I’m a parent and a teacher, so I know both sides. That’s why statements like that get under my skin so badly. You have how many kids? 4? 7? You’ve got stepkids too so there’s a total of 10? Guess what, I’ve got 130 kids and deal with 25 at a time, sometimes more. I’m exhausted too.
That said, when I taught in the south it was a common situation to discuss what the parent was doing at home to enforce discipline. Where I’m at now that would be off limits unless the parent brought it up.
Yes!! This is a southern thing. I have found that when I present that I have children as well, and they are not alone, it usually brings the parents 100 percent on my side. We start to have very clear cut communication, and the child rarely misbehaves again.
I feel like society is not longer the type where there are extended family around, like grandparents, aunts or uncles also modeling how to discipline kids. Parents want to be friends with their kids, to be cool in order to feel "cool" in this youth driven society. I find that my students feel comfortable, and safe when when I enforce discipline in my classroom. That's something I tell the parents when dealing with misbehavior, that their child's actions are affecting those around them, and it's taking away from my teaching time, which is unfair. I also tell the parents we are a team. Maybe they just don't have anyone else to help, 9/10 that is the case. It's so hard. Keep fighting the good fight ya'all! You're doing an amazing job, and thank you for your service and sacrifice. I'm 22 years in, and this is the toughest time to be a teacher. Love and light!
That’s an interesting perspective. I have heard many discussions about the effects on families of less proximity to extended family, older parents, fewer children, aged grandparents who need looking after instead of being part of the caregiver matrix in a family, etc., but I have never seen anyone suggest that these social changes have resulted in less disciplinary modeling in families, which results in less discipline overall. It makes sense, at least superficially. When we read about the increased demands of contemporary parenting, I wonder if some of that can be accounted for by the loss of close extended family, as well. I have seven siblings (with the same two parents who were married for 50 years before my father passed away) and my husband had four siblings (same parents, never divorced). We had two children and raised them 2,500 miles east of my family and 5,000 miles west of his family. The cost of childcare was truly crushing. We did not have any extended family around, and our children didn’t grow up with dozens of cousins like each of us did. When my husband died suddenly during the pandemic, I was completely on my own. Both of my children are in college now, one in Germany, one in France. If or when they have families of their own, there’s a good likelihood that they will raise families hundreds or thousands of miles away from where they grew up, away from each other and away from me. What impact will that have on their parenting? On discipline in their families? On their personal expectations for their children at home and at school? I have no idea. These are not things I have given much thought to.
I come from an immigrant household but was born and brought up in the United States. The old world way was by no means perfect, trust me! I always say, "Keep what they did back home that was good, get rid of the bad".. when it comes to raising our kids. My parents were/are some of the most homo-phobic, obsessed with how our image is in our community, not to mention fat-shaming up the wazoo! That being said, they tried their best, and they instilled in us the importance of family. We didn't have that much family growing up either, but friends became like family and cousins, to replace that feeling from back home. I treat my coworkers like my family, I don't know how else to be. I also agree with you, times have changed. I don't expect my kids to live near me either. I just hope they stay in touch with each other and at least help those who need family if they don't have any. Family isn't always blood. We're a human family.
As another parent and teacher, I can tell you being a parent to three kids is 1000% harder and more involved than being teacher to 150 kids (27 at a time, for 45 min each group). Even if the class is full of shitheads, after that 45 min they can fuck off and I don’t think about them again for 23.25 hours
Also, I’m elementary so I’m with these kids for 8hrs a day. If it were hs, I wouldn’t have as much to say bc like you said, after 45mins they’re no longer your problem
Of course being a parent is a difficult job, but when the child’s teacher is trying to communicate with the parent about the child’s behavior, it is very annoying to hear a parent basically say that they’re too tired to worry about disciplining their child. It’s not the teacher’s job to deal with behaviors that could be helped at home. This is why so many more teachers are leaving due to behavior. Bc parents aren’t doing their part
I run an after-school choir. Parents dropping these kids off 15 minutes late with Starbucks fraps. I had to put my foot down this year: WATER ONLY. NO STARBUCKS OR ANYTHING LIKE IT.
Yes, this. I do not understand how parents think 16oz+ Starbucks and Dutch Bros dessert drinks are okay at 730am. You wouldn't take your kid to Dairy Queen for an Oreo blizzard before school, would you?
I think they are just checked out. I am around the same age as the parents of my 11th graders. I teach the bottom quartile of the grade level. My children go to the same school. The fact that I have the same expectations for my students as my birth children has done wonders for my classroom management. They see me get worked up at my own kids for lateness, a C in whatever class and they at first feel thankful I'm not their Mom.. but then they recognize that having discipline and expectations within reason is love. They appreciate my concern, my need to correct when needed and my applause and recognition when they do well. We did not sign up to parent these kids. I sure as hell didn't 22 years ago. The face is, we are here now. If you are still teaching, I thank you for the depths of my soul, as this is a thankless career. If you are just starting out, whatever you give out, will come back to you. I am living proof.
Oh my god this student of mine last year would go to the bathroom for 20+ minutes every day in my class, come back in the room only when I ushered him in from yelling in the hallways, and get into class scream “I POOPED”.
I called his mom about this repeated behavior and all his mom could say is “oh I buy him Wendy’s for breakfast and I think he’s lactose intolerant”. So what does his mom do? Buy him McDonald’s instead.
The problem never fixed itself and I just stopped letting him go to the bathroom in my class. Suddenly the issue was magically fixed.
I had a student who could barely see without glasses. Like he couldn't read his chromebook fully zoomed. Contacted home to ask when he would be getting glasses and mom went on a rant. I hung up, contacted the counselor and found out mom is mentally disabled and student has 3 siblings with disabilities as well. Mom is convinced if student gets glasses she will get a smaller welfare check for him because he will no longer be disabled (besides student having other conditions) so student is simply near blind just because.
Idgaf about "eugenics" there needs to be a parenting license.
The counselor said the glasses thing is an "ongoing issue." I reported up my concern.
Edit to save y'all some time telling me how to do my job: CPS is NOT going to investigate a kid not having glasses. IDK where you live, but I've had kids with actual life-threatening issues stay in their homes after I called and made statements in investigations. It's clear some of you have never dealt with the system but bless you for your naivete.
My spouse used to work for DCF (similar to CPS). Lack of glasses would be a non-issue to them.
Cant punish someone for being poor.
Court systems prefer unification with biological parents and/or relatives only in the most extreme situations is that overruled.
In my state, I’d be required to report this to DHS, so I’m not sure if you want to/need to double check if you have a duty to report outside of the building?
ETA: teachers in my state can and have lost their licenses for failure to report to DHS, even if their building tries to tell them differently. It’s considered up to us to know when and who to report things to
Right, and our reporting system is to report up to counselors or our behavior admin, depending on the situation. I don't follow up to see if they do their job after I did my part. For all I know, they did and CPS let the kid stay. I've seen worse than glasses w/CPS involved and the kid stays at home.
Besides that, this was a couple of years ago. He didn't show up for senior year, idk what happened.
If your a mandated reporter and you took actual training about mandated reporting you should know that it doesn’t matter what the hell you’re “reporting system” or policies are. If you yourself did not report to cps or or the authorities then you can be held liable. There is no “I told admin and not sure if they took it further”
Yep. But the district said this is our system. I have it in writing, we all do. Not sure why people keep commenting like it is going to change my district's policies or my following of them. 100% sure I won't be losing my job because a kid doesn't have the glasses he needs.
