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ryan is tuff to crack
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I started teaching right after undergrad at a second-tier private school in a small but relatively wealthy city (lots of finance and chemical industry there) and it was in retrospect a very mixed experience. I taught mostly Latin classes, with a few English lit/comp electives for juniors and seniors. This was in 2008-2010, so obviously I didn’t stick with it that long. Leaving out the stuff that was purely a consequence of my personal life, here are some of the highs and lows: HIGHS - great freedom to design courses and lessons; I got to teach a semester of English that I called “future societies” and we read stuff like Brave New World, Neuromancer, and Snow Crash and watched movies and TV ranging from Star Trek to Blade Runner - over 3 months paid vacation each year (winter break, spring break, summer break) that really was vacation—since this was a private school I didn’t have to keep my certification updated or anything - (almost) all the kids had stable homes, at least economically speaking, so they weren’t as messed up as some other middle/high school students - since it was a private school there was in general a higher level of respect from students, who didn’t have to be there and who for the most part understood that their parents, who were paying like $25k/yr for them to be there, would be PISSED if they felt like that was wasted - 100% matching retirement contribution and a mere $99/mo health insurance premium LOWS - a minority of students (and/or their parents) had a very “customer is always right” attitude and seemed to think that my job was to give them good grades to get into college, more than to actually teach them useful knowledge and skills - I had to coach a sport one season and that meant staying around until practice ended at like 6pm weeknights, plus working all day most Saturdays (showing up around 6am and getting back at like 8pm, if the matches/tournaments weren’t local) - the school emphasized “community” in a way that rubbed me the wrong way—as though I was supposed to treat this as “more than a job” and show up for, like, football games on the weekends despite that not being anywhere in my contract - because this was a second-tier private school, the admin made a LOT of concessions to students(‘ parents) to make sure they kept their kids there, such as essentially waiving various graduation requirements or overlooking discipline issues; these were often kids who’d been kicked out of their previous (better) school and would NOT have cut it at public school (where their parents’ wealth wouldn’t have mattered as much) - the pay was really lovely ($32k/yr) compared to what my college classmates were making ($60-80k/yr) though part of that was my fault for deciding to live in the much bigger (and more expensive) city that was a 45min drive away Anyway I quit to go to grad school and get an MA and PhD and now I teach part-time as an adjunct at a mid-tier university where I get paid even LESS—and that’s not even adjusting for inflation. If things don’t pan out in academia in the next year I am figuring out something else to do for the next 30 years until I retire.
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May 29, 2023 12:38
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Nooner posted:pretty soon if youre a teacher yo uget to have a gun just like a cop so that is pretty loving cool pewpewpew Both think they can tell you what to do and uphold the structures of capital when you think about it.
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May 29, 2023 12:52
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My teaching certification was done on a stipend, as was my masters program. I didn't have to take out loans or spend much money, but I had to teach in the state for 3 (I think?) years. I was VERY lucky. I'm not sure I'd still be doing this if I had to go into debt to get in. Edit: I guess to actually answer your question, in my experience no it's not that bad. Greg Legg fucked around with this message at 13:48 on May 29, 2023 |
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May 29, 2023 13:43
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Apollodorus posted:I started teaching right after undergrad at a second-tier private school in a small but relatively wealthy city (lots of finance and chemical industry there) and it was in retrospect a very mixed experience. Do private school students internalise that they themselves are “better” than public school students? If so, how early does this start and how does it manifest? Do private schools train teachers on how to deal with the “customer is always right” attitude, and if so what does that training involve?
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May 29, 2023 14:16
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20 Blunts posted:i dipped my toe in the water by tutoring at Boys n Girls club in college and noped out of that poo poo after one semester the gently caress were you teaching them?
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May 29, 2023 14:22
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NoiseAnnoys posted:the gently caress were you teaching them? how to smoke blunts (20 of them)
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May 29, 2023 14:37
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Halisnacks posted:Do private school students internalise that they themselves are “better” than public school students? If so, how early does this start and how does it manifest? Great question, and not easy to answer. In the most extreme cases, like Tucker Carlson, it’s from a very early age and produces, well, Tucker Carlsons. But plenty of other private school kids have a surprisingly realistic assessment of their situation—they know that they’re lucky, and that doesn’t make them better than anyone else. Mostly it’s in between, but there are some really entitled pricks at prep schools. Halisnacks posted:Do private schools train teachers on how to deal with the “customer is always right” attitude, and if so what does that training involve? Uh…not that well, in my experience, and I really needed more training than I got because I was 23 and new to the job so parents felt like they could run right over me. HOWEVER, I did get a lot of support from more senior colleagues who would join me during meetings with parents.
