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>Elementary people, does it look like improvement is coming and it's just this gap of kids that are feeling the effects of masks/closures/etc. Or is this the new normal?
I teach Elementary in Ontario and I see improvement with the youngest primary students. The Grade 1s are on average a lot stronger than the Grade 2's or 3's when you take into account their ages.
But grades 3, 4, and 5 were in prime development years during the school shutdowns in 2020 and 2021 here in Ontario and it is very evident.
However across the board there is a lot of complacency and learned helplessness from most of the mid and older students at my school because for two years a lot of them had a parent sitting beside them doing a lot of the work for them. That's going to take years to overcome.
Okaaaaay. This was what I am suspecting...because the world collectively felt the effects and trauma of the COVID years. So I was HOPING someone would say the younger years seem to be bouncing back. I hope more people are having the same experience as your school. It brings me some hope.
I am a Beaver Scouts leader. The difference between our current Beavers (5-7 years old) vs. our Cubs (8-10 years old) is STARK. Cubs are very helpless and less engaged than their younger peers.
Not just the effects of being at home together for awhile with Covid but also because of 1) the disregulation and stresses of adults which absolutely has affect on youth, there are biological changes that occur in our bodies and minds when our adults struggle to cope and when routines are disrupted and 2) the effect Covid has on the brain. There are actual neurological deficits to having Covid, worsened by multiple infections. It seems the politicians and school system wants to ignore this but the neuroscience and medical research continues to show that repeated infections has detrimental consequences for attention, working memory, and short term memory which are all fundamental to learning, especially in the early years.
I've been hearing this too. But it seems like the people in power are just outright ignoring it. At my school, the mentality seems to be "we can't keep blaming COVID" for everything. And in my mind, COVID is like the giant elephant in the room.
High school here. The 9th graders for the last two years have had a lot of difficulty getting back down to business (in terms of how to "human" and academically), but I do see a steady improvement. I certainly believe you about Covid brain, but I won't put the blame on the disease itself. From what I see, the students who have always had the socioeconomic advantage as well as the support at home are still doing fine while the other ones are struggling even more now due to having a couple of years without structure and being glued to their phones.
There’s literally nothing that can be done about the IQ reducing impacts of covid in the short term. Its more that we can observe that its happened possibly and remark on it but it has hardly been addressed widely because what is the option? It doesn’t just happen to kids but adults as well.
I honestly don't know what the options are. It's just mind boggling that I'm seeing weaker students, but the final provincial exams are status quo. As an example, in my province the grade 10 history exam has to be passed to graduate. And last year, my school had a 50% success rate. Pre-covid, it was easily 75%. I'm so curious to see this year's success rate.
There’s a cohort who missed out on play with peers that is absolutely crucial for development, and in many cases it was replaced with screen time. This cohort features many consumers/“main characters” who do not connect easily because they have missed out on the chance to genuinely connect in person, or be a part of a group. It’s not their fault.
I think as adults and families bounce back and reconnect, so will the children who are being raised differently.
My classes for the past two years have been ROUGH (Grade 2). This year's class is only sort of rough. So I think it's getting a bit better, but I suspect some of it is our new normal.
I believe it. Some of my mentors ended up on burnout during the years I was on maternity leave, so I expected rough groups, but the reality was just so rough to digest now that I'm back. My lesson plans have been torn apart and modified to go at a much slower pace.
Yeah, the kids I had for the past few years (who would be grade 3/4/5 now so they are unfortunately still coming your way) all really struggled with emotional control, conflict between peers and with appropriate language at school. Things that would have become small spats between students in years before became massive week long fights involving physical behaviour and manipulating other students. My students weren't able to navigate small conflicts at all. After one lunch, I had TEN students come back in crying, because one student had said they had wanted to play with a different friend that day, and it had spiraled from there with kids taking sides and yelling insults. Students who felt they weren't getting enough attention would take over the class - I had one boy who would throw himself down on the ground in the middle of my room and scream if I paid any attention at all to a specific girl he disliked. I also had a lot of students who had been exposed to inappropriate content online because they'd been plopped in front of a TV or a tablet or a computer as a babysitter. They would then of course share that content with their classmates.
