I teach at a high school in New York, and have been teaching for seven years. I come from a Midwest city, where you best bet you stand up and say the pledge of allegiance loud and proud any time it occurs. I get it. Since I’ve been teaching in New York, I have always taught high school, and never has a class got up, put their hands over their hearts, and said the pledge. I’ve taught at three different schools, and not one class has ever done it. I just figured this was a thing. I’m not against it, nor am I all about forcing students to do this. I have an off period where I teach a small group ..read more

Was there some big change of how to approach reading a decade or 15 years ago or something? When common core math was introduced to help math skills , was the way reading taught also changed? I am trying to figure out what happened to where literacy has fallen so much . submitted by /u/SassyPikachuu [visit reddit] [comments ..read more

FYI— long rant coming I’m a veteran middle school teacher of 27+ years and the job just keeps getting tougher instead of easier. Today, if I had any kind of independent wealth, I would have walked out and never come back. My state (FL) is actively attacking literacy by censoring books the kids have access to (each book in a media center or classroom library has to be approved through a complicated electronic process) and my district has taken it a step further by actively banning the teaching of any novel during class time. Short passages only to better prepare kids for the big test at the en ..read more

Happy December! Things are fine. Everything is fine. ? Also some of our 8th grade boys were found throwing rubber gloves full of their own urine at each other in the bathroom. Piss-balloon fight was not on my bingo card for this semester, sadly. submitted by /u/Occasional_Hiker [visit reddit] [comments ..read more

I am a self-contained teacher at a middle school, so I have kids hang back for lunch most days. They can’t handle the insanity that is middle school lunch (don’t blame them, neither can I). The para that usually stays back in my classroom was out today, so it was just me watching 5 kids. For the first part of lunch, it was perfect and calm just like normal. During the last 5 minutes, however, everything that could go wrong did go wrong. I had one student scream crying in the corner because I told them to choose a different toy, another student yelling at a peer to stop copying him, the aforem ..read more

Was subbing for a honors French class a few days ago. They were taking an open-notebook French quiz and I had to monitor. I’m pretty new to the school and also young, so I guess that made them feel ballsy enough to cheat. 3 pairs in one of the classes were passing their notebook back and forth and knew I was aware because I stared at them until they looked at me. Didn’t seem to think I would do anything. I didn’t call them out in front of everyone. One of the cheating pairs was dumb enough to tear out the piece of paper they were using to pass notes and ripped it up before throwing it out in ..read more

There’s a huge list going around of faculty members that the Juniors compiled tallying how many times a teacher was selected for Marry, Fuck, or Kill. I’m proud to announce that I’m winning the Kill category by the widest of margins for both boys and girls. submitted by /u/NotOnHerb5 [visit reddit] [comments ..read more

I have SUCH a good relationship with my kids(14-16 y/os), and usually we have a fun, lighthearted classroom. When they joke around too much, one look and they settle and apologize. I have known many for two years, so we have a mutual respect but not a super strict environment. The boundary is there. However, today they were on something like never before. The English dept is a mess, the theology teacher is despised & homophobic (and 87!), math is getting harder for them and they swear they aren't actually taught science, the usual kid complaints. So I guess they are all so fed up they dec ..read more

https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/188fcb1/teachers_if_there_is_a_high_percentage_of_your/ Yes, I'm aware the goal there is for it to be an unpopular opinion. The author is someone "Who works in schools." submitted by /u/UniqueUsername82D [visit reddit] [comments ..read more

i have had several admin in my room the past couple of days, and a lot has been starting to pile up. it feels like they want our department to do everything; teach for the test, work with another department to help their test, finish this novel (which is our own fault), do pictures, tell them about x y and z and so much other stuff. On top of that, i got scores back from my informal that were not great (which was my fault i had the students doing a work day and i wasn’t circulating), and another email from telling me what i need to do better at. it doesn’t feel like i can do anything right. o ..read more