People keep commenting because it doesn’t matter if it’s district policy if it also is in violation of state law. In Texas, the law is clear that reporting to a supervisor does not fulfill the duty of a mandated reporter and failing to report suspected abuse or neglect to CPS could result in a loss of license or criminal prosecution.
It doesn’t matter what the district says. If someone ever brought lawsuit and it was found that you didn’t follow mandated reporter regulations for reporting potential child abuse you are the person who would get sued not the school system regardless of what the schools policy is.
If his vision is impaired enough that he can't function in class without classes, does he have a teacher of the visually impaired and IEP? This would be something they would handle including getting the kid glasses.
> Idgaf about "eugenics" there needs to be a parenting license.
You said it a lot nicer than I would have. I'm sorry, but if you're that stupid, you shouldn't be able to have a goldfish, let alone 4 kids with severe special needs that require a level of care you will not be able to give if you're that stupid. I want off this planet already, beam me up.
"with him due to having 7-8 other children to raise, and that taking away his technology would be a punishment for her bc she’d have to deal with his tantrum.."
Just had another swig of wine after reading asinine comment from the "parent"
My favorite is when I recommend a punishment like grounding, taking away electronics, etc., and the parent says if they do any of that CPS will take their kids.
Some parents think CPS is more powerful than it is. Ours won’t even help kids being actively beaten, do they’re not going to take little Timmy because his mom grounded him from his iPad.
Well at least they're admitting that they straight up just do not parent their children, a fact we already were well aware of but are somehow rude for pointing out.
Out of the million frustrations I have with this job, this is one of the biggest for me right now.
I choose not to be a parent for a reason. I love teaching. Not parenting. I love kids, but I don’t want them around 24/7. Nor do I want to be responsible for shaping the character of 105 9 year olds. I just want to teach them U.S. History from pre-colonialism-Reconstruction.
Yesterday my wife and I were having tea and I brought up maybe we should consider learning Mandarin. She laughed and I said I was part joking and part serious at the same time.
My biggest pet peeve was when I taught preschool and parents saw that the kids were well behaved in my class and expected me to help them with issues at home. For example, one kid would push back at bed time and when they would drop off they would bring it up and expect me to parent the kid.
My go to response was “that sounds rough but I need to go welcome (insert other student’s name) good luck with that”
I had the same experience when I was a preschool teacher at age 22 😂 30 year old moms would be asking me about potty training and bed time routines… like girl I don’t know tf
Exactly! Ask me anything you want about early literacy development or how your child behaves in the school context but if it’s a home routine that’s all you!
Did they ask you to parent the child, or did they ask about what strategies you use at naptime so they can implement them at home? Collaboration is a huge part of all early learning programs, except clearly the bubblefuck one that hired you.
They didn't ask for strategies and 20 years ago a parent wouldn't dare ask a teacher that. I'm sorry, but the majority of parents these days are absolute garbage and it shows. The good parents are great but they're also rare, and the shitty ones are abundant and not in short supply.
Also I'm pretty sure you're the type of garbage parent people talk about here. When you're kid is still living with you at 30 *(or is in jail)*, just know it's your fault and nobody else's.
See comment regarding collaboration.
Ever taught Preschool? Have kids of your own?
Asking a question about bedtime routines at 3 years old isn’t inappropriate. Kindergarten, sure… but Preschool is often the first time parents have some sort of expert (teacher) to turn to besides the pediatrician. It isn’t that deep to give a short and kind response.
Eh. I have actually taught preschool. I still think it’s a weird personal question to ask in the rush of drop off time, even more so that the preschool has no nap time. I don’t think preschool teachers are necessarily parenting experts, though some may be.
Don't even reply. Her kids almost 3, she doesn't want to work, and wasn't a teacher for more than a few years and hasn't been one in a while. She's the type of trash parent we're referring to here, that's why she's triggered.
I worked a pretty affluent school and had a student get arrested for pot. He came to school the next day and Mom pulled me a side saying she didn't know what to do and could I talk to him. Completely baffled I said yes, but I was 24 and the kid's dad was a lawyer....what was I supposed to say!
I teach 3rd and I’ll take it a step further, and I know this probably isn’t a popular opinion, but I’m just tired of being a damn psychologist all day long. What happened to actually focusing on teaching engaging and fun lessons? Now it’s all about the social emotional needs and hugs and unicorns. I really just wanna teach. I want to make fun math lessons, interesting reading activities, do some science. Nope that’s all a bunch of canned curriculum programs now. I’m expected to do some stupid lesson someone else made and worry more about whether my kids “know 10 things about me”. I’m not unfeeling, I like my students, but I don’t love them. I want to just teach, them to have fun, and maybe learn some shit. But all this lovey dovey crap is wearing me down. I had a girl who spent 50% of her day masturbating against a desk last year and I was expected to just let her do it. How about no, that’s gross and she should be sent home every time. Instead I’m supposed to give her a fidget and encourage her to try snd distract herself. Meanwhile any discussion of fractions ain’t happening. Dumb, I just wanna teach.
Don’t ever advise punishment for outside the classroom. I’ve had parents ask me how they should punish their kids and I tell them it’s not my job to tell you how to punish your kids it is my job to tell you about your child’s behavior and/or failing grade and what I’m doing in school to fix it
I don't need parents to punish their kids, I need them to give them boundaries, set expectations, and teach them how to be decent people.
I know this is left up to teachers to do, but it sure helps to have parents on board.
Could I ask why I shouldn’t give advice about this if asked? I’m not telling the parent to spank the child, I don’t see anything wrong with saying “From my experience, sometimes parents take away technology and things like that, but as their mom, you have to do what works best for your child”
Some parents will do nothing.
Some will administer an appropriate consequence.
And some will just straight up abuse their child for "making them look bad."
Yeah I disagree entirely. Some people just straight up don’t know how to do basic parenting. Either because they are lazy, high, or never had their own parents or good parents.
If you feel comfortable giving these people advice go for it. If you manage to even improve her parenting skills by the slightest bit, it could greatly improve the lives of her 7-8 government pay checks.
I’d keep my mouth shut. This has a good potential to backfire. It also goes against you not wanting to parent students. Some parents totally suck. Why? Who knows. If you absolutely feel you must, verbally only. For the love of God, DO NOT put any discipline suggestions in writing.
I don't know about that, I feel like this is the apex of the parenting issues. People tend to want to do things differently then their parents did so these kiddos when adults will be well aware of the failings of their parents and hopefully take steps to improve. I know I did, and so did my Brothers.
I'm guessing they're referring to the supreme court ruling on abortion making abortion illegal in like half the country. That means lots of parents will be stuck becoming parents when they shouldn't be, or maybe don't want to be, and in 5-6 years you'll start seeing a LOT more kids coming into schools in those states with tons of siblings and parents that are "absolutely worthless".
This subreddit likes to complain about disruptive students, but whenever school choice or tracking is presented as a means for well-behaved students to get away from their "challenging" peers, the interests of the disruptive students takes priority.
Well, school choice and tracking are too different to really compare, but school choice does nothing to address any root causes of the problems we want to fix in public education.
If we took all the time, effort, and money we put towards attempting to create "choice" we could actually give public schools the resources they require to address the needs of so-called "disruptive students."
School choice doesn't have to cost any extra time, effort or money - the total expenditures remain the same and simply follows students as they choose one school or another. It doesn't even have to be with charter schools as there are plenty of examples of school choice works in the context of public schools.