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May 29, 2023 15:36
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I'm about to go back to school to get a teaching certification and endorsements for my state and I've been substitute teaching in the local district to help make possible professional connections as well as get a feel for what level I want to try and go for. Subbing pays well (more than the hospitality job I was doing before) but there's no benefits so it's not a long term thing. It is a different beast from actually teaching a class because you're really just there to babysit the classes, keep them from burning the place down, and supervising them while they maybe do the work the teacher left for them on their Chromebooks. Most students will want to goof off and not do any of that and you are not really respected or treated as an authority figure until you've been there a few times or are a longer term sub. Nothing major has really changed as far as that from when I was a student, sure there's social media and smart phones for distractions but the number of kids checking out for a sub is about the same. Lockdown drills are new, and the kids all seem to be making jokes about it and I'm not sure if it's their way of dealing with it or what. My parents had regular duck and cover drills for a nuclear war that never came so I think it's a similar thing, except there's way more school shootings than nuclear wars. I think the most shocking thing I've seen so far was a middle school student showing off their stab wounds that were healing after they got jumped a month prior. I also intervened in a fight where one student was knocked to the ground and the one above them was moments away from curbstomping them. I've had pencils and other things thrown at me as well and that's the hardest because it's hard to not take it personally. Oh, and the school that held a lockdown drill during my planning period but didn't bother to tell me it was just a drill beforehand so I was literally texting my partner that this could be it while I hid in a corner with scissors pointed at the doorway. But then I've gone back to a couple places as a regular and there's always a bunch of students excited that I am there to sub for them or are noticeably a little sad when they find out that I'm there to sub for someone else. chainchompz fucked around with this message at 19:29 on May 29, 2023 |
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May 29, 2023 17:54
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Schweinhund posted:They get the whole summer off. Cry me a river. From page 1 but couldn't let this slip by. Not a teacher, but know several teachers including my sister. First of all, "summer vacation" for students is not 3 months, it's typically under 2. For teachers, when you account for all the end of year work and all the prep work for the next year, in reality they get about a few weeks off. They also can't really take extended time off at any point during the school year.
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May 29, 2023 20:01
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Also for many public school teachers summer is when they do professional development, often required to maintain their certification, and/or teach summer school. As I said in my post above, it’s usually much more chill for private school teachers, but private school teachers also don’t get paid as well (since they/we are not unionized). Neither group gets to choose their vacation days, though. If, say, your best friend is getting married and wants you to be best man/maid of honor and organize their bachelor(ette) party as a week-long getaway, you better hope they’re cool doing it during summer, spring break, or winter break, because you cannot get away any other time. In my experience and personal opinion, a lovely salary is much easier to swallow when you only actually work nine months out of the year and have good job security—I’d rather make $60k/yr and get 3 months vacation (including a solid 2+ month chunk) than make $120k/yr and get only 2 weeks (plus holidays).
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May 29, 2023 20:46
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cumpantry posted:how to smoke blunts (20 of them) oh, right. i remember shop class.
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May 29, 2023 20:57
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It’s very sad to me that I make way more than my high school teachers that are still teaching 20 years later. I work from home just 40 hours a week and I saw on Facebook one of them died Uber eats 
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May 29, 2023 21:04
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If you want summers off you should be a teacher, it's so easy! Also it's my first week of summer and I have today off and professional development the rest of the week, yay!
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May 29, 2023 21:18
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I'm a new-ish elementary teacher and it's a pretty sweet gig. I also already have a retirement + disability from a previous career that makes the low pay not such a big deal. Going home at 2:30 and having weekends/holidays/summers off is pretty sweet.
