u/rachel-angelina

I am asking this as a genuine question out of my own curiosity. Because where I live, the pay and benefits at most private schools are much lower than public schools, and it can cause interruptions in your pension. You also have way less protections. Teachers in our charter schools get to participate in the state pension system, but their pay, benefits, protections, and hours are much worse. I know public schools have their issues, but to me it’s clear that working in a public school where I live is the way to go. I’ve also only ever worked in public schools so that is my only experience.

However, I’m aware that schools across the U.S. and the world operate differently. I also know that in some secular private schools you can sometimes get more freedom in what you teach (I knew someone who liked this aspect, but her husband made enough money to support them so she could take the lesser pay.) I can see how that might be appealing if you have other income. I also know people who work in private language immersion schools who like it for that reason. But overall, I don’t really see the appeal in working for most private and charter schools. Are they sometimes the better option in the area that you live in? Is it a case of just taking what jobs are available? Is there something about them that you prefer to public schools? I’m curious.

Not sure how this will be received on Reddit, since I see a lot of this sentiment on here, but I am so tired of it. A woman will post on social media about how her boyfriend or husband isn’t treating her right, or about how she’s annoyed with him for something. And without fail, you will see other women (and sometimes men) jump into the comments to tell her “Oh you need to get yourself a nerd, they would NEVER treat you like this. My golden retriever nerdy boyfriend is too busy sorting his Pokémon cards and playing video games so he would never cheat on me. Nerds will treat you like a queen.” Or you’ll see men suggest that she “go to her local card or game store to find a nerd because they truly appreciate women.” (actual comments I’ve seen btw.) Sometimes they also just post this unprompted and not as a comment.

Like what?? Why are we acting like nerdy men can’t be just as shitty partners as any other guy? They can treat you poorly just like any guy who isn’t a “nerd” can do. In fact, sometimes they can be worse! Also why do these people almost implicitly call their partners losers? Just because a guy is into “nerdy” things means other women won’t want him and so therefore he won’t cheat? It feels super backhanded and like they are all living in some collective delusion that “nerds” all will treat you amazingly. And don’t even get me started on how irritating it is when they describe them as “golden retrievers.” Like please stop lol.

Anyways rant over.

Hi all! So this year I got RIFed from my position teaching special ed. social studies at a high school. My experience was mainly with 11th and 12th grade with some 10th. I’ve done pull-out resource and in-class support, and also dealt primarily with upperclassmen who struggled with behavior. But today I just got an offer to teach general ed. social studies at a nice middle school in my state. I was always open to doing both MS and HS so I’m really excited for this new opportunity! Especially since I have multiple friends who teach middle school and they love it. I know classroom management will be top priority with middle schoolers, but I was wondering does anyone have any additional advice and specific strategies for working with this age group?

Thanks so much!

Tagging as humor so we can all just laugh in good fun at the end of the school year. But since my post asking about which admin buzzwords are most irritating to you was such a hit, I thought I would come back with a sequel!

This time it’s: What is the most ridiculous and unnecessary admin job/job title you’ve seen in your district or elsewhere? As in, you look at their job and wonder, “WTF does this person do all day? And do we even need them? Did the superintendent create this job to hire friends?”

I’ll go first. My district (which is RIFing teachers left and right) has two “assistant directors of curriculum and instruction” making $165k a year in addition to our main “director of curriculum and instruction.” They all also had administrative assistants who made more than several teachers in the building. I could not tell you what these people do all day, since most of what was in their job description was offloaded onto teachers for stipend positions. Also for reference, we only have three schools in the district.

So, teachers of Reddit, give me your best “obvious administration bloat” jobs!

This is coming from the perspective of a secondary teacher, just putting that out there. But what is the consensus here on departmentalizing elementary and when do you think it should begin if you are for it? Personally I’m all for departmentalizing elementary subjects, I just don’t know when the appropriate age for it would be. I see a lot of schools do it in 4th or 5th but could it also be done starting in 2nd and 3rd? Not only would it decrease the planning load on elementary teachers, it would allow students to learn from someone who truly specializes in a specific subject. I think it can be an issue when we have teachers that have weaknesses in certain subject areas (I see this the most with math) teaching those subjects when they don’t fully get it themselves, or avoiding them and giving them less time because they don’t feel confident in them. So as a result, students then get poor foundations or have knowledge gaps. It would be best to let people stick to what they are strongest in, IMO. On that note, we acknowledge that kids need specific teachers for subjects like music, art, physical education, different languages, and such. So why not do the same for core subjects? Especially since the kids are already used to switching classes and teachers for this at a young age.

What do we all think? Curious about opinions across the board.

EDIT: Thanks for your answers everyone! It is so interesting to see the various levels of success with this in different schools.

So this is something I’ve noticed amongst (mainly American) parents these days and it seems to increase in occurrence as people validate them and enable this kind of anxiety-ridden and entitled behavior. But essentially it’s those people who have a laundry list of “boundaries and expectations” while also expecting “the village” to help them raise their child to their exact specifications.

