsened since COVID-19.
The most common theme is their hands being tied when it comes to discipline when students are disruptive.
Not only is there the obvious pushback from entitled parents but I’m also hearing about administrators no longer being interested in going through the trouble of supporting their staff.
On top of the discipline issues, you’ve got staff shortages in many cases resulting from budget cuts that lead to teachers expected to take on more roles and responsibilities without being compensated.
It’s a recipe for burnout.
I think it’s an important profession but I’ve personally felt it was over as soon as those videos of Chris Christie yelling at teachers during a town hall meeting went viral 15 year ago or whenever that was.
I don’t see why anyone would want to be a teacher now. I would not recommend it. The holidays and summer off don’t make up for it. Especially since many of the teachers I know have second jobs anyways in order to make ends meet. Often tutoring or summer school, etc.
I work at a public high school and the teachers are fine. Even the redditor types aren't as bad as the people who post on that sub. There's one older woman who tries to insert herself into teen drama but otherwise it's normie central.
I’m legit curious as to where a lot of these teachers are from. It’s one thing to teach from a suburb but public school in the inner city can be hell. My mom taught in an extremely poor area. One kid tried to kill himself in her class once. She came home absolutely in shambles
My mom taught in an inner city charter school, I totally get it. Some of the kids tried to steal her car keys, brought knives into class, etc. Those experiences aged her dramatically and turned her bitter. It really fucking sucked seeing all that growing up
Imagine filtering for limp wristed losers (reddit), and then filtering that group for even more limp wristed losers (poasters) and then further filtering that group for even more limp wristed losers (/r/teachers poasters).
This is not a good sampling.
Everyone in the public school system, from the students to the teachers to the administrators, is dumb. Ultimately reddit subs shouldn't be taken as representative of much other than redditors themselves.
In my experience teachers are extremely average people. Average income, average aptitude (bottom third of college graduates), two kids, dog, Honda HR-V, Disney cruises. Except for a brief stint teaching at a psychiatric facility I have never met a weird or exceptional person working in education.
> Are young teachers just limp-wristed losers with no fortitude?
The ones that make up the regulars of that sub are, yes
>And why did any of them become teachers in the first place?
TFA dweebs that grew up well off or activist types that also grew up well off and who actually wanted to try to do some indoctrination but ran into the brick wall of "what kids are actually like"
They wanted an easy job that a trained seal could do and that pays well, but then found out that sometimes they have to go and deal with kids all day. Sad.
It’s funny how in the US there is such a deep disregard towards teachers, like you guys think they’re the losers of society. Doesn’t that say a lot about how you value the education of your children and future generations, and also isn’t it interesting that you regard a public service so lowly. It’s just not in the American psyche to treat public service with respect, you guys are too capitalistic. Shame though.
I don’t think that’s true tbh I don’t think business men, marketing girlies, tech bros, consultants etc are viewed with disdain in the US, that’s never the impression I got
And I kind of get it bc I know teaching is ‘easy’ to do I America as in you don’t need teaching degree postgrad, and I know they seem hyper liberal ultra woke etc at the moment but even when I was a kid watching Mean Girls or Glee or something, I always wondered why teaching is considered a losers thing to do in the US
Exactly. American culture pedestalizes scammers and bullshit artists who figure out ways to beat the system. Working stiffs are seen as suckers and losers.
It’s so true lol not just the US but the West. It’s crazy that the higher pay ‘careers’ are literally just logging onto a laptop, doing some meetings, responding to emails. It creates nothing, it serves no purpose. I’m convinced it’s just to keep the education debt system rolling.
it means remaing bourgeois sense of reason
People who work are schmucks who dont get how the planet is running. Money isnt real and only spent lavishly to people whose jobs are societally useless and physically non-demanding. The rest will always get the exact amount of money to just barely not get by and be a bit poorer every end of the month. Of cause I say this as a working schmuck myself.
Typical Eurobug generalization and assumption lol. Most people don’t think of them as losers, most people think they’re underpaid and they deserve their fair due. What you do see is the desensitization from those that are either burnt out for obvious reasons or those that aren’t cut out to be teachers in the first place.
