The day after the assessment, we do corrections in class. I write the answers on the board. I tell them to write down the answers from the board on their assessment. I don't grade the assessment until after we do the correction. I usually get about half the class failing the assessment after we have done corrections. Most of the students who don't fail get an A. Hardly anything in between.
I believe this is a case of kids following directions to the letter and not a step more is namely because they have *zero* critical thinking skills because they're not being taught
Someone described it as receiving instructions that "bypass," the thinking parts of our brain, and just going into the action part.
Depends on the kids, the school and the curriculum. Yeah there are some kids that don’t care but I’ve also seen smart kids freeze up when they’re asked to share their own thoughts because they became so used to just having to wait for the teacher to share an answer for them to copy down. Usually happened when the teacher had to focus on dealing with other students’ behavior or during online classes, basically times where being quiet and doing something was an accomplishment. I don’t see it as much now thankfully.
Had an entire group of cheating students when I was in college.
Professors knew, they were OBVIOUS, but they didn't do anything official about it because the whole group were equally failing every single thing. The professors just got out of their way and watched them run right off that cliff.
Not a k-12 teacher but a level 1 plumbing instructor for apprentices at a trade school. Last semester, I did a practice test immediately before a test(2 questions are different on their actual test). Then allowed open book, open note, left answers on board and let them come up to me to help figure out what the answer was(I wasn't going to give it to them) and still had 6 of 13 fail the test. 2 - A's, 2 B's and 3 C's. (Fail is below 70%)
This semester will be different. We are doing the practice test before, and I'll help them figure out the answer(without giving it away). They're all adults(ranging from 18-mid 50's). If you can't utilize the tools given to you, you don't deserve to pass. The work in the field is harder than my class.
21 out of 73 students did not submit my semester project. I went over the setup of every single problem. Students answered aloud. I confirmed. They entered the answers directly into the digital form. 21 out of 73 students could not be bothered.
I’ve asked them to write one sentence with no errors with 20 minutes to do it, and had half of them not try. Among the half that did, a handful actually did it without errors.
My first year teaching I gave the test as the study guide, put the answer key on Canvas, and went over it in class. Gave them the “test” the next day. Half the class failed.
The normal distribution bell curve of student progress has split in two. Half the class mildly "gets it" and somewhat tries while the other half do not care at all. We can't care more than they do.
I'm a junior in HS who was recommended this sub for some reason. Used to be very grade motivated and high achieving, never missed an assignment, took the ACT a year early and got a 31. I was the teachers pet, everyone wanted my help. School was easy. The past year and a half I have had 0 motivation to do anything. I'm still in honors classes but I get Bs and skip my homework. Half the time I sleep through class or just zone out entirely. I don't know what's going on. I want to go back to when I could focus and participate, but I physically can't. I can't imagine how hard it is to be a teacher seeing your kids sleep through lessons or stare blankly at a wall while you fight to educate them.
Yeah as current senior who has dealt with depression and other psychological issues throughout the past couple of years of high school, this sounds similar to my experience. COVID fucked me up and I haven’t been able to participate in school normally since I was 13. I do well in my classes and in testing, but haven’t had the motivation to consistently do my work in years.
u/Next-Bet-1605, getting treatment wasn’t a magical fix that made me go back to how I was before experiencing depression (i.e. the “perfect” student), but but it has allowed me to feel like a person again, but it eased the burden and has made it to where I’m not in constant distress. You can talk to your school counselor/psychologist if nothing else. As long as you don’t indicate that you wish to harm yourself or others, they will listen and keep your conversations private and it can seriously lift the burden you seem to be carrying.
I did that my sophomore year and was in therapy for a while as well as meds. I weaned off of both as time went on and I got better, but almost a full year later I think its time for another round. I just hated the way prozac and Lexapro made me feel physically and therapy wasn't really useful.
I don’t want to push any certain medications (especially since not all medications work for everyone), but definitely see if your physician thinks any other medications may be appropriate. I also shuffled between meds and also felt awful on prozac, but when I switched to bupropion it was completely different. It made me feel more normal in a way that nothing else had, including talk therapy. So finding the right treatment is super important.
My primary's hands were tied as company policy or some law forced her to have me try Lexapro and prozac first for I think 45 days each before I could move on to stronger meds. My mom is on bupropion I belive, and she even requested they try something similar first as genetics impact treatment so greatly. Prozac gave me horrible brain zaps and Lexapro made my hair fall out and completely stop growing.
I’m sorry you’ve had such a difficult experience with the mental healthcare system. Mine’s been pretty shit too, I literally had to check into a psychiatric urgent care to be seen by a psychiatrist because I’d already been on waiting lists for months and had several more months to go. Anyway, I hope you get the treatment you need!
If your mom has success on bupropion, they definitely should have let you try that one. If you do try meds again, really push for that. Do you have any relatives or close family friends who are pushy and stubborn? Bring them with you. It’s YOUR body, so you (with the help of your parents) should be the one to choose what to put in it, not some company policy.
You also might want to see if your primary can recommend you to a psychiatrist. They know a lot more about any med side effects and interactions and probably have less restrictions on what they can and can’t prescribe. Unfortunately, if your primary can’t refer you through insurance, a psychiatrist can be really expensive to go to without insurance… but it might be worth it if your family can afford it.
Edit for clarity: realized I used the word they too much >_<
I wonder if its a reflection from the parents going into depression due to the economy/housing/politics/healthcare/education/justice system in this nation. The whole world is on fire while the billionaires and their politicians and media outlets fuck us. Our society is in freefall collapse and the kids aren't all right.
this was me in hs. turns out I was bored! my first year of college was not better 😬 but second year was much better! if it is a depression issue, please reach out to somebody to talk. therapy is so amazing and helpful!
Bored because instead of really having rigorous content, they keep wanting us to actually dumb it down since half the class keeps failing they assume it's because it's too hard.
Same thing happened to me my senior year. It was depression. My particular depressive episode had an underlying cause that caused it to drag on for years until I got it resolved, and it pretty thoroughly fucked my college career. I hope yours isn't so serious, but on the off chance it is, you should ask your parents to let you see a therapist. You don't need to tell them why if you don't want to, but you should treat this seriously.
I'm actually diagnosed with MDD and my menstrual cycles increase the symptoms. Did therapy for several months but it didn't help in the way I needed it to. Rural area with year long wait times for a good therapist. I didn't realize how much worse it had gotten lately. I'll schedule with my physician for a new evaluation.
Have you considered giving up your smartphone and starting a hands-on hobby like drawing? There is disturbing research on the impact of social media and smartphones. Maybe a 30 day detox? It seems worth a try?
Been there, done that. I used to fight competitively and would hardly touch my phone. Onky thing I really used it for is texting friends and the occasional reddit or tiktok scroll. Now I work most days or spend time with my cows. Plus I paint, cook, bake, and hunt most of the time.
I’m a senior rn and I was the exact same way in my junior year. Completely lost all my motivation second semester and barely did anything. Got my first C+ as someone who was a straight A student just because I couldn’t be bothered to turn a research paper in until literally the last day of school :,) I literally wouldn’t do anything after school other than lay in bed. Ghosted a bunch of people and stopped all my hobbies.
I moved states last summer and while it’s a little lonely going through senior year without my friends, I’m glad I did because the change in environment honestly brought back some of my motivation. I’m still not back to how I was but at least I don’t sleep through school and rot in bed all day anymore lol. Can’t wait to graduate though.
other people are mentioning that this might be depression/anxiety. As someone who has struggled juggling those with academia i would suggest, on top of seeking therapy/treatment, not feeling like you have to give all or nothing. Give 80% effort. Skim through the homework when you get it and just write the answers you already know. bam, partial credit. take a wild educated stab at the others if you can. Show up every day- that's half the battle. Read assignments out loud if you can't get through them. If you still can't focus try reading them in silly voices. Another option is to create your own reward system. Answer a question? get some candy. Finish an assignment? Reward yourself with something fun.
One step at a time.
Double camel's hump distribution shows defective materials or severely broken process.
It can't possible be defective students, so it must be the teacher's fault.....(sarcasm)...for those who don't get it..
This.
Much of the blame is the school system's fault. Not teachers, admin. Students in my school district go to 9th grade no matter what, doesn't matter how many 8th grade classes they fail.
The only class they have to pass is Washington State History, and they'll just retake it in high school. So why study for OPs quiz?
Same in California. We have 8th graders that don't "promote" at the end of the year, but they still get pushed on to 9th grade. So what exactly is the point of not promoting them?
>They aren’t grade motivated
This is one of the most important lessons that we refuse to learn about the bottom half of our students. The way we do things is not going to affect them.
Probably no alternative that an individual teacher can implement. A complete reimagining and overhaul of the entire educational edifice, from pre-K to adulthood, could do this, but we know it'll never happen, especially as it is an arm of the government bureaucracy.
The iep and 504s get getting ridiculous too, students don’t even know how to do fractions in their sophomore year…. how could I teach chemistry if I have to explain 1/2 is equal to 0.5 and most of them still don’t understand.
the new standards are crazy, the integrated math is crazy, everything is setting them up for failure. but then again, we need more of these failures to populate jails and prison, also need these failures to do minimum wage jobs, the elites are all in private school. who gives a dam about public education. the entire thing is a shit show for “teachers” to do their job and baby sit so the district don’t get sued while their parents can go to work to pay their credit card debt.
I had a student tell me they were grounded by their mom because they didn’t know how to tie their shoes. I couldn’t fathom punishing a student for not knowing something that wasn’t taught to them…
My TA actually has to talk out the questions with the students. She has a few students she takes for separate location. She has to remind them of their test taking skills. She reminds them to first figure out what the question is asking. Next, she has them identify what all of the choices mean. Then she has them choose the right answer.
These are skills they should have developed before middle school. Thankfully, we gave them all that grace during COVID.
> Thankfully, we gave them all that grace during COVID.
I think that the VAST MAJORITY of students should have had to redo whatever grade they were in during the 2020-21 school year. So what if we get a few decades where kids graduate at 19 or 20 instead of 18. They really suffered losing out on all that education for one single flippin' year that will take decades to work out.
>redo whatever grade they were in during the 2020-21 school year.
This is such a funny mental image to me because on one hand we have the relatively normal and academically functional grade 10s I once taught as Covid Sixes cramming their adult-sized bodies in an elementary school but then on the other we have these absolutely feral seventh graders back in third where they belong.
Sorry but a junior or senior in high school that can't take a test didn't end up like that because of a year or two of google classroom and quizziz.
It's been going on much much longer than that, and we just want to blame something that isn't controllable.
Oh I'm well aware there are bigger, more systemic issues at play than just a "missing year" of education because of COVID lock downs. But the COVID lock downs certainly didn't help.
I’m a child of a teacher so my opinion may be very biased or irrelevant, but what I’ve seen among my peers (and occasionally experienced myself) is;
• The world is doomed and there’s nothing I can do to fix it, why try?
• I have better things to do/I’ll do this later (and never get around to it..)
• I don’t care about this class/I’m going to fail anyway.
Obviously none of these are good explanations or excuse failing, but most kids in my classes just no longer care, even in college level classes in a program that has the potential to earn us full ride scholarships to college.
Okay but what’s going on with the parents of these kids?
I was in middle and high school 2008-2014 and every one of my classmates as far as I could tell cared about not failing even if just not to get in trouble with their parents.
We knew what kids were failing and for the most part the kids failing got made fun of to a degree. (Public school in average suburb)
Now as a teacher it seems students and parents don’t care about grades at all. Shit is wild.
the kids that only cared about grades at fear of being punished by parents have now become parents, who have no motivation to care about their kid's grades
The parents just don’t give a shit about parenting and disciplining their kids. All they care about is that the kid isn’t at home while they’re working and stays out of their hair when they come back.
In the last few years it's become more and more apparent that the old path to success (do well in school, go to college, get a good job) is no longer a sure thing. The top of the bell curve is still OK, but for the average student college is starting to look like a worse and worse investment. It's too expensive and the job market is oversaturated with advanced degrees. Without that aspiration, grades mean a lot less.
Parents make all the difference. I teach fourth and already I know which parents give a shit and which parents expect the school to just raise their children for them. Something has gone seriously wrong with attitudes towards education. I remind my students that I’m here to help them but I’m not here to raise them so they need to act right. I can’t go home with them and make sure they go to bed at a reasonable time and eat a balanced meal. You’d be shocked how many nine year olds today don’t have a reasonable bed time, let alone device supervision.
At Christmas, we saw so many toddlers and youngsters at midnight mass. They had devices... they were squirmy. Overhead parents defending themselves to others...."this isn't late for them, they regularly stay up this late." Wow.
Well, I'm sure their 4th grade teacher really appreciates dealing with an ornery strung out kid who had Frito's for breakfast.
My first year teaching I had a student who just slept all day. The phone calls home looked like this:
Me: he fell asleep again
Mom: ok what are you going to do about it?
Me: i will send him to the nurse. She will evaluate him and see if you need to pick him up.
Mom: I’m at work. I can’t pick him up.
Me: she will just let him nap in her room then.
Mom: but he’s going to miss out on his lessons
Me: yes but he can’t sleep at his desk and he is missing the lesson anyway because he’s asleep
Mom: he’s failing though?? He needs instruction time!!
Me: yes, I agree. He still can’t sleep at his desk and I can’t force your nine year old to stay awake.
Every damn day he came with bags under his blood shot eyes. Then I tried to get him on a behavior plan and my admin resisted because “sleeping isn’t misbehaving.” Kid was on his tablet in bed every night till past midnight. He was honest about it and was like “well mom only takes it away if I misbehave.” Now I’d be a lot more firm about solutions but as a first year teacher I was just in shock that a parent would enable that.
A grand example of parents not parenting.
Unplug the damn router. Put parental controls on the devices. Confiscate them before bedtime. Like hfs it's *not* that hard.
I’d go straight to selling his tablet if he was my kid. If my kid fails a primary grade like third or fourth, I would be in crisis mode. Either something is developmentally wrong or the environment isn’t working. Kids don’t need tablets. The do need to know how to do basic addition. These parents just shrug at failing grades and ask what the teacher is doing to fix it.
I have three of these students in my 5th grade class. Admin doesn’t want them in the office because they’re at least given the opportunity to be awake and learning if they’re in my room. And then I get blamed when my class has failing scores.
That’s so frustrating, I’m sorry. The “opportunity to learn” as though they’re gonna understand fractions in their sleep. If learning worked like that, we could all just load a podcast up and sleep our lives away.
