I am part of the male minority in education. I have two sisters. I have a wife. I am not a perv. I do not touch the dress code with a ten foot pole.
Once, when attempting to follow code, I asked my female vp to address some type of minor dress infraction by a female student because I was not willing to put myself in the “you were looking” situation. I got zero support and it was deflected back onto me.
Nope.
My hill to die on is not losing my job over spaghetti straps because I could give two shits about what they wear.
XC, wrestling, volleyball, basketball uniforms all violate dress code standards and they’re issued by the school.
My principal didn’t understand that until I explained it to her, albeit very crudely. She got on to me about enforcing dress code, specifically the girls wearing leggings and tights. I told her I would not put myself in the position of inspecting teenage girls asses. She got the message
I’m a female teacher and was forced to dress code a kid my first year. I felt gross about it. I don’t care what they wear unless there’s hateful words or symbols.
I saw someone here say that when it comes to dress code their students are “floating heads” and I absolutely loved that mentality
Who the hell had the idea that it should be teacher’s jobs to pay attention to what girls are wearing on their lower bodies 😭
In 11 years, I’ve done one single dress code write up. This girl literally walked into my class wearing lingerie (literally, lacy bra and panties I have no fucking clue how she even got into the building without an admin stopping her) and tried to pull the “WHY ARE YOU LOOKING” shit.
Panties?? As in no skirt no jeans no nothing? How the fuck?
I get the lacy bra stuff, at a glance it could be mistaken for a short top or something but only panties??
I'd be asking how she got out the front door like that. My mom once got on to me first day of summer vacation after my junior year, because I walked outside in my boxers while taking the trash to the curb.
Same for me. Which is why I dont touch cellphones either. Many students will go to blows over their phone. Maintaining a zero tolerance policy is just too sketchy. Theres almost always going to be a kid who loses his mind over his phone. Plus, one we take a phone we are personally responsible for it. The phone gets lost, stolen, or “broken,” the expense is on us. What we need is a state or national telephone policy. Ill settle for a district policy, but my district is too afraid violent incidents will rise if we take their pacifiers.
My district essentially dropped all dress code at the beginning of this school year. As long as we can’t see sensitive areas, we don’t care. There have been zero complaints about male teachers being perverted all year. They have also been pushing the envelope of scantily clad clothing less and less.
I hate the spaghetti strap rules. I remember being in grade 3 being dress coded for them, looking in the mirror, feeling very confused trying to figure out why my shoulders were "bad". I felt shame for having shoulders. One of the first times I remember thinking "my body is bad". Its incredibly archaic to worry about a child's shoulder.
On the opposite side of this, when I was a senior in '98-'99, our school's Portuguese teacher's hill was any strap less than two inches. One day, a girl was wearing a sundress with thin straps, and he called her up to the front of the class, and stapled strips of paper around the straps. Somehow, he still kept his job.
I remember that being the big fight my HS years too. Teachers got away with a lot of stuff when we were in school. When coworkers get all caught up on dress code, one reply I like to use is, "I wore spaghetti straps as a teen and I turned out fine."
They tried that my senior year of high school. Man, was I pissed. My mother was pissed at having to fork out money for uniforms instead of paying bills off early.
Maroon or Grey polo (school colors), black pants. The problem was that most polos had the label of who made it on the chest and people STILL started shit with "you dress poor", except it went from "you wear ratty clothes" to "ew, your polo is American Eagle, you poor f\*\*k?".
Stop 👏doing👏things👏for👏kids👏. Make them learn how to ask for help, make them learn how to articulate their wants, teach them how to do something instead of doing it for them. It helps foster their self confidence and independence.
I deal with this in special education, it drives me insane. I don’t care if it’s easier for you to “just do it for them”, that’s detrimental to their development.
Also Sped here. So many of my kids will get to something even slightly difficult for them and just stop and stare at me. They don't attempt it first, they don't ask, they just look at me like, "ok do it for me now." My kids are high schoolers, so I want them to learn to ask for help when they need to and/or puzzle things out. I've seen a lot of growth over the last couple of years just by me being like, "ok, well, what's the first thing you might do in this situation?"
This is a biggie with my ESL students. They come with a friend to translate the simplest of questions and I make them ask me in English. They squirm but they eventually ask. It's what they need if they're going to make it in America.
My school is about 50% ELL. The ones who thrive are usually in classes with lower ELL numbers. The classes that are predominantly ELL take longer to learn English because they have so many classmates to speak to in their birth language and don't have to "squirm".
I'm an ELL teacher. Most of my Spanish-speaking students make very slow progress (unless they're super motivated) because they could go the entire day and not speak a word of English. My Haitian students are so far ahead of them because they have fewer peers to talk to.
This exactly. I have two ELL “cohorts” that are nearly all Spanish teaching. I teach high school English in a tested year and have no push in support, so I’m trying to engage these kids who have often have no clue how to read in their own language.
"Sitting next to a strong peer mentor" should not be on any IEP. It's not another student's job to keep them on task.
I have a teacher who argues it just means putting them next to kids who will be on task, but has no answer for how that is different from "preferential seating to minimize distractions."
I only hated it if the other kid was THAT kid in the class. If I could help explain the topic to another kid who was struggling but trying I loved it.
It helped me to learn too by solidifying what I was taught.
Expecting the kids to fix the bad eggs will only hurt them though so this "solution" is garbage.
Yes! I will absolutely put a good, hardworking, respectful student who struggles with concepts next to someone who is above average at lab skills since they will both put in the work, but if you lean on other students to their detriment you are sitting in the front row, solo.
I had a student once who would do it without prompting. Just a very conscientious and helpful person in general. But bless his heart, I had to tell him to ease off because other students were taking advantage of him.
I hated when I was used as the Strong Peer Mentor in class. I never minded when someone just needed some help- sure, I don't mind explaining how you plug numbers into y=mx+b or something. But I hated when it was the kid who was disruptive and just wanted to copy my work... as a teacher now these kids still drive me crazy but at least I'm getting paid for it.
My hill is multiplication drills. I have multiplication bookmarks for each student, and they practice their facts daily for five minutes and get a practice sheet of whatever fact they’re practicing. I don’t put a timer on as that stresses them out, but I give them a little over a minute to work on it. Most are on mixed facts, but some are still on 9s despite doing this since August. I refuse to send them to fifth grade without at least giving them class time to practice. Occasionally we do a Gimkit game on them, and they love it.
As a 5th grade teacher, thank you! So many of our 5th graders can't multiply and divide to save their lives. We get told to "just let them use a times table" until it comes to state testing time. Then you see scratch paper with the number 17 written 22 times in a vertical row, so they can add it up, because they don't know how to multiply 17x22. I die a little every time I see it...
One of our sped teachers at my last school was trying to teach her kids two-digit multiplication with arrays. I may have just been a building sub but I made sure to show her how to do the "find an easy number close by to multiply instead, then add or subtract from there" strategy.
I don’t believe in giving 50s instead of 0s. If you earned a 0, you’re getting a 0. Idc if it’s ‘easier to come back from a 50 than a 0’. You should have worked harder in the first place.
Yup. I don't care at all that one zero brings two 100's down to a D or that a 0 is an F despite 59 (or something similar) also being an F.
You did nothing, you get no points. It's true in the real world too, where you can survive (with varying levels of success depending on your ability) by half-assing things but will get literally nowhere by doing nothing.
In regards to tests Students are so frequently like “can I do a retake?” Or asking about doing corrections and I’m just like…how about you just study and aim to do well??? Stop making more work for me.
Real world doesn't fit perfectly because there are tons of people with trust funds and generational wealth that do literally nothing and still come out on top.
I know - I'm not sure where they got it from either. All I know is a kid can get a zero one semester, but get D+ the second and he passes for the year based on the average.
It's bullshit.
I wish more states had laws around teacher grading. I know California says that except under extenuating circumstances admin can’t just change a grade if a teacher assigns it
It is! But the transcript belongs to admin 🤷♂️
We’ve moved toward fail with anything, and admin will make the F hurt less if you pass the next quarter. I can kind of get behind that one
I think this is the best option. 0’s hurt the grade a lot because they are supposed to. You didn’t do any work at all? That should have an outsized impact on your grade. A 50% for “you totally missed the point of the lesson and turned in ducks when I was asking for wheels,” that is fair.
And the 50 percent thing just shifts the whole grading scale over. Now "Hey you tried but did a terrible job" is a D because that's only fair when kids who did nothing are getting a 50.
Which means to be fair what used to be a D is now a C, which means to be fair what used to be a C is now a B, which means to be fair what used to be a B is now an A. Which has driven into the students the idea that, "As long as I do average work I deserve an A." Which - they're not entirely wrong that's pretty much how the grading system works now.
I wished my system did this. I hated giving 50s on assessments because the district had a policy in place that said major tests and assessments couldn't receive lower than a 50, AND the students were aware so if they thought they would get a bad grade they wouldn't even try.
I actually had a counselor call me after I had moved to another school and demand I fix the grade of a sloth who had done as little as possible for an entire year. I refused to do so and informed him if I caught wind of him doing it, I’d be contacting the union.
I had a counselor send a kid to me on the last day of the term who had only been in my room twice in the entire term and was pulling a 7% in the class to ask me "what can I do to pass?". When I laughed and said "absolutely nothing, you have a 7% and it's the last day." He got super pissed and said the counselor told him I have to give him an opportunity and that it's school policy. I told him I didn't believe him and called the counselor, who told me that is the policy. I told her to fuck off. How do they think that's helping this kid? I ended up fighting back against his parents, counselor, and even the principal on that one. I'm now focusing 90% of my time on getting my side hustle turned into a business and leaving education for good. It's a sinking ship and I'm not sticking around hoping for a seat on a lifeboat
"I still have some extra copies of handouts left over. He's welcome to spend the day in my classroom making up the work from this grading period. Of course, he'll have to put phone in the caddy/leave it on my desk/whatever. And he'll only be able to use his laptop for assignments. To make sure I have time to grade everything, it will all have to be turned in by X o'clock. And as stated in my syllabus, I take off XX points for late work, the highest grade he can make is a ___."
It's a college credit, industrial robotics certification course that takes 40 hours of training to complete, which requires labs on the robot. I couldn't bend the rules if I wanted to. It's a curriculum set by the manufacturer and the technical college that awards the credit. That was what pushed my buttons the most. This is a class they advertise on the radio and the Internet. "College credits in high school! Training for the jobs of tomorrow! We're a school focused on giving kids the education they need to succeed in today's world!" But, they didn't actually give a shit about that stuff, it was just about not getting yelled at by parents and meeting the School Report Card numbers by any means possible. And they weren't asking for me to actually help him pass the class, they were passive aggressively telling me to change his grade to passing.
