Teachers what is the worst thing you have to deal with?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not a teacher, but fcps hs teacher BIL says "the parents."

+100

Parents who think their child's behavioral issues aren't related to parenting (and lack of consequences/repercussions).

-APS

It's probably a combination of things but if that many kids are acting up in school, maybe what is going on at school isn't working and teachers need to rethink their strategies.

+1, parents need to be accountable but sometimes teachers scapegoat parents and kids.

Parents should be held accountable and should be contacted each and every time and if a kid is misbehaving that much they should be sent home for the day.

As a parent of a kid with behavioral issues, I would love to be contacted every time there is an issue. It’s impossible to impose consequences for behavior you don’t know about. Finding out about an incident from last week is not helpful if you want me to change my kid’s behavior.

Fully funding IDEA at the federal level would go so far in helping improve everyone’s experience at school. Having enough slots for kids in special education classrooms and meaningful support for inclusion would free up gen ed teachers to focus on the content.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not a teacher, but fcps hs teacher BIL says "the parents."

+100

Parents who think their child's behavioral issues aren't related to parenting (and lack of consequences/repercussions).

-APS

This. Every parent conference I have boils down to lack of consequences at home.

Wow!

When my kid was in preschool I had a teacher try to convince me that my child needed to be spanked and have more severe consequences at home when she didn’t listen to the teachers during transitions at school. Difficulty with transitions is totally normal for a 3 year old. I couldn’t get my kid out of that school fast enough! My DD is in high school now and is as sweet as can be. I’ve actually had teachers say “I wish we could clone her”. Sometimes the teachers and admin just don’t know how to behave with kids, despite that literally being in their job description.

[Anonymous]

But teachers aren’t talking about your situation specifically—you’re personalizing this. When I call the parents of an elementary child who told another kid to “F off,” and the parent says, “yeah, he does that at home, too. I don’t know how to stop it,” I do tend to think there are not many consequences at home. In the rare occasions a parent asks for suggestions, I might recommend talking away a privilege or liked activity or item.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not a teacher, but fcps hs teacher BIL says "the parents."

+100

Parents who think their child's behavioral issues aren't related to parenting (and lack of consequences/repercussions).

-APS

This. Every parent conference I have boils down to lack of consequences at home.

Wow!

When my kid was in preschool I had a teacher try to convince me that my child needed to be spanked and have more severe consequences at home when she didn’t listen to the teachers during transitions at school. Difficulty with transitions is totally normal for a 3 year old. I couldn’t get my kid out of that school fast enough! My DD is in high school now and is as sweet as can be. I’ve actually had teachers say “I wish we could clone her”. Sometimes the teachers and admin just don’t know how to behave with kids, despite that literally being in their job description.

Seems like there's a wide range of normal here. My 3-year old would never not listen to a teacher. He is as sweet as can be and way before high school. No teacher ever said he needed to be spanked.

[Anonymous]

We absolutely need to bring back corporal punishment in schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But teachers aren’t talking about your situation specifically—you’re personalizing this. When I call the parents of an elementary child who told another kid to “F off,” and the parent says, “yeah, he does that at home, too. I don’t know how to stop it,” I do tend to think there are not many consequences at home. In the rare occasions a parent asks for suggestions, I might recommend talking away a privilege or liked activity or item.

Exactly. It’s the egregious behaviors. It’s the “f*** you, B****” I get from students when I ask them to put away phones. When I call home, I get “why the hell do you care if his phone is out? He can have his f***ing phone out.” And then the kid fails the next test and it’s somehow my fault he didn’t understand the material.

It’s the teacher next door who was pushed into a wall by a student. Admin said that she shouldn’t have been in his way. She wasn’t. She was against a wall. He was free to storm out of the classroom but chose to push her first.

I have many stories just like these ones. I’m counting down the days until retirement. My own child played with the idea of putting education down as her major when she applied to college. I told her that’s the only major I won’t pay for.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not a teacher, but fcps hs teacher BIL says "the parents."

+100

Parents who think their child's behavioral issues aren't related to parenting (and lack of consequences/repercussions).

-APS

It's probably a combination of things but if that many kids are acting up in school, maybe what is going on at school isn't working and teachers need to rethink their strategies.

More so admin and the school boards should rethink their strategies.

As well as teachers. Teachers choose how they run their classroom and while one size doesn't fit all they need to read the room and do what works best for the majority of the kids in the classroom.

I know people think this is true but it isn't always. We are required to use PBIS at my school. Admin makes sure we are using it. It's BS IMO. Kids who behave will behave pretty much no matter what happens. It's the ones who don't that cause the most havoc in a classroom. I'm tired of having students destroy my classroom (almost everything was purchased by me over the years) and they return to the classroom with an admin and candy. I have to spend a lot of extra time during planning (so no planning/grading is getting done) documenting these behaviors and contacting parents. So if you want to know why I'm not getting grading done, this is why. It's because little Larlo had a tantrum, destroyed my classroom, and I need to spend my planning dealing with it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not a teacher, but fcps hs teacher BIL says "the parents."

+100

Parents who think their child's behavioral issues aren't related to parenting (and lack of consequences/repercussions).

-APS

This. Every parent conference I have boils down to lack of consequences at home.

Wow!