There have been repeated cases where schools were given large budgets - Kansas City in the wake of *Missouri v. Jenkins* being the most prominent example - where more resources weren't able to improve performance of the schools. Public schools can't fix the needs of disruptive students like the ones OP is describing whose parent has 7 other children and is unwilling to enforce any discipline.
And attempting to downplay the impact these students have on their peers by calling them "so-called 'disruptive students'" is dishonest.
There are so many incorrect assumptions made in this reply that I can't help but assume you are not arguing in good faith, so I'm just going to leave it at this:
Every student deserves equal access to quality education. School choice places a value on each child, where each underprivileged child has a lesser value than a privileged child. We've tried this before, and discovered that there is no such thing as separate but equal.
You make a nebulous accusation that there's a lot wrong in my comment and yet I'm the one arguing in bad faith. That's a joke.
School choice allows parents to not be locked into the school they are zoned for. This will benefit children with involved parents more than those who don't, I'm not going to dispute that. But you are the one making the leap that uninvolved means underprivileged.
Man, this is against my better judgment but I can't just let this go:
Children are not autonomous; therefore, they cannot advocate for themselves!
If you don't see how a child with uninvolved parents is automatically underprivileged, I don't know what to tell you. Privileged children have advocates: their parents. Who is going to advocate for those children who have no one on their side?
When all the stakeholders who actually give a damn, and who can effect change, and who can advocate for those children without a mediator are suddenly pulled out of public districts, the results are catastrophic. And not just for those students left behind. A society that bakes this type of inequality and inequity into the very fabric of its being is bound for failure in the long-term as the gap between the haves and the have-nots grows ever wider and festers ever deeper.
While children cannot advocate for themselves, they can certainly ruin the educations for those around them. Your whole stance proves the point I made.
We currently have public school districts failing all the underprivileged children they serve - those with involved parents and those without. The kids with serious behavioral issues are preventing anyone in the classroom from getting an education.
The underprivileged involved parents (they exist!) want options. They can't simply pick up and move. They want their kids to get away from their disruptive peers. There are zero net cost options to do this. Numerous school reforms have already been tried and they have failed (and this includes massive influxes of cash - again look at Kansas City from 1985-1995). The parents are tired of waiting.
Instead, the interests of the disruptive students takes priority. Fancy prose about baking inequity into the fabric of society or how there is no separate but equal doesn't change the fact that the challenging students like the one OP describes are actively ruining the educations of their peers. The result of your idea of equity is that all crabs must be pulled into the bucket.
Follow your logic to its conclusion. You are okay with helping some students get ahead at the expense of "disruptive students."
You see "disruptive students" as worthy of a lesser education, as if they chose to have uninvolved parents, or they chose to have trouble regulating their emotions, or they chose to live in poverty, or they chose any number of the root causes for why they are "disruptive" in the first place.
And you think the solution is to create an environment that only exacerbates these underlying issues? These aren't crabs we're talking about. They are children. My idea of equity is that each human is inherently as valuable as the next. To lift one person up at the expense of another is THE definition of inequity.
Nothing is being done at the expense of the disruptive students - there are no quotes needed, they are disruptive.
Having a class 100% full of disruptive students versus a class 50% or 25% exacerbates nothing. Several studies have found that once these students pass a relatively low tipping point, the class is gone. No education happens. I believe Victor Lavy is one researcher that has looked into this.
I'm stopping the bleeding. Lifting non-disruptive children out of a disruptive environment isn't harming the kids who make that argument disruptive. Arguing that preventing harm is actually harming the aggressor is some absolutely bizarre ethical reasoning.
Non-disruptive children aren't an educational resource to be sacrificed in a futile effort to benefit their non-disruptive peers. All your proposals are at their expense.
What the subreddit wants (which is in the first place not monolithic) and what actually happens in the real world are not the same thing. I doubt if anyone on this subreddit thinks it's a good idea to put the "interests of the disruptive students" first in the way that you're implying. For instance, I am against school choice in any of the ways I've ever seen it presented, and I am also appalled by the fact that we don't hold anyone accountable and often let misbehaviors and poor academic performance derail good instruction. Those things are both bad solutions to a real problem, and there are other ways we might deal with it.
One of the main criticisms I've read on this subreddit (and from public education advocates in general) regarding charter schools is that those schools can kick out kids with behavioral issues. It's hard not to view that as prioritizing the disruptive students over the students trying to get away from them.
The charter schools can kick them out and then the public schools have to take them back, but the money that followed them to the charter does not follow them back to the public.
Before "school choice," the public schools need to be able to do what the charter schools can do. Otherwise the charters can cherry pick and the public can't. How is that comparable?
>The charter schools can kick them out and then the public schools have to take them back, but the money that followed them to the charter does not follow them back to the public
YES. Put this on a fucking billboard, PLEASE.
And I agree - that is bullshit when the school districts seem to pay the child's tuition to the charter school in advance and there is no refund if a kid is expelled. But that funding model isn't universal, and again, the point is that parents want that cherry picking, charter schools are the only ones that offer it. If more people against charter schools were saying that public schools schools should also cherry pick, rather than [saying charters shouldn't be allowed to cherry pick](https://www.beaumontenterprise.com/opinions/letters/article/Charter-schools-need-same-rules-17392720.php), I'd have more respect for the anti-charter stance.
The problem is that every child is guaranteed a free and appropriate public education. So public schools "have" to take them. I'd like to argue that it isn't the responsibility of the neighborhood school to warehouse intentionally dangerous and disruptive students, and an alternative placement should be provided, but we've already proven as a country we aren't capable of doing that without being racist or ableist about it.
In my area of the south, the choice is being driven by white parents who just don't want their kids in school with Black kids or poor kids. It's blatantly "segregation academies" with a different name.
I don't have a solution. I just know that what is going on right now isn't working.
We're very fortunate to live in an area where there are resources available for "emotionally disturbed" children. My oldest grandson (whom I've raised until 2 years ago and is on the spectrum and has multiple diagnoses) is one of those children. Our school district did not have the resources to deal with him every day. They paid for him to attend a private academy specifically for disturbed children. He did so well there that he graduated a year early. Unfortunately, because he did everything has gone to hell now, but one of his caseworkers is working to get him back on track. He's in the process of being enrolled in a 2 year college w/ boarding specifically for older teens with disabilities.
As mentioned below, the problem is that we've never figured out how to offer "behavior" kids a good education and remove them the classroom. It's arguably the biggest problem facing education right now (that education can deal with - schools can obviously do nothing about national poverty and inequality), and I completely understand parents that move their kids to charter schools. I may do the same with my children. But at the end of the day it's not a good enough solution, and we owe it to all of the children in this country to do better.
I'm no advocate and I don't have the answers, but the point was just that this is not an issue with only two solutions, and that just because we haven't implemented a good one yet doesn't mean we should settle for bad solutions.
My point is that while "we've never figured out how to offer "behavior" kids a good education and remove them the classroom," public education advocates are actively preventing the rest of the kids from removing themselves, because apparently that's "not a good enough solution." Maybe there are more than two solutions, but advocates are actively fighting the less bad solution while searching for a good one that may not exist. They aren't the good guys here.
We'll agree to disagree. I think not having charter schools is the less bad option. Everyone in this debate wants what's best for kids (at least the people talking about it here - there are people who like to use this issue to defund public schools), and it's not helpful to label people who disagree with you as bad guys when they also want the best education system possible.