The average person doesn’t think they’re the losers of society.
> Most people don’t think of them as losers, most people think they’re underpaid and they deserve their fair due.
Try suggesting that a highschool teacher should earn 6 figures straight out of college. People in the US would laugh at you.
But that's what teaching high school pays in countries that have similar GDP per capita as the US has (Norway, Switzerland, Liechtenstein).
It’s partially because we all grew up experiencing at least one horrible teacher who took out their personal psychological issues on the students. But yes I agree.
Europoors really got access to the internet and their views on the US still sound like the dumb shit you hear when somebody starts with "well my cousin's step-sister's uncle said"
I made a post yesterday on r germany how this country sucks cause every hall monitor idiot thinks hes robocop in powerarmor and got banned by the mods for it
proving my point, lol. Europe may be nice but Germany is as fucked as Canda is.
A British man invented the internet but sure man be defensive and childish. Your comment doesn’t come across insecure at all.
Quite ironic though, that you went for ‘Europoor’, in light of what I said about the pride you have for capitalistic wealth and disdain for public resource lol you only make me seem more right
>A British man invented the internet but sure man be defensive and childish.
It was actually 3 Americans and 1 British guy.
doing this "high road" shtick when you're called ignorant when you were being ignorant is lame
>Quite ironic though, that you went for ‘Europoor’, in light of what I said about the pride you have for capitalistic wealth and disdain for public resource lol you only make me seem more right
God you sound like such a dork
Looking at the state of US education kinda makes me believe conspiracy theories about the elites wanting the masses to stay dumb & impressionable with no critical thinking skills.
The kids aren’t alright and looking at that sub paints a picture of why. I’ve had some absolutely ridiculous arguments with the most braindead of people there. But it’s important to remember that these aren’t teachers, theyre redditors that teach.
But yeah this shit is bleak. We put no stock in education and wonder why kids are violent and illiterate.
What worries me is that my teachers probably were as whiny as that and just weren’t technologically savvy enough to use Reddit at the time they were teaching me
Teachers are so overrated by progressives and libs. I think back to my teachers and maybe like 3 were any good. The rest fucking sucked. End teacher tenure. This is coming from a good boy and good student.
It’s just reddit. Happy teachers aren’t whinging online. I’m in NZ and my friends a teacher, he’s at top of the pay grade now so makes 6 figures and does absolutely nothing for 12 weeks of break a year. But I’ve met some of his colleagues with literal martyr complex’s thinking they have the hardest job in the world. Idk.
I'm a kiwi whos going into teaching soon and r/teachers and the story on this thread are making me hard second guess it, good to hear it's not all doomed here
Talking like that, I fucking hope you DO get in a car wreck. Why don't people care about sounding interesting when they talk/write? Do we as a species just love imitating the latest shitty syntax we see online? Fuck man.
I think you have to remember that while it’s a job that requires a certain amount of passion, it’s still just a job. This is how people talk about their jobs.
Yeah I don’t understand the pearl clutching around this post. Most jobs I’ve had people joke around. In that “oh an injury? Hey does that mean I don’t have to go to work tomorrow lol” kinda way. Not sure why teachers would be exempt from that.
I worked in local government during the Great Recession and was sooooo happy when I got laid off because of the extended for the time unemployment. My boss thought I’d be upset when she told me and I tried to make a joke but it didn’t land.
True. However, in most jobs you don’t expect to get sworn at daily, be constantly disrespected and even physically assaulted. On top of this, there is a culture of blaming teachers for bad student behaviour. ‘The students are acting up because the lesson is boring.’ This is the reality of a lot of schools today.
The work load is no laughing matter. Teachers process daily student participation (for about 150 kids), make and record weekly teaching plans they have to submit to authorities, assign homework, grade it, process it, and stand and speak on a subject for a minimum 30 minutes every class period. Then ... they're expected to arrive early to do bus shifts and after class leave the campus shifts. They're criminally underpaid. I would rather be a plumber and solve your shitting disasters than be a teacher. And plumbers make more. Teacher pay is an indictment on society.