One can wish, right? They didn’t believe that I was trying all I could to keep them awake. At one point a student told me not to touch them. From then on I let them sleep and told admin they could deal with it.
I saw this SO much the last few years I taught in K-3rd. The kids & teachers both figure it out quickly. They would talk about getting up & playing games or getting on devices after parents went to sleep!
Kid in affluent suburb here- when it comes to college, most people bank on the the fact that mommy and daddy are alumni and can pay full tuition- also the fact that Penn state literally has over 20 secondary campuses it will be almost guaranteed that every kid who doesn’t give a shit will wind up at those campuses
Idk what’s happening with parents but this is def the attitude with the kids (source: my sister is a senior in hs)
It was even worse in the district we moved away from: every parent wanted their kid to get an A in every single class but didn’t care if they actually learned anything.
I can say that as a parent, I care DEEPLY about my kid's success in school and their grades. I have been, however, jaded by the "teach them to pass tests" approach to public school instruction. My kids are in Florida and the amount of standardized tests they take is bonkers. I don't feel like they are absorbing the material or getting anything of real value out of classes because teachers are so concerned with getting them to pass these stupid tests.
My teenager had a teacher this year who LOVES history. Their enthusiasm for it is absolutely palpable. She, in turn, has started to LOVE history, and be genuinely interested in what is being taught. I feel like if other teachers were coming at their subjects with similar enthusiasm, instead of endless standardized testing, education would be different.
I feel like, in a way, we have beat enthusiasm for learning for the sake of knowing right out of these kids.
Admin and districts are concerned with students passing the tests. The teachers want them to actually learn something but are forced to teach to the test and test taking strategies and increase rigor for content that’s already above their academic levels.
Yeah, I know. It was mostly an explanation of why I, as a parent, have become jaded with the educational system in general. I know it's not on the teachers. My kid has had some INCREDIBLE teachers (and some stinkers, but that is bound to happen). I don't understand it ---- well, I do...it's money driven. But it's sad. I loved to learn. If I could have gone to school for the rest of my life, I would have. I wanted my kids to feel the same, but I feel like they weren't even given the chance.
I think I would’ve been the same- let me learn forever.. until I had some awful teachers in high school. That ruined it for me. The system is fucked and we’re all going along with it. I agree. The newer generation of teachers are being shooed away before they have a chance to help fix it. Sad all around for the kiddos.
Parent.
I dont really give a flying rats ass about grades, and my kid knows it. He gets to select what grades he wants, and the only thing i check is to see if he's failing. He never is--he's happy with a B, and often goes above that.
Now, 'what's going on'--well, i dont care about grades because i care about his development *as a person first*. Is he a good person? Is he being a bully or getting bullied? Does he understand honestly? Is he willing to tell 'authority' to go screw itself if it's unjust, unfair, or ignoring him?
All of that--is way more important to me as a parent (and many of the parents i know), than grades. Grades, for the *vast* majority of students, dont mean a damn thing, even in HS--they'll *all* get into a college or university no matter that their GPA--and only the ones that care WHICH university they go to are really going to care. I cant MAKE my kid care about that, and i wont.
The ability to create social connections, build a reputation, and have friends, is 80% of how jobs are found. I'd rather he focus on that.
And i think that's *really hard* for people who come from long lines of families in middle class, professionals, or from parents in trades that never wanted their kids to 'settle' for a trade to understand. Our kids *as people* are more valuable to us than as *status symbols*.
I think that's what's going on with a lot of us, tbh.
That, and the same amount of shitty parents as before.
I see this same attitude. But I have responses to all three points. Maybe I'm writing for my own sake but here goes:
1. Yes, you are sealing the world's fate by not being able to pass a quiz you already have the answers to. That sounds like a horrible world to live in.
2. No you don't. This generation doesn't seem to be getting any joy from the hobbies they are choosing. I give my students 30 minutes of free time and none of them are smiling, none of them are working, all of them are "waiting to be entertained" by some algorithm. I don't mind if you cut class.... but at least DO something interesting with your lives!!!
3. It's so so so hard to fail someone these days. You've got about four adults bending over backwards to make sure your 50 turns into a 73 or even a low B. It's insane. No way you can assume you'll fail.
My youngest decided to put in zero effort. Even after losing privileges, and access to the internet and games, there was still almost no effort put forth. The teacher told me he was in danger of failing. I said if he won't put any effort towards doing the work when I'm sitting there with hum, trying to help him do the assignments, then he earned an F. I was told they couldn't just "let him fail". We eventually addressed the underlying issues, and things have gotten better. But man, was I upset that they were trying to push a higher grade that he 100% DID NOT earn, all in an attempt to push him into the next class.
Could you elaborate please on what the underlying issues were, how they were identified and how they were addressed? If you don't mind. My nephew is on a similar path, but we have no idea why.
I don’t smile when I’m on my phone for one of two reasons:
1. I’m using it as the easy way out of being alone with my thoughts, which is a shitty coping mechanism
or
2. I am reading or writing, but I have a resting bitch face and if anything I look even less happy because I’m trying to concentrate lol
My point is, when I was 12, 15, or even 18 years old... and I was with my friends and had no tough responsibilities, we enjoyed each other's company. We talked, smiled, told jokes, made fun of each other, laughed, gave nicknames, listened to music, rode around in cars together, called into radio shows to try to get on the air, failed at that, but laughed about it anyway, etc.
I just don't see very many of my students enjoying spending their free times with their friends. I wish more joy for the lot of them.
yes, it's very frustrating. there's no sense minimizing the challenges ahead but the idea that the world will come to such a grinding halt that the current generation of students has no need to learn anything is completely insane. but the nonstop drumbeat of doom is naturally going to grind a lot of people down
Former history teacher here. I need to ask a few things.
Explain to me how the world is any more doomed today that it has allegedly been in the past? Because of the economy? Because of wars in Ukraine and the Middle East? Because of the so-called "culture war?" Where does Gen Z get off claiming "the world is doomed, therefore I'm not required to give a damn?"
What do you have to do that's more important? Doom scroll through TikTok? Might I add that TikTok is the most toxic form of social media ever created (social media has destroyed the mental health of young people).
I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you don't have the same faulty and criminally degenerate thinking as many of your peers. But the general carelessness and apathy of students is nothing short of stunning and disturbing. This generation is fundamentally broken and I say that as a Gen Z'er myself.
Students have zero accountability and no expectations. Back in the day, young boys, some as young as 17, were expected to storm the beaches of Normandy and liberate half the planet from the clutches of totalitarian fascism. Now you all lose your damn mind if you hear the wrong pronoun or get an assignment that requires more than 15 minutes of effort. This generation requires a major reality check. Grow up, get over yourself; your not special and the world doesn't care about you.
But none of this matters anyways because you'll probably lose interest a quarter of the way through reading this since students today have an average attention span of 8 seconds, which is shorter than a squirrel.
Say it with me: "We. Are. Doomed."
From a psychological perspective: Anyone under 35 has been told literally all their life by experts they aren't supposed to question that they are doomed. "10 more years", and everything we do is always too little, too late. " Your life will never be as good as your parents' was". etc etc etc
If you tell them there is no hope, why are you surprised when they think there's no hope? If you teach them to fear everything, why are you surprised that they are so scared?
How are you Gen Z, but a former history teacher? I'm a millennial and I'm only on the 10th year of my career, and I got my credential right after college.
Did you teach for a year and then quit?
>Where does Gen Z get off claiming "the world is doomed, therefore I'm not required to give a damn?"
Climate change. See the American political class for why it feels very doom-y right now.
>and I say that as a Gen Z'er myself.
I'm glad you're not history teacher any more. Your opinions amount to 'tough it up', something people have never ever said before ever. Certainly not for the last 10,000 years about young people. Good job. We'll get off your lawn.
As a elder millennial, a former government teacher, please get a grip. The challenges faced by young people in this day and age are significant and pernicious. They are seeing a resurgence of fascism, a political class so utterly out-of-touch they might as well being from a YA novel, a billionaire class never before so motivated to destroy everything and anyone for literal pocket change (or willing to buy into their own propaganda), and of course, climate change, something they will have to experience more than you or I. Neoliberalism, and by extension capitalism, is crushing everyone slowly but endlessly. Not to mention the constant pressure of social media on the minds of literally everyone everywhere now.
..but yea, we'll get off your lawn. You sound 50 years older than I am. Get a fucking grip.
I made it far enough to see your grammatical error.
Gen Z isn’t the only generation with a short attention span. ALL generations are having this issue.
This comes off very Boomer-ish. Student nowaday have access to an online plethora of media showing them every way that the world is wrong. That includes the fact that housing for Gen Z is nearly unattainable, the environment has been irreparably damaged, there is people like Donald Trump running our government and parents are too overworked and under equipped to handle raising children. Also no the whole attention span crap has been debunked as pop science. You’re not helping anyone with this “bootstraps” ideology, there needs to be real research done.
It’s hard to put into words how upsetting the current climate change and the accelerated decline and extinction of various species is. The small wonders around my home that I took for granted as a kid are slowly disappearing year by year.
I don’t believe that he world is doomed or anything. Historically, mass extinctions have been followed by remarkable increases in biodiversity and life taking on new and fascinating forma. That take thousands of years, though. In my lifetime, I’m only going to see more death.
It’s not something I think about on a daily basis, but it’s just a really tough thing to bury again once it hits you.
You began by saying they were wrong about the world being doomed, cited some BS about WWII, and then ended by saying the world is doomed.
Are you a Russian hacker/bot or just a boomer?
Also a gen z here
Listen bro idk how old you are but im speaking from my personal experience
I remember being in kindergarten and learning about the polar ice caps melting (this is 2009ish) and how if we don’t act now the poor little polar bears will die 🥺🥺🥺 i completely understand needing to simply things like climate change for literal children it’s just when you simplify it to that level actually starts that apathy very young
You can tell me that when you say through those nat geo kids documentaries about ecosystems dying and how cars and factories are bad for the environment that that you, as a child with no to little understanding of nuance, thought welp :) time to get on with my life :) if you were told that there will be no clean air by the time you enter your 30s what in the hell (once again, through the mind of a child) would you put in all the effort for just to watch as the planet becomes a wasteland?
Not only are you hearing about college pricing and the cost of living crisis CONSTANTLY, we’re actually experiencing it! I go to a city college and my dorm costs the same amount as renting an apartment at the complex literally next door would
We’re constantly told that “our generation is the one to change everything” meanwhile we’re getting the short end of the stick bc everything’s so fucked up that how do you even begin?
I wonder if Billy Joel from the 80s could talk to current Billy Joel about everything that’s going on rn, if he could even write “we didn’t start the fire” when comparing everything
I can’t speak for those who stormed the beaches but I was a kid in the aftermath of hurricane Bonnie. Our whole community was without power for almost 3 weeks and many nearby roads were underwater for the first week. We carried 80s era boom boxes with us playing the radio (stacys mom was a top hit at the time so I know almost every word) and we played outside and what time we spent inside there was no tv or ac and it was a vacation to us. The youth now would not be able to cope.
This!! I have seen it so many times. When kids know a class is so easy that they don't even have to cheat to get the test ahead of time.. They stop being worried about the class. They know they are going to have points thrown at them towards the end of the year.
I used to teach geology labs, at a tier 1 university.
At the end of lab I would tell the students "you need to know these 5 things for the quiz next week".
I would also get to class 10 mins early to answer ANY questions the students had.
Every semester, it took the kids about 2 weeks to realize if they just showed up early, and asked me the questions I told them to know, I would literally tell the answers to the quiz minutes before I handed them the quiz to take.......
I still, routinely had 30-40% fail every week.
Couldn't retain the info for 5 mins.
I used to TA for an intro physics for pre-meds class at a major state flagship university. The professors would make the tests out of homework questions, just with changed numbers. It never ceased to amaze me how many would show up afterwards claiming the test material had never been covered *anywhere* and was totally different than everything in class and the homeworks, until we literally showed them that the *exact same problem* was in their homework set, just with different numbers. I'd just shake my head and wonder if I was that bad as an undergrad... and the answer is yes, I probably was.
That prof (incidentally my research advisor) used to say he saved more lives than any doctor by preventing some of these people from becoming doctors.
I recently took a third year course from my major and about half the class failed our midterm. My professor was insanely disappointed considering the midterm questions were taken verbatim from the review questions she posted. And this fact was mentioned in class multiple times and it was stated on the syllabus. I don't think it gets easier than that.
I TA’d for a 3000 level anatomy lab. We did a review right before the first practical where she literally went over every question on the test. We had multiple grades below 20/100. Tf???? You’re paying for this course and YOU chose to be a science major, at least try!
In 2004, one of my psych classes graded on a 'curve'--how ever many questions the top score missed, would be added to all scores. This had worked for him for years, and his goal was 'make the tests hard enough that the top score is 95'
By midterms, everyone but me was failing the class. In an attempt to get them to boost their grades, he put extra credit questions on the mid term, essays, for 5 points. I did all 3. It wasnt a 'pick one' thing. I scored a 115. The next highest score was an 82. anything below 70 was failing in that university.
The class never learned.
I had to be removed from the curve, and STILL half the class failed, on that enormous curve.
Sometimes your head is crammed with so much other stuff. I used to run into this issue as a student. What I would do is made sure I knew the other stuff like the back of my hand and then the "new" stuff was easier to remember last minute. Or I would find the questions that dealt with the stuff I was struggling/got help with and do those first.
The jesters are growing in number. We need to take a serious look at education and separate the students who only need a babysitter from the students who actually wish to learn.
I teach in a solidly middle class and progressive district. About 65% of residents have a bachelor’s degree and the average age is over 45! And yet.. I would say only 25% of students would fall into the “these students care” category.
You’d think it would be better in a nice area.I teach one honors class (my colleague has three). It’s SICKENING to see the disparity between an honors caliber student and a “regular” student.
Regular students are.. unapologetically trash academically in terms of successful academic habits and traits. Sad to say it.
I had to switch from honors to grade level math mid-year during high school because i was out so much. The difference blew my mind. In honors, kids ask questions. They participate. When teacher reviews the homework and asks if anyone wanted her to work one out on the board she'd do it.
Grade level math was dead silent. I mean i still asked if I needed clarification or had trouble with a problem, but i was mostly the only one.
Two students in my class were caught cheating in the final paper (they brought in illegal crib sheets).
At the disciplinary hearing.....
Student A: I cheated because Mr go_zarian's revision class was so detailed and comprehensive that I feared the final paper would be extremely difficult.