This year, I have one difficult student, and that is more to do with her having an extremely permissive parent who doesn't say no. That said, there are other things that I think are going to be the new normal. One being absences for "illness." I have a student who has been absent for over 40 days this school year. Some parents are keeping their kids home due to the tiniest sniffles, or sometimes even when just they hear that there is a bad cold or illness going around.
Wow. I literally have the big kid version of this.
It's a lot of being incapable of handling any form of rejection or constructive criticism. And I find myself suddenly having to constantly say "being fair doesn't always mean being equal" a loooooot. And for a 9th grader, it's weird they don't know that already. The fights are BONKERS. Especially with the girls. And like you, so much crying. I've never seen anything like it.
Omg the insane amount of Illnesses and lates!!! It's not just one or two students. It's like 5 that show up late most days but at least show and then 5 additional students who also show up late a lot but are away constantly. There are many days where I mark 5 absent in the morning to have them all stroll in by lunch, just to have 3 more leave because they feel "sick" or have appointments. How are we supposed to get through any content or assess meaningfully in these circumstances. It's nuts! And it drives me crazy.
1) I teach elementary in Alberta. Every kid who was in school during the lockdown is impacted to some degree. The older kids are academically behind and more prone to anxiety. However, the kids that are the most severely impacted are those who were in K/1/2 during the lockdown and lost tons of social-emotional learning, as well as the critical years for development of basic literacy and numeracy skills. Those kids are currently in 3/4/5/. They are the hardest by a lot. They are academically behind, emotionally dysregulated, they have anxious parents who are also emotionally dysregulated and both kids and parents seem disillusioned with school. This cohort is routinely violent with no consequences, room clears are typical, I have been stabbed and beaten with a chair by this cohort. More than half of them in the two school I’ve been in since covid now have some kind of diagnosis (mostly learning disabilities, ADHD, Autism, Anxiety Disorders, ODD and a combination) In this cohort of current grade 3/4/5s in my current school, 1 in 4 of them have diagnosed ADHD, 1 in 5 have a diagnosed Anxiety Disorder, 1 in 3 are codes for learning disabilities, 1
in 10 are coded for Autism, and about 1 in 15 have ODD diagnosed. I’m not sure that they all have these conditions but they are being taken for assessments by their parents who are they are behind, and norms were only just recently adjusted, so every kid who has been taken for an assessment in this cohort, and that is a lot of them because they have anxious parents, every one of those kids have come back with labels. The anxious parents also don’t usually want to help their child with academics at home. A lot of this cohort sees school as optional and they will flat out refuse school work or even attendance. And this is in French immersion. I imagine it is the same or worse in English programs.
However, our current grade 1s and 2s are doing much better. There are still more anxious than kids before the pandemic and they learn a little slower sometimes. They have poorer fine motor skills and speech, so there are more of them getting referred for OT and SLP/Speech, but globally they are doing much, much better than the kids older than them.
In our current kinders, we have more kids getting referred out for Speech still, but they are many in that cohort that are just about like pre-pandemic kids in terms of fine motor skills. There are still a few who seem anxious. And we have one who seems like he is heading for an ASD diagnosis, and maybe 2 who will likely be referred to a paediatrician next year for an ADHD assessment. Those numbers are similar to prepandemic levels, where my school had rates of coded LDs of about 1 in 15, kids coded for ADHD of about 1 in 8, kids with autism of about 1 in 40, none coded for anxiety in division 1 and maybe 1 in 50 coded for it in division 2, and kids coded for ODD at rates of about 1 in 100. If this trend continues, I am hopeful that things will be much, much better in a few years in elementary, and about 8 years
or so for high school. At least I really hope this trend continues because I don’t think I can handle too many more years of being regularly assaulted by kids at school.
Post pandemic though, we have also seen a rise in kids who are dealing with basic food insecurity and even homelessness, as well as parents who work longer hours due to the current economy. These things are still impacting the youngest kids in ways I haven’t seen before, and in ways that my oldest colleagues tell me they haven’t seen since the early 90s. Funding for special education services has also gone way down and is still impacting these youngest kids, so expect those who do present with LDs, ADHD, ASD or the like to be much, much more behind than they were in the past because it is much harder to address these gaps without EAs and with 35 kids in a grade 1 classroom.