I’m not talking about boundaries like “don’t give my kid something they are allergic to” or “don’t come around my newborn without your vaccinations” where it’s reasonable and seriously concerns the child’s safety, but the other shit. Like I’m talking about the parents who set a “boundary” that no one else can lay eyes on their newborn for two months because “it’s our time to bond and we don’t want visitors,” they freak out because grandma called their kid her baby and said she is excited for them to have sleepovers at her house, they insist that anyone who wants to see their child should only be coming over to do designated chores in exchange, or they seethe with rage because the kid’s uncle gave them some extra candy and TV time.

But then later on they then bemoan their lack of “a village,” like you pushed “the village” away! If you want the village, you need to be okay with not micromanaging every single aspect of your child’s life. You need to be okay with the fact that the village is going to come in with their own opinions and different ways of doing things. You also need to contribute to your community as well and help other people if you want the same treatment in return. The village is not a beck and call free childcare and housekeeping service that does every single little thing to your specifications and more people need to recognize that.

EDIT: The amount of people who think I’m a bitter grandparent is really funny. Like no I’m in my 20s LOL. Also the fact that I’ve had multiple AI accusations, like nope, wrong again. No AI here lmao.

Tagging this as rant so people can just freely vent lol.

So our school year is just about to let out and I was thinking about this. But I’ll go first. “Data.” Admin talking about data drive me crazy because what they consider “data,” “data-driven,” or “data points” is basically that picture of Charlie from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia with his conspiracy theory board. It’s a bunch of nonsense mashed together and put in window dressing to make it sound like real and pretentious “science.” It’s not like they do anything substantial with the “data” they have either. I can’t stand it when they drone on and on about “data” in PDs as I watch the teachers of subjects like statistics and psychology slowly lose their minds throughout the session because they know what real data science is.

So everyone, what are the trendy admin buzzwords that have grated on you this year? Feel free to mention old ones that have fallen out of fashion too!

EDIT: Omg thanks for your contributions everyone! I saw many familiar and irritating words but wow I am also learning some new ones lol.

Danielson in itself is bullshit but I think what is most irritating is domain 4. Why the hell are we basically being evaluated on our work outside of contract hours? We were at a meeting a bit ago where admin verbatim told us: “Going to school events is bare minimum, that’s a 2. Coaching and running a club is just above bare minimum, that will get you a 3. But one time we had a teacher who organized his basketball team to do a fundraiser game for cancer. That’s a 4.”

Like WTF? I am all for teachers being involved in their school and community, but if teacher doesn’t want to or cannot coach, advise a club, develop curriculum, go to out of district PD, etc. that should not be reflected in their evaluation as a teacher. That’s ridiculous and I don’t know why unions are OK with an evaluation scale that can knock you for not working outside of school hours whether it’s paid or not.

Mini-rant over lol.

EDIT: I just want to add that I am a newer, non-tenured teacher. I know a lot of veteran teachers with tenure don’t care about evaluations but they really do matter more for us, and can affect our job security. I would love to not care but unfortunately I can’t afford to do that yet.

So to become a teacher, you have to go through a preparation program in college or some sort of alternate route program that builds upon a degree you already have. You have to pass exams, get certifications, and essentially show that you are trained for the job and qualified to teach students. But for some reason, it’s legal in this country for parents to just say they are “homeschooling” without *any* qualifications. In WTF other job would this *ever* be allowed? Should I be allowed to say that I took care of my cats so I can just be a vet? Can I go show up at an electrician’s union and start working as one without any sort of training or apprenticeship? Like what the hell! It should honestly be illegal to homeschool kids because no parent is qualified to give their child a fully rounded education K-12. None. Even parents who are educators have their limits (someone only certified to teach elementary shouldn’t be teaching high school level chemistry, for example.) Buying some smushed together curriculum off the internet and giving your kids worksheets is not teaching.

This doesn’t even touch upon how homeschooling makes it so much easier for parents to get away with abusing and/or indoctrinating their children which is a whole other problem in itself. Barely anyone supervises what is going on so if a kid isn’t learning anything, is being abused or neglected, or is being indoctrinated, no one is checking. It’s honestly disgusting how we even allow this to happen in our country. Germany has the right idea with banning homeschooling except in a case of severe chronic illness where a student literally can’t leave their home without being endangered medically.

Anyways, rant over. I just wanted to put this out there because it really feels like homeschooling being allowed is one of many factors that makes teaching a more disrespected profession and why politicians can get away with gutting public schools. This then feeds into a loop and worsens our public schools. Too many people think they can “just do it” and this country lets them.

EDIT: Whew I really made some people mad with this one! But I will not apologize for being an advocate for kids as their own autonomous beings who deserve a supervised education from qualified professionals. There’s a lot of implicit “kids are their parents’ property” viewpoints in this thread and I think we should be more critical of that. You doing your own home repairs and taking on a risk for yourself is not the same as making a choice for a child who is their own human being. Y’all comparing kids to cars, food, and houses is really showing how people think here in America.