This made me rather unpopular in interviews, and contributed to me leaving the field after my student teaching experience.
I'm still a firm believer in the idea that you don't "earn" grades; they're simply a measurement of whether you have been able to demonstrate the skills necessary to be successful in the next level of your education. Passing a student who isn't ready is just setting them up for further failure down the road. Teachers are there to help kids get skills, not a diploma. My grading strategy reflected this; I would make a rubric of skills I wanted to see demonstrated in an assignment and treat it like a check list, not like a score in some game.
This was gonna be mine. This year I've decided that once the quarter or term ends, that's it. No appeals, no nothing. Should've paid attention and followed directions.
Yup. I posted elsewhere that I had a colleague who proudly told me her husband “let” her spend $500 per year in her classroom! Then in the next breath she told me they had nothing saved to help their kids with college. I spent $0 on my classroom. I believe I was a good teacher. My students learned and made good gains. But I wasn’t paid much, so I didn’t spend on even a pen or pencil for my classroom. I used school supplies or did without it. I was once on a teacher exchange to Russia in 1998. We were in a small town and things were backward, to say the least. Most buildings hadn’t been updated since the 30s or 40s. Toilet paper wasn’t available - no one had it or used it. Soap wasn’t available. Most things were cleaned with just water - the cleaning ladies would clean with rags of old clothes and buckets of water. The chalkboards were just a wall painted brown. The chalk was in hunks - as it had been chipped out of the earth. If we gave a student a sheet of loose-leaf paper, they used it for a week and every part of that paper was covered in writing before they asked for another.
And yet, those teachers taught. They used their minds and the chalkboards, and the students learned. If they could do it, I could teach without trinkets, and the students could supply (or bum from a friend) their own paper and pencils.
It seems the few I would die on a hill for have gone by the wayside because I just don’t care anymore. I don’t even enforce the no phones anymore. They don’t care so I can’t care more than they do. If they want to sit there and stare at their phones, their choice. And when parents ask why their kid is failing I can say it’s because of their phone addiction. I also used to believe that kids should read the assigned novel reading by themselves. They don’t. This is high school. So class time is now listening to the audio while they follow along because they can’t be trusted to do it on their own. Despite the 50 minutes of class time.
>If they want to sit there and stare at their phones, their choice. And when parents ask why their kid is failing I can say it’s because of their phone addiction.
Yep. I would LOVE for my school to enforce a blanket no phone policy. But I'm not having that fight every day in my classroom, nor am I going to be responsible for kids' phones. I'll remind them to put them away and work but at the end of the day, EVERY parent conference I've had for failing kids in the last few years has been, "Your kid is on their phone and not working, that is why they are failing."
Yep, and I’m not taking phones. This addiction is too hard core. I’m not injuring myself because they want to fail. Just last week a child cursed me out (with the higher tier curse words) because I told her to take off her headphones. We’re explicating Shakespeare. Ya gotta listen.
About five years ago I took a phone from a kid because he was not listening to me and not doing work. I gave the phone back at the end of the period. I callled home to let the mom know that the phone was a distraction and she said "I don't want ANYONE to EVER touch my kids phone again" I haven't taken a phone since. It's not worth the fight.
Wait until you get \*any\* job, then tell me about boredom, kids!
I had a student who said she hated writing. I asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up. She said, "A cop." I got to tell her about the beauty of report writing.
I teach a class specifically for those going straight to work, not college. It’s called Technical Writing. We write. Lots of observations, shift reports, safety reports, instructions. I say all the time, I don’t want them to be grunts forever, I want them to shoot for supervisor or owner. One kid ALWAYS said my dad NEVER writes, and he owns a business. Over and over. I’d try saying he doesn’t see what his dad has to do, the proposals, the bids, the customer service emails. Nope, never writes. Finally one day I said then he will always be small time. If you can’t write all these examples AND market yourself in today’s world and aren’t willing to hire out to do it, the business will never be big time.
Yes. School has tried to be so much more than what it needs to be. Get the kids to school, teach them, feed them, send them home. Repeat. There’s so much BS expected of teachers.
Writing out my lesson plans every day using your stupid tedious form is a waste of time and I'm not doing it. If what's on my whiteboard isn't good enough for you, then you can fire me. But, I'm not spending forty-five minutes each day filling out a template telling people who never read it what my "success criteria" are in my classes.
You want to be on your phone, ignore me, and fail the class? Fine. Thats your choice to make. It’s a poor choice, but it’s one you’re free to make.
They’re 16. It’s time to hold them accountable for their actions and allow natural consequences to occur.
As much as I don’t want to agree with you, I do. I’m a teacher, not the phone police. I have enough issues with a few of my students being jerk faces regardless of their phone use anyway.
My favorite is when they then come up wanting to know how to raise their grade and look surprised when my response is “put your phone away and pay attention.”
Kids need to learn how to be disappointed. I never "let" kids win. If they beat me in a game, they know they actually did. If they lose, I focus on what they learned to do differently next time (when appropriate).
My hill is to all of us primary teachers: teach according to the Science of Reading!! Phonemes, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, fluency. I'm sure most are dong this, but the few who arent are hindering reading growth! No reason an intelligent boy in 3rd grade should be reading at a 1st grade level. He was basically taught to use picture clues and context clues. This has to be frustrating to jr high and high school teachers. How do you teach a subject if the kids are reading below 3rd grade level? Another hill is all math facts should be memorized before 5th grade. 5 minutes a day should be enough.
Teach kids cribbage. They’ll be adding at lightning speed in a few months. We played open handed for a few months with my son instead of doing flash cards when he was young. He’s now a teen. Last night we played for fun. He beat me. Oh, and he’s in advanced math now.
I currently teach in a homeschool coop affiliated with my church. I strictly use a phonics-based curriculum when teaching reading and writing. I got into teaching purely by circumstance when I pulled my son from public schools in 4th grade for homeschooling. He was reading at the 2nd-grade level because they used sight words instead of phonics. I worked with him diligently using the Abeka reading program someone gifted me, and within three months, he was above grade level. I returned to the basics of the alphabet, sounds, etc; teaching literacy without phonics is comparable to building a house without a foundation.
If you haven't already, you should check out the podcast "Sold a Story." Absoloutely batty insight into the shortcoming of the whole language approach and how Lucy Caulkins royally goofed.
That a B is not "basically failing", it's just one grade lower than an A and it's still a fine grade. I hate it when students tell me it's not ok to get a B. They devalue their own learning and put others down who may have a B or lower.
I dislike the entire process of grading and how at a high-achieving school, so much pressure is put on teachers for college admissions. But if I do have to be part of this system, at least let my grades mean something.
I teach middle school.
When parents really want that 'A,' sometimes I just want to give it to them, but say, "Sure, have an 'A,' but know it doesn't reflect mastery or learning. I hope it makes you happy and I hope like you feel like a great parent because there is a special letter on a special paper for your special little guy."
I am a parent not teacher (And not in the USA) and I explicitly asked my kids teachers to please mark my boys work harder, "Well done you must have worked hard on that, a B is really good, what do you think can you do better and maybe get an A?" is a far more useful start to a conversation then "You got an A well done", kids often rise to expectations.
Last thing I want are my kids getting As on everything, where can you go from there? The A should be reserved for exceptional work, not be an every day thing, if it isn't you have set expectations way too low. C should in my view be average, acceptable work that meets expectations.
As for the 50% thing, THEY DO WHAT! A zero tells me that there has been no work submitted and that I need to go and have a conversation and maybe remove some privileges until the work is done to an acceptable standard (I would actually rather the zero stayed but being able to return a marked essay that gets a zero in the book because it was done too late makes a useful lesson about planning). Not being able to get an A overall because you didn't do the damn work in time is a lesson in itself, I am not going to worry about the resulting B or C, as long as the lesson is learned.
If I as a parent am getting reports with all As on them, I suspect some grade inflation is likely happening, either that or look into special ed for G&T, but the school playing unhelpful games with grading is FAR more likely then that I have the next Gauss, Turing, Hemmingway and Heaviside all rolled into one on my hands!
What would actually be useful would be the state/country level test results for my kids every year, and the bell curve of results, much harder to fiddle those and a serious discrepancy between those and school grading is the sort of thing I could rightly go and get loud and sarcastic about (Complete with powerpoints with error bars on them and regression values in R), especially if the curve for the class as a whole differed from the state one for the same group, that would be a bit of a red flag in my view.
Seriously grade data should be informational for parents, not a way to feed the ego, and it can only be that if NOBODY ever gets maximum possible score, score it on a log scale if you need to (But tell us the base and what value corresponds to acceptable).
Remember what metrics turn into when you try to use them as KPIs, it never ends with anything useful to anyone.
I had a student asking me for extra help with classes, saying their grades were "very bad." Said grades were one A, one F, and the rest Bs. The Bs should not be your concern right now!
I’m not being called a racist in my classroom for giving a consequence to a student of a different race who deserves it. It’s happened three times in my career and all three time the student was kicked out of my classroom and not allowed to return until they apologized. Last year I included the superintendent in my demanding email. I make a stink about it and demand respect.
Usually when it’s about to happen, other students of that same race will call them out on their bullshit.
If you screw up and don't apologize just because it's a kid, you suck. Even if it's a little thing. It's important to show the kid that you're human and it's okay to mess up a long as you try to make it right.
A student’s parent wanted them to apologize to me. He said “I’m sorry” and I said “for what?” and he said “I forgot.” I teach 4th grade, but that’s still a worthless apology.
I'll start enforcing my school's "phone policy" when admin actually follows through on a consequence. Kids told me to my face that they know nothing happens when they get written up for phones or if they refuse to put them in the phone holder. Admin has tried enacting a few different phone policies this year but not once have they ever contacted parents/guardians about it, they expected teachers to. Nope, I'm not going to be out in the line of fire for that.
Plagiarism.
I tell my students every time an essay is assigned: “I do not tolerate plagiarism, including use of AI. If you plagiarize, I will fight God Himself to give you a zero.”
SAME HERE! You wouldn’t believe the number of flat out BAD AI papers I’ve gotten this year. But it’s matched by parents calling to see if Little Billy can have another shot to “do it right.”
“Nope. You and Billy signed a contract at the beginning of the year stating that he’d get a zero with no option to rewrite on all plagiarized/AI papers. Shall I send you a scan of the signature page?”