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May 29, 2023 21:54
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This dude's going to nope out in 4 years and spend the rest of their life saying how lovely being a teacher was and 
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May 29, 2023 21:57
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I was talking to somebody who was teaching English at a factory in China for a little while. Apparently it was a pretty mind blowing experience because there it’s a venerated role with a lot of authority. Obv. some kinda messed up authoritarianism behind that but it got me thinking that it would be nice if western society had more respect for teachers, seems a lot more important for the future of our children than giving millionaires tax breaks. Anyways I know a bunch of teachers and they love their job but the biggest problem is parents not being attentive or even caring about their children. Those kids are the ones causing problems or struggling.
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May 29, 2023 22:19
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Fruits of the sea posted:I was talking to somebody who was teaching English at a factory in China for a little while. Apparently it was a pretty mind blowing experience because there it’s a venerated role with a lot of authority. I mean that also kind of was the case in countries where it's no longer the case you know, and that lots of authority came with lots of ugly sides as well such as punishment of students and abuses of power by teachers being commonplace but very difficult and taboo to report on. Anyway, even in the West how schools work and how teachers work varies alot, like the whole classroom culture, organization of the school day and what a teacher's authority and role varies alot. Alot of continental and southern Europe seems to be very different from Scandinavia (which is what I'm familiar with), and those again are pretty different from each other as well. When I studied pedagogy and didactics for one of the classes we watched recordings of classrooms from several different countries, the US, Australia, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Taiwan among others. To be honest the ones that seemed most similar to Norwegian schools was America.
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May 29, 2023 22:30
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Randarkman posted:I mean that also kind of was the case in countries where it's no longer the case you know, and that lots of authority came with lots of ugly sides as well such as punishment of students and abuses of power by teachers being commonplace but very difficult and taboo to report on. Yeah I’d like to live in a world where people in honored and prestigious positions are also held accountable for their actions but maybe that’s too optimistic.
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May 29, 2023 22:40
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FilthyImp posted:This dude's going to nope out in 4 years and spend the rest of their life saying how lovely being a teacher was and I've just finished my 4th year and originally planned to give the public education system 10 years. Both my parents did over 30 years each so maybe I'll do a few years longer. The school I'm at is really small, my class this year was 13 ( I had 14 last year), so it's not terrible at all.
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May 29, 2023 23:18
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I taught introductory business studies to kids in their late teens for two years after things opened back up in the UK. Huge and atrociously-run school, mostly populated with students who wouldn't have been accepted anywhere else. A lot of very difficult students, and the syllabus we had to work with was bare-bones and dull, but in class we made it work. Our admins though wouldn't have cared if we'd been throwing chairs at the kids as long as they hit their assessment targets. Never felt more like numbers on a spreadsheet than I did in that job. Now I'm doing an MEd and wondering what the hell future I have once I get that extra piece of paper.
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May 30, 2023 07:35
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Gertrude Perkins posted:I taught introductory business studies to kids in their late teens for two years after things opened back up in the UK. Huge and atrociously-run school, mostly populated with students who wouldn't have been accepted anywhere else. A lot of very difficult students, and the syllabus we had to work with was bare-bones and dull, but in class we made it work. Our admins though wouldn't have cared if we'd been throwing chairs at the kids as long as they hit their assessment targets. Never felt more like numbers on a spreadsheet than I did in that job. the truth of it is, administrations are just as often the source of the problems as the parents, especially because they feed off each other in an uroborus of shittiness. so, if you like the job otherwise, the sad answer is find a school that has a better administration.