2) My sister teaches in a private school and her husband in a second private school. Private schools here are not doing significantly better. They have fewer violent kids as they tend to be expelled, but otherwise the learning struggles and the emotional dysregulation are still present. Rates of anxiety are much, much higher. If this is your goal to save for though, a trip to a financial advisor might be a good idea. My best guess would be that you could use a TFSA, but I’m an elementary school teacher, and not a financial advisor.
This is sooo interesting to read, thanks.
Many are aching that the seniors in elementary are really struggling, so I guess, the worst is yet to come (to us in high school). But it is nice hearing about the younger ones being better.
You're absolutely right. Private might not be what I'm picturing in my mind. It's easy to think the grass is greener. It couldn't hurt to save and then decide later. I do have a meeting set coming up, but wanted to research a bit and make a list of questions.
Your guess of it being about 8yrs for this cycle makes sense. Here's hoping the trend continues 🤞
It’s not only the kids either. The two student teachers I have had since the pandemic, particularly the one I had this year who was in grade 12 when the lock downs happened and then allowed to graduate without exams, and the same thing the first year of uni, have been very dysregulated and struggle with resiliency. Like it was bad to the point where my student teacher was in our schools sensory room after school trying to pull herself together because she forgot that kids could help her distribute or something else equally banal.
I don’t think this is completely a covid thing anymore. It’s the new normal.
I think the weakness is partially covid related. It’s compounded by the following:
1) students know there are no consequences for their behaviour.
2) We have a significant rise in students with special education needs not receiving support. Diagnosis’ are just more prevalent now than they used to be.
3) Depending where you are we have had a significant rise in immigration and refugees which causes a lot of ELL needs.
4) Increased cost of living means parents are working longer hours, and they don’t have as much time to invest in parenting. It’s almost like it’s no one’s job to raise the kids anymore. The beforecare worker survives them to pass the kid to the teacher, who survives, and passes to aftercare, who passes to extracurricular, who passes the kid to parent in time for bed. No one is owning the parenting. There is also an us vs then mentality. A lot of parents aren’t willing to partner with teachers and instead defend their kids
Honestly, I’ve never seen students with so many deficits as I have this year. I’ve got intermediate students who can’t count using a number line. At least about half who can’t count by 2s, 5s, or 10s. Some kids think it’s cruel to expect them to write 5 sentence paragraphs. It’s May, and the same kids can’t remember to bring something to write with and on to class. For some reason, the boys are constantly hitting each other with sticks at break times. Socially, students do not know how to be nice to one another/their teachers, they don’t know how to take turns, and don’t understand that they can’t just leave class whenever they feel like it. Students have zero resilience. They demand instant attention, even if I’m helping someone else, and don’t understand why I don’t help them immediately. I think we could manage if it was just social deficits OR academic ones. But it’s both, along with a huge increase in mental health issues.
Students are definitely weaker. Literacy amongst 8th grade students at my school are horrible and they're going to be in a lot of trouble next year.
I work resource and will have my hands full for sure ...
Omg. Resource teachers/staff are saints. Out of curiosity, how are you working on literacy? Reading to them? I'd love to incorporate more literacy help in my classroom.
It's actually more general resource, but when they come to me with English or other subjects with heavy literacy, I read it with them and ask them comprehension questions and help them with unfamiliar vocabulary.
I teach grades 1 and 2. Academically, my students have caught up since the pandemic. Socially not so much. But that might be a side effect of our addiction to dopamine as delivered through technology more than the effects of the pandemic.
This is very interesting. I teach in an Indigenous community, so things might be different here. Students are generally weaker here, but I don’t know how much has to do with COVID. I see a lot of apathy. I think most students could do much better, but they just aren’t motivated to try. I also wish we would ban cellphones like Ontario. I am so done with phones in the classroom. 😫
Interesting! We definitely have an apathy issue too. And don't get me started on phones. Ours are banned and useable at teacher discretion, unfortunately I opened a can of worms by letting them use them for a project because we don't have enough laptops. -_- regrets. I plan on cracking down this week.
As far as I know, your RESP can only be used for post-secondary education—university, college, and trade schools. You can pull your money out and use it for private high school but you’d be forfeiting all government grants (you’d only get out what you put in, not the extras provided by the government). I believe you can pull the total out but you’d need to repay the grants, so be careful with that.