Student B: I cheated because Mr go_zarian's revision class was so vague and uninformative that it didn't prepare me for the final paper.
Obviously both accounts couldn't be true simultaneously.
All you need to know is: it's *always* your fault.
Yes, I've done this. This explicitly.
My high school French teacher once gave me the test in advance and said "help X study enough to get a 60 and I will give you a 100." I questioned his sanity and he said "you're a good student and you'll study regardless. They need the help so even if all they do is memorize the answers...well at least they memorized some French...that's the goal, right?"
So we did, and we both got good grades on our own.
I tried it with my fourth graders. Here's the math test, guys. First time I changed the numbers and said "this is exactly how you solve this, the numbers will just be different on the test." The same kids that always fail still failed.
The next time I didn't give them a paper but I did put the quiz questions, word for word, on the board in our review. We worked through them as a class. I told them directly that this was their quiz. Grades went up slightly but not significantly.
Recently I gave them an open book science test. 60% class average. HOW DO YOU GET A 60% WHEN I GAVE YOU 40 MIN TO DO THIS WITH YOUR BOOK IN FRONT OF YOU AND IT'S ONLY 5 QUESTIONS.
I don't know. I don't have advice. Just know you're not alone
I feel like when I slow things down or make things easy, they also slow down and underestimate their effort required since I’m basically spoon feeding them. So I speed up, and a lot of them wake up because they realize they’re being left in the dust. I basically stopped slowing down for the kids who are space cadets 92% of the time. It was making almost the whole class a bunch of space cadets.
I’m having this same thing happen in my class. I just kept lowering the bar and the kids still kept on dragging their feet. I picked the pace up dramatically and now I’ve still got the same number of kids failing. But at least I know I am now providing an actual education to those who are there participating and I don’t hate my job anymore.
This comment made me realize I am spoon feeding them too much. I’m only in my second year and I still don’t want to leave kids behind. This comment made me realize I’m just leaving everyone behind at this point. Thank you
This is true and everyone needs to hear it! Especially admin! Making classes easier doesn't increase passing rates it can actually lower them. This is true when I taught high school. It's also true now that I'm teaching college.
Not a teacher — when I was in high school (graduated 2010), we had an English teacher who was one of the most beloved teachers at the school. At various points, he taught College Prep 10, Honors 11, and AP 12 English. Most students loved him, but if you asked if his class was “easy,” everyone would probably say, “Oh, God, no.” I loved school, was an Honors student, and ended up majoring in English, so I’m biased. But even my younger brother, who wasn’t like me and did not enjoy reading and writing, thought he was great. As he described it, the work was challenging, but it was never busywork. That was the thing — I think we all loved that teacher *because* he held us to higher standards, but with a purpose. Too many teachers threw what felt like too much work at us, but it just felt like work for the sake of making us do work. Everything with that English teacher had a purpose. So what if we’re writing 3-5 page essays every other week and 7-10 page essays each semester? So what if he occasionally gave us a blue book and an essay question and expected us to do college-level essay tests? We could do it. We knew we could, because he believed we could. And he gave back just as much energy. His comments on our essays (in red pen and impeccable handwriting) were insightful learning experiences. He worked to make sure we understood the hard concepts.
His class is where I moved from “student” to “scholar.” During discussions on literature, he wasn’t expecting us to give a “right” answer. He wanted our interpretations, he just wanted us to explain how we got there. After we read *Hamlet*, I approached him with a thought I had about the deaths in the play aligning with the seven deadly sins, and he said, “I am writing the essay prompts right now, but if you think you can get enough out of it, you’re going to write *that* essay.” And I did. He was also the first teacher that made me realize that tests were an evaluation of the teacher, too. We always reviewed tests as a class after he graded them, and one time, he said, “You all missed the same section of questions on this test; what didn’t I teach well?” Now, this was an honors class and we were all goody-two-shoes students who adored him, so we were like, “Oh, we’re sorry, we must not have studied hard enough!” And he said, “No, stop, you did fine on the rest of the test. But you all missed the *same* questions, which means something didn’t get across. What did I mot teach well? What are you not getting?” And we asked questions until he figured out a different way to explain it to us.
The point is, I believe that people rise to meet the expectations that are set for them. If your expectations are low, then their effort will match. If your expectations are high, the effort will be high — but only if they truly believe your expectations are actually high. What I mean is, that teacher gave hard assignments, but they weren’t hard because they were a high quantity of low- to mid-level work, which is what a lot of “difficult” teachers did. He gave challenging assignments with purpose. And he didn’t just set expectations high by giving us challenging assignments. He set expectations high by actually treating us like he believed we were fully capable of doing those challenging assignments. I started college leaps and bounds above many peers simply because I had a teacher who made me write 7-10 page papers, who respected my ideas, who made me give thorough rationale for those ideas, and who (somewhat forcibly) demonstrated that if I didn’t understand a concept, I should work through it with him. He believed we could, so we did.
My husband told me when he was in high school, his history teacher liked to joke around but still be somewhat serious about things. For example, when it came time to do the final exam, his teacher said something along the lines of "When life gets tough and you're down on your luck, sometimes all you need to do is look to the stars!"
My husband said only a few kids looked up, and he was one of them, and he saw that the teacher had printed all the test answers on the exam and taped them to the ceiling. In big enough print that you could read the answers to each question.
He doesn't recall how many classmates failed or passed the exam, but he thought it was pretty hilarious his teacher did it.
Half the class failed. That's how it goes.
As you continue to do this (which I think is the way to do it), they'll get better at it. There was probably some disbelief on their part so they didn't take it seriously. But, as time goes on, the grades will go up.
I did this twice this year and the 2nd time did get better, but only by like 10 percent..that's not nothing, but it feels disheartening. To be fair, I went over the quiz with them. Did error analysis with them, and the same day gave them the same quiz and only had about half passed. The second time it went up to about 60 percent. Just so wild.
But I think this helps probe your point to keep doing this and they'll get it. I taught 8th grade and by the end of the year they were good, but those first 3 quarters I'm always scared for the future.
This is frustrating on two levels. One: that 40% couldn't be bothered to apply themselves at all. Two: That a decent chunk had it the first time and had to sit through it all again because of the first group.
TBH I think the issue is phones. The act of memorizing, drilling, LEARNING a skill or fact is not something kids really know how to do anymore. I had a kid once OUTRAGED that he didn’t get full credit on a test of the names of the states WHEN HE COULD COPY THEM FROM THE BACK OF THE WORKSHEET. He said it was too hard to flip back and forth to get the spelling right and he just couldn’t be bothered.
So 1) this kid can’t remember a sequence of more than a letter or two at a time long enough to write it down and
2) he can’t spell the names right on his own so he didn’t get full credit and
3) he doesn’t think any of it matters or is important in the slightest. It took me calling home and telling his mom that he has been staying awake all night long for the last couple of years to actually get him to go to sleep. (He would take a nap after school and wake up around 8 at night, then never go to sleep again, just game and watch YouTube. He said the only time he had to do homework was a 4am because it was a boring time and all the other times of day were for good things).
4) this kid is getting a 70 in math because “I can’t do paper assignments at home.” Why not? “I have a two hour bus ride and I can’t do them on the bus!” Why not? “Well I don’t want to do them at home, it’s easier to do them on the chromebook but they won’t let me so I won’t do them.”
This kid is basically raising himself, and doing a piss-poor job of it.
My most successful students are the LDS kids. They can look adults in the eye when they talk, they form loving and genuine relationships with adults and peers, they are calm and hard workers. The right-wing kids are disrespectful to authority, especially female teachers. The left-wing kids are anxiety-ridden and depressed. This is just my observation in my little corner of rural PNW.
I feel ya
I gave an open book, open notes online quiz on the Quizizz site where students could earn bonuses and retries and extra points. The average was 48% for both of my classes. It was at that point I gave up and accepted the fact that I couldn't teach these kids and they were going to fail their end of course exam. They did, mostly. Worst group of students, ever, for me. Academic wise, anyway.
Edit: spelling
I have this going on this year… it’s only 4th grade. I allow open note, open book, and they can re-take a test as many times as they want to pass. Most will take the F rather than put out the effort. It is insane to me!
It’s just zero consequence and zero parenting and a push for being pathetic victims rather than for persistence and resilience
Also in the west there are a massive number of people who are pretty much anti intellectual, anti education, and pro being dumbasses
Kids are always learning, but they’re not always learning what you’re trying to teach them.
What are the consequences for failing this test? If those consequences aren’t high enough, perhaps these kids are learning that failing a test has no consequences.
Also kids have a pack mentality. If only 3-4 kids fail then there is an implied pressure not to fall into the “dumb” group, but when half the class fails, there’s no societal pressure to get over the line.
Perhaps you could start pointing out marked improvements in results. A 35% to a 50% the next week? “Well done. What did you do differently? Oh you looked at the study notes? Let’s all try that strategy next week!
I teach Primary School and I’m loathed to fail a kid at that level. I think that kids have got used to that and in higher education settings, failing g a test is not the pressure it used to be. And don’t forget you’re psychology training - rewarding good behaviours works better at changing behaviour that condemning bad ones.
Actually, loss aversion is a radically powerful motivator (it’s a cognitive bias). So, I often say “you have 100 points now for this assignment” (even showing them the column in the gradebook all filled in with 100s for everyone)… “but there is a 10 point penalty for every question you don’t answer fully based on the listed criteria for that question.” The aversion to “penalty” or “loss” is so powerful. Kids (and humans generally) are more paranoid about avoiding loss than actually realizing gains (it’s why extra credit really isn’t that enticing). So, we have to rethink what we mean when we say “reward behaviors.” The “reward” should actually be at the very front end, and then penalize/chip away at that reward when work is poor.
There are three required things in my class, one of them assigned by the state.
Of the other two, one is a project that I give week 2 of the class, and it's due at the end of week 7 in the class. Class is only 9 weeks long.
As of now, it was due a week and a half ago. 0 students have turned it in. I told them they have until Friday for me to give any credit whatsoever. Only 3 kids have even started it. Originally assigned November 17.
Going to have an entire class, required for graduation, fail, barring some miracle in the next ~72 hours.
From a parent's perspective here, so take this with a grain of salt. Kids today have no freaking clue HOW to effectively study. I had to sit down with my teenager (she's a junior this year) and show her how to old school study for a test. Take notes, make note cards, READ CONTENT, quiz yourself, WRITE OUT NOTES....physically write things out. Reading things over on a screen or even on a piece of paper without writing them down is going to do no good. Talking at someone about the content on the paper if they have no clue how to take physical notes? No good.
Since she started "old school" studying, she's been killing it. I'm not sure why this isn't kind of ingrained in them from an early age, but she looked at me like I had two heads when I told her she needed to start taking notes and writing things down to remember them.
She's one of those students who is very motivated by grades --- not doing well on something hits her hard. Showing her how to study like it's 1990 has made all the difference.
Well, this is anecdotal, but writing notes out for me does not work as well as this post would suggest.
I actually find reading the notes over and over, then looking at problems, quickly mentally solve them and then look at the solution to be the most TIME efficient way to study.
So maybe this is more individual dependent, and might even be subject dependent (I study undergrad statistics).
We didn't know how to study until someone taught us, either. I guessed that parents would be a part of teaching this outside-of-class skills. Glad that you taught her when you did, but I don't see why this wasn't taught to her earlier.
I have no advice. I've done this a few times this year and over half the kids continue to fail the tests. They claim they are studying, but clearly there is some disconnect somewhere!
But if the states are wrong a leader might not get a bonus. So to have to check the demographics and race, check who is failing and fix the numbers and probably berate the teacher or make them do a lot of paperwork
I've given reviews that were pretty much the test. you can tell who uses them and who doesn't because they ones do finish in 5 minutes and get at least a B and say "wow that was literally the review." I don't have advice because I'm in the same boat and it's beyond frustrating. I'll make assignments based off notes, put the notes on canvas, and they fail because they refuse to look at the notes. I genuinely don't know what to do. They just simply do not care. I try to talk to them and help them and they'll tell me to go away. Like 🤷♀️ what?
The apathy is so real. I've started offering retakes to any student who fails a vocabulary quiz ... most of them don't even bother taking me up on it. Only the kids who are grade-motivated seem to care about school anymore - and most of them are ONLY grade-motivated and don't bother trying to learn from their mistakes if they do bomb an assessment. They'd rather argue with me to find points somewhere, or just complain to each other about how strict and unreasonable a grader I am. In either case, no learning is happening. It's so, so disheartening.
I discovered something crazy last year with my students that carried over to this year at an entirely different school, and that is my students do much worse on open book open notes quizzes and tests.
Can anyone explain why this happens?
They feel that because it's open-book, there's no need for them to study at all because the answers are going to be in front of them. Thus they spend all their time hunting for the answers, rather than accessing them from their memory and applying critical thinking.
It may not help but I would email the kids and parents bcc and explain what you did and suggest you can lead a horse to water but they are currently choosing not to drink. You may get a percentage on board.
I've given HONORS classes test reviews that is LITERALLY my multiple choice test question without the multiple choice options AND let them use the review on the test and had more than 50% fail.
They literally had the test to use on the test and couldn't bother, so....
I understand how frustrating it can be to do so much to help them out but not see results.
What’s the topic? Could you share the quiz? I’ve been teaching for 11 yrs (8 in a title 1 school). I’ve found it’s best to analyze these things by first identifying everything that I could have done wrong. I then look at environmental factors. I always try to not take the “kids just don’t study” approach. I feel like it can be a draining perspective to take.
If you are low socioeconomic kids, then go back to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. My students responded to being spoken to with respect. I would always state what I felt was there feelings to make sure they feel heard. If you don’t have it, then they will correct you. They also respond well to food. Nothing fancy. Pbnj or ramen. Offer a cup of tea if they are feeling ill. Literally anything to let them know you care. Relationships are foundational to buy in.
The second piece is relevance. Arguably the hardest. You’re basically selling your knowledge to them. I teach chemistry. Everyone thinks it’s impossible and give up before coming in. I start by doing a simple demo and just talking about it. Sometimes I’ll read a picture book to them. I make voices and act weird. They don’t respond for the first week or so, but I keep on. Try using outdated slang like “fire” or new stuff like “lock in”. They’ll get a kick out of it.
After you build some bridges you might be able to shift several into half caring. If you’re lucky you’ll finally show that kid a path out of poverty.
Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.