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May 30, 2023 07:55
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This has just reaffirmed my belief that parents should have to get permission to raise their kids instead of just assuming the parents will do good enough
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May 30, 2023 08:05
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I have been teaching for about 16 years now. Summer Break - Yeah summer break is cool, but it is not as cool as it sounds. Just because you as a student do not go to school before school 'starts' or stay there after it 'ends' is not the same same for teachers. We have to go back early, we stay late, there are endless days of bullshit. Discipline Sucks, in general. You have to maintain your cool at all times in a profession where people are often screaming at you or physically attacking you or others. Most schools are unable or unwilling to really do anything on the discipline front unless it gets enough traction with the media or parents but most of the time everything is basically ignored. The Apps School has never been the same since Covid. Because of Covid we all had to get on all these loving apps all the time and every time you do anything in class it must be done in duplicate on several different apps and sent through email and tracked in a bunch of different ways on buggy software. You hate this buggy software but the parents think you like it, and you are forced to defend it morally and do tech support on software that you personally despise and wish you didn't have to use. Even after we went back to regular classrooms after the online years this poo poo didn't disappear. That is just the standard expectation, now, that everything is synergized in all the loving ways that every modern corporation does with apps being enmeshed in every aspect of your life. Switching schools is extra lovely now. In the past, you could just go to a new school and once you learned the basics you could teach a class. Now, you have to get trained on all of their new lovely bespoke apps that everyone hates. Unskilled but ambitious teachers go get their master's degree and come out of it with the same idea: "I will develop an app that will revolutionize learning. It will be better than the three apps we already use!". It never is. I really miss just teaching. The Hours Are loving long. I know you may remember school as short because you were a student. We have to get there long before the kids. We leave long after them. We have endless amounts of parent-nights, school trips, school plays, dances, sport events, and all sorts of other completely unpaid bullshit in which you get to ruin your weekend to come in and have parents accuse you of turning the frogs gay. Red Tape Doing anything involves doing fucktons of admin work. I used to be able to do a Science lesson or experiment that I found interesting and just throw it together and do it because I was inspired. That is now impossible. I need to order everything I need a year ahead, duplicated in triplicate on a bunch of loving apps. I have to submit a lesson plan ahead of time with detailed instructions on every possible piece of equipment that may be needed, even the most obvious ones, and delineate how we will spend each and every minute in class. As Napoleon said, "No plan survives first contact with the enemy" so all this lesson planning is just hours of pointless poo poo because no planned lesson ever goes exactly as you predicted once it meets the kids, because today Yotomi is having a meltdown about his parents' divorce so we gotta skip the warmup and in 3rd period there was a bloody fistfight so I can't rearrange the desks for an experiment until the cleaners wipe up all the blood and in 5th period someone broke the HDMI cable so now I can't use the powerpoint I had to make. Imagine spending several hours planning an improv comedy routine and you get how valuable these lesson plans have. Also, please fill your lesson plan with a bunch of bullshit educational jargon so you can make sure it is part of this complete breakfast and has alternate activities for 3 varied skill levels (so really, each is three lesson plans). Then get this plan rejected the day before you actually teach the class so do it all again, even though whatever is in the 1st or 2nd or 3rd plan is gonna bear no resemblance to what you actually do in class. Now, make sure to rate each kid in a class of 25 on a 1-9 scale on how well they grokked what you taught, for every 45 minute class, every single day, while keeping in mind their individual skill levels and also keeping in mind not to actually tell the truth because the Parents Have a lot of control, and let me tell you, parents can be loving crazy. Some of them get to watch class-room cameras in real-time feeds so they can call you during your actual lessons to chew you out if Javier was eating glue while you are dealing with some other crisis. Parents will call or email or bother you 24/7 with zero boundaries. They get real-time uploads of their grades so they can bother you 10 seconds after you enter a kid's score as to why little Junior got 97% on a test somehow when he really deserved 100%. They will bother you with political bullshit, regardless of their actual place on the spectrum. They will insist you are corrupting their children by letting them read anti-feminist literature like a princess fairy-tale. They will insist you are destroying their religion by letting them celebrate Halloween. They will find you out of school and take photos of you and share your activities on their parental WhatsApp groupchats. They will find your profile on dating apps and share it around while lamenting your morals. They will harass you in the street, sometimes in a friendly manner by assuming that I really want to stop and have a 20 minute conversation about their kid while at the loving bank, but then get very upset when you want to just bail. They will harass you in a condescending moralistic manner if they see you at a bar or on a date or dressed like a slob or buying alcohol from a shop. I