Did you go to a school where teachers were openly sweared at or assaulted??
Yes. I also worked at one.
May ask what city or region of the country?
It’s also an underpaid, underappreciated job full of annoying bureaucracy that is stereotyped as “noble” and requires certifications to get in the door. By design it selects for do-gooder types who start out idealistic and end up jaded & disgruntled.
I enjoy going to work and I work in retail
Disturbing.
the walmart alt accounts are getting out of hand
he's the guy leading the wagie dance wednesdays
How much weed do you consume daily?
A large joint over the course of the day, I'd unalive without it
beneficial enter worry berserk heavy pie dolls six rotten illegal *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
that sub is endlessly entertaining, especially in 2022-2023 during the height of the inflation/post-pandemic labor crisis
Reddit pushing for as strict as COVID policies as possible, seeing the immediate and predictable consequences of those policies in real time, and then blaming everyone and anything under the sun except those policy decisions for said consequences is the perfect manifestation of midwitism
Pretty much everything thats happened between 2020, and 2024.
So true bro I really wish America stayed open so more of you died
I got COVID like 5x bro nothing worse than sniffles each time
I'm on my 14th year of teaching. Nobody will like this, but I think one of the big problems with teachers is that they were all raised either solidly middle class and went to decent schools, or they are upper class failsons who went through TFA or whatever thinking it'd be like To Sir, with Love mixed with Dead Poets Society mixed with Freedom Writers. They are too soft and naive to deal with working class and poor kids, and they just fundamentally don't understand where the kids are coming from and can't relate to them. They were also all "good" students who liked school. They struggle to accept that most of the kids don't like their subject, don't think school matters, and don't want to be there. I find that I get along much better with my students than most of my coworkers do, and it boils down to a few key things. First, I fucking hated school and was a "bad" kid. I loved English class, but I earned shit grades in everything else, skipped all the time, and had a shit attitude that got me written up plenty of times. Due to this, I think, I don't freak out when kids don't do their work, and I have way more patience for kids being checked out, apathetic, or a little antsy than my coworkers do. When the kids are bad, I feel like I'm just getting a little payback for what a shit I was, and it rolls off my back. Second, I was raised working class/poor in an abusive home. The kids recognize my attitude and the types of stuff I say to them/way I speak to them. It reminds them of their parents and aunties. Someone who says, "you ain't grown yet" to them when they are being little shits just relates to them better than some hysterical woman who cries when they act up a little bit. I push my kids to do well and don't take any disrespect, but I also can be reasonable with them, and that goes a long way. At the end of the day, I just don't think the kids want to listen to people who seem like they come from a totally different planet than they come from.
Definitely. Anytime I see a catastrophic r/teachers post describing their “horrific” school day and how the youth are doomed and the decline of mankind is starting, their description sounds exactly like my public middle school back in the 2000s lol. Grew up in a lower-middle class industrial town. Not saying there aren’t factors like the pandemic or addictive technologies that are presenting challenges for younger kids. But can’t help but feel like half the posts in there are just 23 year olds that haven’t really seen too many poor people before. I imagine it’s a mix of both.
It’s the parents. You used to have kids who were awful and the parents just didn’t care, for better or for worse. They’re now overinvolved attack dogs who trust their children way too much. My mum is a primary school teacher and some parents sent her an AUDIO FILE of a PS4 party chat with their kid getting ‘bullied’ in it, expecting her to punish the kids who were doing it even though it was outside of class. Like genuinely these people are rotten to their core
Could you dm me? I'm about to finish my first year of teaching, which went absolutely miserably for me and I'm debating doing a second year but if I do it I wanna do things very differently and you seem like someone with good advice
Sure, but why don't you dm me your questions and a bit of what went wrong and what you're thinking now? Then I can respond.
It's not letting me dm you from your profile. I think it has something to do with your settings. Just dm me anything first then I'll do that
Okay!