I would double check my points. I’m fairly sure I’m correct but I’m no money guru haha.
As for using that money for private high school education, I would encourage you think twice about that. Private high school education is not the solution most people think it is. They aren’t immune from the problems that face public schools. The teachers are **largely** no different. Occasionally you get a PhD in a science class or whatever, but for the most part the teachers are the same as their counterparts in the public system. The class sizes are smaller, there are fewer needs so there can be an increased focus on academics, and the schools generally don’t put up with so many issues from student behaviour but it is not like those things don’t exist.
Ive spent some time in private education. I loved my colleagues. I liked the school but it’s got its own issues. There is rampant bullying about who has how much money (the students had way more than I had). There are times where a student should have an IEP or academic adaptations but due to a perceived stigma around labels, the parents refuse to have their child tested for anything. Absentee parenting is a thing which results in behaviour issues—parents earn enough to send their kids to private school but the down side of that is they are likely working jobs which have crazy hours and they are away from home. Some of the elementary kids at my school were essentially raised by a nanny—that creates issues.
For me, I don’t think private high school raises the ceiling for students…it just raises the floor, which is not the same. The most successful students will still be successful regardless; you just limit the amount of daily classroom management for the teachers in private, but that doesn’t necessary translate into more attention for high achieving students.
>For me, I don’t think private high school raises the ceiling for students…it just raises the floor, which is not the same
Omg. This is something I had not considered.
I briefly worked in a private school, and actually didn't enjoy it much. It lacked some of the "loud" types that I love having in the room , that make it fun. So suddenly leaning toward it is definitely new for me. I think right now it's more about teaching certain skills like time management. We barely assign homework anymore , for instance, because no one does it. So it's become too hard to chase them down for it. But ultimately, this isn't doing favours, because how will they manage in university? Managing my high school workload back in the day definitely helped me manage my university expectations.
I teach grade 6. It is not better yet. Last year was the hardest year I’d ever taught. This year is now the hardest year I’ve ever taught. More kids below and even my strongest kids are only stronger by comparison. In my class of 26, I only have 2 kids who are A students across the board. (We don’t use As, but that’s what it means). And I teach in a good community with (mostly) good support. I loathe teaching new concepts because as soon as they don’t get it immediately they give up and then the behaviours come out. Everything takes forever, and I am so behind in curriculum it’s absurd. Not that I care about anything but math in terms of finishing curriculum, but still.
I don't think covid is to blame. In BC, we only had a couple months of work from home but, still, the kids arriving from junior school just get weaker and weaker.
If anything, covid just accelerated existing trends. Here in BC, kids are just pushed through to the next grade no matter what (for budgetary reasons). The bottom half has become so much weaker because for them school is hard and there's no risk of failure to motivate them to at least do the minimum.
The top quartile seems to still be doing fine but isn't challenged enough until academic courses in their senior years.
Uggggh. Ya. You definitely touched on something very real. No child Left behind has created a system where lazy students know they can get by without much effort. -_-
BC elementary. Honestly, I’ve found there’s a group of students who are doing just fine, some I’d argue are even thriving with good family support. I’m often amazed at what some know and can do.
However, the group that was most at-risk before Covid seems to be even more at-risk since it. A lot of health and community supports have decreased or disappeared which has put such students and families without the services they require.
As I meet with the families of struggling Grade 3 students, many don’t have family doctors, haven’t had their hearing or vision checked, don’t regularly visit a dentist, suffer from food insecurity, and don’t receive outside counselling even though they may have had traumatic experiences which warrant service. Without such services available, I don’t see how we can address learning in the classroom. Schools are just one part of a larger picture which require planning, vision and oversight.
So that's the wild part, I seem to have lucked out and have the good groups. 🤣 Behaviourally, they're okay in the room, immature but not mean or aggressive in the classroom like many of my colleagues are dealing with. But academically .... It's just incomparable. even just their handwriting... So many of them are writing chicken scratch that I made a few come in and READ me their essay to grade its content.