have been on a beach in an entirely separate country and been found by parents who then drop their kids off with me without permission for me to 'watch a while'. This is insane. It happens. If you enforce boundaries they will call your boss. Your boss is likely a spineless piece of poo poo who exists to protect the school's reputation at all costs, when the cost is typically a teacher's wellbeing. They will often start poo poo with admin and waste your time in meetings, which get to be unpaid overtime as you sit in the school and defend your actions vs a crazy insane parent person who has power over you. I have had "Special" parent meetings for such horrible actions as: - Being in a classroom alone with female students. - Crumpling a child's paper airplane -Refusing to tie the shoes of a neurotypical teenager - Confiscating a vuvuzela - Giving kids 0% on assignments they never turned in. - Giving kids 0% on assignments they clearly cheated on. -Giving kids the actual proper marks they deserve based on questions correct on a test. - Confiscating their precious pictures full of swastikas - Grabbing a kid's arm to stop him from trying to finger my butthole - Confiscating a slingshot - Confiscating pornography - Making a bad call while refereeing a football match - Witnessing a wardrobe malfunction at the school pool. - Refusing to write a recommendation letter - Allowing a vegan child to try jerky - Recommending a scary movie to watch at home (Jurassic Park) - Admitting I don't respect Donald Trump - Admitting I don't have a religion - Saying that you can be trans if you want to - Displaying images of a skeleton in a science lesson about the human body. - Making kids feel bad about global warming - Being pro-vax - Explaining how old planet Earth is -Exposing child to dangerous animals (frog) My girlfriend is a teacher too and she had the real winner of parent-meetings, in that they brought her in to complain to her boss that my girlfriend was not literally sticking her finger up a kid's rear end to help him poop, because this is the only way he would poop at home and they demanded that she continue this at kindergarten. I imagine at a low income public school the parents have a lot less power than they do at my Rich School For Rich Assholes, but it would have its own set of horrible other problems. TL;DR Teaching, as in the act of teaching, is mostly fine. That has become a smaller and smaller part of the job as a trend for years now, and all of the other bullshit is a lot worse than teaching, and it often requires immense amounts of time, with the knockon effects of making your teaching actually worse. I'm burnt out and I'd probably switch if I wasn't a sellout. I'm working at one of the most prestigious schools in my area so they pay us well, but I would never agree that it is worth the amount of bullshit I put up with. I want to retire early, so I'll stick with it until I curse out the wrong parent and get fired. I don't really see any other endgame. Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 09:22 on May 30, 2023 |
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May 30, 2023 08:55
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Halisnacks posted:Do private school students internalise that they themselves are “better” than public school students? If so, how early does this start and how does it manifest? As far as I know they internalize this quite early. The kids can mostly be cool, but my students pick up quickly that they are wealthy and elite. I am also teaching in the gifted program for my school so we have a whole special building just for smart rich kids and they are well aware of that from a very early age. A kid getting demoted into standard is often a death sentence for their social life as not all of them are willing to mix with the 'normies' (still rich kids just not as smart). Some of them figure out quite early that their teachers obviously come from a lower economic class than they do, and will either act awkwardly embarrassed about it or will go out of their way to brag about and flaunt their wealth. I can't really blame them, they are learning this from home. It usually tracks that the old-money kids learn to be chill about it while the new money kids like to be assholes about it, but it is not universal. The 'training' is basically hypocritical. The managers are rather two-faced in general and will almost always side with the parent. Sometimes they do this in a chummy way by saying "We know you're right, Mr. Grapes, but it would just be a lot easier if you call Mrs. Schmidt and tell her how deeply sorry you are for confiscating her son's rubber band gun." Sometimes parents will try to bribe you with varying levels of transparency. There is also a lot of falsification of grades going on at many schools I have worked at, as a determined-enough parent can move heaven and earth to make sure their kid gets what they 'deserve', and the school definitely wants to keep their money. We will have all sorts of high-security TSA-style theater going on during final exams to protect the 'integrity' of the scores and then the admins will just overlook blatant cheating or change the grades behind our backs or offer 're-tests' which is basically the same test but now the kid knows all the answers and he can do it in a room with a sympathetic admin who will hint at all the answers. Mr. Grapes! fucked around with this message at 09:32 on May 30, 2023 |
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May 30, 2023 09:28
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The first two weeks (as a kindergarten teacher) is always pretty chaotic as you have a bunch of feral children. You've got to teach them literally everything from scratch. How to line up and actually stay in a line while walking, sitting on the carpet, use the bathroom/wash hands, get lunch and eat it, sit and pay attention, etc. And all that's gotta get done so you can actually start lesson plans. The social interaction stuff can be a challenge too, depending on their home environment. Thinking about others doesn't come easily to some kids at that age.