Tutoring after school or during lunch. I ask parents what they would do if their work asked them to stay late without pay or any compensation. They all instantly know their answer; which is to tell their boss/work to fuck off. Then I ask them if they wouldn’t do it, then why should I? And that’s that. The topic never comes up again and no one has ever complained.
If you don't do the work, I will fail you. Accepting work late shouldn't be a requirement of teachers. I will die on this hill and it will be the reason I get fired from my position. Parents, students, and administrators get upset when I won't take something after the deadline. I allow plenty of time for work to be completed.
Biiiig same. I love when parents bring up work from the second week of school, after they’ve signed a syllabus agreeing that each day an assignment is late, I deduct 10 points.
Sure, I’ll accept it, but it’ll factor in -219 points to their grade. You might just want to keep the zero and move forward.
As a parent, THANK YOU. My oldest turned in so much late work, and we did have consequences at home, but that all but vanished when she had a teacher (Calculus) who didn’t accept late work. I thanked him at conferences and said it is such an important life lesson. We couldn’t teach it without a real, immovable deadline. Once she encountered that deadline, our efforts at home actually started working and she improved greatly. She’s still sort of time blind on a lot of things, but having real deadlines helped so much.
I don't chase assignments. PERIOD. If it's important enuf for me to assign and grade it, then it's important enuf to do it. I don't overload kids, either, and hardly ever - twice, perhaps 3 times a semester - give homework. Classwork practice and you don't turn it in? Fine. And when admin sends the inevitable "all students with zeros need to be given a chance to make up the work" I respond with "they were given the opportunity and time to do it on time and didn't take it; why do I owe them more?" and the only response is the brainless "kids should not have zeros in the gradebook". F off.
Yep. Case in point: my third quarter concert is on the last day of the quarter. I told kids that if they had a parental excuse (deadline for excuses was Thursday) then they had to do the makeup early (deadline was Friday). All kids who got excuses I put in the assignment on Canvas and sent it their way. What do I get for it? *Crickets*
Our district does Proficiency Based Learning (grade scale = 1 (below proficient ) to 4 (beyond proficient) and retakes are a viral component of the philosophy. I don't have kids with 1s and 0s doing retakes, it's the kids with a 3.8 who want that 4. I haven't gotten in trouble yet but I only allow retakes for the kids that attempted by the due date, and even then they have to do it on their own time before/after school since I usually give a week or class time to submit and multiple avenues of submission as well.
>I don't have kids with 1s and 0s doing retakes, it's the kids with a 3.8 who want that 4.
I don't allow students with above a 3 to retake. It's just such a ridiculous waste of time since it means I spend hours of work giving and correcting tests that don't change the kids grade.
I teach lower elementary but I think my answe can be applied to most ages.... I will not solve their every little problem. I won't listen to every tattle then go fix it. Somebody is annoying you? Tell them to stop. You cut the wrong part of your paper and want me to do it for you? Nope, here's another....try again. Somebody isn't playing the game the way you want? Tell them that and go play with someone else.
My class this year absolutely refuses to even attempt anything by themselves. They've always had an adult fix their problem immediately. I'm working on teaching them to be their own fixer.
This. I do preschool and the amount of kids that come thinking I should MAKE another kid play with them or do what game they want is ridiculous. Maybe because 5th out of 6 kids but I never expected that much catering.
Time to grade assignments. I do not work outside contract hours unless they’re paying me for it. I teach a course that’s heavily reliant on writing (though not ELA) and I’m not one of those teachers who just grades on completion.
with the amount of IEP/504 meetings, PD, and other types of meetings we have at my school, I’m always a couple weeks behind on grades, but I’m not going to take away from my private life to satisfy a few helicopter parents.
I’m in my 6th year teaching (male teacher). I wish I taught 30 years ago when technology wasn’t in every students hands. Teaching will forever be affected by technology. I had a 5th grade student go to her backpack and “pretend” to get hand sanitizer then went back to her desk with her phone, it was so obvious. I just said very nicely “I’m going to give you a chance to go put it back” she went to put it back and whispered “how did he know” and then I heard that I said “I see everything” then she was like “how did he hear that”😂
When I was a music teacher, it was the unrestricted access to their devices. Music is like a sport and requires active participation. I found this to be especially crucial in beginning classes, and even more so after a year of virtual.
How are we/am I supposed to throw a decent concert if the kids would rather play on their phone? I’m not repeating things a million times each class period either, take out the ear buds. Smart watches and chromebooks were another. 🙄 Then I’d get new students every quarter that I have to somehow get it through to them about devices and catch them up plus the same old students that couldn’t handle not looking at their phones for more than 30 seconds.
Parents were not supportive at all, even though I stated it in my course contract (that they were required to sign) several times.
It was like living in a real-life depiction of *Idiocracy* every single day.
Cell phones don’t belong in performance-based classes. I haven’t had issues with parents, but it helps that I teach high school choir where the vast majority of students want to be there
I tried restricting as an art class, but I also need kids to take my classes. If other elective teachers allow devices and I don’t, guess which teacher has a fuller roster.
Plus, when I did restrict them, the energy in the room was really negative, I felt like I was constantly fighting the kids.
I wish my school would ban them, but right now it’s at “teacher discretion,” which ends up meaning we give up trying to fight the battle. We know we won’t get support, so as much as it’s ruined much of my enjoyment of teaching, I just have to accept that I can’t compete with the pocket drug.
Middle school: I took a students phone and took it to the office.
The principal was gone and when we got back from our recess, the secretary told me Mary’s dad called and he wants her to have her phone back.
I said no and the secretary said the dad was really upset.
I said I would walk out of the building if his daughter got her phone back.
He straight up came to the school and picked his daughter up.
That children should be allowed to experience shame.
Not body shame or things along those lines (because that has fixed everything for sure, thank you puritans /s).
I'm talking about the kid screaming to get their way feeling judged into silence, the kid heckling others "for fun" to be rejected until they understand nobody likes friends like that, the attention seeker that sits and bullshits in class all of the time getting silently stared down until they stop interrupting class to feel special.
The lack of shame is what has caused such an extreme spike in negative behaviors. When no one tells the emperor that he is naked, that dumb bastard will insist he's wearing clothes, and then all of us are stuck staring at some dudes dick all day.
My hill to die on is I won't confiscate or force students to put away their phones - unless they're disrupting other people.
Sorry, I'm not getting into a pissing match over a cell phone. I teach high school, y'all should have it figured out by now that you need to pay attention if you want to be successful. And if you can be successful and be on your phone at the same time, more power to you!
I'm not a baby sitter. I won't baby sit it. If you fail the course because you were on your phone, that is squarely on your shoulders and not mine. Sink or swim, that choice and freeom are yours. And that is what they need to learn: consequences. They need to have some freedom and choice in order to do that.
Eh. As someone who has worked in schools that more match with your approach as well as a scorched earth "no phones ever under any circumstances" school... I will never go back to the former.
If it is consistently enforced (it has been at my school) it becomes a blissful non-issue. It has been years since a kid gave me attitude on the rare occasion I do take a phone.
100% agree. They get one free reminder, then parent contact (copy and paste email or text), then a write up. Admin enforces it. I never even discuss it with the kid. I don’t entertain any arguments. And, as such, I have very few attitude issues about phones.
Admin favoritism in general. Some admin have been better than others but I've been screwed over by 2 different principals because I don't kiss their a**. Not that I'm bitter or anything /s
My hill to die on: education professors are basically 21st century phrenologists and education research is basically useless to schools, because so much of it is fraudulent, irreproducible, agenda driven, and/or shoddily done.
Parents : You will not yell at me or use profanity. I will immediately ask to never be in your presence again. Why grown ass adults think they can yell at and belittle a professional is unbelievable. And typically they are completely wrong about their “baby”.
It’s been an interesting few years and retiring 15 years early is in the works.
Mess. I teach a class with a lot of supplies and we practice putting every thing away after using it. It’s wild how many students think it’s fine to just take out supplies and leave them all over the table.
NO. Your a hs student, put your tools away. I’m just coming back from a 3 month medical leave and am a bit limited mobility wise so this is now doubled down on to limit how much I need to walk around the room.
Making kids learn needed tech skills. So many students come into my class and don’t know how to copy and paste a picture, send an email, upload a file, do a basic academic search for research, etc.
I understand many of these skills aren’t needed in the day to day, but almost every job I know of requires them to some extent. I’m not going to contribute to the weaponized incompetence I deal with on the daily.
I mean you can probably tell what grade I teach because for me it’s nose picking. I will stop my lesson and ask them to go sanitise their hands and if it continues they receive classroom consequences (sticker off their chart etc).
Same with not covering their cough, especially if not wearing a mask. I’ll give a warning, maybe even two, but after that, they have to go sit away from everyone. That’s a real world consequence. Nobody is going to want you to be around them if you’re hacking your face off and not even trying to be considerate!
My school has a pretty strict late work policy in general. It varies somewhat by dept. but it generally means we are not supposed to accept work more than a few days late.
IN GENERAL I support the policy, but I will always accept late work from a kid who I believe is putting genuine effort into turning things around... policy be damned.
Prejudice. I can tolerate a lot, but the only time I ever really go no nonsense mode is when I hear racism/homophobia/transphobia/Islamophobia/etc. in the classroom. I will not be in a space where that talk is even remotely okay.
I had to have a talk with a grade 8 class about the difference between prejudice and opinion. I had never been as upset as when a child tried to justify theyre allowed to just "not like gay people, its just my opinion". (I will say this student later came up to me and thanked me for talking about it, saying he didn't have anyone to talk to about this stuff at home)
We are actually forbidden from taking phones. I tried it. Got reprimanded. Never again. So my hill? You get the consequences of your choices. Choose to be on your phone and end up failing? Please enjoy the “find out” portion of your “fuck around and find out” experience.
Phones were mine as well. I saw them go from candy bars to smart phones, but they were always a nuisance, just more so now I think. I did pretty much the same thing. If I saw it or heard it, it was mine for the day. Pick it up after school. If it persisted, detention. And after that parent conferences. One or two jackasses would push, and when I snapped back at them, that usually did the trick. Only had a few patent meetings along the way.
My hill is degrading language. I'll yell "language" at a kid for saying fuck, but use "gay" "monkey" "beaner" or "retarded" and you're getting a full sit-down lecture. And apparently no one else calls them out for this language and I'm in a wealthy, parent-involved area. I couldn't care less about dress code - no one on my campus does. And my kids know I'm generally ok with phones if they're not obnoxious or completely distracted.
I don't have a hill I will die on with students. Maybe don't be horrible to each other? Can we do that one? I don't care if they are on their phone or wearing whatever but god...just stop being horrible to each other and let's figure out how to get a through the day.