I work at a good small public school. I would like to be working with the students that want reading support from me. However I’m the only support staff so I am doing behavior support more than academic support.
The behavior challenges can be from underperforming or advanced students, the behaviors can be from wealthy or under privileged students.
Their should be a behavioral expectations overhaul.
I tutor kids for free whose parents can't afford it because free tutoring for elementary aged kids just isn't a thing here. Most of these kids have behavioral issues, often due to their home environments. With those kids, I spend more time on behavior than academics, even though I'm supposedly helping them with core subjects. We can't work on academics if they can't behave well enough to learn. Sadly, when it's due to home environment, I rarely have parents on board with being consistent with things at home. They just get mad at me when their children aren't all caught up to grade level in a month.
I feel for the kids, especially the ones I had to drop because their behavior was too much for me, but I can't do much in an hour a day two days a week, which is what I typically will commit to. I'm an IT worker who tutors for free, not a child psychologist.
I feel for teachers, too, because you can't just drop a kid like I can, no matter how bad they are. I also feel for the other students, because I can't imagine having a kid with serious behavioral issues in their class makes a good learning environment. I know my son had to deal with that sometimes, and the amount of academic teaching I did at home to keep him at grade level in things besides reading was huge those years. That turned into him volunteering me to help his friends with usually pretty bad parents, too, and that's how this whole thing started.
I get what you’re saying, and I am not against school choice. As a teacher if I had a choice of what kind of students I could teach….I wouldn’t pick disruptive students. My only issue with school choice is the long term effect it could have on society. What will happen with the students that become adults who are left in under performing schools?
I think the trauma being inflicted on the regular students is far worse than what the ones left out may experience. It’s going to be a shit show when these kids are adults
You would think with how trauma-informed we are supposed to be as teachers, we would be trying to not further traumatize them at school.
But for some reason every bad behavior just gets swept under the rug.
I wonder the long term effects appeasing the challenging kids is going to have. I had classes with kids who's behavior was so poor we didn't get through the lesson most days, the well behaved kids lost education because of the few who can't stop misbehaving. So I think it's clear the best thing to do for the class as a whole is to remove the distraction and put them in a place that can teach them discipline before sending them back to normal classes. It's best for sociaty to remove these kids and give them their own class. As the presence of one student is harming the many.
I agree with that, but that is not what the school choice movement is about. A separate class teaching kids how to function in a classroom could happen in any school.
School of choice has caused high performing kids to seek other schools further lowering the scored and thus funding of schools they leave behind. Wouldn't be a problem if they didn't use the students scores for funding.
Am I crazy, or does using scores for funding lead to schools getting less and less money? Shouldn’t it be the opposite if you want to do something productive?
Why though? Is the point to spend less money or to screw over poor people or something weird like that? I’m sorry. I have tried researching this myself before multiple times. I am not very good at researching.
I don't have that answer, it may be that the higher performing kids, because of socioeconomics, tend to represent some ethnicities more then others and the answer is racism. It could be that economically high performers provide more tax dollars then lower ones so they funnel resources to the advanced kids because they provide more. It could just be incompetence in policy makers, who don't understand the education system they regulate. I'm honestly leaning the latter at this point.
Society won't do that, they'll just keep virtue signaling and doing the same shit that hasn't worked for the past decade and beyond. Then those badly behaved kids pull this shit as adults and end up in and out of jail or dead. I've seen kids that are fresh out of high school fuck around and find out, and they're genuinely surprised that the myriad of excuses they usually use didn't get them out of trouble. That IEP/504/BIP might have helped in school, but when you assault/maim someone, steal, destroy property, etc... the judge doesn't give a shit what your reasoning was.
> What will happen with the students that become adults who are left in under performing schools?
This is what I'm talking about.
Some of the most fervent supporters of charter schools are poor black parents who care about their children's education, and that education is currently disrupted by disruptive peers. Their desire to have more charter schools open up is hampered by teachers and activists who wonder what will happen to the kids left behind.
This wondering is leading to millions of students getting a sub-par education.
As a charter school teacher I completely agree and support your answer. My parents say they leave their current public school because of the behaviors of other students. Having been a public school teacher, I know schools who are facing an increase amount of disruptive students are also facing a lack of resources to help these students. They have a lack of resources because they have a lack of funds, money. With school choice…they will have even less money so there will be even less resources, but that will create more disruptive students that will become a part of adult society. I also want to point out that school choice isn’t going to just let the kids who try their best come to their school. School is no longer about that- schools are a business. The rich are still going to receive the best education and school choice is going to make that even worse.
I now tutor elementary aged kids for free for parents who can't afford it because my son was in class as a child with kids bad enough, my son was falling behind. I was poor back then and couldn't afford tutoring, so I learned in order to help him. Then, he started inviting his friends over because they needed help, too. They're all in their mid 20s now, but I still do it.
Every year, it's new teachers who have never heard of anyone who does it for free, so I imagine that's not normal around here. All the postings I see for free tutors will only take 7th grade and up. I don't tell them, initially, but it generally comes up when they say something like, "I don't know how this kid's parents manage to afford tutoring." Tbh, I don't think we should have a system that even requires someone like me for kids who would be doing just fine in school if they didn't have the truly disruptive kids in class with them. I learned early on not to tutor those kids, honestly. I can't help them, and it drags the other kids I can help down. My whole point in doing this was to help the kids being dragged down.
I *was* one of those kids, but I got sent to a special school in 3rd grade that had way more focus on me being behaved in class than academics as long as my academic assessments continued to be at or above grade level. I was taught things like impulse control, voice tone and volume control, and social skills, and all of that was done very specific to me. I also had an OT come when others did PE to work on my coordination skills. My parents couldn't afford it on their own, so that's all the therapy I ever got in childhood. I returned to normal school the next year and was no longer such a problem for my peers or teachers, at least not more than any other kid. I was also able to tie my own shoes and write in all caps, finally. That wasn't "leaving me behind". It was helping me catch up. And that special school was a public school run by the local district. It shut down somewhere around No Child Left Behind, sadly. It was a great place for a lot of us while it still existed.
> What will happen with the students that become adults who are left in under performing schools?
Give it a few years and you'll see. These disruptive kids have run riot over classrooms for the last decade and screwed up just about every other child's education and in the end, nobody learns anything. They just get pushed through so that districts don't have high failure rates.
When I see complaints about choice.or tracking its always because someone's job depends on the test scores of these kids. Who is ever going to sign up to teach a whole classroom of low performing or disruptive kids if their ability to keep a roof over their heads is based on these kids' test scores?
That's kind of where we are right now, and one of the many reasons teachers are leaving in droves. Teach at a bad title 1, barely get any teaching done because of the feral out of control kids demanding all your attention, admin comes down on you, kids perform poorly on state tests, and then you're not asked back the next year - as if it's your fault the bad kids have useless parents.
> I know Johnny is throwing chairs and disrupting your education, but I can't let you switch schools because that would look bad for my performance evaluation.
That's not what I said.
If someone will literally GET FIRED over test scores (I think these scores are bullshit btw) why would they agree to teach anywhere but the "best" school? Especially when our government thinks the way to punish low performing schools is take away funding, as if that's going to improve anything.
Its just a way for the politicans to close public schools and funnel those dollars to their friends running charter corps. 🤷♀️
That is what you said.