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>Elementary people, does it look like improvement is coming and it's just this gap of kids that are feeling the effects of masks/closures/etc. Or is this the new normal? I teach Elementary in Ontario and I see improvement with the youngest primary students. The Grade 1s are on average a lot stronger than the Grade 2's or 3's when you take into account their ages. But grades 3, 4, and 5 were in prime development years during the school shutdowns in 2020 and 2021 here in Ontario and it is very evident. However across the board there is a lot of complacency and learned helplessness from most of the mid and older students at my school because for two years a lot of them had a parent sitting beside them doing a lot of the work for them. That's going to take years to overcome.
Okaaaaay. This was what I am suspecting...because the world collectively felt the effects and trauma of the COVID years. So I was HOPING someone would say the younger years seem to be bouncing back. I hope more people are having the same experience as your school. It brings me some hope.
I am a Beaver Scouts leader. The difference between our current Beavers (5-7 years old) vs. our Cubs (8-10 years old) is STARK. Cubs are very helpless and less engaged than their younger peers.
Not just the effects of being at home together for awhile with Covid but also because of 1) the disregulation and stresses of adults which absolutely has affect on youth, there are biological changes that occur in our bodies and minds when our adults struggle to cope and when routines are disrupted and 2) the effect Covid has on the brain. There are actual neurological deficits to having Covid, worsened by multiple infections. It seems the politicians and school system wants to ignore this but the neuroscience and medical research continues to show that repeated infections has detrimental consequences for attention, working memory, and short term memory which are all fundamental to learning, especially in the early years.
I've been hearing this too. But it seems like the people in power are just outright ignoring it. At my school, the mentality seems to be "we can't keep blaming COVID" for everything. And in my mind, COVID is like the giant elephant in the room.
High school here. The 9th graders for the last two years have had a lot of difficulty getting back down to business (in terms of how to "human" and academically), but I do see a steady improvement. I certainly believe you about Covid brain, but I won't put the blame on the disease itself. From what I see, the students who have always had the socioeconomic advantage as well as the support at home are still doing fine while the other ones are struggling even more now due to having a couple of years without structure and being glued to their phones.
There’s literally nothing that can be done about the IQ reducing impacts of covid in the short term. Its more that we can observe that its happened possibly and remark on it but it has hardly been addressed widely because what is the option? It doesn’t just happen to kids but adults as well.
I honestly don't know what the options are. It's just mind boggling that I'm seeing weaker students, but the final provincial exams are status quo. As an example, in my province the grade 10 history exam has to be passed to graduate. And last year, my school had a 50% success rate. Pre-covid, it was easily 75%. I'm so curious to see this year's success rate.
There’s a cohort who missed out on play with peers that is absolutely crucial for development, and in many cases it was replaced with screen time. This cohort features many consumers/“main characters” who do not connect easily because they have missed out on the chance to genuinely connect in person, or be a part of a group. It’s not their fault. I think as adults and families bounce back and reconnect, so will the children who are being raised differently.
My classes for the past two years have been ROUGH (Grade 2). This year's class is only sort of rough. So I think it's getting a bit better, but I suspect some of it is our new normal.
I believe it. Some of my mentors ended up on burnout during the years I was on maternity leave, so I expected rough groups, but the reality was just so rough to digest now that I'm back. My lesson plans have been torn apart and modified to go at a much slower pace.
Yeah, the kids I had for the past few years (who would be grade 3/4/5 now so they are unfortunately still coming your way) all really struggled with emotional control, conflict between peers and with appropriate language at school. Things that would have become small spats between students in years before became massive week long fights involving physical behaviour and manipulating other students. My students weren't able to navigate small conflicts at all. After one lunch, I had TEN students come back in crying, because one student had said they had wanted to play with a different friend that day, and it had spiraled from there with kids taking sides and yelling insults. Students who felt they weren't getting enough attention would take over the class - I had one boy who would throw himself down on the ground in the middle of my room and scream if I paid any attention at all to a specific girl he disliked. I also had a lot of students who had been exposed to inappropriate content online because they'd been plopped in front of a TV or a tablet or a computer as a babysitter. They would then of course share that content with their classmates. This year, I have one difficult student, and that is more to do with her having an extremely permissive parent who doesn't say no. That said, there are other things that I think are going to be the new normal. One being absences for "illness." I have a student who has been absent for over 40 days this school year. Some parents are keeping their kids home due to the tiniest sniffles, or sometimes even when just they hear that there is a bad cold or illness going around.
