r/teaching

I feel the need to apologize as a sophomore in high school. Things have seem to be getting worse with my generation and teachers are quitting more than ever. Nobody is giving you guys respect and you guys aren’t getting paid enough. People are so far off grade level it’s not even funny, all because parents gave their kids devices to shut them up, and you guys are getting the blame for that. So for all of the bullshit from people my age you’ve gotten, I’m really sorry. I have the utmost respect for all of you who still teach.

So my sister is about to graduate (yay go her!) and I want to surprise her with a nice basket full of classroom decor and materials and am looking for suggestions on what to fill it with !! One idea I want to do is print a picture of her cat and some outfits and props so she can dress him up for weather and holidays lol :) (she's going into elementary ed)

i’m a first year middle school teacher. i’ve noticed that a significant portion of my students complain in a disrespectful manner every single time we do schoolwork… which is every day. they’ll raise their voices at me, curse, groan, make rude and inflammatory comments, which start arguments with peers and then they attempt to do the same with me—the whole nine yards.

i’ve retaught expectations as for how they should be interacting with me, have one-on-one discussions with the worst and repeat offenders, sent multiple emails home, and have been troubleshooting with the school’s dean on how to manage this. oftentimes, the students walk away from me mid conversation and i have to remind them that our chat isn’t over yet. alternatively, they’ll talk over me regardless of the consequence or conversation.

some students have reeled it in, while others seem to be getting worse. i understand that this age group will always have behaviors like this, but the amount of students and frequency of it happening is outrageous.

i know part of the reason is the fact that i’m very young. my students have figured out my age despite my best efforts to keep it under wraps. i emphasize that i’m not their friend, sibling, or parent. i keep the boundary of our relationship very clear and have to remind them that i am, in fact, their teacher.

any advice would be greatly appreciated. there’s a myriad of other struggles i’m facing right now, i have no idea what to do. i adore my students, but my sanity is withering away.

I’m getting a little worried about my major decision and I want to make sure I’m making the right choice. I made the choice slightly under pressure by family.

Collaboration that is organic is great, co teaching is complete garbage. Admin bully teachers into submitting to a poor practice, there is zero autonomy, this heterogenous mainstreaming everyone using two teachers in the room is idiotic. It is to the demise of the student. The high needs kids who need more explicit instruction get nothing, the high preforming kids get nothing.

Hi all! This year, I'm experimenting with a new revisions policy in my classroom. I'm not going to get super in-depth here, but as it pertains to this post, students have to earn 'revision points' in order to have opportunities to revise various kinds of assignments-- I'm calling it 'Inspiration'. Inspiration can be gained from a variety of sources, such as participation in class, enrichment activities, conferences with me, etc. -- in my head, it's a fairly passive system: students gain Inspiration for meaningfully and consistently engaging with ELA. Whenever Inspiration is earned (or, eventually, spent), I update that student's total on a Google Spreadsheet.

I don't want Inspiration to be in short supply, but right now, it is a huge headache to keep track of everything. Remembering to pull up the sheet in the first place and update a student's number is one thing-- I can handle that easily enough -- but there have been a few times this year already where I've decided to give the entire team or an entire class Inspiration for something like a particularly successful Socratic Seminar or Gallery Walk. In order to do that on Google Sheets, I have to go through each individual name on the list and manually increase each number by 1. It has got to be one of the biggest wastes of time I have willingly engaged in in quite a while.

Has anyone ever used a similar system, or are there any spreadsheet wizards around? I would love to be able to simply press a plus or minus button to change each student's total by 1 all at once. If that is not possible, I'll have to start looking at alternatives for keeping track of these numbers, because what I'm doing right now just doesn't feel sustainable as we get further into the school year.

I have been teaching for a decade, and am on year 4 of coming to terms with balancing:

-balancing paperwork (IEPs, annual reviews, self-management data sets, etc.)