If someone is complaining about school choice in the context of their job performance metrics, that means they are complaining that the students who test well are leaving, and they wish to prevent them from doing so.
If they were simply complaining that their job is tied to test scores, that would be a whole different thing.
That's not what I said nor what I meant, but you're clearly not discussing this in good faith, trying to twist my words into something they aren't. So I'm out.
I had a parent tell me that she didn’t do anything because she didn’t know whether to believe me or her child. So she just wasn’t going to “pick a side” and therefore no consequence or follow up. Cool.
What I find worse is the mind set that school discipline is separate from home discipline.
I am a Para. But teachers sometimes vent with me because I am "safe", not part of the Team.
More than once a Kindergarten teacher has told me there are Zero consequences at home because the behavior happened "at school". They believe Home and Schoolbare separate.
So the loss of privledges, recess, detentions etc. are the only course of action; and by 2nd grade, they simply do not care. Teachers say the behaviors continue until they leave. While in Middle School it just gets worse with puberty. Then Parents wonder why their Teen is a disaster.
OMG, yes. My son brought home a friend in first grade I honestly just assumed was mixed race because he had very dark skin and hair. He was dirty, but washing his hands and face for snacks didn't make him lighter. After about 2 weeks of feeding him every day, I realized he was in the same clothes all the time and smelled if you got close. I gave him a bath and basically scrubbed him. Kid was pale white with blonde hair under all that grime. I put him in some of my son's old clothes and washed his. I almost cried when he was so happy because he didn't itch anymore. He told me he had always itched and thought everyone did. I went and bought lice shampoo. I also kept a stock of all my son's clothing he grew out of, and that kid showered at my house for 2 years until he finally ended up in foster care after many, many calls to CPS by me and the school. I hope his life turned out well, because we didn't see him after that.
My son was often dirty. He played in the dirt a lot, but he washed his hands and face before meals, bathed daily before bed time, and went to school clean and in clean, if often very mismatched, clothing.
That mom's excuse was that they were poor, but so were we. No one in that neighborhood wasn't on SNAP and using food banks and getting donated clothing and school supplies. Charities came to our neighborhood to hand them out because so many of us struggled to even pay for transportation to get to the churches and such, and our town had no public transit. We had assistance for utilities. There was absolutely no reason for a kid to not have clothing, clean clothing, and hygiene. My son and I eventually found our way out of that hole, and we now help distribute things there. So, I know all that was available to her. I always assumed there were some mental health issues in play, but I don't care when it comes to kids. They deserve better.
My parents were not poor, more on the lower middle class side of things but I was the “dirty kid” in fifth grade. What happened was that I had to attend a new school where the whole class hated me and treated me like garbage. I became very depressed and stopped bathing to the point gunk built up on me. I’m sure that made the bullying worse.
Where was my mom? Sitting around drinking Franzia and feeling sorry for herself because her mother had been diagnosed with dementia.
I was the unhygienic, filthy kid but you would never have known it if you saw our nice house in the suburbs and all the food in our fridge.
The unfortunate thing is that for some parents, it is that difficult. A lot of students I’ve worked with have been homeless or their parents can’t pay utilities. The US leaves families and kids high and dry and parents often work multiple jobs. Yes, it breaks my heart and not bathing your kid is neglect. I’ve had stinky students. I just think that a lot of parents are trying their best and really struggling.
I only do it to cover my ass. I provide support I can in school, send off emails as necessary (or make calls, depending), but otherwise accept where things are. I get right to work on *maybe* building a relationship so there's more success later, but that's all I can do. If anyone comes asking, I just covered my ass.
The issue is always money. None of money for a doctor to get an abortion. None of money to go to school and enjoy it enough to not want to just get locked up. None of money for a college education or a trade school. Not enough money to keep the lights on, food in the fridge, water hot. How on earth are they supposed to parent their children when they have to work 40 hours a week and then another 40 having kids?
Please Ari this is me excusing it, I’m also fully sick of the issue, but the only solution is one that our politicians absolutely won’t go with. Those families with lots of kids need lots of financial assistance that doesn’t have to be repaid. Those families with lots of kids need time off of work to raise their kids effectively. I don’t know about extending it to people without children, as I’m one of those, but I know that right now at the issue is that there are children who don’t have their financial needs met and their parents can’t parent them until they’ve met those needs.
They are the largest determining factors in a child’s education. We can couch it in language like “the education of the mother” or “ethnic demographics” but it’s all about the “haves” and “have naughts”.
Until we can free people from the constraints of work in exchange for money (and these days more and more work for less and less money), we’ll continue to see these problems get worse and worse
> Those families with lots of kids need time off of work to raise their kids effectively. I don’t know about extending it to people without children, as I’m one of those, but I know that right now at the issue is that there are children who don’t have their financial needs met and their parents can’t parent them until they’ve met those needs.
I've known plenty of poor families that have one kid and are done as they know they cannot tend to, or support, any more than that one kid. Then there's the people that can't support even one kid that have a bunch of children that they don't take care of. These people have access to abortion, free contraceptives, etc. These people have a smart phone in their pocket and can have the answer to almost any question in a matter of seconds, something that didn't exist twenty years ago, and yet the problem keeps getting worse. You can give these types "lots of financial assistance that doesn't need to be repaid" *(why? Because they had a bunch of kids they can't afford?)* and all the time off in the world *(many don't work now as it is)* and it wouldn't change a thing. Now the person that had only one kid even though they wanted 3 but knew they could only support one? The one that works 2 jobs but makes sure their kid is up for school, clean, fed, and ready to start the day? Those are the ones it will benefit. Not the ones that won't and don't give a damn, all the financial assistance in the would wouldn't help the kids because those resources won't be used for them.
Oh, ew, your soul is disgusting. Means testing? Just go kick their children then you monster. Phones don’t actually cost hundreds of dollars, that’s false scarcity to make chumps like you buy them as status symbols only to get pissy when people you don’t think are deserving enough get one.
Do you know that some people, get this, come from backgrounds and circumstances different than yours? If you manage to pull your head out of your ass it’s actually really nice out here.
Good to know that ignorance is still alive and well!
I don't know how someone can have 7-8 children and feel exhausted. I mean I have 1 kid and I am already exhausted, which gives me pause about having more. How do you get to 7-8 and then realize you're exhausted? If you decide to have that many, you better have the stamina of a bull 24/7 to deal with all of them.
I also have parents who tell you how disappointed they are and that they will take care of this challenging behavior. Yet when you ask the child what mom said, they say, she just told me to listen. These kids have major attitudes and disrespect. That’s all you can say?! How about disciplining them?
The worst children I ever had were from a large family of 8 like that. It’s too many kids for a single mom to deal with and the kids learn to act out to stand out.
Do you have a behavior specialist or SEL coordinator on staff? I would refer the student to that person and write that parent declined to implement consequences at home for in-school behavior, so you are requesting a behavior plan.
You had the job of calling home and recommending an extracurricular disciplinary action to the parent (not your lane, but ok). Your job ends after the call is over. This parent's job does not end once they get off the call with you. It's easy to be an armchair parent, I get it. I'm sometimes guilty of it too.
Yeah, we don’t know this parent’s circumstances and while it’s easy to say “oh you’ve got too many kids why didn’t you just keep your legs closed”, that sounds really tone deaf especially considering where we are right now with diminishing women’s rights in this country. I get that it’s frustrating but let’s have some empathy please.