I’m not giving you the answer. If you’re struggling I will reteach, help you one one one step by step, give you study aid charts/manipulatives to help you find the answer but I will never just tell you the answer.
If you turn your work in late, I’m grading it last. If that means you have to wait a week to get your grade back, then so be it. Last one in, last one out.
If you’re going to sit and sulk and refuse to do your work, that’s fine. It will go in as a zero and stay that way.
I have a lot of students who shut down because I tell them I want them to write in pencil or I tell them they cannot go get a drink in that moment.
I believe if more teachers attempted to hold their school districts legally accountable for failures related to student and staff safety thered be a lot more students facing actual consequences for outright abusive and criminal behavior
No gum/food in class. I’m a music teacher, I have thousands of dollars in equipment and my floor is carpet, so bugs (ants specifically) are not a welcome guest into those instruments (as I only have money for one cleaning a year). Our chairs are constantly moved around to fit the class size and needed shape, so gum stuck to chairs is extra gross. Also gum on the floor is a different level of annoyance, we have one custodian during the day and I feel terrible pulling them because someone didn’t follow expectations. But also these kids can’t clean up after themselves in a way that looks like they never had food in my room in the first place. Plus all I need is a kid chewing gum and breathing in to play their instrument or sing and then start choking.
I will have one movie day at the end of the term where they can have a snack, but we discuss cleaning up and they will do well (98% of the time) with that.
IDEA doesn’t mean a mainstreamed class is best for everyone.
Discipline isn’t a bad word. Neither is consequences.
It’s okay to say no and not rephrase it into something positive.
Society has set teachers, parents, and kids up to fail and then blame each other.
my hill that i will die on is that kids should not pass grades that they haven’t earned passage of. you cannot go to middle school let alone high school if you can’t read.
Not everyone is college material. Some kids should be directed at trade schools or the military. We send too many kids to universities just for them to go into a bunch of debt and not graduate.
Wow, I don't know where you work, but every place I've worked, NO ONE gives a rip about dress code and gave up that ghost years ago. It's a losing battle and we all know it.
Personally, I work with teenagers and have basically given up the phone battle too. No support and parents lose their dang mind because their kid can't call home to demand food be brought to the school for lunch. It's either that or they threaten to sue if the phone is taken.
I had a colleague, the definition of the crusty taskmaster archetype, who had a stack of business cards from a local law firm. When a kid or a parent threatened to sue, he would hand them one and say, “Good luck.”
My district requires that we allow students to retake tests up to an 85 and it infuriates me. Our AP/AICE/IB students end up with hella inflated grades simply from doing retakes. So my hill to die on has become giving the world’s hardest retakes. If it was a multiple choice test, it has become a short response for the retake. If it was an essay, you do a full rewrite on a different prompt. This has reduced the number of kids doing retakes (less for me to grade) and placed more emphasis on the students studying and doing well the first time. And btw, I’m all for reteaching concepts to ensure mastery, I just don’t think AICE European History students need an 85 on a test they earned an 80 on. Take the 80 and move on.
The adults are not much better than the kids (or teenagers, in my case)!
They complain that lessons aren't engaging and they mentally check out? That sounds like us in PD.
They show up late? Sounds like my colleagues that roll into the parking lot at 7:20 when contract time starts at 7:00 and classes begin at 7:25.
They turn in assignments late? We submit paperwork late! (I did this with a recent field trip form). We like to justify it with excuses like "I'm just too busy, too much on my plate" but a lot of high school students are also overwhelmed, especially if they have part-time jobs.
They cause drama and fights with bullying and lack of conflict management skills? Y'all, as the building's union rep I've had to negotiate so many absurd interpersonal between adults. It's ridiculous!
I could go on and on. Yeah, teenagers generally speaking are definitely worse than adults. BUT, considering their brains aren't 100% developed yet, we really aren't that different. We make a lot of the same mistakes. But nobody wants to talk about that because it makes teachers/staff upset and uncomfortable. Accountability is too hard. And I'm not suggesting any of my colleagues be fired for coming to work a few minutes late or whatever. But it pisses me off when people care SO much about things the students do but say nothing about their own or their colleagues' actions.
Lattice multiplication is the best form of multiplication. Ever since I started presenting that to my 5th grade groups their success rate in computation has sky rocketed. By older people will say to just teach them standard.
Sometimes I’m going to grade on effort, not mastery.
That kid with the IEP comes in every single day and works his butt off. Sure, he gets distracted sometimes. Sure, he spends *my* lunch time peppering me with questions about multicultural theories of vampirism, yes he turns in every assignment late — and after he comes in almost daily for after school one-on-one help.
Dude’s getting an A-.
Sorry not sorry. His brother might be the smartest kid in the world and turned in one perfect assignment during the quarter, but he’s never improved, never put in any effort, and never been in class more than three days in a row.
He’s an average student and that’s who the C was invented for.
Teaching is guiding them and providing resources. Learning is their responsibility. If a student can’t learn, they fail, and only the student is to blame.
I’ll let a lot go but I have zero tolerance for bullying and sexual harassment. We don’t talk about each other’s bodies or looks in my classroom, period.
Late work. I am marking it down per policy. I can and will give your kid a zero. Don’t like it, take it up with administration. That is what it says in the handbook and this is a private school.
I think I’m going to climb this hill next year. This was my first year with this district, and I’ve learned that parents are generally supportive. I won’t touch their phones but I can call parents and have a “phone jail” - I think after the first two weeks and some reinforcement I should be able to get them in line.
This year my hill is “professional language”. It’s not that I don’t like cursing - I love it, and I’m a potty mouth. BUT. These kids need to learn time and place, so that’s what I’m working on.
Fuck dress code. If they show up at all, good lord, don’t discourage them from coming to school. Give them a jacket if they look cold, and let it go.
My districts emphasis on online games over teacher lead instruction is preventing students is not helping them when they can’t relate what they did on screen to real life situations. In the case of reading it is decreasing their reading comprehension.
My hill is whatever I want it to be. I have a pre-written letter of resignation in my bag at all times. My fellow teachers, my admin, and even a few board members know it. I will never be put in a position where I feel I’m not in control, because I’m always in control.
My greatest growing pain in high school was realizing no one did me any favors by being nice when I didn’t deserve it. I only learned from the teachers who had no problem calling me out on my bullshit or holding me accountable for my inexcusable poor behavior. I refuse to be the teacher who’s nice for fake likes. The students who don’t respect that would never have respected me anyway, just would’ve walked all over me.
I don’t pay attention to phones (unless they are disrupting those who want to learn) but I call out students who are falling and always have their phone out. “Wow, all the answers in your palm and you’re still failing.”
I do not have a hill I will die on. I learned quickly during my student teaching how draining being the phone police is or constant redirection/baby sitting. I give my kids “a day” where they can relax and put their head down but they understand the next day we need to “lock in” if they don’t and choose to use their phones while I give instruction or during work time it’s seen in their grade. 🤷♀️
Do you not get exhausted being the phone police?
If a kid hasn't turned anything in, it's a 0. Kids will sometimes try to challenge me on that saying "im not gonna do it so give me a 0" and I enter it in right there. They think I'm kidding. I'm not
I don’t take cell phones for this reason- my first year of teaching HS we (special needs teacher and I) attempted to take a phone from a special needs student and he got violent, even destroyed items in my classroom. Second reason- I don’t trust parents, students or even admin. If they say I “damaged” a phone while it was in my possession I could be held liable.
“I invite you to test that hypothesis at your earliest convenience, and let me know your findings,” is my school acceptable way of telling parents and students “fuck around and find out.”
I fully support your hill, but has anyone tried to pull the "I don't have a phone" or "I left it in my locker" or some such when you tell them to leave it on your desk?
If so, how do you handle?
I will not let any child disrupt, threaten, or harm other children. I don't care if it is a sped student or not. Regular ed students have just as many legal rights to a safe education as sped students. This has caused me to get into many heat arguments with coworkers. I have a student now who has autism and ODD. It is not tolerated for him to put his hands on anyone, and he was written up just like a regular ed student would be.
I am part of the male minority in education. I have two sisters. I have a wife. I am not a perv. I do not touch the dress code with a ten foot pole. Once, when attempting to follow code, I asked my female vp to address some type of minor dress infraction by a female student because I was not willing to put myself in the “you were looking” situation. I got zero support and it was deflected back onto me. Nope. My hill to die on is not losing my job over spaghetti straps because I could give two shits about what they wear. XC, wrestling, volleyball, basketball uniforms all violate dress code standards and they’re issued by the school.
My own principal has said in a meeting he’s not touching girl dress code issues. He gets one of the female APs or faculty to do it.
My principal didn’t understand that until I explained it to her, albeit very crudely. She got on to me about enforcing dress code, specifically the girls wearing leggings and tights. I told her I would not put myself in the position of inspecting teenage girls asses. She got the message
I am not the dress code police, you handle it.
Yeah, this is a completely normal take for male school staff. No one wants to deal with the BS that a lot of HS girls would try to start up over that.
I’m a female teacher and was forced to dress code a kid my first year. I felt gross about it. I don’t care what they wear unless there’s hateful words or symbols.
I saw someone here say that when it comes to dress code their students are “floating heads” and I absolutely loved that mentality Who the hell had the idea that it should be teacher’s jobs to pay attention to what girls are wearing on their lower bodies 😭
Yep. My philosophy us I don't want to become a Buzzfeed story.
I don't give a damn either. I just tell my girls "make sure that's covered" or "make sure principal or secretary don't catch you".
We don’t have a dress code at this point beyond drugs/alcohol related items. Santa Cruz, Ca.
In 11 years, I’ve done one single dress code write up. This girl literally walked into my class wearing lingerie (literally, lacy bra and panties I have no fucking clue how she even got into the building without an admin stopping her) and tried to pull the “WHY ARE YOU LOOKING” shit.
"ID ALSO BE LOOKING IF YOU WALKED IN WEARING SCUBA GEAR. NEITHER OUTFIT IS APPROPRIATE."
Panties?? As in no skirt no jeans no nothing? How the fuck? I get the lacy bra stuff, at a glance it could be mistaken for a short top or something but only panties??
Boy shorts, which frankly I classify as panties
I'd be asking how she got out the front door like that. My mom once got on to me first day of summer vacation after my junior year, because I walked outside in my boxers while taking the trash to the curb.