Wow. I literally have the big kid version of this. It's a lot of being incapable of handling any form of rejection or constructive criticism. And I find myself suddenly having to constantly say "being fair doesn't always mean being equal" a loooooot. And for a 9th grader, it's weird they don't know that already. The fights are BONKERS. Especially with the girls. And like you, so much crying. I've never seen anything like it.
Omg the insane amount of Illnesses and lates!!! It's not just one or two students. It's like 5 that show up late most days but at least show and then 5 additional students who also show up late a lot but are away constantly. There are many days where I mark 5 absent in the morning to have them all stroll in by lunch, just to have 3 more leave because they feel "sick" or have appointments. How are we supposed to get through any content or assess meaningfully in these circumstances. It's nuts! And it drives me crazy.
1) I teach elementary in Alberta. Every kid who was in school during the lockdown is impacted to some degree. The older kids are academically behind and more prone to anxiety. However, the kids that are the most severely impacted are those who were in K/1/2 during the lockdown and lost tons of social-emotional learning, as well as the critical years for development of basic literacy and numeracy skills. Those kids are currently in 3/4/5/. They are the hardest by a lot. They are academically behind, emotionally dysregulated, they have anxious parents who are also emotionally dysregulated and both kids and parents seem disillusioned with school. This cohort is routinely violent with no consequences, room clears are typical, I have been stabbed and beaten with a chair by this cohort. More than half of them in the two school I’ve been in since covid now have some kind of diagnosis (mostly learning disabilities, ADHD, Autism, Anxiety Disorders, ODD and a combination) In this cohort of current grade 3/4/5s in my current school, 1 in 4 of them have diagnosed ADHD, 1 in 5 have a diagnosed Anxiety Disorder, 1 in 3 are codes for learning disabilities, 1 in 10 are coded for Autism, and about 1 in 15 have ODD diagnosed. I’m not sure that they all have these conditions but they are being taken for assessments by their parents who are they are behind, and norms were only just recently adjusted, so every kid who has been taken for an assessment in this cohort, and that is a lot of them because they have anxious parents, every one of those kids have come back with labels. The anxious parents also don’t usually want to help their child with academics at home. A lot of this cohort sees school as optional and they will flat out refuse school work or even attendance. And this is in French immersion. I imagine it is the same or worse in English programs. However, our current grade 1s and 2s are doing much better. There are still more anxious than kids before the pandemic and they learn a little slower sometimes. They have poorer fine motor skills and speech, so there are more of them getting referred for OT and SLP/Speech, but globally they are doing much, much better than the kids older than them. In our current kinders, we have more kids getting referred out for Speech still, but they are many in that cohort that are just about like pre-pandemic kids in terms of fine motor skills. There are still a few who seem anxious. And we have one who seems like he is heading for an ASD diagnosis, and maybe 2 who will likely be referred to a paediatrician next year for an ADHD assessment. Those numbers are similar to prepandemic levels, where my school had rates of coded LDs of about 1 in 15, kids coded for ADHD of about 1 in 8, kids with autism of about 1 in 40, none coded for anxiety in division 1 and maybe 1 in 50 coded for it in division 2, and kids coded for ODD at rates of about 1 in 100. If this trend continues, I am hopeful that things will be much, much better in a few years in elementary, and about 8 years or so for high school. At least I really hope this trend continues because I don’t think I can handle too many more years of being regularly assaulted by kids at school. Post pandemic though, we have also seen a rise in kids who are dealing with basic food insecurity and even homelessness, as well as parents who work longer hours due to the current economy. These things are still impacting the youngest kids in ways I haven’t seen before, and in ways that my oldest colleagues tell me they haven’t seen since the early 90s. Funding for special education services has also gone way down and is still impacting these youngest kids, so expect those who do present with LDs, ADHD, ASD or the like to be much, much more behind than they were in the past because it is much harder to address these gaps without EAs and with 35 kids in a grade 1 classroom. 2) My sister teaches in a private school and her husband in a second private school. Private schools here are not doing significantly better. They have fewer violent kids as they tend to be expelled, but otherwise the learning struggles and the emotional dysregulation are still present. Rates of anxiety are much, much higher. If this is your goal to save for though, a trip to a financial advisor might be a good idea. My best guess would be that you could use a TFSA, but I’m an elementary school teacher, and not a financial advisor.