When my kid was in preschool I had a teacher try to convince me that my child needed to be spanked and have more severe consequences at home when she didn’t listen to the teachers during transitions at school. Difficulty with transitions is totally normal for a 3 year old. I couldn’t get my kid out of that school fast enough! My DD is in high school now and is as sweet as can be. I’ve actually had teachers say “I wish we could clone her”. Sometimes the teachers and admin just don’t know how to behave with kids, despite that literally being in their job description.

And this is why nobody wants to become a teacher anymore. It's not rocket science.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not a teacher, but fcps hs teacher BIL says "the parents."

+100

Parents who think their child's behavioral issues aren't related to parenting (and lack of consequences/repercussions).

-APS

It's probably a combination of things but if that many kids are acting up in school, maybe what is going on at school isn't working and teachers need to rethink their strategies.

More so admin and the school boards should rethink their strategies.

As well as teachers. Teachers choose how they run their classroom and while one size doesn't fit all they need to read the room and do what works best for the majority of the kids in the classroom.

The vast majority of kids are fine and polite enough and ready to work every day.

Their experience is disrupted by a small number of kids that shouldn’t be in the classroom but are every day that they actually bother to come to school.

You sound like you’re posting from 1994.

[Anonymous]

Parents who openly justify rule-breaking and ethics violations.

[Anonymous]

There is a minority of kids who cause a lot of the classroom issues. There is a minority of parents who don't care and won't do anything when it happens. AND there are a minority of teachers who blame parents as a whole for their inability to manage classrooms and behavior, and this includes a subset of teachers who still believe that if they could just hit kids, that would solve the problems (this is a dead giveaway, in teachers and parents, that they have no idea what they are doing).

Most teachers and parents are doing okay. But when we argue about this, there is a tendency to act like ALL parents are terrible or ALL teachers are terrible. It's not the case.

[Anonymous]

I'm not a teacher but teacher friends have told me the lack of discipline/consequences makes it so hard.

When I was in elementary school, even, a kid could be suspended for a lot of the behavior my teacher friends have to deal with. They're not allowed to do anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is a minority of kids who cause a lot of the classroom issues. There is a minority of parents who don't care and won't do anything when it happens. AND there are a minority of teachers who blame parents as a whole for their inability to manage classrooms and behavior, and this includes a subset of teachers who still believe that if they could just hit kids, that would solve the problems (this is a dead giveaway, in teachers and parents, that they have no idea what they are doing).

Most teachers and parents are doing okay. But when we argue about this, there is a tendency to act like ALL parents are terrible or ALL teachers are terrible. It's not the case.

I agree with most of what you wrote. Yes, it’s a minority of students causing problems in a classroom. Unfortunately, they take the majority of a teacher’s time. If a teacher has an ineffective administration, then the situation can become unbearable quickly.

I’m also not sure I agree “most” teachers are doing okay. Most I know are looking for exits out of the profession. 2/3rds of my department had quit in the past few years and we can’t get new teachers to stay more than a year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But teachers aren’t talking about your situation specifically—you’re personalizing this. When I call the parents of an elementary child who told another kid to “F off,” and the parent says, “yeah, he does that at home, too. I don’t know how to stop it,” I do tend to think there are not many consequences at home. In the rare occasions a parent asks for suggestions, I might recommend talking away a privilege or liked activity or item.

Exactly. It’s the egregious behaviors. It’s the “f*** you, B****” I get from students when I ask them to put away phones. When I call home, I get “why the hell do you care if his phone is out? He can have his f***ing phone out.” And then the kid fails the next test and it’s somehow my fault he didn’t understand the material.

It’s the teacher next door who was pushed into a wall by a student. Admin said that she shouldn’t have been in his way. She wasn’t. She was against a wall. He was free to storm out of the classroom but chose to push her first.

I have many stories just like these ones. I’m counting down the days until retirement. My own child played with the idea of putting education down as her major when she applied to college. I told her that’s the only major I won’t pay for.

Your admin could definitely help out here. I had a MS student recently refuse to put the phone away. A quick email to admin and one showed up at my door to confiscate the phone. There are consequences that the current administrators stick to that has made a difference. It has cut down on the disruptions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But teachers aren’t talking about your situation specifically—you’re personalizing this. When I call the parents of an elementary child who told another kid to “F off,” and the parent says, “yeah, he does that at home, too. I don’t know how to stop it,” I do tend to think there are not many consequences at home. In the rare occasions a parent asks for suggestions, I might recommend talking away a privilege or liked activity or item.

Exactly. It’s the egregious behaviors. It’s the “f*** you, B****” I get from students when I ask them to put away phones. When I call home, I get “why the hell do you care if his phone is out? He can have his f***ing phone out.” And then the kid fails the next test and it’s somehow my fault he didn’t understand the material.

It’s the teacher next door who was pushed into a wall by a student. Admin said that she shouldn’t have been in his way. She wasn’t. She was against a wall. He was free to storm out of the classroom but chose to push her first.

I have many stories just like these ones. I’m counting down the days until retirement. My own child played with the idea of putting education down as her major when she applied to college. I told her that’s the only major I won’t pay for.

Your admin could definitely help out here. I had a MS student recently refuse to put the phone away. A quick email to admin and one showed up at my door to confiscate the phone. There are consequences that the current administrators stick to that has made a difference. It has cut down on the disruptions.

You don’t know that.