r/TeacherReality

How do the students/school policies compare in terms of behavior?

I am Californian. Wondering if more rural or more Republican states are more punitive by and large and suspend/discipline easier…

Teachers gripe about how behaviors and how nothing adequate is done to help. They blame parents and blame admin, but there are some things going on behind the curtain that they may not be aware of. You’ve probably heard the flowery crap about “build relationships” and “restorative justice practices.” These ideas are meant to replace more serious consequences for defiance and classroom disruption. We know they’re ineffective when it comes to certain students. So why do schools persist in pushing it?

The reason is that school districts operate by numbers. What are the graduation rates? How many suspensions have there been? If a site admin suspends a student this sets off a chain reaction. Now the district admin is pissed, because their suspension rate has increased. If too much of that happens the state takes notice and there are state penalties. They might like to help, but it’s their ass if they do.

So don’t expect help. Don’t expect action. Manage the best you can in a system that is permissive to make the numbers work.

I have only watched one episode of “Abbot Elementary”. It was focused mostly on a school council or school board meeting, something like that. I expected it to be all happy-happy-joy-joy; unrealistic. It was not completely that, but it was also not very deep in content. Obviously the episode was forgettable because I don’t even remember what the meeting was focused on.

Have you seen it? What do you think?

The recently appointed principle called me in her office today, she started by saying that she got a really good feedback about me from the students. Then she proceeded to say, but I have heard few things about you.

Now a little insight about me, I teach Physics to the senior most classes of the school. I'm a young teacher & hence I suppose the children like my methodology of teaching the subject. I have recently joined this place, so I barely talk to the teachers, only when necessary & just stay busy with my own tasks.

A few days back, there was this event from the school for which the teachers neede to be present at a far away location. The coordinator asked everyone if we will be joining or not, i said, i live very far away and am new to the place, so i wont be able to join. He offered to pick me up, i said alright.

So that was her basis of her accusation. I just simply cried, because i have been working day an night to prepare lesson notes, give my best to the students, yet this is how the management rewards me.

I discussed about this with my boyfriend on chat. He told be to go confront her. So, i did after departure of students. I said to her that i dont understand why the blame is put on me. He is the coordinator, i am obliged to interact with him and how is this fair. She assured me that she will be having a talk with him.

This might seem small but it ruined my entire day.

In my final year of university to be a primary (kindergarten) teacher, have a part time job as a teaching assistant.

It’s the parents. Some come to pick their kids up and it all makes sense why their kid is a bully, is unsociable, is angry. Some parents are just so rude and horrid with the way they speak to their children, and lack empathy or patience. I know of children that didn’t know how to play with toys before they came to school, or speak to peers with language that should never come out of a 5 year olds mouth.

I get told in whispers by other teachers about my students family’s and about abuse or neglect. And the worst part is I can’t do anything about it. My job is to teach and support, not fix.

My reason for coming onto here for the first time was what a child said to me a couple weeks back that’s been playing on my mind since. For context I have an absent farther, did his best at times but overall shit. When I asked a girl (7), what she was doing over the weekend, she said she was super excited to be seeing her dad and was going to the park. I asked whether the park was special, she said what was special is that she hadn’t seen him in a long time.

I asked when was the last time she saw him. She paused thoughtfully and just shrugged ‘I can’t remember’. I saw my father very sporadically during my childhood and had the best time doing basically what any other good farther would do, like going to the park, because I got to spend time with him, only to be heartbroken that this pattern of absence didn’t change through my teens to adulthood.. it really hit home.

The worst part is a can’t cry, or pry for more context. I just smiled and was happy for her. Now her situation may clearly be very different to mine. But to be confronted with an unhealed part of my own childhood by a child that may be experiencing something similar in real time, it’s very difficult.

But I love my job, and can’t wait to be a teacher. But I often have moments of regret because I didn’t realise the weight of the emotional side of being in this job.

I got my class lists. One class has three kids in it who had at least more than 25 referrals written on them last year. One particular grade level was extremely rough, and I have some of them again. Last year was hell. I wrote the same two kids up every day (and so did everyone else), but nothing happened to them. I am going to have another year of aggravation, yelling, and being in a bad mood all day.

The decline was driven by a 53,000-job loss, concentrated overwhelmingly in “local government education,” the name the BLS uses for all public education jobs organized at the local level, meaning K-12 schools and community colleges. Fifty thousand of the job losses were in teaching or other school support staff positions.

The start of the new municipal fiscal year on July 1, 2026, triggered immediate staff reductions across major urban school districts facing severe budget deficits following the expiration of federal pandemic relief funds. Chicago Public Schools issued formal layoff notices in July to over 160 central office staff while cutting hundreds of vacant school-level positions to address a $732 million budget shortfall. Similar municipal budget cuts took effect across major metropolitan districts in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida, where thousands of seasonal support staff, tutors and non-tenured classroom aides were officially non-renewed entering the summer.

I’ve been teaching in a large district my whole career except that 1 “teacher residency” year in a completely different district.

I chose my district with intention. That’s a big part of the culture here. Like choosing my district is tied to the core of who I am. Thats how “political” the issue is here for those who are engaged. This is an important detail.

So I agreed and dove in. Worked for a diabolical principal. Ate up the “in the name of equity” entree and “for the kids + social justice” side course.
Being told all along that I needed prove myself every step of the way by submitting my planned lesson down to each word I’d say and gaining approval by people more knowledgeable by me…

Now the autonomy of choosing my own words and strategies to teach the universal curriculum has decreased to the autonomy of choosing the color of my PowerPoint slide.

I no longer have to write my own script for every lesson word for word. Now I have to read someone else’s script.

I went to school and studied hard to learn how to best share my knowledge with my students in service of reducing the stains of racism and inequity. But now I’ve gone from the author of my own course, to child actor with an oppressive stage mom pocketing my earnings and Claude/AI is the script writer.

Is this happening everywhere? Are we all slowly losing our autonomy in our classrooms? Or do I just work in a district that’s extremely toxic?

I don’t know. It’s hard to tell when the elites have always chosen to strip the autonomy of others rather than slow their own profiteering.

Why is teacher burnout so high? Because we expect fresh college graduates to perform miracles. New teachers face the exact same crushing workload as 25-year veterans, often managing overcrowded classrooms of more than 30 students with zero support. Across most of the country, teachers are severely underpaid, politically persecuted for their curricula, and bombarded by constant parental complaints. Meanwhile, students are trapped in school for ten hours a day, leading to exhaustion and behavioral lashing out that teachers are left to handle alone.

Around 200 government schoolteachers protested on August 4 in front of the Ministry of Education building in Colombo, demanding an end to delays in promotions and salary increments, and payment of the outstanding two-thirds of promised pay increases.

The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power (JVP/NPP) promised during its election campaigns to meet these demands. After winning the elections in 2024, it abandoned its promises and intensified the attacks on workers and poor.

Tuesday’s protest was the first action organised by the Teachers’ and Principals’ Trade Union Alliance (TPTUA) since the JVP/NPP came to power. There is mounting pressure from teachers to fight the government’s attacks on their wages and working conditions, but the unions have refused to mobilise them and deliberately sought to limit the size of the protest.

Public sector teachers number around 240,000, but only a minority are union members, reflecting widespread distrust of the bureaucracy.

Over the past two years, union leaders have repeatedly made empty threats to call industrial action, only to withdraw them, claiming that the government “promised” to address issues facing teachers. This has suppressed opposition while the government implemented the austerity measures demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).