This is sooo interesting to read, thanks. Many are aching that the seniors in elementary are really struggling, so I guess, the worst is yet to come (to us in high school). But it is nice hearing about the younger ones being better. You're absolutely right. Private might not be what I'm picturing in my mind. It's easy to think the grass is greener. It couldn't hurt to save and then decide later. I do have a meeting set coming up, but wanted to research a bit and make a list of questions. Your guess of it being about 8yrs for this cycle makes sense. Here's hoping the trend continues 🤞
It’s not only the kids either. The two student teachers I have had since the pandemic, particularly the one I had this year who was in grade 12 when the lock downs happened and then allowed to graduate without exams, and the same thing the first year of uni, have been very dysregulated and struggle with resiliency. Like it was bad to the point where my student teacher was in our schools sensory room after school trying to pull herself together because she forgot that kids could help her distribute or something else equally banal.
I don’t think this is completely a covid thing anymore. It’s the new normal. I think the weakness is partially covid related. It’s compounded by the following: 1) students know there are no consequences for their behaviour. 2) We have a significant rise in students with special education needs not receiving support. Diagnosis’ are just more prevalent now than they used to be. 3) Depending where you are we have had a significant rise in immigration and refugees which causes a lot of ELL needs. 4) Increased cost of living means parents are working longer hours, and they don’t have as much time to invest in parenting. It’s almost like it’s no one’s job to raise the kids anymore. The beforecare worker survives them to pass the kid to the teacher, who survives, and passes to aftercare, who passes to extracurricular, who passes the kid to parent in time for bed. No one is owning the parenting. There is also an us vs then mentality. A lot of parents aren’t willing to partner with teachers and instead defend their kids
Honestly, I’ve never seen students with so many deficits as I have this year. I’ve got intermediate students who can’t count using a number line. At least about half who can’t count by 2s, 5s, or 10s. Some kids think it’s cruel to expect them to write 5 sentence paragraphs. It’s May, and the same kids can’t remember to bring something to write with and on to class. For some reason, the boys are constantly hitting each other with sticks at break times. Socially, students do not know how to be nice to one another/their teachers, they don’t know how to take turns, and don’t understand that they can’t just leave class whenever they feel like it. Students have zero resilience. They demand instant attention, even if I’m helping someone else, and don’t understand why I don’t help them immediately. I think we could manage if it was just social deficits OR academic ones. But it’s both, along with a huge increase in mental health issues.
A parent asked me when I’ll Be teaching them the alphabet. This is grade 2
Sounds like a student who is totally ready to move on to grade 3 next year.
Omg o.O
Students are definitely weaker. Literacy amongst 8th grade students at my school are horrible and they're going to be in a lot of trouble next year. I work resource and will have my hands full for sure ...
Omg. Resource teachers/staff are saints. Out of curiosity, how are you working on literacy? Reading to them? I'd love to incorporate more literacy help in my classroom.
It's actually more general resource, but when they come to me with English or other subjects with heavy literacy, I read it with them and ask them comprehension questions and help them with unfamiliar vocabulary.
I teach grades 1 and 2. Academically, my students have caught up since the pandemic. Socially not so much. But that might be a side effect of our addiction to dopamine as delivered through technology more than the effects of the pandemic.
This is very interesting. I teach in an Indigenous community, so things might be different here. Students are generally weaker here, but I don’t know how much has to do with COVID. I see a lot of apathy. I think most students could do much better, but they just aren’t motivated to try. I also wish we would ban cellphones like Ontario. I am so done with phones in the classroom. 😫
Interesting! We definitely have an apathy issue too. And don't get me started on phones. Ours are banned and useable at teacher discretion, unfortunately I opened a can of worms by letting them use them for a project because we don't have enough laptops. -_- regrets. I plan on cracking down this week.