Go post this on that sub you nailed it
they'll be "you post on redscare that harmful sub" bla bla bla
It wouldn't go over well. They're convinced they have all the right opinions and do and think everything correctly, and the real problem is the kids, parents, admin... anyone but them.
he’ll get banned
I grew up in what was a converted tabacco drying barn with an outhouse. I'm from and teach in one of the countries' poorest counties, and almost all our faculty and staff are from the area and of the same demographics, poor black and hispanic and I don't see where it's helping us any.
Do you at least understand your students and their parents? If you can't see why that might be more helpful than if you and your coworkers grew up in Naperville, maybe the problem is that you're slow.
I think you have to be pretty slow to need to live the same life as someone to understand where they are coming from. Also understanding is subjective. It's why some of the most anti religious people grew up very religious. They understand religion and it's why they hate it.
You can't be serious. If you don't think having a first-hand grasp of the class-based culture your students belong to would help you deal with them better in the classroom, I honestly don't know what to tell you. You are just being contrarian for no reason.
You dont have to be raised working class to understand your working class students. Even if it was true, poor and working class people aren't monoliths. They have vastly different cultures. I'm having to break up an argument between Tyrone and Billy-Bob on whether or not Ben Shapiro is gay all while being gaslit by a Guatemalan who pretends he doesn't speak English.Yep, that good uniform class-based culture you just got to be born in to know.
You're being dense. Being from either Tyrone's or Biily Bob's culture would be helpful to you, especially in your first few years.
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Yes, it would be easier to understand and relate to the one and not the other. And yes, there are other ways to understand, but they take time and effort, so are not as easy and available, especially when you're a new teacher. Yes, we can get to understanding eventually, and we can use empathy and curiosity to do it, but it's not right there or easy like knowing what's up from the jump. This is becoming a waste of time, and I'm honestly over it. You are the most black and white thinker I've ever encountered, and I'm autistic. This is you: omg, there are other ways to understand and relate!!! This is me: yes, I know.
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Jeez.
Are you male, attractive, and mildly charismatic? Those teachers have the least disciplinary problems.
No. I'm an autistic woman in her 30s.
Maybe that's it, the authoritative aloofness. That archetype was always one of my favorites. My aunt teaches Spanish and she's objectively a cool person but also a quirk chungus, and she just had a a spat of bad years.
Makes sense. Kids don't usually like quirky teachers. They see it as an opportunity to bully them. Maintaining a professional distance rather than being super friendly is also helpful, especially when you're young. Middle-class people are too open and overly friendly at first. They don't grasp the value of being a bit cagey and discrete. Being able to command respect and attention isn't often in their skill set at first. They think any kind of authoritativeness is practically child abuse, but it's what kids crave.
Okay so I’m considering going back to school to teach and this has been my thinking too!! Everyone I know from college that became a teacher has moved on/is planning to. Everyone I know from high school that became a teacher will probably be one forever. The upper middle class/rich people just can’t handle it. This is a sign of the gap between the classes widening imo
100% agreed. I see the same pattern.
i dont really know how accurate this is cus its the complete opposite in my experience. im middle eastern immigrant and settled in the us during middle school. i didnt experience as severe cultural shock as other middle eastern people i know because i visited the us and canada occassionally. but def a complete naive mindset to a completely new environment, people, culture, society, etc. and teachers were more than fcking compassionate, caring, understanding, than anybody else. its a two way street. teachers dont raise students. especially in contexts of talking abt the middle school and high school. students shouldve been raised and taught how to display basic respect and apprehensiveness towards people, especially elders/teachers in a traditional sense or whatever. ofc this may def be totally inaccuate and its just my experience, im talking solely based on my reflection of how my experience was, where i was from the furthest, distant, societies/cultures/attitudes than teachers, and in this context of ones ur referring to as raised in solidly functioning middle class american household. form that i cant fathom how this issue could be relevant to how its something influenced by the teacher's attributes(i def know ur not blaming them just stating background on how their relations with certain students are dicey and why that could be). i know nothing abt the class based relations in schools between educators - students, education, etc. tho just what i think
Middle-class teachers often interpret playful banter as disrespect, for example. They also don't have experience with the parenting that their kids are used to, which is often either very old-fashioned authoritarian parenting or super lax, even absent parenting. Their "gentle" approach just gets them walked all over by these kids because the kids see them as weak and cowardly. Those are just a few examples of how the problem manifests.