- creating lessons to adhere to the curriculum and standards

- grading

- helping students individually and collectively

- managing emails from colleagues, administrators, students, and students' PARENTS

- texts, phone calls from colleagues while teaching

*I also teach behaviorally challenged students so I have been working with managing those behaviors etc. and I only have an assistant for ONE class period, versus the several I teach every day.*

Ya'll, I'm sorry -- I'm being whittled away and the feelings of 'less than' or 'it's never done' continue to creep in. I feel like I can never catch up and am doing my best to meet the demands of everything aforementioned, and when I come home, I do my best to decompress. When you're ON for 8 hours a day working with children, and then doing your best to make sure they grasp the materials all the while marking data sheets for IEPs and self-management goals, etc. for a TON of kids, I have little left for my partner at home, my hobbies, etc. This is not me or who I want to be.

I'm in my 40s and am wondering how you all keep up! I have even started to work on the weekends to catch up. :( This is the first time in my 10 years of teaching where I have had to do this as the paperwork was never as insane as where I work now. I am grateful for this job as it's somewhat less stressful than my last one from a student behavior perspective, but the paperwork is crushing me. How are we supposed to be teachers and bask in the joy of sharing knowledge when we're bogged down by a ton of paperwork and deadlines, outside of submitting grades?!

Happy Friday.

Does something like this exist? We are now being asked to write the learning objective, the task, and success criteria on the board each day. I understand why but it can be tedious to have to write all this and I'm wondering if there's an easy way, so I can type it and then display it on the board, without the smart board. I'm already using that for my PowerPoint etc. Thank you

I am 5-8 years away from retiring. How did you stay motivated to the end? And what are some things you wish you had done starting five years before you retired.

Pretty good chance I’m about to move to Seattle so starting to explore school districts. I’ll prob be there in a year or two so curious, I’ve heard about how competitive SPS is, outta curiosity why is that??

I’m sure the most competitive districts are SPS, Bellevue, shoreline, etc. but how is Renton? Tukwila? Highline? Don’t really want to go further than that but obviously I’ll do what I need to get a job

Just curious to hear about teachers experiences in those districts. I’m fine with title I high need schools; that’s what I’ve taught in preciously just trying to feel the vibe

ALSO: if I I have 2 masters but one isn’t in education can that still move up my salary or do they only count the education masters?

Hi, sorry if this isn’t the right venue, today I messed up royally regarding student trust in me.

I’m a first year art teacher. Across grades 3-5 We’ve been working on a Poster Design Contest for about a week (3 classes spread out across every other day). This contest is sponsored by the county, and promises the grand winner a money-prize.

I’ve encountered projects like these in my past practicums and I figured that this would be no problem. For the 5th and 4th grade classes, it was a bit of a struggle getting them interested, but one class that was really eager were the 3rd graders.

So many incredible projects, they did an awesome job. Today was their last work day and tomorrow would be when I HAD to get them to the county. The papers need parent signatures, so I had to get them out there TONIGHT if they wanted it in tomorrow.

So, I told them I’d pass them out at the end of the day, just to make sure they made it back home with them. Then the end of the day came and well… I forgot. I was so focused on preparing for my afternoon classes that my submission folder was a mess, I grabbed what I could and just rushed getting them out.

Only made it in time to give it to one of my 3rd grade classes, and on top of that, one student’s work in that class was just missing.

I feel so crushed and guilty. I got back to my room and frantically started organizing every paper in my room. Then just sat at my computer. I took down notes of what I’m doing differently next time:
Not doing the project if the designs can’t be finished a week before the official due date
Starting a day-by-day planner
Prioritizing organization and having grade + class specific submission bins.

I’m only drawing a blank on what to do for my 3rd grade students. I feel so awful. I’m convinced some of them could have won, but I prevented that from happening.

How can I earn student trust back? I’m thinking of giving them a free day, but I fear this only does so much. This job thus far has been so rewarding, only now I feel like I just crushed my students and don’t know how I can help heal our relationship.

Thanks for reading

TLDR: 3rd Grade students had a recycle poster contest. Gave them this week, and today to work and they had to get parent signatures tonight to submit them tomorrow. I didn’t get their work out in time, and worse yet only half got their projects to take back and the other half didn’t. I feel crushed and don’t know how i can build back trust.

I love my job and I teach with so much enthusiasm, but nowadays I’m not liking it as my class has strength of at least 50 students and whenever I ask question to weak or average student, they just simply say we didn’t understand. Tell again explain again and when I ask, which part then they say whole lecture when their marks are not up to their parents expectation. They only make one excuse. We didn’t understand what teacher explain what to do.