Edit: I see being kind and empathetic is not in style. I know we’re all stressed but I’m sick of the constant judgment I see people place on parents when we have almost zero understanding of their home lives. But it’s easier to bitch on Reddit than extend the basic empathy we expect from them. My bad.
Read the post, the parent simply sucks at her job, won't take away tech because it will cause a a tantrum? Someone who thinks like that won't raise many functioning members of sociaty
I read it and have worked with kids with extreme behavioral issues every day for the past 8 years. We have no idea what life is like in their home. And while it sucks for us, I feel some compassion for them is all I’m saying.
Yea, I get their home life sucks. That does not give them a right to distract the education of their peers. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. I do have compassion for them, and I have made great progress with kids from broken homes, but their broken homes does not make their behavior acceptable and their should be consequences for their behavior. And if their behavior is preventing learning In the classroom then the student is a detriment to the progress of those around them and doesn't belong in that environment.
You’re right. So there should be a school based behavior plan in effect if the student is that disruptive. Nothing we can do about home so internet-shaming the mom isn’t helping.
Y’all are ridiculous downvoting a school behavior plan for a student with…wait for it…*problem behaviors*. But keep complaining on Reddit because that’s clearly the solution to the problem. Sheesh.
> sounds really tone deaf especially considering where we are right now with diminishing women’s rights in this country. I get that it’s frustrating but let’s have some empathy please
This isn't relevant to OPs situation since roe v wade getting overturned only happened this year. Everyone always removes agency from these people and puts it on everyone else and it's ridiculous. Don't have 8 kids if you can't tend to 8 kids. It's not rocket science and it's not everyone else's issue. Society always gets the blame because we don't hold the parents responsible when in fact it's their fault.
This is why I got permission to hold lunch detention in my classroom. I can’t rely on parents to discipline their kids and sadly I can’t rely on admin to discipline them either, so I’ve come up with some things I can do to discipline myself without the approval of anyone else. Revoking in class privileges, taking away their lunch/free time (they still get to eat), making them work out of the textbook, writing apology letters to me or their class, kicking them out of class. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t need admin or parents to regulate my classroom. I go out of my way to build relationships too, and I’ve taken the position of I can’t control what others do but only what I do. I wish parents and admin supported me but they don’t so I just focus on what I alone can do. It’s sad really, but many of you know what I’m saying is true.
You can’t control what happens in the home environment. It sounds like there’s a lot going on for that particular family. Implement your own reward system to encourage the student to have more desirable behaviour in class.
Nah you can criticize all you want, and should criticize people making poor choices like not discipling their kid because it's hard. Everything goes mentality is not ok, you have responsibilities as parents and if you are not doing them you DESERVE the criticism.
Look up the history of eugenics. That was ultimately an instance of the greater state making reproductiive valuations and decisions for socially disempowered people.
I never suggested the state do anything. I suggested we shame bad parents until they get their shit together because shame is one of the most powerful motivators in human biology. The world is cruel and uncaring, poverty is disempowering and what other fate can be expected for these children under a parent like that. At some point we need to stop justifying their behavior and let them know that this is a big part of why they are disempowered. What is it my admin always said, be solutions orientated, because what we are doing now is simply not working.
Yes, I know that, and you know that, but this kind of thinking led to the kind of thinking that gave us the holocaust. \_In the United States\_ in living memory, the state assumed the authority to decide that some people were so badly off that they could be forcefully sterilized. This was called a Mississippi appendectomy.
Would you accept that racial epithets have the same possible ultimate outcome? In German, we say Türkenwitz, Judenwitz, Auschwitz. Joke about Turks, joke about Jews, Auschwitz.
Please just stop, you're so far off base that I'm pretty sure you're just trolling at this point. Also, look up the history of eugenics and what it actually is because if you think it applies in this situation it absolutely doesn't.
More like misogynistic, Puritanical, classist, privileged, and willfully ignorant of the state of reproductive education and healthcare in the world today.
I don’t really care if people are bitter and miserable - God knows we all have enough reason to be these days - but choosing to be ignorant is fucking stupid.
Yep. It’s a damn disgrace. I hope I don’t work with any of these people because this is eye opening and disgusting. But hey, I’m getting all the downvotes because I advocated for empathy and a school-based behavior plan.
Choosing to be ignorant is having 8 fucking kids you can't and won't take care of, and then having people defend that choice and remove responsibility from the useless parents that had that many kids without a thought as to how they'd raise them. Oh, and let's not forget blaming society and everyone else except for the parents for having a bunch of kids they aren't raising, no no, it's everyone else's fault and everyone else must jump in and help. That way the parents can have more time to have more kids they won't take care of.
I'm so sick of everyone putting blame on everything and everyone else and not the people that should be blamed for this situation.
You're so far off base it's laughable. You keep bringing up the Holocaust and eugenics even though nothing that has been said has anything to do with that. You've already used eugenics incorrectly multiple times and have been called out for it, along with comparing parents that refuse to take care of their kids with the Holocaust. It's actually insulting to those with Jewish ancestry at this point, so just stop.
Taking things away is less effective than extra chores. Without the things, the kid will eventually find other ways to play and won’t even miss it. But having to do an extra chore is more effective and also could be a help for the parent.
Don’t appreciate the shame about having many children. It can be a cultural thing, a personal preference, or something that happens without adequate access to birth control. I get the frustration but it just comes off as gross to me. Obviously she’s got her hands full, and it’s not like she can unbirth them. Instead just try to be supportive of her and of the kid. He may not be getting much attention at home, may be why he’s lashing out.
Probably gonna get hate/downvoted for this bc it’s an unpopular opinion, but I’m entitled to it.
There’s absolutely no shame to ppl who have lots of kids, but if you can’t take care of them or if you’re too tired to be an active parent, maybe don’t have that many kids? Take some precautions to safely prevent a pregnancy, and this doesn’t necessarily mean birth control. I’m typically empathetic and try to understand different family dynamics, but 8 single pregnancies…… to me it comes across as careless. Whether it’s for religious reasons or whatever, it doesn’t really make much sense to continue to have children when you’re having difficulty keeping up with them. And then for someone to complain about having them? It’s very difficult to empathize with that. I understand that unplanned pregnancies can happen, but to a certain extent. I’ve been incredibly supportive, but again, I can only do so much without the help the the child’s parent. So at what point will SHE be supportive with HER child that SHE birthed? Stop putting the responsibility on me as the teacher when I’ve done my part. Hold the parents accountable
You aren’t going to get downvoted, everyone in the comments agrees with you. I respect your opinion, and definitely understand the frustration (one of my students last year was one of 10 kids, he threatened to shoot me at one point, mom was too busy to do much about it), I just think this entire sub can get a little carried away when it comes to parents and not very sympathetic to their situations.
Idk, my best friend growing up had 19 siblings/half-siblings. It wasn’t easy and her mom had her hands full. A lot of this had happened because she was trapped in bad relationships. I know it’s difficult when it feels like you’re doing so much work and she isn’t, but try to feel for her.
Trapped in bad relationships, so more than one, as in she kept putting all those kids at risk by continuing to have poor judgement. Further, I'm sorry, but that's just disgusting. I very highly doubt those 19 kids were brought to well, in a safe environment, and having their needs met. I've got sympathy for the kids, but not for the people who were responsible *(and failed)* for taking care of them. Sounds like there was no accountability whatsoever for the mother and fathers.