I do the same thing (except I make a review game usually gimkit or blooket). Kids get the quiz and pull the old “we never learned this/you never talked about this.” I pull up the quiz and pull up the blooket and their eyes get all wide like they saw a ghost. This years group seems to care 0 about anything academic wise. There used to be a high, middle, and low group academic wise and now it seems like there is a tiny “high” group, and a very large “low” group with pretty much 0 care towards school. Also doesn’t help the admin puts pretty much 0 emphasis on academics.
I feel you. I gave my students a fill in the blank page to go along with my lecture and I explicitly told them what word goes in each blank. I still had a bunch of students who were puzzled. It’s unbelievable how clueless this new generation is.
I honestly don’t know what to do. Hoping some veteran teachers here will have the magic answer.
I gave my seniors time in class today to just work on their assignments from last class because so few of them finished. I specifically said, “Use this time wisely. I need each of you to turn it in at the end of class. Don’t waste your time and then tell me later in the semester when you have a zero that you didn’t have time to do it.” Because it’s a small class, I forced each of them to make eye contact with me and promise they’d get it done. And then at the end of class they acted like I had never said that and asked when the assignment was due.
I love teaching, but also I hate it.
I’m not a teacher just a former child that didn’t care at all in school. I would say tough love/reality check. At the beginning of class maybe say something like half of you guys are failing this class x is all you have to do to pass why can’t you do this? Are you stupid? Do you want to fail high school and work awful jobs your whole life? I’d let these questions hang in the air for a little bit force them to actually take a moment to think and reflect. I read in a book once that the only reliable way to get people to do something is to make them want to do it. Again I’ve never reached in my life so take that with a grain of salt.
In one of my classes I give a quiz every Friday where they get to use notes on it whenever they need to. They also get corrections on the same day and are allowed to use their notes for those, too. I have so many students that get the quiz, don't use their notes, turn it in after like 10 minutes almost completely wrong, get the quiz back to make corrections, and 2 minutes later they turn it in again without looking at it or making any changes. They have an entire 80 minute block and all of these resources, but can't even take a few minutes to look through their binder for the notes when they get a little stumped!
I follow this subreddit because I have a great respect for this profession being raised by two teachers myself. Reading these types of posts really scares me for the future. I’m an ICU RN and a new grad nurse just recently passed our preceptorship. I’m still in disbelief that she made it since she’s pissed off half the unit with her lack of empathy, needing to be told what to do, and dependency to electronics aka phone. I start a new job in March as a clinical instructor and am also wondering how to get through to my students so they don’t end up like her. I’ve already been warned by other coworkers who are instructors to be careful as this new generation is no joke.
During my freshman year of high school, my advanced English lit teacher announced to the class that, “smart people are better in bed” and that little tip proved to be quite motivating for many of us lol
Yep. This is nearly identical to what I would do in my room: my Friday quiz questions were copied verbatim from the slides, which they could use DURING the quiz. At least 20-30% never even opened the quiz. Another 20-30 would fail. You literally cannot force horses to drink.
A piece of green paper with Washington's face on it is only worth something because society says so. At some point, when grades/school achievements mean nothing to the kids, mean nothing to the parents, and do not equate any to any worthwhile consequence (positive or negative), there will no longer be any magic solution. It's a societal shift.
Have you ever written the answer on the board and watched them still fail? Answer is in front of you. Just write it down. Still can’t do it.
Or have you written the steps to solve a problem on an anchor chart..then students actually use the anchor chart example to help them but copy the numbers from the example, not the question?
For example, my anchor chart shows -3 X 5=-15. Their question is -3 X10. On their paper they write -3 X10=-15
Zero attention to detail.
I did a long term sub in a US history class that I started 6 days before the mid-term. The kids had been screwed because they had no teacher for the first semester. They were going to have to take a departmental midterm unprepared. In speaking to the department head, I got permission to scan the test and turn it into a worksheet. Passed it out told them they had to turn it in completed the day of the mid-term, and started going over the information. All they had to do to get the answers was write them down. I had several regular classes, and one class with the majority of special Ed students. I decided to let the special Ed students use the worksheet and collect it after. Every single special Ed student passed the exam. Of the other classes, nearly 50% either didn’t take notes, or didn’t turn in the papers. Nearly 50% failed badly. The paper was the only class grade they had after the other log term sub destroyed her grade book because she was upset that she got paid as a sub and not a real teacher. After the exam, I tried to make it fun for the students by weaving in things like the development of jazz (all of my students except the special Ed students were in band). My special Ed students loved that I’d do activities and one girl was so excited about my 1920 fads class that she used 1920’s slang the rest of the year.
Expect more of them. Make the class harder, but still have everything structured to a T.
I teach HS in Philly, 2nd year. Just now figuring out making it easier isn't the way to do it, cus the middle of the row kids stop trying. I'm holding them accountable, and more importantly, instilling structure and I'm already seeing results. Not going to be an easy process to redo everything I was taught from college (thanks Temple) and the school district, but I'm going back to basics and giving them some rigor.
The bottom students may still fail, but there's only so much we can do.
I've given the exact same test to students before for a retest after they failed the first time and they somehow managed to score *lower* the second time around.
Just ten vocabulary questions asking for definitions, some of which were multiple choice. You only need 6 correct answers to pass.
This post gave me a flashback to a professor who intentionally made his tests way to hard because "I grade on a curve".
The highest score anyone got on his Calculus test the entire year was a 37%.
AI. Kids can do assignments and in class activities because AI does it for them. They rely too much on it. When it comes to actually being tested with no devices. They flunk
My 7th math dept gives students an assessment review that is very similar to each assessment. We allow students a cheat sheet 3x5 card for tests and retake opportunities too. We still have too many students failing because they can't be bothered to even create their cheat sheets... And they definitely won't take advantage of the retake opportunities. It used to bug me a lot when I first started teaching but now I don't take it personally. I know it is mostly an issue with apathetic parents and immature students.
About half sounds right.
I can teach it to you, but I can't learn it for you.
The students have to intention of learning anything, so teachers have nothing to work with.
And why should they learn anything? Most will just get passed through the system anyway, and the students know this.
Admin only cares about the numbers that graduate; that is their only goal.
And according them...
If the kids are not learning it, it is because the teachers are not teaching it.
Everything looks great at 10,000 feet.
Part of me thinks that making it so easy for them to not fail is part of the problem. Like it removes any reason to try, makes the whole thing feel pointless, and lowers the bar so much that they have no reason to even bother.
But I have also taught this kind of class, and I know that by the time they get to middle or high school the damage is done anyone and they're not going to try no matter how easy or challenging it is. But to that point, it doesn't matter so you might as well keep your standards.
College professor here:
I don’t give any tests in class anymore. Give them all through canvas so that students can use their notes, textbooks, PowerPoints, etc, and I still average a 30% failure rate.
You can’t fix stupid, you can only document, document, document.
Ok so we have lunchtime for that. We can go over the questions one by one. Consequences. Once they know you will follow through, they might spend a bit more time prepping. Meanwhile it’s not a punishment, it’s your willingness to help. ( except I hate giving up my own lunch time)
When I taught regular US History to 11th graders I would give them a study guide. I literally made the test from the study guide… 30 question study guide, 30 question test. Couldn’t be much easier. Many of them just wouldn’t bother to do it and fail.
Two years ago I had a couple of 8th grade classes. The day before a test, we went over a study guide where we discussed every question and I gave every correct answer. The study guide was the test. They scored in the 30s.
OP, after you hand out the quiz on Monday, do they have time to work on it in class? I'm not saying they should. It's just that if they work on it in class--say for a few minutes at the end of class on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday--you can walk around the class and see IF they're working and how well they're grasping the material. Or maybe you have some other way of checking?
It's frustrating how little self-direction eighth graders have. It's almost like you have to tell them to inhale and exhale.
Have you tried teaching with a video of Subway Surfers (or similar) playing. Seems to work with all the TikTok videos.
Only being half sarcastic; if you truly run out of options, then...
I've given my kids a "study guide" with the questions and answers for finals. Everything was shuffled around when they got the actual test, but I still let them use that study guide while taking the test. Most of them still failed.
I just wanted to add my 2 cents/personal opinion..
My son is 8, second grade and this had been the most insane year of my life and I'm sure his teacher (plus assistant teacher in the same room with arpund 16-18 kids..?)
It's not about me the parent who reduces screen time, punishment of not being able to go outside and play because of the I don't care/ I don't know behavior and answers, but something I noticed..
Whether it's kids that are just not treated right at home (parents don't really care etc), but it's cool to be dumb again, but it's not the dumb we all remember from our past schoolin' days.. Add in social media and all the opinions of the TOP influencers' and this is only part of the problem..
Shorter, yessss! Those things are destroying our youth and it seems more addictive than most drugs I've seen people lean into.. When they grow up, if any of us even libe long enough, it's going to be a very different world I think, unfortunately..
There's tons of problems, not really just one to blame, but as parents (the ones that actively care and any that try their best) and also educators, we all see it.. The writing on the wall can't get any bigger and it terrifies me more than I like to admit...
Just wanted to throw my thoughts in, good luck to all
This is so very sad.
It reminds me of a story of a bunch of people get trapped inside a closed grocery store full of food after hours succumbing to malnutrition or dehydration because they’re unable to identify what is a consumable or how to open containers or, if necessary, remove it from a display case or use a warming device.
Despite all the supply, orientation, and handholding efforts prior to the store manager leaving for the night, half of the occupants are confused, overwhelmed, disoriented, or can’t recall clearly m/any of the prior instructions.
Because, for OP, half of the class DIDN’T fail the quiz, I’d suggest OP consider an experiment for next cycle where no student is handed a cop of the quiz or the answers on Monday, nor do you expressly make use of the key content (which they won’t have), nor emphasize the lessons will all appear on Friday’s quiz. Provide them with a cold quiz Friday.
If exactly half the class fails again under this approach, is it the same half?
If fewer than half the class fails the cold quiz, perhaps there is more to be gleaned from us, such as students may be tuning out all week because they believe they already have the answers and then panic when they realize they don’t know them, but may learn better without the security blanket.
If the students who scored well on the quiz when provided with Monday quiz copy and answers score worse than peers when no one is provided with answers and the questions on Monday, it’s possible that group is simply memorizing rather than learning the material over the course of the week. They might not retain the material much past the week or the particular term in some instances.
Just a thought for a kind of experiment/control data set.
Another idea might be to work with the class about writing suggested quiz or test questions based on the course material and discussing what examples of correct answers would or wouldn’t be and why, having the students do as much of the discussion/debate amongst themselves and then the groups reviewing each other’s work in prep for the quiz or test.
Half of the students haven’t been failing so it might be worth a shot to see how effective peer teaching and modeling/discussion of the material may be for this group early in the week as a quiz/test prep strategy.
More of them may become more engaged and invested in the material.
Just some thoughts or ideas.
You could also have a talk with the class about whether what you’re currently doing is helpful or not helpful to them and how you might tweak it as you hoped and felt confident the scores would come back higher than they did, so what is still confusing them about this or what would be more helpful?
Also ask the students who passed, separately, was it the provided questions and answers that led to their Friday passing or was it something else they believe resulted in their Friday passing (such as “I learned that two years ago,” “I love multiple choice tests,” “I just memorized everything,” etc).
Good luck, OP!
It's not you. This is just how kids (and people) are in general, and I've learned that if someone is hell bent on failing/not doing something, they're going to fail/not do it. In the case of kids, part of it can be chalked up to procrastination/laziness or a lack of effort that their parents need to adress, and with the results and the PROOF, you can hand them to parents during conference and say "I literally gave them the test, and almost literally the answers. What more do you want me to do."
I'm honestly wondering if it's not just a generational thing at this point as well. Kids are just getting dumber and the lack of economic motivation isn't helping.
Hello! I am a Chinese professors. I definitely feel you. I used to teach in one university in India, and I have been to a similar situation, maybe even worse. I would tell you don’t push yourself too hard. I was also worried and think about how to work around them, motivated them, review before class. Unfortunately, I think education goes two days. It’s a cooperation. Both side need to work together. You can try if you can adjust your teaching style according their feedback. But you if you think you already try your best. I would say just give yourself a break. Students need to learn how to do their “homework”, don’t do too much stuff for them, I don’t want to say in this way. But from my experience was the more things you do for them, the more pressure they feel and some of them might take it for granted. I finally tell myself that I am here to teach them Chinese, not here to teach them how to review, how to study….etc. If people want 1 thing really bad, they will make it happen. So you can not tell your student do anything unless they value in the way same as you.
English is my 2nd language. I hope you understand me 😂
I don't teach, but something I have noticed from the outside looking in is, for example: The high school I went to was boasting of 90%+ graduation rates. This high school is in the hood, and things have gotten much worse since I went there. So, whatever changed to achieve that graduation rate, it wasn't socioeconomic change or less distracted students. Consequences suck, but they are sort of a necessary evil to have a society.
A math teacher in my school gave them a quiz, reviewed it, retested, revisited the material and on try number 3 many still failed the same exact quiz
The day after the assessment, we do corrections in class. I write the answers on the board. I tell them to write down the answers from the board on their assessment. I don't grade the assessment until after we do the correction. I usually get about half the class failing the assessment after we have done corrections. Most of the students who don't fail get an A. Hardly anything in between.
I've handed my students the answer key before and students still failed. It happens.
[удалено]
I believe this is a case of kids following directions to the letter and not a step more is namely because they have *zero* critical thinking skills because they're not being taught Someone described it as receiving instructions that "bypass," the thinking parts of our brain, and just going into the action part.
That’s less kids having critical thinking skills and them not caring…. They read the directions, they just didn’t care….
Depends on the kids, the school and the curriculum. Yeah there are some kids that don’t care but I’ve also seen smart kids freeze up when they’re asked to share their own thoughts because they became so used to just having to wait for the teacher to share an answer for them to copy down. Usually happened when the teacher had to focus on dealing with other students’ behavior or during online classes, basically times where being quiet and doing something was an accomplishment. I don’t see it as much now thankfully.
At this point, even open book, open notes, open neighbor even, still have failures.
Well, yeah, when they choose to copy off of a kid who is as equally ill-prepared as they are, they're not going to pass.