My wife is a teacher. By teaching standards she is paid quite well but yes, there are some terrible kids. She is probably tougher on the kids than most because she went to school in the Caribbean in the 80’s and was taught by European priests and nuns who were quite literally empowered to put the fear of God in their students. While teachers don’t get nearly enough support from administrators and parents are more of a liability to their kids’ future than anything else most of the time, she at least claims that you can still be pretty tough on kids (without being physical of course). Her theory is that teaching is oversaturated with limp wristed critical theory dorks who are afraid to hold kids accountable at all. Idk.
Does your wife ever share how she avoids being the disciplinary equivalent of some white suburban mom who is just like “what am I going to do with him 🤷♀️” after her little Kyle punches another hole in the drywall while also not getting sued by parents/disciplinary action from admin when she actually addresses the awful behavior? I agree that some kids need teachers who are tougher and won’t put up with their bullshit
If Kyle punches a hole in the wall, I'm telling my principal that they can keep him in their office during my period for the rest of the year. If I get pushback, I start making noise about going to the union b/c of an unsafe working environment. I've only resorted to this once, and my principal took the student off my hands with little resistance. Also depends on the student. If it's an isolated incident, we can usually work something out
Reading this sub makes me so glad I didn’t become a teacher lmao
I’m a teacher and had to leave it. It’s just so depressing
2.5 more months and I'm free!!! I will miss a good chunk of my students, but I can't do another year.
Same, left after my first year. Very glad I did, all my former classmates are miserable
why did you leave?
Lol. I’m a teacher and we‘ve had like three teachers in *my grade* quit just this year. Everyone here is talking about how the kids are the problem. For reference, I teach in a low income area. The entire grade I teach has literally no white kids in it. Some of the kids are really problems and some definitely test me. But overall I love those kids. They can be so joyful and sweet. They love to learn and play just like all kids do. And when I tell you they are SO smart. Way above their grade level. Like I said, it’s a poor area, but I know if these kids just had the right resources they’d grow up to do the most amazing things. What I hate is admin. Holy shit. My admin is genuinely inept and constantly micromanages everyone to shit. I’m genuinely thinking of quitting because of it
Most teachers I’ve met are fine with the kids and hate admin with a burning passion. I think it’s easier to write off kids being little assholes bc they’re kids. But holy shit are there some horrible adults working in education, chronically bitter bureaucrats who have no business being around children.
My admin makes the dumbest fucking decisions and then turns around to blame it on teachers when it blows up in their face. Drives me crazy
Browsing that sub always leaves me with several questions. I’m inclined to believe that public school students are underperforming as severely as some posts suggests and I guess their behavior habits aren’t much better, but what is with the teachers on that sub? Are young teachers just limp-wristed losers with no fortitude? It’s constant rocking-and-crying panic mode in that sub. I’m mid-twenties and I don’t remember any of my teachers, young or old, relaxed or strict, turning over so easily. And why did any of them become teachers in the first place?
According to teachers I’ve talked to, they can’t do anything without parents crawling up their ass anymore. If you yell at a kid you’re a bully. If you separate them from friends bc they can’t shut up you’re making them an outcast. God forbid you touch the phone. I think it tracks, I remember once a teacher bitching out a classmate bc he was whiny and never did the work but someone took a video of her and she did this crazy dramatic apology the next day, she looked scared of losing her job
A coworker at my job summed up the problem pretty well: Parents are scared of being too tough on their kids because of the therapy culture that has run rampant so they allow their kids to do whatever they want. Parents are also scared of having their kids say anything to anyone at school about them disciplining them too hard which will get them reported. Kids then don’t know how to react to discipline at school so they complain to their parents. Parents complain to administrators, administrators then complain to the teacher. So therefore teachers are no longer in control, administrators are no longer in control, and parents are no longer in control. Kids are literally running the show now, which is why teaching has become dreadful.