I teach PE at a high school and also coach a girls' sport after school. My problem is with the head coach of the program I work in. There are 4 of us coaches in this program, Head Coach/varsity, assistant varsity, JV, and myself (C team). For context, I've been at this school for 7 years and have coached in this program that entire time. When I first got hired, they offered me the head coach position and I turned it down - I didn't want the extra time and responsibility that came with it. Fast forward 3 years and the head coach position opened up again. Again, they offered it to me and I turned it down. They gave it to another teacher in the building, who is the current head/varsity coach and has been for the past 4 years.

Over these past few years, this head coach has build a program that can easily be described as a "mean girls club". Multiple girls have quit the sport and/or the program because of the shitty culture she has created. But that's not even my biggest issue.

My issue is that as time has gone on, head coach has brought in one of her personal best friends to coach the JV team and is also close personal friends with the assistant varsity coach. In the beginning, things were okay - they would invite me to join them sometimes for happy hours or whatever, but they stopped doing that once they realized that I don't drink and am not really into that scene.

To be clear, my problem is not with the being excluded from their activities outside of school. I am not here to make friends and I don't care about any of that.

My issue is that the head coach has become increasingly rude, condescending, and shitty towards me. I have countless examples of her snapping at me, barking orders, criticizing without offering help or solutions, and sending the asst varsity coach in to do her dirty work with me. My team has been physically separated into a different practice space than the other two teams. It's clear that communication and professional courtesy only extend to the other two coaches and not me, I am only told what decisions are being made, never asked for my thoughts/input/opinions. I have asked for feedback and never gotten any follow up.

Bottom line, this coach seems to have such disdain for me that she can't even have a simple conversation about what pants I should wear on game days without giving herself a 24 hour waiting period to calm down and then pointing out to me that she intentionally waited so as not to "blow up" on me about it.

Girl..if my clothing choices are that upsetting for you, there are clearly bigger issues here.

I am not going to claim perfection. I am aware of my own faults and shortcomings. I do my best to be professional and polite, and help out with anything I can. I am the type of person who sees something needs to be done and will take care of it before anyone else even realizes the shit I helped them avoid.

So here's where I am stuck. I'm not leaving this school and I don't think she is leaving this school. She can't fire me from coaching (that decision is above her head), and I have debated whether I should quit, but I love the sport and the kids. I don't want to quit. So knowing that I am stuck with this person and she is going to continue being the garbage leader of this program, how do I deal??

Our boss (athletic director) is new this year and also pretty meek/non-confrontational. I have not talked to him because I do not expect him to be able to provide any concrete help.

I have bit my tongue and not snapped off on her yet because I know it will only make my life harder afterwards. I keep telling myself to just let it roll off my back, but OMG ITS SO HARD TO DO when she is such a dick to me every fucking time I am in her presence.

So I come to you, fellow education professionals. Guidance and suggestions are welcome.

TL; DR: the head coach of the program I work in seems to hate me and make my life miserable at every opportunity. She is emotionally volatile and really just a terrible leader, but I am stuck with her unless I want to quit. Help me proceed.

Exactly what the title says. I have a BFA (fine arts bachelor degree) and a MAT in k-12 art. I’ve been teaching for 4 years now. My years vary wildly in how difficult they have been. My first year was actually pretty good, with one hell class. My second year was all around awful (I blame the admin for this because between my first and second year 20 teachers left the school). I transferred and my first year in the new school was pretty good with one hellish class and this year has been really tough all around. Everyone in the building is having issues with these kids. Not having the ability to predict how my year is going to go has me feeling like I really want to leave K-12 art education. I’m thinking of returning to get my MFA to become a professor potentially. I am just so tired of going to work and coming home mentally fatigued every blessed day. It’s too much to have little hormonal monsters that don’t care about my class (and simply have to have it to graduate) make my life and the life of the kids that do care about school miserable. (I teach high school freshman mainly. And the district has my job on the chopping block as is because of budget cuts)

For additional context: I don’t have any student loans to pay off and have looked into fully funded or very low tuition institutions to get my MFA at. Just wanted some weigh in here. What do I do?? What have other visual art educators done post-teaching?

I been substitute teaching and found I like teaching and want to either get a credential in teaching elementary school or pe at any grade level. I have narrowed it down to these two, which would be easiest to find a job in?