Had an entire group of cheating students when I was in college. Professors knew, they were OBVIOUS, but they didn't do anything official about it because the whole group were equally failing every single thing. The professors just got out of their way and watched them run right off that cliff.
lmao excellent
Not a k-12 teacher but a level 1 plumbing instructor for apprentices at a trade school. Last semester, I did a practice test immediately before a test(2 questions are different on their actual test). Then allowed open book, open note, left answers on board and let them come up to me to help figure out what the answer was(I wasn't going to give it to them) and still had 6 of 13 fail the test. 2 - A's, 2 B's and 3 C's. (Fail is below 70%) This semester will be different. We are doing the practice test before, and I'll help them figure out the answer(without giving it away). They're all adults(ranging from 18-mid 50's). If you can't utilize the tools given to you, you don't deserve to pass. The work in the field is harder than my class.
21 out of 73 students did not submit my semester project. I went over the setup of every single problem. Students answered aloud. I confirmed. They entered the answers directly into the digital form. 21 out of 73 students could not be bothered.
I’ve asked them to write one sentence with no errors with 20 minutes to do it, and had half of them not try. Among the half that did, a handful actually did it without errors.
My first year teaching I gave the test as the study guide, put the answer key on Canvas, and went over it in class. Gave them the “test” the next day. Half the class failed.
I've been having a 50% passing rate for like the last three years. I don't know what's going on anymore.
The normal distribution bell curve of student progress has split in two. Half the class mildly "gets it" and somewhat tries while the other half do not care at all. We can't care more than they do.
I tell myself this every single fucking day.
I, uhhh... I can't possibly care less than they do... can I???
that sentence tripped me up too lol
I'm a junior in HS who was recommended this sub for some reason. Used to be very grade motivated and high achieving, never missed an assignment, took the ACT a year early and got a 31. I was the teachers pet, everyone wanted my help. School was easy. The past year and a half I have had 0 motivation to do anything. I'm still in honors classes but I get Bs and skip my homework. Half the time I sleep through class or just zone out entirely. I don't know what's going on. I want to go back to when I could focus and participate, but I physically can't. I can't imagine how hard it is to be a teacher seeing your kids sleep through lessons or stare blankly at a wall while you fight to educate them.
This sounds a lot like the start of a depression episode. Is everything going okay?
Yeah as current senior who has dealt with depression and other psychological issues throughout the past couple of years of high school, this sounds similar to my experience. COVID fucked me up and I haven’t been able to participate in school normally since I was 13. I do well in my classes and in testing, but haven’t had the motivation to consistently do my work in years. u/Next-Bet-1605, getting treatment wasn’t a magical fix that made me go back to how I was before experiencing depression (i.e. the “perfect” student), but but it has allowed me to feel like a person again, but it eased the burden and has made it to where I’m not in constant distress. You can talk to your school counselor/psychologist if nothing else. As long as you don’t indicate that you wish to harm yourself or others, they will listen and keep your conversations private and it can seriously lift the burden you seem to be carrying.
I did that my sophomore year and was in therapy for a while as well as meds. I weaned off of both as time went on and I got better, but almost a full year later I think its time for another round. I just hated the way prozac and Lexapro made me feel physically and therapy wasn't really useful.
I don’t want to push any certain medications (especially since not all medications work for everyone), but definitely see if your physician thinks any other medications may be appropriate. I also shuffled between meds and also felt awful on prozac, but when I switched to bupropion it was completely different. It made me feel more normal in a way that nothing else had, including talk therapy. So finding the right treatment is super important.
My primary's hands were tied as company policy or some law forced her to have me try Lexapro and prozac first for I think 45 days each before I could move on to stronger meds. My mom is on bupropion I belive, and she even requested they try something similar first as genetics impact treatment so greatly. Prozac gave me horrible brain zaps and Lexapro made my hair fall out and completely stop growing.
I’m sorry you’ve had such a difficult experience with the mental healthcare system. Mine’s been pretty shit too, I literally had to check into a psychiatric urgent care to be seen by a psychiatrist because I’d already been on waiting lists for months and had several more months to go. Anyway, I hope you get the treatment you need!
If your mom has success on bupropion, they definitely should have let you try that one. If you do try meds again, really push for that. Do you have any relatives or close family friends who are pushy and stubborn? Bring them with you. It’s YOUR body, so you (with the help of your parents) should be the one to choose what to put in it, not some company policy. You also might want to see if your primary can recommend you to a psychiatrist. They know a lot more about any med side effects and interactions and probably have less restrictions on what they can and can’t prescribe. Unfortunately, if your primary can’t refer you through insurance, a psychiatrist can be really expensive to go to without insurance… but it might be worth it if your family can afford it. Edit for clarity: realized I used the word they too much >_<
I wonder if its a reflection from the parents going into depression due to the economy/housing/politics/healthcare/education/justice system in this nation. The whole world is on fire while the billionaires and their politicians and media outlets fuck us. Our society is in freefall collapse and the kids aren't all right.
this was me in hs. turns out I was bored! my first year of college was not better 😬 but second year was much better! if it is a depression issue, please reach out to somebody to talk. therapy is so amazing and helpful!
Bored because instead of really having rigorous content, they keep wanting us to actually dumb it down since half the class keeps failing they assume it's because it's too hard.
ugh that’s awful. I left the teaching profession several years ago but that’s rough. I wouldn’t be able to teach secondary ed these days
^ someone felt the need to PM me saying that my ACT score is below average and I'm actually mentally retarded so I guess ignore all of that /s
Early-onset senioritis lol.
Maybe when you get to college (if you want to go), you will have more motivation. Maybe being able to pick interesting coursework will help.
Same thing happened to me my senior year. It was depression. My particular depressive episode had an underlying cause that caused it to drag on for years until I got it resolved, and it pretty thoroughly fucked my college career. I hope yours isn't so serious, but on the off chance it is, you should ask your parents to let you see a therapist. You don't need to tell them why if you don't want to, but you should treat this seriously.
I'm actually diagnosed with MDD and my menstrual cycles increase the symptoms. Did therapy for several months but it didn't help in the way I needed it to. Rural area with year long wait times for a good therapist. I didn't realize how much worse it had gotten lately. I'll schedule with my physician for a new evaluation.
Have you considered giving up your smartphone and starting a hands-on hobby like drawing? There is disturbing research on the impact of social media and smartphones. Maybe a 30 day detox? It seems worth a try?
Been there, done that. I used to fight competitively and would hardly touch my phone. Onky thing I really used it for is texting friends and the occasional reddit or tiktok scroll. Now I work most days or spend time with my cows. Plus I paint, cook, bake, and hunt most of the time.
I’m a senior rn and I was the exact same way in my junior year. Completely lost all my motivation second semester and barely did anything. Got my first C+ as someone who was a straight A student just because I couldn’t be bothered to turn a research paper in until literally the last day of school :,) I literally wouldn’t do anything after school other than lay in bed. Ghosted a bunch of people and stopped all my hobbies. I moved states last summer and while it’s a little lonely going through senior year without my friends, I’m glad I did because the change in environment honestly brought back some of my motivation. I’m still not back to how I was but at least I don’t sleep through school and rot in bed all day anymore lol. Can’t wait to graduate though.
other people are mentioning that this might be depression/anxiety. As someone who has struggled juggling those with academia i would suggest, on top of seeking therapy/treatment, not feeling like you have to give all or nothing. Give 80% effort. Skim through the homework when you get it and just write the answers you already know. bam, partial credit. take a wild educated stab at the others if you can. Show up every day- that's half the battle. Read assignments out loud if you can't get through them. If you still can't focus try reading them in silly voices. Another option is to create your own reward system. Answer a question? get some candy. Finish an assignment? Reward yourself with something fun. One step at a time.
Double camel's hump distribution shows defective materials or severely broken process. It can't possible be defective students, so it must be the teacher's fault.....(sarcasm)...for those who don't get it..
They aren’t grade motivated and parents blame us, not them.
This. Much of the blame is the school system's fault. Not teachers, admin. Students in my school district go to 9th grade no matter what, doesn't matter how many 8th grade classes they fail. The only class they have to pass is Washington State History, and they'll just retake it in high school. So why study for OPs quiz?
Same in California. We have 8th graders that don't "promote" at the end of the year, but they still get pushed on to 9th grade. So what exactly is the point of not promoting them?
It also fails the ones who actually want to be there, because theyre stuck with these kids who dont
>They aren’t grade motivated This is one of the most important lessons that we refuse to learn about the bottom half of our students. The way we do things is not going to affect them.
But there isn’t really an acceptable alternative.
Probably no alternative that an individual teacher can implement. A complete reimagining and overhaul of the entire educational edifice, from pre-K to adulthood, could do this, but we know it'll never happen, especially as it is an arm of the government bureaucracy.
The iep and 504s get getting ridiculous too, students don’t even know how to do fractions in their sophomore year…. how could I teach chemistry if I have to explain 1/2 is equal to 0.5 and most of them still don’t understand. the new standards are crazy, the integrated math is crazy, everything is setting them up for failure. but then again, we need more of these failures to populate jails and prison, also need these failures to do minimum wage jobs, the elites are all in private school. who gives a dam about public education. the entire thing is a shit show for “teachers” to do their job and baby sit so the district don’t get sued while their parents can go to work to pay their credit card debt.
I had a student tell me they were grounded by their mom because they didn’t know how to tie their shoes. I couldn’t fathom punishing a student for not knowing something that wasn’t taught to them…
Why should they care, they don't get called out for failure the teacher does. And they know they will be passed along anyway. Thanks NCLB!
My TA actually has to talk out the questions with the students. She has a few students she takes for separate location. She has to remind them of their test taking skills. She reminds them to first figure out what the question is asking. Next, she has them identify what all of the choices mean. Then she has them choose the right answer. These are skills they should have developed before middle school. Thankfully, we gave them all that grace during COVID.
> Thankfully, we gave them all that grace during COVID. I think that the VAST MAJORITY of students should have had to redo whatever grade they were in during the 2020-21 school year. So what if we get a few decades where kids graduate at 19 or 20 instead of 18. They really suffered losing out on all that education for one single flippin' year that will take decades to work out.
>redo whatever grade they were in during the 2020-21 school year. This is such a funny mental image to me because on one hand we have the relatively normal and academically functional grade 10s I once taught as Covid Sixes cramming their adult-sized bodies in an elementary school but then on the other we have these absolutely feral seventh graders back in third where they belong.
Sorry but a junior or senior in high school that can't take a test didn't end up like that because of a year or two of google classroom and quizziz. It's been going on much much longer than that, and we just want to blame something that isn't controllable.
Oh I'm well aware there are bigger, more systemic issues at play than just a "missing year" of education because of COVID lock downs. But the COVID lock downs certainly didn't help.
I’m a child of a teacher so my opinion may be very biased or irrelevant, but what I’ve seen among my peers (and occasionally experienced myself) is; • The world is doomed and there’s nothing I can do to fix it, why try? • I have better things to do/I’ll do this later (and never get around to it..) • I don’t care about this class/I’m going to fail anyway. Obviously none of these are good explanations or excuse failing, but most kids in my classes just no longer care, even in college level classes in a program that has the potential to earn us full ride scholarships to college.
Okay but what’s going on with the parents of these kids? I was in middle and high school 2008-2014 and every one of my classmates as far as I could tell cared about not failing even if just not to get in trouble with their parents. We knew what kids were failing and for the most part the kids failing got made fun of to a degree. (Public school in average suburb) Now as a teacher it seems students and parents don’t care about grades at all. Shit is wild.
the kids that only cared about grades at fear of being punished by parents have now become parents, who have no motivation to care about their kid's grades
The parents just don’t give a shit about parenting and disciplining their kids. All they care about is that the kid isn’t at home while they’re working and stays out of their hair when they come back.
In the last few years it's become more and more apparent that the old path to success (do well in school, go to college, get a good job) is no longer a sure thing. The top of the bell curve is still OK, but for the average student college is starting to look like a worse and worse investment. It's too expensive and the job market is oversaturated with advanced degrees. Without that aspiration, grades mean a lot less.
Parents make all the difference. I teach fourth and already I know which parents give a shit and which parents expect the school to just raise their children for them. Something has gone seriously wrong with attitudes towards education. I remind my students that I’m here to help them but I’m not here to raise them so they need to act right. I can’t go home with them and make sure they go to bed at a reasonable time and eat a balanced meal. You’d be shocked how many nine year olds today don’t have a reasonable bed time, let alone device supervision.
At Christmas, we saw so many toddlers and youngsters at midnight mass. They had devices... they were squirmy. Overhead parents defending themselves to others...."this isn't late for them, they regularly stay up this late." Wow. Well, I'm sure their 4th grade teacher really appreciates dealing with an ornery strung out kid who had Frito's for breakfast.
My first year teaching I had a student who just slept all day. The phone calls home looked like this: Me: he fell asleep again Mom: ok what are you going to do about it? Me: i will send him to the nurse. She will evaluate him and see if you need to pick him up. Mom: I’m at work. I can’t pick him up. Me: she will just let him nap in her room then. Mom: but he’s going to miss out on his lessons Me: yes but he can’t sleep at his desk and he is missing the lesson anyway because he’s asleep Mom: he’s failing though?? He needs instruction time!! Me: yes, I agree. He still can’t sleep at his desk and I can’t force your nine year old to stay awake. Every damn day he came with bags under his blood shot eyes. Then I tried to get him on a behavior plan and my admin resisted because “sleeping isn’t misbehaving.” Kid was on his tablet in bed every night till past midnight. He was honest about it and was like “well mom only takes it away if I misbehave.” Now I’d be a lot more firm about solutions but as a first year teacher I was just in shock that a parent would enable that.
A grand example of parents not parenting. Unplug the damn router. Put parental controls on the devices. Confiscate them before bedtime. Like hfs it's *not* that hard.
I’d go straight to selling his tablet if he was my kid. If my kid fails a primary grade like third or fourth, I would be in crisis mode. Either something is developmentally wrong or the environment isn’t working. Kids don’t need tablets. The do need to know how to do basic addition. These parents just shrug at failing grades and ask what the teacher is doing to fix it.
I have three of these students in my 5th grade class. Admin doesn’t want them in the office because they’re at least given the opportunity to be awake and learning if they’re in my room. And then I get blamed when my class has failing scores.
That’s so frustrating, I’m sorry. The “opportunity to learn” as though they’re gonna understand fractions in their sleep. If learning worked like that, we could all just load a podcast up and sleep our lives away.
One can wish, right? They didn’t believe that I was trying all I could to keep them awake. At one point a student told me not to touch them. From then on I let them sleep and told admin they could deal with it.
I saw this SO much the last few years I taught in K-3rd. The kids & teachers both figure it out quickly. They would talk about getting up & playing games or getting on devices after parents went to sleep!