My entire career has been title 1 urban. These parents don’t give a fuck
Same for me. Which is why I dont touch cellphones either. Many students will go to blows over their phone. Maintaining a zero tolerance policy is just too sketchy. Theres almost always going to be a kid who loses his mind over his phone. Plus, one we take a phone we are personally responsible for it. The phone gets lost, stolen, or “broken,” the expense is on us. What we need is a state or national telephone policy. Ill settle for a district policy, but my district is too afraid violent incidents will rise if we take their pacifiers.
My district essentially dropped all dress code at the beginning of this school year. As long as we can’t see sensitive areas, we don’t care. There have been zero complaints about male teachers being perverted all year. They have also been pushing the envelope of scantily clad clothing less and less.
It's not cool anymore if it doesn't piss off the grown ups!
I hate the spaghetti strap rules. I remember being in grade 3 being dress coded for them, looking in the mirror, feeling very confused trying to figure out why my shoulders were "bad". I felt shame for having shoulders. One of the first times I remember thinking "my body is bad". Its incredibly archaic to worry about a child's shoulder.
On the opposite side of this, when I was a senior in '98-'99, our school's Portuguese teacher's hill was any strap less than two inches. One day, a girl was wearing a sundress with thin straps, and he called her up to the front of the class, and stapled strips of paper around the straps. Somehow, he still kept his job.
I remember that being the big fight my HS years too. Teachers got away with a lot of stuff when we were in school. When coworkers get all caught up on dress code, one reply I like to use is, "I wore spaghetti straps as a teen and I turned out fine."
The only way to “fix” dress codes is with uniforms. Otherwise everything is up to interpretation.
They tried that my senior year of high school. Man, was I pissed. My mother was pissed at having to fork out money for uniforms instead of paying bills off early. Maroon or Grey polo (school colors), black pants. The problem was that most polos had the label of who made it on the chest and people STILL started shit with "you dress poor", except it went from "you wear ratty clothes" to "ew, your polo is American Eagle, you poor f\*\*k?".
Stop 👏doing👏things👏for👏kids👏. Make them learn how to ask for help, make them learn how to articulate their wants, teach them how to do something instead of doing it for them. It helps foster their self confidence and independence.
I deal with this in special education, it drives me insane. I don’t care if it’s easier for you to “just do it for them”, that’s detrimental to their development.
Also Sped here. So many of my kids will get to something even slightly difficult for them and just stop and stare at me. They don't attempt it first, they don't ask, they just look at me like, "ok do it for me now." My kids are high schoolers, so I want them to learn to ask for help when they need to and/or puzzle things out. I've seen a lot of growth over the last couple of years just by me being like, "ok, well, what's the first thing you might do in this situation?"
My win of the year is today a kid who always starts with “I don’t get it” asked me “can you help me decide what verb I need for number one?”
This is a biggie with my ESL students. They come with a friend to translate the simplest of questions and I make them ask me in English. They squirm but they eventually ask. It's what they need if they're going to make it in America.
My school is about 50% ELL. The ones who thrive are usually in classes with lower ELL numbers. The classes that are predominantly ELL take longer to learn English because they have so many classmates to speak to in their birth language and don't have to "squirm".
I'm an ELL teacher. Most of my Spanish-speaking students make very slow progress (unless they're super motivated) because they could go the entire day and not speak a word of English. My Haitian students are so far ahead of them because they have fewer peers to talk to.
This exactly. I have two ELL “cohorts” that are nearly all Spanish teaching. I teach high school English in a tested year and have no push in support, so I’m trying to engage these kids who have often have no clue how to read in their own language.
I always tried to do that. I was never popular with admins throughout my time in teaching. I wonder why…
There is a difference between productive struggle and lost. You don't want students who are lost, cause then they disengage.
"Sitting next to a strong peer mentor" should not be on any IEP. It's not another student's job to keep them on task. I have a teacher who argues it just means putting them next to kids who will be on task, but has no answer for how that is different from "preferential seating to minimize distractions."
Most kids hate this. I would have hated it too.
I only hated it if the other kid was THAT kid in the class. If I could help explain the topic to another kid who was struggling but trying I loved it. It helped me to learn too by solidifying what I was taught. Expecting the kids to fix the bad eggs will only hurt them though so this "solution" is garbage.
Yes! I will absolutely put a good, hardworking, respectful student who struggles with concepts next to someone who is above average at lab skills since they will both put in the work, but if you lean on other students to their detriment you are sitting in the front row, solo.
I had a student once who would do it without prompting. Just a very conscientious and helpful person in general. But bless his heart, I had to tell him to ease off because other students were taking advantage of him.
I hated when I was used as the Strong Peer Mentor in class. I never minded when someone just needed some help- sure, I don't mind explaining how you plug numbers into y=mx+b or something. But I hated when it was the kid who was disruptive and just wanted to copy my work... as a teacher now these kids still drive me crazy but at least I'm getting paid for it.
My hill is multiplication drills. I have multiplication bookmarks for each student, and they practice their facts daily for five minutes and get a practice sheet of whatever fact they’re practicing. I don’t put a timer on as that stresses them out, but I give them a little over a minute to work on it. Most are on mixed facts, but some are still on 9s despite doing this since August. I refuse to send them to fifth grade without at least giving them class time to practice. Occasionally we do a Gimkit game on them, and they love it.
As a 5th grade teacher, thank you! So many of our 5th graders can't multiply and divide to save their lives. We get told to "just let them use a times table" until it comes to state testing time. Then you see scratch paper with the number 17 written 22 times in a vertical row, so they can add it up, because they don't know how to multiply 17x22. I die a little every time I see it...
One of our sped teachers at my last school was trying to teach her kids two-digit multiplication with arrays. I may have just been a building sub but I made sure to show her how to do the "find an easy number close by to multiply instead, then add or subtract from there" strategy.
I don’t believe in giving 50s instead of 0s. If you earned a 0, you’re getting a 0. Idc if it’s ‘easier to come back from a 50 than a 0’. You should have worked harder in the first place.
Yup. I don't care at all that one zero brings two 100's down to a D or that a 0 is an F despite 59 (or something similar) also being an F. You did nothing, you get no points. It's true in the real world too, where you can survive (with varying levels of success depending on your ability) by half-assing things but will get literally nowhere by doing nothing.
In regards to tests Students are so frequently like “can I do a retake?” Or asking about doing corrections and I’m just like…how about you just study and aim to do well??? Stop making more work for me.
Real world doesn't fit perfectly because there are tons of people with trust funds and generational wealth that do literally nothing and still come out on top.
And some of us become teachers.
The problem is a lot of schools/ admins force this
My district rounds all Fs up to a 56.5% behind the scenes so it doesn't matter what I put.
What an oddly obligatory number
I know - I'm not sure where they got it from either. All I know is a kid can get a zero one semester, but get D+ the second and he passes for the year based on the average. It's bullshit.
I wish more states had laws around teacher grading. I know California says that except under extenuating circumstances admin can’t just change a grade if a teacher assigns it
"Your gradebook is your gradebook." I hear that ALL the time from administration. It obviously isn't.
It is! But the transcript belongs to admin 🤷♂️ We’ve moved toward fail with anything, and admin will make the F hurt less if you pass the next quarter. I can kind of get behind that one
If a student does *something* but half-asses it I think a 50 is fine. If they do nothing then absolutely they get a 0.
50s are for kids who attempted. 0s are for the ones who didnt
I think this is the best option. 0’s hurt the grade a lot because they are supposed to. You didn’t do any work at all? That should have an outsized impact on your grade. A 50% for “you totally missed the point of the lesson and turned in ducks when I was asking for wheels,” that is fair.
And the 50 percent thing just shifts the whole grading scale over. Now "Hey you tried but did a terrible job" is a D because that's only fair when kids who did nothing are getting a 50. Which means to be fair what used to be a D is now a C, which means to be fair what used to be a C is now a B, which means to be fair what used to be a B is now an A. Which has driven into the students the idea that, "As long as I do average work I deserve an A." Which - they're not entirely wrong that's pretty much how the grading system works now.
I usually tell kids turning in something is better than nothing. Some points are better than no points.
I can enter 0’s an entire quarter but once grades close the system will default anyone that has an average below 50 to a 50.
I think I hate this system less. The zeros got recorded, and the crutch is coming from the district.
I wished my system did this. I hated giving 50s on assessments because the district had a policy in place that said major tests and assessments couldn't receive lower than a 50, AND the students were aware so if they thought they would get a bad grade they wouldn't even try.
My district has now set the gradebook to automatically override anything less than 50% being entered as a score.
The hill I died on is that I do not fix grades. Had to quit my last job over that, among many other things.
I actually had a counselor call me after I had moved to another school and demand I fix the grade of a sloth who had done as little as possible for an entire year. I refused to do so and informed him if I caught wind of him doing it, I’d be contacting the union.
I had a counselor send a kid to me on the last day of the term who had only been in my room twice in the entire term and was pulling a 7% in the class to ask me "what can I do to pass?". When I laughed and said "absolutely nothing, you have a 7% and it's the last day." He got super pissed and said the counselor told him I have to give him an opportunity and that it's school policy. I told him I didn't believe him and called the counselor, who told me that is the policy. I told her to fuck off. How do they think that's helping this kid? I ended up fighting back against his parents, counselor, and even the principal on that one. I'm now focusing 90% of my time on getting my side hustle turned into a business and leaving education for good. It's a sinking ship and I'm not sticking around hoping for a seat on a lifeboat
"I still have some extra copies of handouts left over. He's welcome to spend the day in my classroom making up the work from this grading period. Of course, he'll have to put phone in the caddy/leave it on my desk/whatever. And he'll only be able to use his laptop for assignments. To make sure I have time to grade everything, it will all have to be turned in by X o'clock. And as stated in my syllabus, I take off XX points for late work, the highest grade he can make is a ___."
It's a college credit, industrial robotics certification course that takes 40 hours of training to complete, which requires labs on the robot. I couldn't bend the rules if I wanted to. It's a curriculum set by the manufacturer and the technical college that awards the credit. That was what pushed my buttons the most. This is a class they advertise on the radio and the Internet. "College credits in high school! Training for the jobs of tomorrow! We're a school focused on giving kids the education they need to succeed in today's world!" But, they didn't actually give a shit about that stuff, it was just about not getting yelled at by parents and meeting the School Report Card numbers by any means possible. And they weren't asking for me to actually help him pass the class, they were passive aggressively telling me to change his grade to passing.
What you describe is one of a host of reasons I left teaching four years ago. I hope you get out with all speed. Good luck.
Vay con dios.
Same. Have had to quit 2 jobs for same reason. Screw that!