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May 30, 2023 12:03
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Mr. Grapes! posted:Teaching, as in the act of teaching, is mostly fine. That has become a smaller and smaller part of the job as a trend for years now, and all of the other bullshit is a lot worse than teaching, and it often requires immense amounts of time, with the knockon effects of making your teaching actually worse. Of course, our paychecks have always made it bearable. I've been watching my 1st grader's progress in our very good public school system though the lens of what teachers and staff have to do every day. I have so much respect and gratitude toward them. Speaking for myself, when my kid has had difficulty and I visibly/verbally take the burden on myself, the biggest reassurance that teachers or staff can tell me is "other kids are going though this too; its not just yours". I realize that likely won't help others, but it does me.
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May 30, 2023 12:11
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It can be way loving worse than the internet makes it out to be OP, but it depends on your area/ administration/ state MI before Whitmer being an HS teacher was garbage, after COVID it got WAY worse, I heard it's better now with the new government, but gently caress if I would go back. This particular crop of parents is loving deranged, the hours are okay to terrible, the students are typically fine, a few assholes here and there, and most Admin are failed MBAs who act like corporate so they don't want to do ANYTHING, so it's all on you. Also the pay is trash for what you do, unless you do extra curricular, the stipends can be quite nice. Also don't expect to make anything till year 3. Worked as a long term substitute/ part time teacher for about 6 years, HS and Adult Ed, Adult Ed was WAAAY better because no parents/ stupid insane poo poo. Most districts at that point in my moderate white suburbs area don't want to hire younger teachers, so good luck getting in full time unless you went there/ know someone. Nepotism is HORRIBLE in education, as well as grooming and sexual harassment among staff. Moved up to Academic Advisor for First Adult Education and then college during COVID, after having massive panic attacks about returning to a classroom never looked back. As an Academic advisor/ program coordinator I make like almost twice what I made as a 1-3 year teacher, and my hours are amazing. I still have the exact same degree too lol. I also feel like I affect way more students lives positively than I ever could as a teacher with the zero power to do things I had. Teaching in America sucks and needs massive reforms 
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May 30, 2023 12:34
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I teach in a couple museums and it rules. Kids come in excited, get to do fun poo poo, they leave, I leave. No yard duty or meetings. Being in classrooms prior to this was okay but again I was a music teacher so we were mostly doing cool stuff. The noise could get a bit much but I could always be louder than them if I needed to. Of the 10 people I kept in touch with from my teaching degree, 8 have left the industry since we graduated 4 years ago though.
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May 30, 2023 12:51
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i may as well use my teaching degree as a paperweight, i dont think i'd ever consider going back unless it was at the college level. or elementary actually, because kids 1st-3rd grade were pretty cool. the kindergardners sucked though cuz theyd just spend all of free time trying to kill themselves
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May 30, 2023 13:08
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in the education world, almost every question about "why?" could be answered by "nepotism"
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May 30, 2023 13:24
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The post-COVID attention issues y’all are describing are absolutely true of college students now, too. They think it’s totally normal to be in class and also watch a Premier League soccer game on their laptop while chatting online with a friend and answering texts on their phones, because that’s what their last two years of high school were like. They also have no compunctions about using ChatGPT to write response papers. At least with college students, though, I can give them a 0 for participation or a 0 on their writing and not worry about their parents complaining to my department chair because FERPA. Also I’m 38 now instead of 23, which is night and day w/r/t getting students to respect me. That, and—not gonna lie—regardless of my being nominally from a lower socioeconomic class than most of my students it definitely helps me in my job to have degrees from schools they didn’t/couldn’t get into. In all honesty though I much preferred teaching at a big non-flagship public university (my first job out of grad school) to teaching at the small private university where I am now, because public uni students tend to be a) happy just to be there, rather than disappointed they didn’t get into a better school despite all the $$$ their parents spent on SAT tutoring, and b) much more willing to demonstrate accountability for their own work than to expect me to give them the grades they want because they’re paying $$$$$ to be there.