So at the end of April I found out I was being non-renewed as a first year teacher. It was not due to performance as all of my evaluations were proficient or higher, and I got along very well with my colleagues and admin. My whole department was just as blindsided as me after I found out. I contributed to the school community and my students loved me. My principal even told me to my face that I did nothing wrong. I just got the typical “not a good fit” spiel which makes sense from the district’s HR standpoint. But I and several other teachers (including my union rep) highly suspect that the non renewal of me and several other non-tenured staff is due to the massive budgetary crisis our district is having + the declining enrollment. They are most likely using non-renewals to cut down before RIFs.

But anyways, obviously I have to find another job. I secured letters of recommendation from multiple admin and colleagues and started applying a week after I was informed of my non-renewal. I started getting calls for multiple interviews pretty quickly and I am still getting them now. More schools have been calling now that June board meetings are coming up. I’ve had to use personal and sick days to go to them (I didn’t use any of mine all year) since no schools do interviews outside of the school day.

However, I am worried that my references might now give a bad word if another school calls them because I’ve been taking more days off the past couple of months. I know they are allotted to me in my contract but that thought still lingers in the back of my mind even though I don’t know what my other options would even be since I need to interview for jobs as much as I can. This especially goes because I teach in a very competitive region and subject.

I guess this is just a long winded way of asking, do you think this would be used against me during my job hunt? Has anyone ever had that happen to them? Or did your district leave you alone about it? I am looking to get insight from people who may have been in/dealt with similar situations.

I know this might be controversial since a lot of people get defensive over this but I think it needs to be said. I’m saying all of this as a teacher with ADHD-C who has struggled with tests in certain content areas as a student before. I passed all of my Praxis (Core and Social Studies) tests on the first try with scores on the higher end of passing. Also I’m going to get a few more things out of the way first since I know they will come up.

1. Obviously us teachers should be paid more to reflect the fact that this is a professional job and we should be paid and treated like professionals. This would attract better candidates for jobs and make it easier to justify a limit like this.
2. Praxis exams should not cost as much as they do. It should be free of cost or at the very least, inexpensive. This way they aren’t just farming people for money on multiple tries. (I know they would never put a limit on the tests for this reason, too much money involved.)
3. Being a “bad test taker” or “well should we just not ever let students do retakes to show their knowledge?” are not excuses for potential educators IMO. You either know the content and can teach it, or you don’t. You will also need to be able to teach students test-taking strategies as well. So you should know that too. Not to mention that *you are not a student.* You are a professional who needs to know their content, so it’s not appropriate to compare yourself to them.

But given that, it’s seriously concerning to me how many people I see who have to take some of the Praxis tests numerous times. I don’t mean two tries, or even three. I’m talking like 8-9-10 tries. I met someone who took 9 tries to pass the core writing Praxis. That’s insane considering it’s essentially a general knowledge test! Any literate adult should be able to pass that.

Or I will meet people who took tons of tries to pass the elementary content exams. I’ve seen the questions on those tests and they are not hard at all. So it’s very concerning if you can’t pass them after 7 tries but want to teach students in some of their most important developmental years. As an elementary teacher you are responsible for giving kids the foundations they need in all of those subjects, so it’s not good if you can barely do the math or whatever subject it is that you need to be educating them in.

I’ve also met people in secondary education who took like 6 tries to pass their content knowledge Praxis. Why on earth should anyone trust you to teach their kids social studies when you can’t pass the test for it until the sixth try? That is concerning IMO.

I don’t know what exactly the cap should be (maybe 3 tries?) but it’s definitely concerning for someone to have to do so many retakes and then go on to teach students. We need to have some sort of more rigorous standard or bar for being an educator. I know I am prepared to be flamed for this but I am also curious to see what other teachers and other faculty think.

So the school counseling sub (r/schoolcounseling) popped up on my page a few times recently and I’ve noticed a trend of posts of people there saying that r/Teachers “hates counselors just for advocating for their students by emailing a question asking how their student can pass their class” and other similar things. And I just wanted to speak on behalf of most teachers here when I say this:

We don’t hate you. Sure, there are definitely teachers who don’t understand school counselors’ jobs, teachers who are too rigid and inflexible, teachers who refuse to change their ways and are a pain to work with etc. (Most of us dislike these kinds of colleagues too!) But this is not a majority of teachers who are complaining about those kind of emails. Most teachers are happy to collaborate to support a student who has been genuinely trying even though they’ve been struggling. We don’t want kids to fail either! As we are advocates for our students too. So if you reach out to us to help a kid pass, especially if it’s mid semester, they aren’t failing by a giant margin, and they have been putting in effort, we will want to work to help that student. It’s part of our job!

What we *do* hate is when you email us at the tail end of the semester after not hearing a peep the whole time about Timmy, who has been doing next to zero work all semester, goofs off or wanders the halls during class time, doesn’t show up to school, cheats on numerous assignments, and has a 32% class average, asking us “How can we help him pass?” Because that isn’t “advocating for a student,” that’s enabling. Timmy earned that grade, and I don’t blame teachers for standing firm on it and saying no to extra work for themselves and compromising the integrity of student learning!

So all in all, school counselors reading this sub, we don’t hate you “advocating for your students.” We hate when we are expected to lower our standards for student learning to the ground as well as do extra work last second to pass a student who has done nothing to earn a passing grade that semester. That is all, thank you.