It's not fair for my nice kid to always get paired with the challenging kid. It's not fair for my nice kid to get shoved out of the way when picking art supplies or not get to be goalie on his soccer team because another kid had a tantrum. I don't know what the answer is. I want to raise a good, kind, human. But I also don't want him to always feel second/third/fourth best.

Admin please don't fire us for doing what we are legally entitled to do when reporting violence.

Posters, don’t do this:

Put clickbait junk as your post title.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s not rocket science, but it is a classroom, not a circus. There’s no excuse for children to be talking while a teacher is lecturing or students are to be completing work quietly. The teacher should not allow best friends to be talking if that means another child has to get an accommodation to avoid them. That’s insane. The classroom door can also be closed, and people in the hallway should be as quiet as possible knowing that classes are in session.

Since we can’t physically put tape over their mouths, and often times they won’t stop talking because of ADHD or they’re rude or disrespectful, how do you suggest we get them to stop talking?

Then they don’t deserve to be in the classroom. Suspend or expel them, and let their parents figure out how to educate them since they can’t figure out how to stop talking in class. Nothing will change until the parents are inconvenienced.

Ha! My principal said kids can’t even be sent to the office for talking out of turn. Kids can’t be suspended at all in the early grades, and in the upper grades only if they bring a weapon. There is no such thing as being expelled from elementary school. You are living in fantasyland.

So nobody gets to learn until the little darlings learn to keep their mouths shut when the teacher is talking? Again, until the parents are inconvenienced, nothing will change.

Yep, it’s not 1980 anymore.

Parents aren’t inconvenienced, because the majority of them with bad kids don’t answer the phone, read emails, or attend parent teacher conferences.

I think the reality is that much of the “degradation” people notice in schools since the 1980s isn’t just about teachers or parents suddenly becoming lax—it’s about the system being asked to take on more and more responsibilities with fewer resources.

Schools today are expected to mainstream nearly every student, regardless of need, and to accommodate a wide range of challenges: ESL populations, neurological or behavioral diagnoses, varying home supports. That inclusivity has value, but it comes at a real cost. To make it work, schools jettison things that once were standard—penmanship grading, cursive instruction, homework expectations (because not all kids have parents to check it), even substantive take-home writing assignments (to avoid inequities when some parents can’t help).

A lot of what used to build rigor has been hollowed out not because educators wanted to, but because the system has been forced to stretch itself thin, while pretending it can compensate for every gap. Realistically, schools can never replicate at scale what’s missing from a child’s home environment. It takes enormous resources just to address part of that deficit, and those resources have never matched the mandates.

So what we’re left with is that the kind of schooling people remember from the 1980s—orderly, skill-driven, with higher expectations—is now closer to a luxury product than the baseline. I don’t think there’s a single bad actor here, but it’s a lamentable consequence of trying to do everything for everyone without the tools to succeed.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s not rocket science, but it is a classroom, not a circus. There’s no excuse for children to be talking while a teacher is lecturing or students are to be completing work quietly. The teacher should not allow best friends to be talking if that means another child has to get an accommodation to avoid them. That’s insane. The classroom door can also be closed, and people in the hallway should be as quiet as possible knowing that classes are in session.

Since we can’t physically put tape over their mouths, and often times they won’t stop talking because of ADHD or they’re rude or disrespectful, how do you suggest we get them to stop talking?

Then they don’t deserve to be in the classroom. Suspend or expel them, and let their parents figure out how to educate them since they can’t figure out how to stop talking in class. Nothing will change until the parents are inconvenienced.

Ha! My principal said kids can’t even be sent to the office for talking out of turn. Kids can’t be suspended at all in the early grades, and in the upper grades only if they bring a weapon. There is no such thing as being expelled from elementary school. You are living in fantasyland.

So nobody gets to learn until the little darlings learn to keep their mouths shut when the teacher is talking? Again, until the parents are inconvenienced, nothing will change.

Yep, it’s not 1980 anymore.

Parents aren’t inconvenienced, because the majority of them with bad kids don’t answer the phone, read emails, or attend parent teacher conferences.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So basically no neurotypical child ever gets “preferential” seating or partners?

Lovely.

“Preferential seating” doesn’t refer to highly coveted seats that are desired by all students; it means seating a student in a location that enhances their ability to learn. Students who have trouble seeing or hearing may need to be up front. Kids who need to be seated away from distractions may need to be seated where they can’t see out the windows. Students who need frequent redirection back to their work benefit from proximity to the teacher’s desk. Generally speaking, if a child has no disabilities, their performance doesn’t vary widely based on their seating.

Lots of kids like mine are denied ieps and my kid in the back is an issue with a language processing disorder. We spend a fortune on private therapies.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s not rocket science, but it is a classroom, not a circus. There’s no excuse for children to be talking while a teacher is lecturing or students are to be completing work quietly. The teacher should not allow best friends to be talking if that means another child has to get an accommodation to avoid them. That’s insane. The classroom door can also be closed, and people in the hallway should be as quiet as possible knowing that classes are in session.

Since we can’t physically put tape over their mouths, and often times they won’t stop talking because of ADHD or they’re rude or disrespectful, how do you suggest we get them to stop talking?

Then they don’t deserve to be in the classroom. Suspend or expel them, and let their parents figure out how to educate them since they can’t figure out how to stop talking in class. Nothing will change until the parents are inconvenienced.

Ha! My principal said kids can’t even be sent to the office for talking out of turn. Kids can’t be suspended at all in the early grades, and in the upper grades only if they bring a weapon. There is no such thing as being expelled from elementary school. You are living in fantasyland.

So nobody gets to learn until the little darlings learn to keep their mouths shut when the teacher is talking? Again, until the parents are inconvenienced, nothing will change.

That’s equity! Deal with it!

/snark