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May 30, 2023 13:31
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spacetoaster posted:The first two weeks (as a kindergarten teacher) is always pretty chaotic as you have a bunch of feral children. You've got to teach them literally everything from scratch. How to line up and actually stay in a line while walking, sitting on the carpet, use the bathroom/wash hands, get lunch and eat it, sit and pay attention, etc. And all that's gotta get done so you can actually start lesson plans. Most of the problems in our society can be boiled down to “doesn’t give a poo poo about other people.”
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May 30, 2023 14:27
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I grew up in a family of teachers and if I was to mouth off or be a little poo poo, I’d have better have good reason to do so. Usually I just wouldn’t go to class and hide in the library (depression!). Admittedly, I also hated the disruptive kids because I just wanted to get grade and go home. So why bother going to class if half of it was spent yelling at kids drawing dicks on the walls? Thankfully some of the teachers twigged onto that and let me just do my work when I could and grade me accordingly. I’ve always wanted to thank them for understanding that about me when I couldn’t articulate it myself. I was in HS from 05-09 with the rise of social media and smartphones, and even then you could tell how much worse it would become. Like I even had one my senior year but like, don’t be obnoxious and use it in class all the loving time and then get upset that the teacher takes it?? It was the same with game boys and Pokémon cards, most teachers were fine with having it as long as it never became a problem. how was that hard to grasp? I’ve seen so, SO many friends of mine become teachers and leave within a year or two because of the garbage treatment they’ve received. It’s damning. In Sweden I don’t quite know why the teacher situation is like, but I’ve seen some horrendously behaved kids here and some parents who wouldn’t notice if their kid was smeared on the highway five cities over. Poorly behaved kids will always exist but I never remember parents being so inattentive and just disconnected from their child. I can’t imagine being a kid on the other end of that, I’d probably go buckwild too. Still, can’t imagine being a teacher here is any easier. Schools are underfunded, there’s recent news of an upswing of kids aged 9-10 who can’t read, and a lot more violence and abhorrent behavior in schools across all ages. That’s not even touching the mess that private schools are here. Rubber stamp good grades lest parents scream holy terror. Kids who report creepy teachers being ignored for years until whoops they’re caught sharing CSAM of students online. It’s slightly better for parents here in that there’s parental leave if your kid is sick, parental leave if you have a kid and a small stipend for kids up to age 16.
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May 30, 2023 15:07
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Honestly I would have wanted to be a teacher but it's all stuff like this and my fear of losing my poo poo at some student/parent that kept me from it. My condolences. Also it's absolutely insane that we don't universally make students put personal devices in a bucket during class.
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May 30, 2023 15:08
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Lawman 0 posted:Honestly I would have wanted to be a teacher but it's all stuff like this and my fear of losing my poo poo at some student/parent that kept me from it. Same, I have the utmost respect for teachers because the parents are the real shitheels sometimes. Like there are absolutely garbage teachers, I can definitely make a few, but far more awful parents that are only hindering their kid.
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May 30, 2023 15:22
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Private schools and colleges I can vaguely understand because it’s essentially a service with customers nowadays, my wife is a state uni professor so I see what she has to deal with all the time in terms of “customer is right”mentality, but I don’t get why public schools are like this. Why should a Public high school teacher give two shits about what a random parent thinks? The admins make em I guess but why do the admins care, what’s the parent gonna do transfer schools? Is that a tangible threat from a funding perspective? Not doubting just curious as to how this dynamic started.
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May 30, 2023 15:25
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I taught Intro to C++ to high schoolers for one year. Never again. This was before smart phones too; but it was in a computer lab so similar distractions. Most of the kids enrolled because it counted as a math credit and they didn’t want to take Trig. They’d gently caress around on the PCs and then copy assignments from the one or two kids who were actually interested. Did get to bring in a GameCube and hook it up to the projector for end-of-semester Soul Caliber, though. That was fun.
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May 30, 2023 15:28
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PoundSand posted:Private schools and colleges I can vaguely understand because it’s essentially a service with customers nowadays, my wife is a state uni professor so I see what she has to deal with all the time in terms of “customer is right”mentality, but I don’t get why public schools are like this. Superintendent is an elected position so it all trickles down from there I'd bet.
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May 30, 2023 16:13
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any european teachers check in? wondering how it compares to canada/ontario where it is a very good job
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May 30, 2023 16:15
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