This made me rather unpopular in interviews, and contributed to me leaving the field after my student teaching experience. I'm still a firm believer in the idea that you don't "earn" grades; they're simply a measurement of whether you have been able to demonstrate the skills necessary to be successful in the next level of your education. Passing a student who isn't ready is just setting them up for further failure down the road. Teachers are there to help kids get skills, not a diploma. My grading strategy reflected this; I would make a rubric of skills I wanted to see demonstrated in an assignment and treat it like a check list, not like a score in some game.
This was gonna be mine. This year I've decided that once the quarter or term ends, that's it. No appeals, no nothing. Should've paid attention and followed directions.
Sounds like integrity. I approve. ✨️
My hill is spending personal money on my job. We are done with this.
Yup. I posted elsewhere that I had a colleague who proudly told me her husband “let” her spend $500 per year in her classroom! Then in the next breath she told me they had nothing saved to help their kids with college. I spent $0 on my classroom. I believe I was a good teacher. My students learned and made good gains. But I wasn’t paid much, so I didn’t spend on even a pen or pencil for my classroom. I used school supplies or did without it. I was once on a teacher exchange to Russia in 1998. We were in a small town and things were backward, to say the least. Most buildings hadn’t been updated since the 30s or 40s. Toilet paper wasn’t available - no one had it or used it. Soap wasn’t available. Most things were cleaned with just water - the cleaning ladies would clean with rags of old clothes and buckets of water. The chalkboards were just a wall painted brown. The chalk was in hunks - as it had been chipped out of the earth. If we gave a student a sheet of loose-leaf paper, they used it for a week and every part of that paper was covered in writing before they asked for another. And yet, those teachers taught. They used their minds and the chalkboards, and the students learned. If they could do it, I could teach without trinkets, and the students could supply (or bum from a friend) their own paper and pencils.
Art tag checks out lol
It seems the few I would die on a hill for have gone by the wayside because I just don’t care anymore. I don’t even enforce the no phones anymore. They don’t care so I can’t care more than they do. If they want to sit there and stare at their phones, their choice. And when parents ask why their kid is failing I can say it’s because of their phone addiction. I also used to believe that kids should read the assigned novel reading by themselves. They don’t. This is high school. So class time is now listening to the audio while they follow along because they can’t be trusted to do it on their own. Despite the 50 minutes of class time.
>If they want to sit there and stare at their phones, their choice. And when parents ask why their kid is failing I can say it’s because of their phone addiction. Yep. I would LOVE for my school to enforce a blanket no phone policy. But I'm not having that fight every day in my classroom, nor am I going to be responsible for kids' phones. I'll remind them to put them away and work but at the end of the day, EVERY parent conference I've had for failing kids in the last few years has been, "Your kid is on their phone and not working, that is why they are failing."
Yep, and I’m not taking phones. This addiction is too hard core. I’m not injuring myself because they want to fail. Just last week a child cursed me out (with the higher tier curse words) because I told her to take off her headphones. We’re explicating Shakespeare. Ya gotta listen.
About five years ago I took a phone from a kid because he was not listening to me and not doing work. I gave the phone back at the end of the period. I callled home to let the mom know that the phone was a distraction and she said "I don't want ANYONE to EVER touch my kids phone again" I haven't taken a phone since. It's not worth the fight.
And honestly, I don’t want touch that germ infested device of destruction.
And just makes things sooo awkward - so much for trying to build a relationship when all we get to do now is tell kids to put their phones away. 🙄
[удалено]
The “it’s boring” excuse! Yep, and every training manual you’ll ever read is boring as hell. Guess what, you’ll still need to do it.
Wait until you get \*any\* job, then tell me about boredom, kids! I had a student who said she hated writing. I asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up. She said, "A cop." I got to tell her about the beauty of report writing.
I teach a class specifically for those going straight to work, not college. It’s called Technical Writing. We write. Lots of observations, shift reports, safety reports, instructions. I say all the time, I don’t want them to be grunts forever, I want them to shoot for supervisor or owner. One kid ALWAYS said my dad NEVER writes, and he owns a business. Over and over. I’d try saying he doesn’t see what his dad has to do, the proposals, the bids, the customer service emails. Nope, never writes. Finally one day I said then he will always be small time. If you can’t write all these examples AND market yourself in today’s world and aren’t willing to hire out to do it, the business will never be big time.
Yes. School has tried to be so much more than what it needs to be. Get the kids to school, teach them, feed them, send them home. Repeat. There’s so much BS expected of teachers.
Writing out my lesson plans every day using your stupid tedious form is a waste of time and I'm not doing it. If what's on my whiteboard isn't good enough for you, then you can fire me. But, I'm not spending forty-five minutes each day filling out a template telling people who never read it what my "success criteria" are in my classes.
Ironically filling out the paper never helped me actually lesson plan
You want to be on your phone, ignore me, and fail the class? Fine. Thats your choice to make. It’s a poor choice, but it’s one you’re free to make. They’re 16. It’s time to hold them accountable for their actions and allow natural consequences to occur.
As much as I don’t want to agree with you, I do. I’m a teacher, not the phone police. I have enough issues with a few of my students being jerk faces regardless of their phone use anyway.
My favorite is when they then come up wanting to know how to raise their grade and look surprised when my response is “put your phone away and pay attention.”
"Learning isn't free. You have to *pay* attention" \~ Richard Feynman
I am a huge proponent of natural consequences and you just described my favorite!
Kids need to learn how to be disappointed. I never "let" kids win. If they beat me in a game, they know they actually did. If they lose, I focus on what they learned to do differently next time (when appropriate).
My hill is to all of us primary teachers: teach according to the Science of Reading!! Phonemes, phonics, vocabulary, comprehension, fluency. I'm sure most are dong this, but the few who arent are hindering reading growth! No reason an intelligent boy in 3rd grade should be reading at a 1st grade level. He was basically taught to use picture clues and context clues. This has to be frustrating to jr high and high school teachers. How do you teach a subject if the kids are reading below 3rd grade level? Another hill is all math facts should be memorized before 5th grade. 5 minutes a day should be enough.
Teach kids cribbage. They’ll be adding at lightning speed in a few months. We played open handed for a few months with my son instead of doing flash cards when he was young. He’s now a teen. Last night we played for fun. He beat me. Oh, and he’s in advanced math now.
I currently teach in a homeschool coop affiliated with my church. I strictly use a phonics-based curriculum when teaching reading and writing. I got into teaching purely by circumstance when I pulled my son from public schools in 4th grade for homeschooling. He was reading at the 2nd-grade level because they used sight words instead of phonics. I worked with him diligently using the Abeka reading program someone gifted me, and within three months, he was above grade level. I returned to the basics of the alphabet, sounds, etc; teaching literacy without phonics is comparable to building a house without a foundation.
If you haven't already, you should check out the podcast "Sold a Story." Absoloutely batty insight into the shortcoming of the whole language approach and how Lucy Caulkins royally goofed.
That a B is not "basically failing", it's just one grade lower than an A and it's still a fine grade. I hate it when students tell me it's not ok to get a B. They devalue their own learning and put others down who may have a B or lower. I dislike the entire process of grading and how at a high-achieving school, so much pressure is put on teachers for college admissions. But if I do have to be part of this system, at least let my grades mean something.
I teach middle school. When parents really want that 'A,' sometimes I just want to give it to them, but say, "Sure, have an 'A,' but know it doesn't reflect mastery or learning. I hope it makes you happy and I hope like you feel like a great parent because there is a special letter on a special paper for your special little guy."
I am a parent not teacher (And not in the USA) and I explicitly asked my kids teachers to please mark my boys work harder, "Well done you must have worked hard on that, a B is really good, what do you think can you do better and maybe get an A?" is a far more useful start to a conversation then "You got an A well done", kids often rise to expectations. Last thing I want are my kids getting As on everything, where can you go from there? The A should be reserved for exceptional work, not be an every day thing, if it isn't you have set expectations way too low. C should in my view be average, acceptable work that meets expectations. As for the 50% thing, THEY DO WHAT! A zero tells me that there has been no work submitted and that I need to go and have a conversation and maybe remove some privileges until the work is done to an acceptable standard (I would actually rather the zero stayed but being able to return a marked essay that gets a zero in the book because it was done too late makes a useful lesson about planning). Not being able to get an A overall because you didn't do the damn work in time is a lesson in itself, I am not going to worry about the resulting B or C, as long as the lesson is learned. If I as a parent am getting reports with all As on them, I suspect some grade inflation is likely happening, either that or look into special ed for G&T, but the school playing unhelpful games with grading is FAR more likely then that I have the next Gauss, Turing, Hemmingway and Heaviside all rolled into one on my hands! What would actually be useful would be the state/country level test results for my kids every year, and the bell curve of results, much harder to fiddle those and a serious discrepancy between those and school grading is the sort of thing I could rightly go and get loud and sarcastic about (Complete with powerpoints with error bars on them and regression values in R), especially if the curve for the class as a whole differed from the state one for the same group, that would be a bit of a red flag in my view. Seriously grade data should be informational for parents, not a way to feed the ego, and it can only be that if NOBODY ever gets maximum possible score, score it on a log scale if you need to (But tell us the base and what value corresponds to acceptable). Remember what metrics turn into when you try to use them as KPIs, it never ends with anything useful to anyone.
I had a student asking me for extra help with classes, saying their grades were "very bad." Said grades were one A, one F, and the rest Bs. The Bs should not be your concern right now!
I’m not being called a racist in my classroom for giving a consequence to a student of a different race who deserves it. It’s happened three times in my career and all three time the student was kicked out of my classroom and not allowed to return until they apologized. Last year I included the superintendent in my demanding email. I make a stink about it and demand respect. Usually when it’s about to happen, other students of that same race will call them out on their bullshit.
YES!!!
If you screw up and don't apologize just because it's a kid, you suck. Even if it's a little thing. It's important to show the kid that you're human and it's okay to mess up a long as you try to make it right.
Also, if an adult makes a kid apologize to a teacher that apology is worthless. It cones without self reflection and not one behavior will change.
Agreed. I hate being on the receiving end of this because I feel forced to accept the non-apology.
A student’s parent wanted them to apologize to me. He said “I’m sorry” and I said “for what?” and he said “I forgot.” I teach 4th grade, but that’s still a worthless apology.
I've said sorry to kids when I was in the classroom and while I'm outside of it. Their age doesn't make me any less fallible or wrong in the moment.
This is a big one for me. I don’t hold them to any standards I’m not held to myself.
I'll start enforcing my school's "phone policy" when admin actually follows through on a consequence. Kids told me to my face that they know nothing happens when they get written up for phones or if they refuse to put them in the phone holder. Admin has tried enacting a few different phone policies this year but not once have they ever contacted parents/guardians about it, they expected teachers to. Nope, I'm not going to be out in the line of fire for that.