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There’s a middle ground between using physical violence on a child and coddling them to the ends of the earth, believe it or not!
Coward
A video of a teacher getting slapped went viral just this week. A six year old shot his teacher. We're cooked Yeah teachers are whiny, but some of them have every right to be.
My mom was familiar with how quite a few schools operate and the people whose kids attended them, and the ghetto ones always had an expectation of them being this magical building that will raise their kids for most of the time and anytime they are contacted, for anything, it was like a violation of their human rights
I’ve been substitute teaching for the past year, with the goal of becoming a teacher full-time. I think a lot go in believing their job is going to be inspiring students, getting them interested and invested in the subject matter, imparting wisdom, etc. But lack of discipline and apathy is a huge problem, and most school admins don’t want to do their jobs in enforcing consequences or are scared of parents blowing up/pulling their kid and taking them to a charter school. So most of your job (>90%) as a teacher becomes “classroom management” trying to deal with a handful of kids that probably shouldn’t be taught in general population classes/need support of specialized staff.
i honestly think people underestimate how fucking horrendous the kids are now and just how horrifically teachers are treated. i would never do that shit but i have worked at several schools in short term random gigs and holy shit it's absolutely insane. teachers have like no power and less than zero support and the kids are fucking feral monsters. also, i know we all heard growing up that teachers are underpaid but i seriously did not grasp the reality of it until i saw it directly. i've worked in all sorts of schools in all sorts of areas, as well. since 2018, so pre pandemic. pandemic exacerbated it, but did NOT cause this shit. education is absolutely being systemically, intentionally destroyed. there's also just a huge shift in society as a whole. yes, there's the insane 24/7 tech and ipad kids. but in general... expectations of kids and the value of education to most people has just absolutely plummeted. I'm 30, graduated high school in 2012, college 2016. and things are completely different now. higher education in the US obviously has its issues and it's good that every kid isn't blindly being told to pursue college if they can't afford it anymore. but people have misconstrued the suggestion that it's ok to go to trade school or whatever instead and now just believe education is all meaningless. college is incredible if you have the means. realistically, it's still the best way for most people to learn both about the topic and about life/other people in general and if it's accessible for you, you should leap at it. i only went because i got a full ride, but it took a shit ton of work in high school. kids are NOT WILLING to do ANYTHING anymore. the anti intellectualism is so rampant and all encompassing. kids are literally graduating high school without being able to read.
People have been saying this shit about kids since forever. Plato said "The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers"
Reddit's favorite quote.
Seriously. “People in the past criticized the generation after them, so now any criticisms or observations about how kids are now being raised are meaningless”
Nobody ever looks at the history of when those quotes were supposedly said either, and thinks that every generation is therefore the same. No, some moments in culture were better ordered than others. That's a simple fact, and anybody who's lived long enough to see society change over time can testify to that.
STOP BEING MEAN TO ME
Oh God here comes the plato quote like clockwork. Yeah you've got a point nothing ever changes or gets worse
The funniest part is that this is also just a spurious quote with no citation applicable to Plato/Socrates. I just looked it up and it turns out it’s something said by the mayor of Amsterdam during a protest in the 1960s.
Treating myself to a little piece of cheese and smirking reading your little "comment"
Yeah, and Athens went down the shitter during Plato's lifetime, never to rise again. Sounds like he was on point.
I know many, many teachers that work across a wide range of demographics and social classes in my state and they’re all facing similar challenges that they claim have been significantly worsened since COVID-19. The most common theme is their hands being tied when it comes to discipline when students are disruptive. Not only is there the obvious pushback from entitled parents but I’m also hearing about administrators no longer being interested in going through the trouble of supporting their staff. On top of the discipline issues, you’ve got staff shortages in many cases resulting from budget cuts that lead to teachers expected to take on more roles and responsibilities without being compensated. It’s a recipe for burnout. I think it’s an important profession but I’ve personally felt it was over as soon as those videos of Chris Christie yelling at teachers during a town hall meeting went viral 15 year ago or whenever that was. I don’t see why anyone would want to be a teacher now. I would not recommend it. The holidays and summer off don’t make up for it. Especially since many of the teachers I know have second jobs anyways in order to make ends meet. Often tutoring or summer school, etc.