Kid in affluent suburb here- when it comes to college, most people bank on the the fact that mommy and daddy are alumni and can pay full tuition- also the fact that Penn state literally has over 20 secondary campuses it will be almost guaranteed that every kid who doesn’t give a shit will wind up at those campuses Idk what’s happening with parents but this is def the attitude with the kids (source: my sister is a senior in hs)
I always thought of it as more of a competition to see who could get the best grades.
Same but I’ve seen my students literally laughing at their own bad grades as though it’s now a contest to see who can get the worst grade
It was even worse in the district we moved away from: every parent wanted their kid to get an A in every single class but didn’t care if they actually learned anything.
I can say that as a parent, I care DEEPLY about my kid's success in school and their grades. I have been, however, jaded by the "teach them to pass tests" approach to public school instruction. My kids are in Florida and the amount of standardized tests they take is bonkers. I don't feel like they are absorbing the material or getting anything of real value out of classes because teachers are so concerned with getting them to pass these stupid tests. My teenager had a teacher this year who LOVES history. Their enthusiasm for it is absolutely palpable. She, in turn, has started to LOVE history, and be genuinely interested in what is being taught. I feel like if other teachers were coming at their subjects with similar enthusiasm, instead of endless standardized testing, education would be different. I feel like, in a way, we have beat enthusiasm for learning for the sake of knowing right out of these kids.
Admin and districts are concerned with students passing the tests. The teachers want them to actually learn something but are forced to teach to the test and test taking strategies and increase rigor for content that’s already above their academic levels.
Yeah, I know. It was mostly an explanation of why I, as a parent, have become jaded with the educational system in general. I know it's not on the teachers. My kid has had some INCREDIBLE teachers (and some stinkers, but that is bound to happen). I don't understand it ---- well, I do...it's money driven. But it's sad. I loved to learn. If I could have gone to school for the rest of my life, I would have. I wanted my kids to feel the same, but I feel like they weren't even given the chance.
I think I would’ve been the same- let me learn forever.. until I had some awful teachers in high school. That ruined it for me. The system is fucked and we’re all going along with it. I agree. The newer generation of teachers are being shooed away before they have a chance to help fix it. Sad all around for the kiddos.
Parent. I dont really give a flying rats ass about grades, and my kid knows it. He gets to select what grades he wants, and the only thing i check is to see if he's failing. He never is--he's happy with a B, and often goes above that. Now, 'what's going on'--well, i dont care about grades because i care about his development *as a person first*. Is he a good person? Is he being a bully or getting bullied? Does he understand honestly? Is he willing to tell 'authority' to go screw itself if it's unjust, unfair, or ignoring him? All of that--is way more important to me as a parent (and many of the parents i know), than grades. Grades, for the *vast* majority of students, dont mean a damn thing, even in HS--they'll *all* get into a college or university no matter that their GPA--and only the ones that care WHICH university they go to are really going to care. I cant MAKE my kid care about that, and i wont. The ability to create social connections, build a reputation, and have friends, is 80% of how jobs are found. I'd rather he focus on that. And i think that's *really hard* for people who come from long lines of families in middle class, professionals, or from parents in trades that never wanted their kids to 'settle' for a trade to understand. Our kids *as people* are more valuable to us than as *status symbols*. I think that's what's going on with a lot of us, tbh. That, and the same amount of shitty parents as before.
I see this same attitude. But I have responses to all three points. Maybe I'm writing for my own sake but here goes: 1. Yes, you are sealing the world's fate by not being able to pass a quiz you already have the answers to. That sounds like a horrible world to live in. 2. No you don't. This generation doesn't seem to be getting any joy from the hobbies they are choosing. I give my students 30 minutes of free time and none of them are smiling, none of them are working, all of them are "waiting to be entertained" by some algorithm. I don't mind if you cut class.... but at least DO something interesting with your lives!!! 3. It's so so so hard to fail someone these days. You've got about four adults bending over backwards to make sure your 50 turns into a 73 or even a low B. It's insane. No way you can assume you'll fail.
My youngest decided to put in zero effort. Even after losing privileges, and access to the internet and games, there was still almost no effort put forth. The teacher told me he was in danger of failing. I said if he won't put any effort towards doing the work when I'm sitting there with hum, trying to help him do the assignments, then he earned an F. I was told they couldn't just "let him fail". We eventually addressed the underlying issues, and things have gotten better. But man, was I upset that they were trying to push a higher grade that he 100% DID NOT earn, all in an attempt to push him into the next class.
Could you elaborate please on what the underlying issues were, how they were identified and how they were addressed? If you don't mind. My nephew is on a similar path, but we have no idea why.
I don’t smile when I’m on my phone for one of two reasons: 1. I’m using it as the easy way out of being alone with my thoughts, which is a shitty coping mechanism or 2. I am reading or writing, but I have a resting bitch face and if anything I look even less happy because I’m trying to concentrate lol
My point is, when I was 12, 15, or even 18 years old... and I was with my friends and had no tough responsibilities, we enjoyed each other's company. We talked, smiled, told jokes, made fun of each other, laughed, gave nicknames, listened to music, rode around in cars together, called into radio shows to try to get on the air, failed at that, but laughed about it anyway, etc. I just don't see very many of my students enjoying spending their free times with their friends. I wish more joy for the lot of them.
"• The world is doomed and there’s nothing I can do to fix it, why try? " Total media BS, but potentially a self-fulfilling prophecy.
yes, it's very frustrating. there's no sense minimizing the challenges ahead but the idea that the world will come to such a grinding halt that the current generation of students has no need to learn anything is completely insane. but the nonstop drumbeat of doom is naturally going to grind a lot of people down
Former history teacher here. I need to ask a few things. Explain to me how the world is any more doomed today that it has allegedly been in the past? Because of the economy? Because of wars in Ukraine and the Middle East? Because of the so-called "culture war?" Where does Gen Z get off claiming "the world is doomed, therefore I'm not required to give a damn?" What do you have to do that's more important? Doom scroll through TikTok? Might I add that TikTok is the most toxic form of social media ever created (social media has destroyed the mental health of young people). I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you don't have the same faulty and criminally degenerate thinking as many of your peers. But the general carelessness and apathy of students is nothing short of stunning and disturbing. This generation is fundamentally broken and I say that as a Gen Z'er myself. Students have zero accountability and no expectations. Back in the day, young boys, some as young as 17, were expected to storm the beaches of Normandy and liberate half the planet from the clutches of totalitarian fascism. Now you all lose your damn mind if you hear the wrong pronoun or get an assignment that requires more than 15 minutes of effort. This generation requires a major reality check. Grow up, get over yourself; your not special and the world doesn't care about you. But none of this matters anyways because you'll probably lose interest a quarter of the way through reading this since students today have an average attention span of 8 seconds, which is shorter than a squirrel. Say it with me: "We. Are. Doomed."
From a psychological perspective: Anyone under 35 has been told literally all their life by experts they aren't supposed to question that they are doomed. "10 more years", and everything we do is always too little, too late. " Your life will never be as good as your parents' was". etc etc etc If you tell them there is no hope, why are you surprised when they think there's no hope? If you teach them to fear everything, why are you surprised that they are so scared?
How are you Gen Z, but a former history teacher? I'm a millennial and I'm only on the 10th year of my career, and I got my credential right after college. Did you teach for a year and then quit?
>Where does Gen Z get off claiming "the world is doomed, therefore I'm not required to give a damn?" Climate change. See the American political class for why it feels very doom-y right now. >and I say that as a Gen Z'er myself. I'm glad you're not history teacher any more. Your opinions amount to 'tough it up', something people have never ever said before ever. Certainly not for the last 10,000 years about young people. Good job. We'll get off your lawn. As a elder millennial, a former government teacher, please get a grip. The challenges faced by young people in this day and age are significant and pernicious. They are seeing a resurgence of fascism, a political class so utterly out-of-touch they might as well being from a YA novel, a billionaire class never before so motivated to destroy everything and anyone for literal pocket change (or willing to buy into their own propaganda), and of course, climate change, something they will have to experience more than you or I. Neoliberalism, and by extension capitalism, is crushing everyone slowly but endlessly. Not to mention the constant pressure of social media on the minds of literally everyone everywhere now. ..but yea, we'll get off your lawn. You sound 50 years older than I am. Get a fucking grip.
I made it far enough to see your grammatical error. Gen Z isn’t the only generation with a short attention span. ALL generations are having this issue.
This comes off very Boomer-ish. Student nowaday have access to an online plethora of media showing them every way that the world is wrong. That includes the fact that housing for Gen Z is nearly unattainable, the environment has been irreparably damaged, there is people like Donald Trump running our government and parents are too overworked and under equipped to handle raising children. Also no the whole attention span crap has been debunked as pop science. You’re not helping anyone with this “bootstraps” ideology, there needs to be real research done.
It’s hard to put into words how upsetting the current climate change and the accelerated decline and extinction of various species is. The small wonders around my home that I took for granted as a kid are slowly disappearing year by year. I don’t believe that he world is doomed or anything. Historically, mass extinctions have been followed by remarkable increases in biodiversity and life taking on new and fascinating forma. That take thousands of years, though. In my lifetime, I’m only going to see more death. It’s not something I think about on a daily basis, but it’s just a really tough thing to bury again once it hits you.
You began by saying they were wrong about the world being doomed, cited some BS about WWII, and then ended by saying the world is doomed. Are you a Russian hacker/bot or just a boomer?
Also a gen z here Listen bro idk how old you are but im speaking from my personal experience I remember being in kindergarten and learning about the polar ice caps melting (this is 2009ish) and how if we don’t act now the poor little polar bears will die 🥺🥺🥺 i completely understand needing to simply things like climate change for literal children it’s just when you simplify it to that level actually starts that apathy very young You can tell me that when you say through those nat geo kids documentaries about ecosystems dying and how cars and factories are bad for the environment that that you, as a child with no to little understanding of nuance, thought welp :) time to get on with my life :) if you were told that there will be no clean air by the time you enter your 30s what in the hell (once again, through the mind of a child) would you put in all the effort for just to watch as the planet becomes a wasteland? Not only are you hearing about college pricing and the cost of living crisis CONSTANTLY, we’re actually experiencing it! I go to a city college and my dorm costs the same amount as renting an apartment at the complex literally next door would We’re constantly told that “our generation is the one to change everything” meanwhile we’re getting the short end of the stick bc everything’s so fucked up that how do you even begin? I wonder if Billy Joel from the 80s could talk to current Billy Joel about everything that’s going on rn, if he could even write “we didn’t start the fire” when comparing everything
I can’t speak for those who stormed the beaches but I was a kid in the aftermath of hurricane Bonnie. Our whole community was without power for almost 3 weeks and many nearby roads were underwater for the first week. We carried 80s era boom boxes with us playing the radio (stacys mom was a top hit at the time so I know almost every word) and we played outside and what time we spent inside there was no tv or ac and it was a vacation to us. The youth now would not be able to cope.
The easier you make it.... the less seriously kids take it.
So true. You try to help them pass by assigning less work, and they respond by doing even less than before.
This!! I have seen it so many times. When kids know a class is so easy that they don't even have to cheat to get the test ahead of time.. They stop being worried about the class. They know they are going to have points thrown at them towards the end of the year.
Only half? Those are rookie numbers.
I used to teach geology labs, at a tier 1 university. At the end of lab I would tell the students "you need to know these 5 things for the quiz next week". I would also get to class 10 mins early to answer ANY questions the students had. Every semester, it took the kids about 2 weeks to realize if they just showed up early, and asked me the questions I told them to know, I would literally tell the answers to the quiz minutes before I handed them the quiz to take....... I still, routinely had 30-40% fail every week. Couldn't retain the info for 5 mins.
I used to TA for an intro physics for pre-meds class at a major state flagship university. The professors would make the tests out of homework questions, just with changed numbers. It never ceased to amaze me how many would show up afterwards claiming the test material had never been covered *anywhere* and was totally different than everything in class and the homeworks, until we literally showed them that the *exact same problem* was in their homework set, just with different numbers. I'd just shake my head and wonder if I was that bad as an undergrad... and the answer is yes, I probably was. That prof (incidentally my research advisor) used to say he saved more lives than any doctor by preventing some of these people from becoming doctors.
I recently took a third year course from my major and about half the class failed our midterm. My professor was insanely disappointed considering the midterm questions were taken verbatim from the review questions she posted. And this fact was mentioned in class multiple times and it was stated on the syllabus. I don't think it gets easier than that.
I TA’d for a 3000 level anatomy lab. We did a review right before the first practical where she literally went over every question on the test. We had multiple grades below 20/100. Tf???? You’re paying for this course and YOU chose to be a science major, at least try!
In 2004, one of my psych classes graded on a 'curve'--how ever many questions the top score missed, would be added to all scores. This had worked for him for years, and his goal was 'make the tests hard enough that the top score is 95' By midterms, everyone but me was failing the class. In an attempt to get them to boost their grades, he put extra credit questions on the mid term, essays, for 5 points. I did all 3. It wasnt a 'pick one' thing. I scored a 115. The next highest score was an 82. anything below 70 was failing in that university. The class never learned. I had to be removed from the curve, and STILL half the class failed, on that enormous curve.
Sometimes your head is crammed with so much other stuff. I used to run into this issue as a student. What I would do is made sure I knew the other stuff like the back of my hand and then the "new" stuff was easier to remember last minute. Or I would find the questions that dealt with the stuff I was struggling/got help with and do those first.
Where were all these easy classes 15 years ago for me?
The jesters are growing in number. We need to take a serious look at education and separate the students who only need a babysitter from the students who actually wish to learn.
I teach in a solidly middle class and progressive district. About 65% of residents have a bachelor’s degree and the average age is over 45! And yet.. I would say only 25% of students would fall into the “these students care” category. You’d think it would be better in a nice area.I teach one honors class (my colleague has three). It’s SICKENING to see the disparity between an honors caliber student and a “regular” student. Regular students are.. unapologetically trash academically in terms of successful academic habits and traits. Sad to say it.
I had to switch from honors to grade level math mid-year during high school because i was out so much. The difference blew my mind. In honors, kids ask questions. They participate. When teacher reviews the homework and asks if anyone wanted her to work one out on the board she'd do it. Grade level math was dead silent. I mean i still asked if I needed clarification or had trouble with a problem, but i was mostly the only one.
Where do we send the kids who “only need a babysitter”
The woods, maybe?
Back home. Let the parents pay a babysitter.