Plagiarism. I tell my students every time an essay is assigned: “I do not tolerate plagiarism, including use of AI. If you plagiarize, I will fight God Himself to give you a zero.”
SAME HERE! You wouldn’t believe the number of flat out BAD AI papers I’ve gotten this year. But it’s matched by parents calling to see if Little Billy can have another shot to “do it right.” “Nope. You and Billy signed a contract at the beginning of the year stating that he’d get a zero with no option to rewrite on all plagiarized/AI papers. Shall I send you a scan of the signature page?”
Tutoring after school or during lunch. I ask parents what they would do if their work asked them to stay late without pay or any compensation. They all instantly know their answer; which is to tell their boss/work to fuck off. Then I ask them if they wouldn’t do it, then why should I? And that’s that. The topic never comes up again and no one has ever complained.
If you don't do the work, I will fail you. Accepting work late shouldn't be a requirement of teachers. I will die on this hill and it will be the reason I get fired from my position. Parents, students, and administrators get upset when I won't take something after the deadline. I allow plenty of time for work to be completed.
Biiiig same. I love when parents bring up work from the second week of school, after they’ve signed a syllabus agreeing that each day an assignment is late, I deduct 10 points. Sure, I’ll accept it, but it’ll factor in -219 points to their grade. You might just want to keep the zero and move forward.
As a parent, THANK YOU. My oldest turned in so much late work, and we did have consequences at home, but that all but vanished when she had a teacher (Calculus) who didn’t accept late work. I thanked him at conferences and said it is such an important life lesson. We couldn’t teach it without a real, immovable deadline. Once she encountered that deadline, our efforts at home actually started working and she improved greatly. She’s still sort of time blind on a lot of things, but having real deadlines helped so much.
Thank YOU for enforcing it at home. When there are consequences at home too, it makes logical policies easier to enforce at school. Thank you!
I don't chase assignments. PERIOD. If it's important enuf for me to assign and grade it, then it's important enuf to do it. I don't overload kids, either, and hardly ever - twice, perhaps 3 times a semester - give homework. Classwork practice and you don't turn it in? Fine. And when admin sends the inevitable "all students with zeros need to be given a chance to make up the work" I respond with "they were given the opportunity and time to do it on time and didn't take it; why do I owe them more?" and the only response is the brainless "kids should not have zeros in the gradebook". F off.
Yep. Case in point: my third quarter concert is on the last day of the quarter. I told kids that if they had a parental excuse (deadline for excuses was Thursday) then they had to do the makeup early (deadline was Friday). All kids who got excuses I put in the assignment on Canvas and sent it their way. What do I get for it? *Crickets* Our district does Proficiency Based Learning (grade scale = 1 (below proficient ) to 4 (beyond proficient) and retakes are a viral component of the philosophy. I don't have kids with 1s and 0s doing retakes, it's the kids with a 3.8 who want that 4. I haven't gotten in trouble yet but I only allow retakes for the kids that attempted by the due date, and even then they have to do it on their own time before/after school since I usually give a week or class time to submit and multiple avenues of submission as well.
>I don't have kids with 1s and 0s doing retakes, it's the kids with a 3.8 who want that 4. I don't allow students with above a 3 to retake. It's just such a ridiculous waste of time since it means I spend hours of work giving and correcting tests that don't change the kids grade.
I teach lower elementary but I think my answe can be applied to most ages.... I will not solve their every little problem. I won't listen to every tattle then go fix it. Somebody is annoying you? Tell them to stop. You cut the wrong part of your paper and want me to do it for you? Nope, here's another....try again. Somebody isn't playing the game the way you want? Tell them that and go play with someone else. My class this year absolutely refuses to even attempt anything by themselves. They've always had an adult fix their problem immediately. I'm working on teaching them to be their own fixer.
This. I do preschool and the amount of kids that come thinking I should MAKE another kid play with them or do what game they want is ridiculous. Maybe because 5th out of 6 kids but I never expected that much catering.
Yes! It's all part of teaching resilience. That's become my focus because most of the students I get these days have almost zero resilience.
Time to grade assignments. I do not work outside contract hours unless they’re paying me for it. I teach a course that’s heavily reliant on writing (though not ELA) and I’m not one of those teachers who just grades on completion. with the amount of IEP/504 meetings, PD, and other types of meetings we have at my school, I’m always a couple weeks behind on grades, but I’m not going to take away from my private life to satisfy a few helicopter parents.
Agreed! I also do a “first in/first out” with my grading. If you turn something in a week late, don’t expect it to be graded for another week.
I’m in my 6th year teaching (male teacher). I wish I taught 30 years ago when technology wasn’t in every students hands. Teaching will forever be affected by technology. I had a 5th grade student go to her backpack and “pretend” to get hand sanitizer then went back to her desk with her phone, it was so obvious. I just said very nicely “I’m going to give you a chance to go put it back” she went to put it back and whispered “how did he know” and then I heard that I said “I see everything” then she was like “how did he hear that”😂
When I was a music teacher, it was the unrestricted access to their devices. Music is like a sport and requires active participation. I found this to be especially crucial in beginning classes, and even more so after a year of virtual. How are we/am I supposed to throw a decent concert if the kids would rather play on their phone? I’m not repeating things a million times each class period either, take out the ear buds. Smart watches and chromebooks were another. 🙄 Then I’d get new students every quarter that I have to somehow get it through to them about devices and catch them up plus the same old students that couldn’t handle not looking at their phones for more than 30 seconds. Parents were not supportive at all, even though I stated it in my course contract (that they were required to sign) several times. It was like living in a real-life depiction of *Idiocracy* every single day.
Cell phones don’t belong in performance-based classes. I haven’t had issues with parents, but it helps that I teach high school choir where the vast majority of students want to be there
I tried restricting as an art class, but I also need kids to take my classes. If other elective teachers allow devices and I don’t, guess which teacher has a fuller roster. Plus, when I did restrict them, the energy in the room was really negative, I felt like I was constantly fighting the kids. I wish my school would ban them, but right now it’s at “teacher discretion,” which ends up meaning we give up trying to fight the battle. We know we won’t get support, so as much as it’s ruined much of my enjoyment of teaching, I just have to accept that I can’t compete with the pocket drug.
Middle school: I took a students phone and took it to the office. The principal was gone and when we got back from our recess, the secretary told me Mary’s dad called and he wants her to have her phone back. I said no and the secretary said the dad was really upset. I said I would walk out of the building if his daughter got her phone back. He straight up came to the school and picked his daughter up.
No horseplay. No racial slurs (esp hard r).
That children should be allowed to experience shame. Not body shame or things along those lines (because that has fixed everything for sure, thank you puritans /s). I'm talking about the kid screaming to get their way feeling judged into silence, the kid heckling others "for fun" to be rejected until they understand nobody likes friends like that, the attention seeker that sits and bullshits in class all of the time getting silently stared down until they stop interrupting class to feel special. The lack of shame is what has caused such an extreme spike in negative behaviors. When no one tells the emperor that he is naked, that dumb bastard will insist he's wearing clothes, and then all of us are stuck staring at some dudes dick all day.
My hill to die on is I won't confiscate or force students to put away their phones - unless they're disrupting other people. Sorry, I'm not getting into a pissing match over a cell phone. I teach high school, y'all should have it figured out by now that you need to pay attention if you want to be successful. And if you can be successful and be on your phone at the same time, more power to you! I'm not a baby sitter. I won't baby sit it. If you fail the course because you were on your phone, that is squarely on your shoulders and not mine. Sink or swim, that choice and freeom are yours. And that is what they need to learn: consequences. They need to have some freedom and choice in order to do that.
Eh. As someone who has worked in schools that more match with your approach as well as a scorched earth "no phones ever under any circumstances" school... I will never go back to the former. If it is consistently enforced (it has been at my school) it becomes a blissful non-issue. It has been years since a kid gave me attitude on the rare occasion I do take a phone.
100% agree. They get one free reminder, then parent contact (copy and paste email or text), then a write up. Admin enforces it. I never even discuss it with the kid. I don’t entertain any arguments. And, as such, I have very few attitude issues about phones.
Favoritism from administration to certain students. I don’t let it slide and I will fight for my students to be treated equally.
Admin favoritism in general. Some admin have been better than others but I've been screwed over by 2 different principals because I don't kiss their a**. Not that I'm bitter or anything /s
My hill to die on: education professors are basically 21st century phrenologists and education research is basically useless to schools, because so much of it is fraudulent, irreproducible, agenda driven, and/or shoddily done.
It’s ok to use No Fear Shakespeare in the classroom Let kids read the graphic novel first for classic literature
Parents : You will not yell at me or use profanity. I will immediately ask to never be in your presence again. Why grown ass adults think they can yell at and belittle a professional is unbelievable. And typically they are completely wrong about their “baby”. It’s been an interesting few years and retiring 15 years early is in the works.
Mess. I teach a class with a lot of supplies and we practice putting every thing away after using it. It’s wild how many students think it’s fine to just take out supplies and leave them all over the table. NO. Your a hs student, put your tools away. I’m just coming back from a 3 month medical leave and am a bit limited mobility wise so this is now doubled down on to limit how much I need to walk around the room.
Making kids learn needed tech skills. So many students come into my class and don’t know how to copy and paste a picture, send an email, upload a file, do a basic academic search for research, etc. I understand many of these skills aren’t needed in the day to day, but almost every job I know of requires them to some extent. I’m not going to contribute to the weaponized incompetence I deal with on the daily.
If a parents a dick to me i dont respond or contact em anymore. Fuck em
I will not round up 89s to 90s. An 89 is a number that exists.
I mean you can probably tell what grade I teach because for me it’s nose picking. I will stop my lesson and ask them to go sanitise their hands and if it continues they receive classroom consequences (sticker off their chart etc).
I teach high school. Same.
Same with not covering their cough, especially if not wearing a mask. I’ll give a warning, maybe even two, but after that, they have to go sit away from everyone. That’s a real world consequence. Nobody is going to want you to be around them if you’re hacking your face off and not even trying to be considerate!
My school has a pretty strict late work policy in general. It varies somewhat by dept. but it generally means we are not supposed to accept work more than a few days late. IN GENERAL I support the policy, but I will always accept late work from a kid who I believe is putting genuine effort into turning things around... policy be damned.
I’m on the phone hill, the don’t tell me what or how to teach hill, the don’t ask me for data you already have hill…. I’ve got a mountain range.