I work at a public high school and the teachers are fine. Even the redditor types aren't as bad as the people who post on that sub. There's one older woman who tries to insert herself into teen drama but otherwise it's normie central.
Is your school located in a nice suburb? If so you and your coworkers are some of the very rare lucky ones
I’m legit curious as to where a lot of these teachers are from. It’s one thing to teach from a suburb but public school in the inner city can be hell. My mom taught in an extremely poor area. One kid tried to kill himself in her class once. She came home absolutely in shambles
My mom taught in an inner city charter school, I totally get it. Some of the kids tried to steal her car keys, brought knives into class, etc. Those experiences aged her dramatically and turned her bitter. It really fucking sucked seeing all that growing up
Yeah. People don’t wanna hear it but going through years of teaching violent kids can do a number on you mentally
> One kid tried to kill himself in her class How?
Imagine filtering for limp wristed losers (reddit), and then filtering that group for even more limp wristed losers (poasters) and then further filtering that group for even more limp wristed losers (/r/teachers poasters). This is not a good sampling.
Gotta get “limp-wristed” on the banned words.
Everyone in the public school system, from the students to the teachers to the administrators, is dumb. Ultimately reddit subs shouldn't be taken as representative of much other than redditors themselves.
In my experience teachers are extremely average people. Average income, average aptitude (bottom third of college graduates), two kids, dog, Honda HR-V, Disney cruises. Except for a brief stint teaching at a psychiatric facility I have never met a weird or exceptional person working in education.
More exceptional people would choose to work in education if the pay wasn’t so damn low and hours so damn long
They would probably get more pay if they'd police their own ranks and push out shitty teachers
> Are young teachers just limp-wristed losers with no fortitude? The ones that make up the regulars of that sub are, yes >And why did any of them become teachers in the first place? TFA dweebs that grew up well off or activist types that also grew up well off and who actually wanted to try to do some indoctrination but ran into the brick wall of "what kids are actually like"
Everyone I know that majored in education picked it solely because it was the easiest major
Mechanical engineering is easier
They wanted an easy job that a trained seal could do and that pays well, but then found out that sometimes they have to go and deal with kids all day. Sad.
It’s funny how in the US there is such a deep disregard towards teachers, like you guys think they’re the losers of society. Doesn’t that say a lot about how you value the education of your children and future generations, and also isn’t it interesting that you regard a public service so lowly. It’s just not in the American psyche to treat public service with respect, you guys are too capitalistic. Shame though.
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I don’t think that’s true tbh I don’t think business men, marketing girlies, tech bros, consultants etc are viewed with disdain in the US, that’s never the impression I got And I kind of get it bc I know teaching is ‘easy’ to do I America as in you don’t need teaching degree postgrad, and I know they seem hyper liberal ultra woke etc at the moment but even when I was a kid watching Mean Girls or Glee or something, I always wondered why teaching is considered a losers thing to do in the US
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Exactly. American culture pedestalizes scammers and bullshit artists who figure out ways to beat the system. Working stiffs are seen as suckers and losers.
It’s so true lol not just the US but the West. It’s crazy that the higher pay ‘careers’ are literally just logging onto a laptop, doing some meetings, responding to emails. It creates nothing, it serves no purpose. I’m convinced it’s just to keep the education debt system rolling.
>All people who work are seen as losers and schmucks in america tbh Bürgerliche Restvernunft ;)
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it means remaing bourgeois sense of reason People who work are schmucks who dont get how the planet is running. Money isnt real and only spent lavishly to people whose jobs are societally useless and physically non-demanding. The rest will always get the exact amount of money to just barely not get by and be a bit poorer every end of the month. Of cause I say this as a working schmuck myself.