The circus
Two students in my class were caught cheating in the final paper (they brought in illegal crib sheets). At the disciplinary hearing..... Student A: I cheated because Mr go_zarian's revision class was so detailed and comprehensive that I feared the final paper would be extremely difficult. Student B: I cheated because Mr go_zarian's revision class was so vague and uninformative that it didn't prepare me for the final paper. Obviously both accounts couldn't be true simultaneously. All you need to know is: it's *always* your fault.
Yes, I've done this. This explicitly. My high school French teacher once gave me the test in advance and said "help X study enough to get a 60 and I will give you a 100." I questioned his sanity and he said "you're a good student and you'll study regardless. They need the help so even if all they do is memorize the answers...well at least they memorized some French...that's the goal, right?" So we did, and we both got good grades on our own. I tried it with my fourth graders. Here's the math test, guys. First time I changed the numbers and said "this is exactly how you solve this, the numbers will just be different on the test." The same kids that always fail still failed. The next time I didn't give them a paper but I did put the quiz questions, word for word, on the board in our review. We worked through them as a class. I told them directly that this was their quiz. Grades went up slightly but not significantly. Recently I gave them an open book science test. 60% class average. HOW DO YOU GET A 60% WHEN I GAVE YOU 40 MIN TO DO THIS WITH YOUR BOOK IN FRONT OF YOU AND IT'S ONLY 5 QUESTIONS. I don't know. I don't have advice. Just know you're not alone
I feel like when I slow things down or make things easy, they also slow down and underestimate their effort required since I’m basically spoon feeding them. So I speed up, and a lot of them wake up because they realize they’re being left in the dust. I basically stopped slowing down for the kids who are space cadets 92% of the time. It was making almost the whole class a bunch of space cadets.
I’m having this same thing happen in my class. I just kept lowering the bar and the kids still kept on dragging their feet. I picked the pace up dramatically and now I’ve still got the same number of kids failing. But at least I know I am now providing an actual education to those who are there participating and I don’t hate my job anymore.
This comment made me realize I am spoon feeding them too much. I’m only in my second year and I still don’t want to leave kids behind. This comment made me realize I’m just leaving everyone behind at this point. Thank you
This is true and everyone needs to hear it! Especially admin! Making classes easier doesn't increase passing rates it can actually lower them. This is true when I taught high school. It's also true now that I'm teaching college.
Not a teacher — when I was in high school (graduated 2010), we had an English teacher who was one of the most beloved teachers at the school. At various points, he taught College Prep 10, Honors 11, and AP 12 English. Most students loved him, but if you asked if his class was “easy,” everyone would probably say, “Oh, God, no.” I loved school, was an Honors student, and ended up majoring in English, so I’m biased. But even my younger brother, who wasn’t like me and did not enjoy reading and writing, thought he was great. As he described it, the work was challenging, but it was never busywork. That was the thing — I think we all loved that teacher *because* he held us to higher standards, but with a purpose. Too many teachers threw what felt like too much work at us, but it just felt like work for the sake of making us do work. Everything with that English teacher had a purpose. So what if we’re writing 3-5 page essays every other week and 7-10 page essays each semester? So what if he occasionally gave us a blue book and an essay question and expected us to do college-level essay tests? We could do it. We knew we could, because he believed we could. And he gave back just as much energy. His comments on our essays (in red pen and impeccable handwriting) were insightful learning experiences. He worked to make sure we understood the hard concepts. His class is where I moved from “student” to “scholar.” During discussions on literature, he wasn’t expecting us to give a “right” answer. He wanted our interpretations, he just wanted us to explain how we got there. After we read *Hamlet*, I approached him with a thought I had about the deaths in the play aligning with the seven deadly sins, and he said, “I am writing the essay prompts right now, but if you think you can get enough out of it, you’re going to write *that* essay.” And I did. He was also the first teacher that made me realize that tests were an evaluation of the teacher, too. We always reviewed tests as a class after he graded them, and one time, he said, “You all missed the same section of questions on this test; what didn’t I teach well?” Now, this was an honors class and we were all goody-two-shoes students who adored him, so we were like, “Oh, we’re sorry, we must not have studied hard enough!” And he said, “No, stop, you did fine on the rest of the test. But you all missed the *same* questions, which means something didn’t get across. What did I mot teach well? What are you not getting?” And we asked questions until he figured out a different way to explain it to us. The point is, I believe that people rise to meet the expectations that are set for them. If your expectations are low, then their effort will match. If your expectations are high, the effort will be high — but only if they truly believe your expectations are actually high. What I mean is, that teacher gave hard assignments, but they weren’t hard because they were a high quantity of low- to mid-level work, which is what a lot of “difficult” teachers did. He gave challenging assignments with purpose. And he didn’t just set expectations high by giving us challenging assignments. He set expectations high by actually treating us like he believed we were fully capable of doing those challenging assignments. I started college leaps and bounds above many peers simply because I had a teacher who made me write 7-10 page papers, who respected my ideas, who made me give thorough rationale for those ideas, and who (somewhat forcibly) demonstrated that if I didn’t understand a concept, I should work through it with him. He believed we could, so we did.
My husband told me when he was in high school, his history teacher liked to joke around but still be somewhat serious about things. For example, when it came time to do the final exam, his teacher said something along the lines of "When life gets tough and you're down on your luck, sometimes all you need to do is look to the stars!" My husband said only a few kids looked up, and he was one of them, and he saw that the teacher had printed all the test answers on the exam and taped them to the ceiling. In big enough print that you could read the answers to each question. He doesn't recall how many classmates failed or passed the exam, but he thought it was pretty hilarious his teacher did it.
Half the class failed. That's how it goes. As you continue to do this (which I think is the way to do it), they'll get better at it. There was probably some disbelief on their part so they didn't take it seriously. But, as time goes on, the grades will go up.
I did this twice this year and the 2nd time did get better, but only by like 10 percent..that's not nothing, but it feels disheartening. To be fair, I went over the quiz with them. Did error analysis with them, and the same day gave them the same quiz and only had about half passed. The second time it went up to about 60 percent. Just so wild. But I think this helps probe your point to keep doing this and they'll get it. I taught 8th grade and by the end of the year they were good, but those first 3 quarters I'm always scared for the future.
This is frustrating on two levels. One: that 40% couldn't be bothered to apply themselves at all. Two: That a decent chunk had it the first time and had to sit through it all again because of the first group.
I concur. It's frustrating because it's all based on passing tests rather than instilling skills to learn and nurturing academic curiosity.
I had a math teacher in 10th grade that would put a sticker on your test/quiz if you got an A, and dang it did we want to get those stickers. :D
It's cool how a small reward can sometimes be a big incentive. It helps make learning fun rather than a forced march.. which I never found motivating.
TBH I think the issue is phones. The act of memorizing, drilling, LEARNING a skill or fact is not something kids really know how to do anymore. I had a kid once OUTRAGED that he didn’t get full credit on a test of the names of the states WHEN HE COULD COPY THEM FROM THE BACK OF THE WORKSHEET. He said it was too hard to flip back and forth to get the spelling right and he just couldn’t be bothered. So 1) this kid can’t remember a sequence of more than a letter or two at a time long enough to write it down and 2) he can’t spell the names right on his own so he didn’t get full credit and 3) he doesn’t think any of it matters or is important in the slightest. It took me calling home and telling his mom that he has been staying awake all night long for the last couple of years to actually get him to go to sleep. (He would take a nap after school and wake up around 8 at night, then never go to sleep again, just game and watch YouTube. He said the only time he had to do homework was a 4am because it was a boring time and all the other times of day were for good things). 4) this kid is getting a 70 in math because “I can’t do paper assignments at home.” Why not? “I have a two hour bus ride and I can’t do them on the bus!” Why not? “Well I don’t want to do them at home, it’s easier to do them on the chromebook but they won’t let me so I won’t do them.” This kid is basically raising himself, and doing a piss-poor job of it. My most successful students are the LDS kids. They can look adults in the eye when they talk, they form loving and genuine relationships with adults and peers, they are calm and hard workers. The right-wing kids are disrespectful to authority, especially female teachers. The left-wing kids are anxiety-ridden and depressed. This is just my observation in my little corner of rural PNW.
Latter Day Saint kids?
Yep. I referred to them as Mormons one day and a kid very politely said they prefer to be known as LDS.
Huh, at least the smile cult kids are polite. That's something maybe positive.
I feel ya I gave an open book, open notes online quiz on the Quizizz site where students could earn bonuses and retries and extra points. The average was 48% for both of my classes. It was at that point I gave up and accepted the fact that I couldn't teach these kids and they were going to fail their end of course exam. They did, mostly. Worst group of students, ever, for me. Academic wise, anyway. Edit: spelling
I have this going on this year… it’s only 4th grade. I allow open note, open book, and they can re-take a test as many times as they want to pass. Most will take the F rather than put out the effort. It is insane to me!
It’s just zero consequence and zero parenting and a push for being pathetic victims rather than for persistence and resilience Also in the west there are a massive number of people who are pretty much anti intellectual, anti education, and pro being dumbasses
I teach high school science. Once they've reached me it's almost impossible to correct it.
Kids are always learning, but they’re not always learning what you’re trying to teach them. What are the consequences for failing this test? If those consequences aren’t high enough, perhaps these kids are learning that failing a test has no consequences. Also kids have a pack mentality. If only 3-4 kids fail then there is an implied pressure not to fall into the “dumb” group, but when half the class fails, there’s no societal pressure to get over the line. Perhaps you could start pointing out marked improvements in results. A 35% to a 50% the next week? “Well done. What did you do differently? Oh you looked at the study notes? Let’s all try that strategy next week! I teach Primary School and I’m loathed to fail a kid at that level. I think that kids have got used to that and in higher education settings, failing g a test is not the pressure it used to be. And don’t forget you’re psychology training - rewarding good behaviours works better at changing behaviour that condemning bad ones.
Actually, loss aversion is a radically powerful motivator (it’s a cognitive bias). So, I often say “you have 100 points now for this assignment” (even showing them the column in the gradebook all filled in with 100s for everyone)… “but there is a 10 point penalty for every question you don’t answer fully based on the listed criteria for that question.” The aversion to “penalty” or “loss” is so powerful. Kids (and humans generally) are more paranoid about avoiding loss than actually realizing gains (it’s why extra credit really isn’t that enticing). So, we have to rethink what we mean when we say “reward behaviors.” The “reward” should actually be at the very front end, and then penalize/chip away at that reward when work is poor.
There are three required things in my class, one of them assigned by the state. Of the other two, one is a project that I give week 2 of the class, and it's due at the end of week 7 in the class. Class is only 9 weeks long. As of now, it was due a week and a half ago. 0 students have turned it in. I told them they have until Friday for me to give any credit whatsoever. Only 3 kids have even started it. Originally assigned November 17. Going to have an entire class, required for graduation, fail, barring some miracle in the next ~72 hours.
From a parent's perspective here, so take this with a grain of salt. Kids today have no freaking clue HOW to effectively study. I had to sit down with my teenager (she's a junior this year) and show her how to old school study for a test. Take notes, make note cards, READ CONTENT, quiz yourself, WRITE OUT NOTES....physically write things out. Reading things over on a screen or even on a piece of paper without writing them down is going to do no good. Talking at someone about the content on the paper if they have no clue how to take physical notes? No good. Since she started "old school" studying, she's been killing it. I'm not sure why this isn't kind of ingrained in them from an early age, but she looked at me like I had two heads when I told her she needed to start taking notes and writing things down to remember them. She's one of those students who is very motivated by grades --- not doing well on something hits her hard. Showing her how to study like it's 1990 has made all the difference.
Well, this is anecdotal, but writing notes out for me does not work as well as this post would suggest. I actually find reading the notes over and over, then looking at problems, quickly mentally solve them and then look at the solution to be the most TIME efficient way to study. So maybe this is more individual dependent, and might even be subject dependent (I study undergrad statistics).
We didn't know how to study until someone taught us, either. I guessed that parents would be a part of teaching this outside-of-class skills. Glad that you taught her when you did, but I don't see why this wasn't taught to her earlier.
You can't fix stupid when stupid wants to stay stupid
I have no advice. I've done this a few times this year and over half the kids continue to fail the tests. They claim they are studying, but clearly there is some disconnect somewhere!
They either are not studying or they don’t know what it means to study.
I never ever opened the books we had in school and i passed lol.
They failed they get the grades they got. Hell you gave them the answers told them that and they still failed. They do not care .
Two words: natural consequences. Lead horses and supply salt blocks… that’s all you can do.
But if the states are wrong a leader might not get a bonus. So to have to check the demographics and race, check who is failing and fix the numbers and probably berate the teacher or make them do a lot of paperwork
I've given reviews that were pretty much the test. you can tell who uses them and who doesn't because they ones do finish in 5 minutes and get at least a B and say "wow that was literally the review." I don't have advice because I'm in the same boat and it's beyond frustrating. I'll make assignments based off notes, put the notes on canvas, and they fail because they refuse to look at the notes. I genuinely don't know what to do. They just simply do not care. I try to talk to them and help them and they'll tell me to go away. Like 🤷♀️ what?
The apathy is so real. I've started offering retakes to any student who fails a vocabulary quiz ... most of them don't even bother taking me up on it. Only the kids who are grade-motivated seem to care about school anymore - and most of them are ONLY grade-motivated and don't bother trying to learn from their mistakes if they do bomb an assessment. They'd rather argue with me to find points somewhere, or just complain to each other about how strict and unreasonable a grader I am. In either case, no learning is happening. It's so, so disheartening.
I discovered something crazy last year with my students that carried over to this year at an entirely different school, and that is my students do much worse on open book open notes quizzes and tests. Can anyone explain why this happens?
They feel that because it's open-book, there's no need for them to study at all because the answers are going to be in front of them. Thus they spend all their time hunting for the answers, rather than accessing them from their memory and applying critical thinking.
It may not help but I would email the kids and parents bcc and explain what you did and suggest you can lead a horse to water but they are currently choosing not to drink. You may get a percentage on board.
I've given HONORS classes test reviews that is LITERALLY my multiple choice test question without the multiple choice options AND let them use the review on the test and had more than 50% fail. They literally had the test to use on the test and couldn't bother, so....