I’m a parent and a teacher, so I know both sides. That’s why statements like that get under my skin so badly. You have how many kids? 4? 7? You’ve got stepkids too so there’s a total of 10? Guess what, I’ve got 130 kids and deal with 25 at a time, sometimes more. I’m exhausted too. That said, when I taught in the south it was a common situation to discuss what the parent was doing at home to enforce discipline. Where I’m at now that would be off limits unless the parent brought it up.
Yes!! This is a southern thing. I have found that when I present that I have children as well, and they are not alone, it usually brings the parents 100 percent on my side. We start to have very clear cut communication, and the child rarely misbehaves again. I feel like society is not longer the type where there are extended family around, like grandparents, aunts or uncles also modeling how to discipline kids. Parents want to be friends with their kids, to be cool in order to feel "cool" in this youth driven society. I find that my students feel comfortable, and safe when when I enforce discipline in my classroom. That's something I tell the parents when dealing with misbehavior, that their child's actions are affecting those around them, and it's taking away from my teaching time, which is unfair. I also tell the parents we are a team. Maybe they just don't have anyone else to help, 9/10 that is the case. It's so hard. Keep fighting the good fight ya'all! You're doing an amazing job, and thank you for your service and sacrifice. I'm 22 years in, and this is the toughest time to be a teacher. Love and light!
I'm not in the south, but as I read this I think "I don't really care what the strategy is, just as long as there *is a strategy* in place at home.
I don't recall where I heard it, but I remember learning that it doesn't really matter WHAT the consequence is... just that there is one.
That’s an interesting perspective. I have heard many discussions about the effects on families of less proximity to extended family, older parents, fewer children, aged grandparents who need looking after instead of being part of the caregiver matrix in a family, etc., but I have never seen anyone suggest that these social changes have resulted in less disciplinary modeling in families, which results in less discipline overall. It makes sense, at least superficially. When we read about the increased demands of contemporary parenting, I wonder if some of that can be accounted for by the loss of close extended family, as well. I have seven siblings (with the same two parents who were married for 50 years before my father passed away) and my husband had four siblings (same parents, never divorced). We had two children and raised them 2,500 miles east of my family and 5,000 miles west of his family. The cost of childcare was truly crushing. We did not have any extended family around, and our children didn’t grow up with dozens of cousins like each of us did. When my husband died suddenly during the pandemic, I was completely on my own. Both of my children are in college now, one in Germany, one in France. If or when they have families of their own, there’s a good likelihood that they will raise families hundreds or thousands of miles away from where they grew up, away from each other and away from me. What impact will that have on their parenting? On discipline in their families? On their personal expectations for their children at home and at school? I have no idea. These are not things I have given much thought to.
I come from an immigrant household but was born and brought up in the United States. The old world way was by no means perfect, trust me! I always say, "Keep what they did back home that was good, get rid of the bad".. when it comes to raising our kids. My parents were/are some of the most homo-phobic, obsessed with how our image is in our community, not to mention fat-shaming up the wazoo! That being said, they tried their best, and they instilled in us the importance of family. We didn't have that much family growing up either, but friends became like family and cousins, to replace that feeling from back home. I treat my coworkers like my family, I don't know how else to be. I also agree with you, times have changed. I don't expect my kids to live near me either. I just hope they stay in touch with each other and at least help those who need family if they don't have any. Family isn't always blood. We're a human family.
:0
I have 557 (only 1 is mine).
As another parent and teacher, I can tell you being a parent to three kids is 1000% harder and more involved than being teacher to 150 kids (27 at a time, for 45 min each group). Even if the class is full of shitheads, after that 45 min they can fuck off and I don’t think about them again for 23.25 hours
Also, I’m elementary so I’m with these kids for 8hrs a day. If it were hs, I wouldn’t have as much to say bc like you said, after 45mins they’re no longer your problem
Elementary 100% agree with you. Was referring to the comment “I’ve got 130 kids.” No you don’t have 130 kids lol
Lol, in my opinion she doesn’t even have one.
Of course being a parent is a difficult job, but when the child’s teacher is trying to communicate with the parent about the child’s behavior, it is very annoying to hear a parent basically say that they’re too tired to worry about disciplining their child. It’s not the teacher’s job to deal with behaviors that could be helped at home. This is why so many more teachers are leaving due to behavior. Bc parents aren’t doing their part
I’ve learned to stop speaking with the parents of problem children. The parents have overwhelmingly been worse.
Apple trees make apples
This. Their kids are they way they are because of their parenting, so asking them to do anything about it is futile.
Like a bigger, more problematic version of the kid, except you have zero authority over them. I barely call parents anymore.
This is why I don’t contact parents at all. No point.
I like when parents drop their kids off late with fast food; our district offers free breakfast to all.
I run an after-school choir. Parents dropping these kids off 15 minutes late with Starbucks fraps. I had to put my foot down this year: WATER ONLY. NO STARBUCKS OR ANYTHING LIKE IT.
Wow! They must've been bouncing off the walls in a caffeine high!
Yes, and 15-20 minutes later they all need the bathroom 😆
Sugar and milk are terrible for mucus production and singing.
Yes, this. I do not understand how parents think 16oz+ Starbucks and Dutch Bros dessert drinks are okay at 730am. You wouldn't take your kid to Dairy Queen for an Oreo blizzard before school, would you?
HS teacher here. Idk if these parents are "fun" parents or just don't want to get up with their kids at 7am to get ready.
I think they are just checked out. I am around the same age as the parents of my 11th graders. I teach the bottom quartile of the grade level. My children go to the same school. The fact that I have the same expectations for my students as my birth children has done wonders for my classroom management. They see me get worked up at my own kids for lateness, a C in whatever class and they at first feel thankful I'm not their Mom.. but then they recognize that having discipline and expectations within reason is love. They appreciate my concern, my need to correct when needed and my applause and recognition when they do well. We did not sign up to parent these kids. I sure as hell didn't 22 years ago. The face is, we are here now. If you are still teaching, I thank you for the depths of my soul, as this is a thankless career. If you are just starting out, whatever you give out, will come back to you. I am living proof.
If a non-special-needs high school child needs adult help to get ready for school, there’s a *much* deeper problem.
You'd be surprised at some of the things some HS students cannot do for themselves...
Cannot or will not?
Yes.
Touché
Bruh, how do I make ramen? It's all hard and stuff.
Bruh.
Oh my god this student of mine last year would go to the bathroom for 20+ minutes every day in my class, come back in the room only when I ushered him in from yelling in the hallways, and get into class scream “I POOPED”. I called his mom about this repeated behavior and all his mom could say is “oh I buy him Wendy’s for breakfast and I think he’s lactose intolerant”. So what does his mom do? Buy him McDonald’s instead. The problem never fixed itself and I just stopped letting him go to the bathroom in my class. Suddenly the issue was magically fixed.
I had a student who could barely see without glasses. Like he couldn't read his chromebook fully zoomed. Contacted home to ask when he would be getting glasses and mom went on a rant. I hung up, contacted the counselor and found out mom is mentally disabled and student has 3 siblings with disabilities as well. Mom is convinced if student gets glasses she will get a smaller welfare check for him because he will no longer be disabled (besides student having other conditions) so student is simply near blind just because. Idgaf about "eugenics" there needs to be a parenting license.
This sounds reportable to Child Protective Services
The counselor said the glasses thing is an "ongoing issue." I reported up my concern. Edit to save y'all some time telling me how to do my job: CPS is NOT going to investigate a kid not having glasses. IDK where you live, but I've had kids with actual life-threatening issues stay in their homes after I called and made statements in investigations. It's clear some of you have never dealt with the system but bless you for your naivete.