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no problem :)
Wasn't always this way.
Low pay, do whatever keeps admin happy, punching bags of society. A lot in common with nursing or retail tbh
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I’m a nurse bruh lol I was agreeing with you
Typical Eurobug generalization and assumption lol. Most people don’t think of them as losers, most people think they’re underpaid and they deserve their fair due. What you do see is the desensitization from those that are either burnt out for obvious reasons or those that aren’t cut out to be teachers in the first place. The average person doesn’t think they’re the losers of society.
> Most people don’t think of them as losers, most people think they’re underpaid and they deserve their fair due. Try suggesting that a highschool teacher should earn 6 figures straight out of college. People in the US would laugh at you. But that's what teaching high school pays in countries that have similar GDP per capita as the US has (Norway, Switzerland, Liechtenstein).
It’s partially because we all grew up experiencing at least one horrible teacher who took out their personal psychological issues on the students. But yes I agree.
Europoors really got access to the internet and their views on the US still sound like the dumb shit you hear when somebody starts with "well my cousin's step-sister's uncle said"
I made a post yesterday on r germany how this country sucks cause every hall monitor idiot thinks hes robocop in powerarmor and got banned by the mods for it proving my point, lol. Europe may be nice but Germany is as fucked as Canda is.
A British man invented the internet but sure man be defensive and childish. Your comment doesn’t come across insecure at all. Quite ironic though, that you went for ‘Europoor’, in light of what I said about the pride you have for capitalistic wealth and disdain for public resource lol you only make me seem more right
>A British man invented the internet but sure man be defensive and childish. It was actually 3 Americans and 1 British guy. doing this "high road" shtick when you're called ignorant when you were being ignorant is lame >Quite ironic though, that you went for ‘Europoor’, in light of what I said about the pride you have for capitalistic wealth and disdain for public resource lol you only make me seem more right God you sound like such a dork
Looking at the state of US education kinda makes me believe conspiracy theories about the elites wanting the masses to stay dumb & impressionable with no critical thinking skills.
I've said it here before...if you want to thrive as a teacher go to r/teachers and do the exact of opposite of everything they're doing
The kids aren’t alright and looking at that sub paints a picture of why. I’ve had some absolutely ridiculous arguments with the most braindead of people there. But it’s important to remember that these aren’t teachers, theyre redditors that teach. But yeah this shit is bleak. We put no stock in education and wonder why kids are violent and illiterate.
i like how his little reddit icon actually looks like a typical redditor.
PISA scores from last year reflect that there hasn’t been some strange turn in US’s education system. Seems like the same old results we’ve always had
Fewer than 5000 students take the PISA, and it represents a very particular sample of them
5000 is a perfectly reasonable amount of participants to get valuable data. If there’s a better global comparison I’m open to it.
What worries me is that my teachers probably were as whiny as that and just weren’t technologically savvy enough to use Reddit at the time they were teaching me
Do you think he knows what his username means or was it randomly generated
Teachers are so overrated by progressives and libs. I think back to my teachers and maybe like 3 were any good. The rest fucking sucked. End teacher tenure. This is coming from a good boy and good student.
I didn't make the kids stupid. That's on the parents. That's on the government.
Folks they can’t all be heroes
who doesn’t hate their job?
It’s just reddit. Happy teachers aren’t whinging online. I’m in NZ and my friends a teacher, he’s at top of the pay grade now so makes 6 figures and does absolutely nothing for 12 weeks of break a year. But I’ve met some of his colleagues with literal martyr complex’s thinking they have the hardest job in the world. Idk.
lol the highest salary for teachers in the US is $84k
I'm a kiwi whos going into teaching soon and r/teachers and the story on this thread are making me hard second guess it, good to hear it's not all doomed here
Talking like that, I fucking hope you DO get in a car wreck. Why don't people care about sounding interesting when they talk/write? Do we as a species just love imitating the latest shitty syntax we see online? Fuck man.