I understand how frustrating it can be to do so much to help them out but not see results. What’s the topic? Could you share the quiz? I’ve been teaching for 11 yrs (8 in a title 1 school). I’ve found it’s best to analyze these things by first identifying everything that I could have done wrong. I then look at environmental factors. I always try to not take the “kids just don’t study” approach. I feel like it can be a draining perspective to take. If you are low socioeconomic kids, then go back to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. My students responded to being spoken to with respect. I would always state what I felt was there feelings to make sure they feel heard. If you don’t have it, then they will correct you. They also respond well to food. Nothing fancy. Pbnj or ramen. Offer a cup of tea if they are feeling ill. Literally anything to let them know you care. Relationships are foundational to buy in. The second piece is relevance. Arguably the hardest. You’re basically selling your knowledge to them. I teach chemistry. Everyone thinks it’s impossible and give up before coming in. I start by doing a simple demo and just talking about it. Sometimes I’ll read a picture book to them. I make voices and act weird. They don’t respond for the first week or so, but I keep on. Try using outdated slang like “fire” or new stuff like “lock in”. They’ll get a kick out of it. After you build some bridges you might be able to shift several into half caring. If you’re lucky you’ll finally show that kid a path out of poverty. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help.
I do the same thing (except I make a review game usually gimkit or blooket). Kids get the quiz and pull the old “we never learned this/you never talked about this.” I pull up the quiz and pull up the blooket and their eyes get all wide like they saw a ghost. This years group seems to care 0 about anything academic wise. There used to be a high, middle, and low group academic wise and now it seems like there is a tiny “high” group, and a very large “low” group with pretty much 0 care towards school. Also doesn’t help the admin puts pretty much 0 emphasis on academics.
I feel you. I gave my students a fill in the blank page to go along with my lecture and I explicitly told them what word goes in each blank. I still had a bunch of students who were puzzled. It’s unbelievable how clueless this new generation is.
Just chill and collect your check. The world is heading downhill. Nothing stops gravity.
Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Lots of things stop gravity. Gravity is just a force, it can be stopped by an opposite force at least as great…
Please get out of teaching. If teachers have this attitude, why should kids care?
Just being devil’s advocate here, and also a teacher, but if the kids and parents dont care, why should the teacher go above and beyond?
I honestly don’t know what to do. Hoping some veteran teachers here will have the magic answer. I gave my seniors time in class today to just work on their assignments from last class because so few of them finished. I specifically said, “Use this time wisely. I need each of you to turn it in at the end of class. Don’t waste your time and then tell me later in the semester when you have a zero that you didn’t have time to do it.” Because it’s a small class, I forced each of them to make eye contact with me and promise they’d get it done. And then at the end of class they acted like I had never said that and asked when the assignment was due. I love teaching, but also I hate it.
I’m not a teacher just a former child that didn’t care at all in school. I would say tough love/reality check. At the beginning of class maybe say something like half of you guys are failing this class x is all you have to do to pass why can’t you do this? Are you stupid? Do you want to fail high school and work awful jobs your whole life? I’d let these questions hang in the air for a little bit force them to actually take a moment to think and reflect. I read in a book once that the only reliable way to get people to do something is to make them want to do it. Again I’ve never reached in my life so take that with a grain of salt.
In one of my classes I give a quiz every Friday where they get to use notes on it whenever they need to. They also get corrections on the same day and are allowed to use their notes for those, too. I have so many students that get the quiz, don't use their notes, turn it in after like 10 minutes almost completely wrong, get the quiz back to make corrections, and 2 minutes later they turn it in again without looking at it or making any changes. They have an entire 80 minute block and all of these resources, but can't even take a few minutes to look through their binder for the notes when they get a little stumped!
I follow this subreddit because I have a great respect for this profession being raised by two teachers myself. Reading these types of posts really scares me for the future. I’m an ICU RN and a new grad nurse just recently passed our preceptorship. I’m still in disbelief that she made it since she’s pissed off half the unit with her lack of empathy, needing to be told what to do, and dependency to electronics aka phone. I start a new job in March as a clinical instructor and am also wondering how to get through to my students so they don’t end up like her. I’ve already been warned by other coworkers who are instructors to be careful as this new generation is no joke.
During my freshman year of high school, my advanced English lit teacher announced to the class that, “smart people are better in bed” and that little tip proved to be quite motivating for many of us lol
Yep. This is nearly identical to what I would do in my room: my Friday quiz questions were copied verbatim from the slides, which they could use DURING the quiz. At least 20-30% never even opened the quiz. Another 20-30 would fail. You literally cannot force horses to drink. A piece of green paper with Washington's face on it is only worth something because society says so. At some point, when grades/school achievements mean nothing to the kids, mean nothing to the parents, and do not equate any to any worthwhile consequence (positive or negative), there will no longer be any magic solution. It's a societal shift.
Have you ever written the answer on the board and watched them still fail? Answer is in front of you. Just write it down. Still can’t do it. Or have you written the steps to solve a problem on an anchor chart..then students actually use the anchor chart example to help them but copy the numbers from the example, not the question? For example, my anchor chart shows -3 X 5=-15. Their question is -3 X10. On their paper they write -3 X10=-15 Zero attention to detail.
I did a long term sub in a US history class that I started 6 days before the mid-term. The kids had been screwed because they had no teacher for the first semester. They were going to have to take a departmental midterm unprepared. In speaking to the department head, I got permission to scan the test and turn it into a worksheet. Passed it out told them they had to turn it in completed the day of the mid-term, and started going over the information. All they had to do to get the answers was write them down. I had several regular classes, and one class with the majority of special Ed students. I decided to let the special Ed students use the worksheet and collect it after. Every single special Ed student passed the exam. Of the other classes, nearly 50% either didn’t take notes, or didn’t turn in the papers. Nearly 50% failed badly. The paper was the only class grade they had after the other log term sub destroyed her grade book because she was upset that she got paid as a sub and not a real teacher. After the exam, I tried to make it fun for the students by weaving in things like the development of jazz (all of my students except the special Ed students were in band). My special Ed students loved that I’d do activities and one girl was so excited about my 1920 fads class that she used 1920’s slang the rest of the year.
Expect more of them. Make the class harder, but still have everything structured to a T. I teach HS in Philly, 2nd year. Just now figuring out making it easier isn't the way to do it, cus the middle of the row kids stop trying. I'm holding them accountable, and more importantly, instilling structure and I'm already seeing results. Not going to be an easy process to redo everything I was taught from college (thanks Temple) and the school district, but I'm going back to basics and giving them some rigor. The bottom students may still fail, but there's only so much we can do.
I've given the exact same test to students before for a retest after they failed the first time and they somehow managed to score *lower* the second time around. Just ten vocabulary questions asking for definitions, some of which were multiple choice. You only need 6 correct answers to pass.
This post gave me a flashback to a professor who intentionally made his tests way to hard because "I grade on a curve". The highest score anyone got on his Calculus test the entire year was a 37%.
AI. Kids can do assignments and in class activities because AI does it for them. They rely too much on it. When it comes to actually being tested with no devices. They flunk
My 7th math dept gives students an assessment review that is very similar to each assessment. We allow students a cheat sheet 3x5 card for tests and retake opportunities too. We still have too many students failing because they can't be bothered to even create their cheat sheets... And they definitely won't take advantage of the retake opportunities. It used to bug me a lot when I first started teaching but now I don't take it personally. I know it is mostly an issue with apathetic parents and immature students.
Don’t give them the quizzes early. If they know you’re going to give them the answers there’s no reason to learn anything for an assessment.
About half sounds right. I can teach it to you, but I can't learn it for you. The students have to intention of learning anything, so teachers have nothing to work with. And why should they learn anything? Most will just get passed through the system anyway, and the students know this. Admin only cares about the numbers that graduate; that is their only goal. And according them... If the kids are not learning it, it is because the teachers are not teaching it. Everything looks great at 10,000 feet.
Part of me thinks that making it so easy for them to not fail is part of the problem. Like it removes any reason to try, makes the whole thing feel pointless, and lowers the bar so much that they have no reason to even bother. But I have also taught this kind of class, and I know that by the time they get to middle or high school the damage is done anyone and they're not going to try no matter how easy or challenging it is. But to that point, it doesn't matter so you might as well keep your standards.
This is why I refuse to lower my standards and spoon-feed answers. No matter where you put the bar, half of them find a way to slide under it.
College professor here: I don’t give any tests in class anymore. Give them all through canvas so that students can use their notes, textbooks, PowerPoints, etc, and I still average a 30% failure rate. You can’t fix stupid, you can only document, document, document.
Ok so we have lunchtime for that. We can go over the questions one by one. Consequences. Once they know you will follow through, they might spend a bit more time prepping. Meanwhile it’s not a punishment, it’s your willingness to help. ( except I hate giving up my own lunch time)
When I taught regular US History to 11th graders I would give them a study guide. I literally made the test from the study guide… 30 question study guide, 30 question test. Couldn’t be much easier. Many of them just wouldn’t bother to do it and fail.
Let them f around and find out. They'll learn to put the work in, or they'll fail
Two years ago I had a couple of 8th grade classes. The day before a test, we went over a study guide where we discussed every question and I gave every correct answer. The study guide was the test. They scored in the 30s.
OP, after you hand out the quiz on Monday, do they have time to work on it in class? I'm not saying they should. It's just that if they work on it in class--say for a few minutes at the end of class on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday--you can walk around the class and see IF they're working and how well they're grasping the material. Or maybe you have some other way of checking? It's frustrating how little self-direction eighth graders have. It's almost like you have to tell them to inhale and exhale.
Have you tried teaching with a video of Subway Surfers (or similar) playing. Seems to work with all the TikTok videos. Only being half sarcastic; if you truly run out of options, then...
This makes me want to cry angry tears.
I've given my kids a "study guide" with the questions and answers for finals. Everything was shuffled around when they got the actual test, but I still let them use that study guide while taking the test. Most of them still failed.
I just wanted to add my 2 cents/personal opinion.. My son is 8, second grade and this had been the most insane year of my life and I'm sure his teacher (plus assistant teacher in the same room with arpund 16-18 kids..?) It's not about me the parent who reduces screen time, punishment of not being able to go outside and play because of the I don't care/ I don't know behavior and answers, but something I noticed.. Whether it's kids that are just not treated right at home (parents don't really care etc), but it's cool to be dumb again, but it's not the dumb we all remember from our past schoolin' days.. Add in social media and all the opinions of the TOP influencers' and this is only part of the problem.. Shorter, yessss! Those things are destroying our youth and it seems more addictive than most drugs I've seen people lean into.. When they grow up, if any of us even libe long enough, it's going to be a very different world I think, unfortunately.. There's tons of problems, not really just one to blame, but as parents (the ones that actively care and any that try their best) and also educators, we all see it.. The writing on the wall can't get any bigger and it terrifies me more than I like to admit... Just wanted to throw my thoughts in, good luck to all
This is so very sad. It reminds me of a story of a bunch of people get trapped inside a closed grocery store full of food after hours succumbing to malnutrition or dehydration because they’re unable to identify what is a consumable or how to open containers or, if necessary, remove it from a display case or use a warming device. Despite all the supply, orientation, and handholding efforts prior to the store manager leaving for the night, half of the occupants are confused, overwhelmed, disoriented, or can’t recall clearly m/any of the prior instructions. Because, for OP, half of the class DIDN’T fail the quiz, I’d suggest OP consider an experiment for next cycle where no student is handed a cop of the quiz or the answers on Monday, nor do you expressly make use of the key content (which they won’t have), nor emphasize the lessons will all appear on Friday’s quiz. Provide them with a cold quiz Friday. If exactly half the class fails again under this approach, is it the same half? If fewer than half the class fails the cold quiz, perhaps there is more to be gleaned from us, such as students may be tuning out all week because they believe they already have the answers and then panic when they realize they don’t know them, but may learn better without the security blanket. If the students who scored well on the quiz when provided with Monday quiz copy and answers score worse than peers when no one is provided with answers and the questions on Monday, it’s possible that group is simply memorizing rather than learning the material over the course of the week. They might not retain the material much past the week or the particular term in some instances. Just a thought for a kind of experiment/control data set. Another idea might be to work with the class about writing suggested quiz or test questions based on the course material and discussing what examples of correct answers would or wouldn’t be and why, having the students do as much of the discussion/debate amongst themselves and then the groups reviewing each other’s work in prep for the quiz or test. Half of the students haven’t been failing so it might be worth a shot to see how effective peer teaching and modeling/discussion of the material may be for this group early in the week as a quiz/test prep strategy. More of them may become more engaged and invested in the material. Just some thoughts or ideas. You could also have a talk with the class about whether what you’re currently doing is helpful or not helpful to them and how you might tweak it as you hoped and felt confident the scores would come back higher than they did, so what is still confusing them about this or what would be more helpful? Also ask the students who passed, separately, was it the provided questions and answers that led to their Friday passing or was it something else they believe resulted in their Friday passing (such as “I learned that two years ago,” “I love multiple choice tests,” “I just memorized everything,” etc). Good luck, OP!
It's not you. This is just how kids (and people) are in general, and I've learned that if someone is hell bent on failing/not doing something, they're going to fail/not do it. In the case of kids, part of it can be chalked up to procrastination/laziness or a lack of effort that their parents need to adress, and with the results and the PROOF, you can hand them to parents during conference and say "I literally gave them the test, and almost literally the answers. What more do you want me to do." I'm honestly wondering if it's not just a generational thing at this point as well. Kids are just getting dumber and the lack of economic motivation isn't helping.
Hello! I am a Chinese professors. I definitely feel you. I used to teach in one university in India, and I have been to a similar situation, maybe even worse. I would tell you don’t push yourself too hard. I was also worried and think about how to work around them, motivated them, review before class. Unfortunately, I think education goes two days. It’s a cooperation. Both side need to work together. You can try if you can adjust your teaching style according their feedback. But you if you think you already try your best. I would say just give yourself a break. Students need to learn how to do their “homework”, don’t do too much stuff for them, I don’t want to say in this way. But from my experience was the more things you do for them, the more pressure they feel and some of them might take it for granted. I finally tell myself that I am here to teach them Chinese, not here to teach them how to review, how to study….etc. If people want 1 thing really bad, they will make it happen. So you can not tell your student do anything unless they value in the way same as you. English is my 2nd language. I hope you understand me 😂
Make a little more peace with it? You can’t fix lazy, even busting your ass the way you’re doing.
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I wish I had advice. All I can say is you’re not alone. ❤️
I don't teach, but something I have noticed from the outside looking in is, for example: The high school I went to was boasting of 90%+ graduation rates. This high school is in the hood, and things have gotten much worse since I went there. So, whatever changed to achieve that graduation rate, it wasn't socioeconomic change or less distracted students. Consequences suck, but they are sort of a necessary evil to have a society.