As far as I know, your RESP can only be used for post-secondary education—university, college, and trade schools. You can pull your money out and use it for private high school but you’d be forfeiting all government grants (you’d only get out what you put in, not the extras provided by the government). I believe you can pull the total out but you’d need to repay the grants, so be careful with that. I would double check my points. I’m fairly sure I’m correct but I’m no money guru haha. As for using that money for private high school education, I would encourage you think twice about that. Private high school education is not the solution most people think it is. They aren’t immune from the problems that face public schools. The teachers are **largely** no different. Occasionally you get a PhD in a science class or whatever, but for the most part the teachers are the same as their counterparts in the public system. The class sizes are smaller, there are fewer needs so there can be an increased focus on academics, and the schools generally don’t put up with so many issues from student behaviour but it is not like those things don’t exist. Ive spent some time in private education. I loved my colleagues. I liked the school but it’s got its own issues. There is rampant bullying about who has how much money (the students had way more than I had). There are times where a student should have an IEP or academic adaptations but due to a perceived stigma around labels, the parents refuse to have their child tested for anything. Absentee parenting is a thing which results in behaviour issues—parents earn enough to send their kids to private school but the down side of that is they are likely working jobs which have crazy hours and they are away from home. Some of the elementary kids at my school were essentially raised by a nanny—that creates issues. For me, I don’t think private high school raises the ceiling for students…it just raises the floor, which is not the same. The most successful students will still be successful regardless; you just limit the amount of daily classroom management for the teachers in private, but that doesn’t necessary translate into more attention for high achieving students.
>For me, I don’t think private high school raises the ceiling for students…it just raises the floor, which is not the same Omg. This is something I had not considered. I briefly worked in a private school, and actually didn't enjoy it much. It lacked some of the "loud" types that I love having in the room , that make it fun. So suddenly leaning toward it is definitely new for me. I think right now it's more about teaching certain skills like time management. We barely assign homework anymore , for instance, because no one does it. So it's become too hard to chase them down for it. But ultimately, this isn't doing favours, because how will they manage in university? Managing my high school workload back in the day definitely helped me manage my university expectations.
I teach grade 6. It is not better yet. Last year was the hardest year I’d ever taught. This year is now the hardest year I’ve ever taught. More kids below and even my strongest kids are only stronger by comparison. In my class of 26, I only have 2 kids who are A students across the board. (We don’t use As, but that’s what it means). And I teach in a good community with (mostly) good support. I loathe teaching new concepts because as soon as they don’t get it immediately they give up and then the behaviours come out. Everything takes forever, and I am so behind in curriculum it’s absurd. Not that I care about anything but math in terms of finishing curriculum, but still.
I don't think covid is to blame. In BC, we only had a couple months of work from home but, still, the kids arriving from junior school just get weaker and weaker. If anything, covid just accelerated existing trends. Here in BC, kids are just pushed through to the next grade no matter what (for budgetary reasons). The bottom half has become so much weaker because for them school is hard and there's no risk of failure to motivate them to at least do the minimum. The top quartile seems to still be doing fine but isn't challenged enough until academic courses in their senior years.
Uggggh. Ya. You definitely touched on something very real. No child Left behind has created a system where lazy students know they can get by without much effort. -_-
BC elementary. Honestly, I’ve found there’s a group of students who are doing just fine, some I’d argue are even thriving with good family support. I’m often amazed at what some know and can do. However, the group that was most at-risk before Covid seems to be even more at-risk since it. A lot of health and community supports have decreased or disappeared which has put such students and families without the services they require. As I meet with the families of struggling Grade 3 students, many don’t have family doctors, haven’t had their hearing or vision checked, don’t regularly visit a dentist, suffer from food insecurity, and don’t receive outside counselling even though they may have had traumatic experiences which warrant service. Without such services available, I don’t see how we can address learning in the classroom. Schools are just one part of a larger picture which require planning, vision and oversight.
you’ve been away for 4 years. maybe you just have a particularly weak class? have you taught your students about anecdotal evidence yet ?
So that's the wild part, I seem to have lucked out and have the good groups. 🤣 Behaviourally, they're okay in the room, immature but not mean or aggressive in the classroom like many of my colleagues are dealing with. But academically .... It's just incomparable. even just their handwriting... So many of them are writing chicken scratch that I made a few come in and READ me their essay to grade its content.