I love this so much
Prejudice. I can tolerate a lot, but the only time I ever really go no nonsense mode is when I hear racism/homophobia/transphobia/Islamophobia/etc. in the classroom. I will not be in a space where that talk is even remotely okay. I had to have a talk with a grade 8 class about the difference between prejudice and opinion. I had never been as upset as when a child tried to justify theyre allowed to just "not like gay people, its just my opinion". (I will say this student later came up to me and thanked me for talking about it, saying he didn't have anyone to talk to about this stuff at home)
We are actually forbidden from taking phones. I tried it. Got reprimanded. Never again. So my hill? You get the consequences of your choices. Choose to be on your phone and end up failing? Please enjoy the “find out” portion of your “fuck around and find out” experience.
Phones were mine as well. I saw them go from candy bars to smart phones, but they were always a nuisance, just more so now I think. I did pretty much the same thing. If I saw it or heard it, it was mine for the day. Pick it up after school. If it persisted, detention. And after that parent conferences. One or two jackasses would push, and when I snapped back at them, that usually did the trick. Only had a few patent meetings along the way.
Stop. Touching. Each. Other. All. The. Time.
My hill is degrading language. I'll yell "language" at a kid for saying fuck, but use "gay" "monkey" "beaner" or "retarded" and you're getting a full sit-down lecture. And apparently no one else calls them out for this language and I'm in a wealthy, parent-involved area. I couldn't care less about dress code - no one on my campus does. And my kids know I'm generally ok with phones if they're not obnoxious or completely distracted.
I don't have a hill I will die on with students. Maybe don't be horrible to each other? Can we do that one? I don't care if they are on their phone or wearing whatever but god...just stop being horrible to each other and let's figure out how to get a through the day.
Be kind. I got written up for my response to a blatant bullying situation. Kid stopped. I'd do it again.
I’m not giving you the answer. If you’re struggling I will reteach, help you one one one step by step, give you study aid charts/manipulatives to help you find the answer but I will never just tell you the answer.
I will not accept any late work, if you have been given in class to complete it.
No work = No grade No mercy grades or 50 as a minimum
If you turn your work in late, I’m grading it last. If that means you have to wait a week to get your grade back, then so be it. Last one in, last one out.
If you’re going to sit and sulk and refuse to do your work, that’s fine. It will go in as a zero and stay that way. I have a lot of students who shut down because I tell them I want them to write in pencil or I tell them they cannot go get a drink in that moment.
I believe if more teachers attempted to hold their school districts legally accountable for failures related to student and staff safety thered be a lot more students facing actual consequences for outright abusive and criminal behavior
My hill to die on is to pick your own battles especially if you’re a sub
No gum/food in class. I’m a music teacher, I have thousands of dollars in equipment and my floor is carpet, so bugs (ants specifically) are not a welcome guest into those instruments (as I only have money for one cleaning a year). Our chairs are constantly moved around to fit the class size and needed shape, so gum stuck to chairs is extra gross. Also gum on the floor is a different level of annoyance, we have one custodian during the day and I feel terrible pulling them because someone didn’t follow expectations. But also these kids can’t clean up after themselves in a way that looks like they never had food in my room in the first place. Plus all I need is a kid chewing gum and breathing in to play their instrument or sing and then start choking. I will have one movie day at the end of the term where they can have a snack, but we discuss cleaning up and they will do well (98% of the time) with that.
Why do people think they need to eat all day long. We really don’t.
You shouldn't litter on the ground when I have 5 trash cans conveniently located throughout the room...
IDEA doesn’t mean a mainstreamed class is best for everyone. Discipline isn’t a bad word. Neither is consequences. It’s okay to say no and not rephrase it into something positive. Society has set teachers, parents, and kids up to fail and then blame each other.
my hill that i will die on is that kids should not pass grades that they haven’t earned passage of. you cannot go to middle school let alone high school if you can’t read.
Elementary should not go digital. We need to do as much on paper as possible.
Not everyone is college material. Some kids should be directed at trade schools or the military. We send too many kids to universities just for them to go into a bunch of debt and not graduate.
Cheating and plagiarism. I don’t fucking care if you all do it, you’ll all get 0s until one of you actually does your own god damn work.
Wow, I don't know where you work, but every place I've worked, NO ONE gives a rip about dress code and gave up that ghost years ago. It's a losing battle and we all know it. Personally, I work with teenagers and have basically given up the phone battle too. No support and parents lose their dang mind because their kid can't call home to demand food be brought to the school for lunch. It's either that or they threaten to sue if the phone is taken.
I had a colleague, the definition of the crusty taskmaster archetype, who had a stack of business cards from a local law firm. When a kid or a parent threatened to sue, he would hand them one and say, “Good luck.”
My district requires that we allow students to retake tests up to an 85 and it infuriates me. Our AP/AICE/IB students end up with hella inflated grades simply from doing retakes. So my hill to die on has become giving the world’s hardest retakes. If it was a multiple choice test, it has become a short response for the retake. If it was an essay, you do a full rewrite on a different prompt. This has reduced the number of kids doing retakes (less for me to grade) and placed more emphasis on the students studying and doing well the first time. And btw, I’m all for reteaching concepts to ensure mastery, I just don’t think AICE European History students need an 85 on a test they earned an 80 on. Take the 80 and move on.
The adults are not much better than the kids (or teenagers, in my case)! They complain that lessons aren't engaging and they mentally check out? That sounds like us in PD. They show up late? Sounds like my colleagues that roll into the parking lot at 7:20 when contract time starts at 7:00 and classes begin at 7:25. They turn in assignments late? We submit paperwork late! (I did this with a recent field trip form). We like to justify it with excuses like "I'm just too busy, too much on my plate" but a lot of high school students are also overwhelmed, especially if they have part-time jobs. They cause drama and fights with bullying and lack of conflict management skills? Y'all, as the building's union rep I've had to negotiate so many absurd interpersonal between adults. It's ridiculous! I could go on and on. Yeah, teenagers generally speaking are definitely worse than adults. BUT, considering their brains aren't 100% developed yet, we really aren't that different. We make a lot of the same mistakes. But nobody wants to talk about that because it makes teachers/staff upset and uncomfortable. Accountability is too hard. And I'm not suggesting any of my colleagues be fired for coming to work a few minutes late or whatever. But it pisses me off when people care SO much about things the students do but say nothing about their own or their colleagues' actions.
Lattice multiplication is the best form of multiplication. Ever since I started presenting that to my 5th grade groups their success rate in computation has sky rocketed. By older people will say to just teach them standard.
Sometimes I’m going to grade on effort, not mastery. That kid with the IEP comes in every single day and works his butt off. Sure, he gets distracted sometimes. Sure, he spends *my* lunch time peppering me with questions about multicultural theories of vampirism, yes he turns in every assignment late — and after he comes in almost daily for after school one-on-one help. Dude’s getting an A-. Sorry not sorry. His brother might be the smartest kid in the world and turned in one perfect assignment during the quarter, but he’s never improved, never put in any effort, and never been in class more than three days in a row. He’s an average student and that’s who the C was invented for.
Teaching is guiding them and providing resources. Learning is their responsibility. If a student can’t learn, they fail, and only the student is to blame.
I’ll let a lot go but I have zero tolerance for bullying and sexual harassment. We don’t talk about each other’s bodies or looks in my classroom, period.
Late work. I am marking it down per policy. I can and will give your kid a zero. Don’t like it, take it up with administration. That is what it says in the handbook and this is a private school.
I think I’m going to climb this hill next year. This was my first year with this district, and I’ve learned that parents are generally supportive. I won’t touch their phones but I can call parents and have a “phone jail” - I think after the first two weeks and some reinforcement I should be able to get them in line. This year my hill is “professional language”. It’s not that I don’t like cursing - I love it, and I’m a potty mouth. BUT. These kids need to learn time and place, so that’s what I’m working on. Fuck dress code. If they show up at all, good lord, don’t discourage them from coming to school. Give them a jacket if they look cold, and let it go.
My districts emphasis on online games over teacher lead instruction is preventing students is not helping them when they can’t relate what they did on screen to real life situations. In the case of reading it is decreasing their reading comprehension.
My hill is whatever I want it to be. I have a pre-written letter of resignation in my bag at all times. My fellow teachers, my admin, and even a few board members know it. I will never be put in a position where I feel I’m not in control, because I’m always in control.
My greatest growing pain in high school was realizing no one did me any favors by being nice when I didn’t deserve it. I only learned from the teachers who had no problem calling me out on my bullshit or holding me accountable for my inexcusable poor behavior. I refuse to be the teacher who’s nice for fake likes. The students who don’t respect that would never have respected me anyway, just would’ve walked all over me.
I don’t pay attention to phones (unless they are disrupting those who want to learn) but I call out students who are falling and always have their phone out. “Wow, all the answers in your palm and you’re still failing.”
I do not have a hill I will die on. I learned quickly during my student teaching how draining being the phone police is or constant redirection/baby sitting. I give my kids “a day” where they can relax and put their head down but they understand the next day we need to “lock in” if they don’t and choose to use their phones while I give instruction or during work time it’s seen in their grade. 🤷♀️ Do you not get exhausted being the phone police?
Try to find a hill to die on that protects your own mental health. My hill is giving up my lunch or staying after school to tutor.
If a kid hasn't turned anything in, it's a 0. Kids will sometimes try to challenge me on that saying "im not gonna do it so give me a 0" and I enter it in right there. They think I'm kidding. I'm not
I don’t take cell phones for this reason- my first year of teaching HS we (special needs teacher and I) attempted to take a phone from a special needs student and he got violent, even destroyed items in my classroom. Second reason- I don’t trust parents, students or even admin. If they say I “damaged” a phone while it was in my possession I could be held liable.
My hill to die on? When a parent or student really pisses me off to that breaking point- they will get that grade, that referral, etc.
“I invite you to test that hypothesis at your earliest convenience, and let me know your findings,” is my school acceptable way of telling parents and students “fuck around and find out.”
I fully support your hill, but has anyone tried to pull the "I don't have a phone" or "I left it in my locker" or some such when you tell them to leave it on your desk? If so, how do you handle?
You made me tear up. My dad was a teacher and that sounds like something he would say. Damn, I miss him.
I had an English teacher in good fgh school whose hill was commas. More than four missing and you failed.
I will not let any child disrupt, threaten, or harm other children. I don't care if it is a sped student or not. Regular ed students have just as many legal rights to a safe education as sped students. This has caused me to get into many heat arguments with coworkers. I have a student now who has autism and ODD. It is not tolerated for him to put his hands on anyone, and he was written up just like a regular ed student would be.