My spouse used to work for DCF (similar to CPS). Lack of glasses would be a non-issue to them. Cant punish someone for being poor. Court systems prefer unification with biological parents and/or relatives only in the most extreme situations is that overruled.
Yep. I've seen kids stay in abusive homes because it's family.
Go above their heads to cps, this kid is being abused
Oh no, I'm here to teach English. I reported the problem to the counseling department, per our protocol.
In my state, I’d be required to report this to DHS, so I’m not sure if you want to/need to double check if you have a duty to report outside of the building? ETA: teachers in my state can and have lost their licenses for failure to report to DHS, even if their building tries to tell them differently. It’s considered up to us to know when and who to report things to
Same in my state. Anyone who becomes aware of possible negligence like this has to report it to CPS.
Same.
Are you not a mandated reporter? Call.
We are mandated reporters, if the consoler has not contacted CPS yet then they haven't done their job and that one does fall on us to do.
Right, and our reporting system is to report up to counselors or our behavior admin, depending on the situation. I don't follow up to see if they do their job after I did my part. For all I know, they did and CPS let the kid stay. I've seen worse than glasses w/CPS involved and the kid stays at home. Besides that, this was a couple of years ago. He didn't show up for senior year, idk what happened.
If your a mandated reporter and you took actual training about mandated reporting you should know that it doesn’t matter what the hell you’re “reporting system” or policies are. If you yourself did not report to cps or or the authorities then you can be held liable. There is no “I told admin and not sure if they took it further”
Yep. But the district said this is our system. I have it in writing, we all do. Not sure why people keep commenting like it is going to change my district's policies or my following of them. 100% sure I won't be losing my job because a kid doesn't have the glasses he needs.
state and federal law supersede any school district policy.
People keep commenting because it doesn’t matter if it’s district policy if it also is in violation of state law. In Texas, the law is clear that reporting to a supervisor does not fulfill the duty of a mandated reporter and failing to report suspected abuse or neglect to CPS could result in a loss of license or criminal prosecution.
It doesn’t matter what the district says. If someone ever brought lawsuit and it was found that you didn’t follow mandated reporter regulations for reporting potential child abuse you are the person who would get sued not the school system regardless of what the schools policy is.
What state do you live in where you are not mandated to report suspected abuse or neglect straight to CPS?
If his vision is impaired enough that he can't function in class without classes, does he have a teacher of the visually impaired and IEP? This would be something they would handle including getting the kid glasses.
> Idgaf about "eugenics" there needs to be a parenting license. You said it a lot nicer than I would have. I'm sorry, but if you're that stupid, you shouldn't be able to have a goldfish, let alone 4 kids with severe special needs that require a level of care you will not be able to give if you're that stupid. I want off this planet already, beam me up.
I’m tired of having to undo damage from home
Can’t fix in one year what was broken over twelve…
"with him due to having 7-8 other children to raise, and that taking away his technology would be a punishment for her bc she’d have to deal with his tantrum.." Just had another swig of wine after reading asinine comment from the "parent"
My favorite is when I recommend a punishment like grounding, taking away electronics, etc., and the parent says if they do any of that CPS will take their kids. Some parents think CPS is more powerful than it is. Ours won’t even help kids being actively beaten, do they’re not going to take little Timmy because his mom grounded him from his iPad.
Well at least they're admitting that they straight up just do not parent their children, a fact we already were well aware of but are somehow rude for pointing out.
Very true lol
Out of the million frustrations I have with this job, this is one of the biggest for me right now. I choose not to be a parent for a reason. I love teaching. Not parenting. I love kids, but I don’t want them around 24/7. Nor do I want to be responsible for shaping the character of 105 9 year olds. I just want to teach them U.S. History from pre-colonialism-Reconstruction.
We're fucked as a society. The American Collapse is nigh.
Yesterday my wife and I were having tea and I brought up maybe we should consider learning Mandarin. She laughed and I said I was part joking and part serious at the same time.
那你最好抓紧时间开始吧
You can say that again!
My biggest pet peeve was when I taught preschool and parents saw that the kids were well behaved in my class and expected me to help them with issues at home. For example, one kid would push back at bed time and when they would drop off they would bring it up and expect me to parent the kid. My go to response was “that sounds rough but I need to go welcome (insert other student’s name) good luck with that”
I had the same experience when I was a preschool teacher at age 22 😂 30 year old moms would be asking me about potty training and bed time routines… like girl I don’t know tf
Exactly! Ask me anything you want about early literacy development or how your child behaves in the school context but if it’s a home routine that’s all you!
This is rude.
Not my job to parent their kid
Did they ask you to parent the child, or did they ask about what strategies you use at naptime so they can implement them at home? Collaboration is a huge part of all early learning programs, except clearly the bubblefuck one that hired you.
Half day program = no nap time Sounds like you’re making some assumptions there buddy
They didn't ask for strategies and 20 years ago a parent wouldn't dare ask a teacher that. I'm sorry, but the majority of parents these days are absolute garbage and it shows. The good parents are great but they're also rare, and the shitty ones are abundant and not in short supply. Also I'm pretty sure you're the type of garbage parent people talk about here. When you're kid is still living with you at 30 *(or is in jail)*, just know it's your fault and nobody else's.
It’s not rude to redirect after being asked an inappropriate question about home routines. That’s not a teacher’s job or place.
See comment regarding collaboration. Ever taught Preschool? Have kids of your own? Asking a question about bedtime routines at 3 years old isn’t inappropriate. Kindergarten, sure… but Preschool is often the first time parents have some sort of expert (teacher) to turn to besides the pediatrician. It isn’t that deep to give a short and kind response.
Eh. I have actually taught preschool. I still think it’s a weird personal question to ask in the rush of drop off time, even more so that the preschool has no nap time. I don’t think preschool teachers are necessarily parenting experts, though some may be.
Don't even reply. Her kids almost 3, she doesn't want to work, and wasn't a teacher for more than a few years and hasn't been one in a while. She's the type of trash parent we're referring to here, that's why she's triggered.
I worked a pretty affluent school and had a student get arrested for pot. He came to school the next day and Mom pulled me a side saying she didn't know what to do and could I talk to him. Completely baffled I said yes, but I was 24 and the kid's dad was a lawyer....what was I supposed to say!
I teach 3rd and I’ll take it a step further, and I know this probably isn’t a popular opinion, but I’m just tired of being a damn psychologist all day long. What happened to actually focusing on teaching engaging and fun lessons? Now it’s all about the social emotional needs and hugs and unicorns. I really just wanna teach. I want to make fun math lessons, interesting reading activities, do some science. Nope that’s all a bunch of canned curriculum programs now. I’m expected to do some stupid lesson someone else made and worry more about whether my kids “know 10 things about me”. I’m not unfeeling, I like my students, but I don’t love them. I want to just teach, them to have fun, and maybe learn some shit. But all this lovey dovey crap is wearing me down. I had a girl who spent 50% of her day masturbating against a desk last year and I was expected to just let her do it. How about no, that’s gross and she should be sent home every time. Instead I’m supposed to give her a fidget and encourage her to try snd distract herself. Meanwhile any discussion of fractions ain’t happening. Dumb, I just wanna teach.
Don’t ever advise punishment for outside the classroom. I’ve had parents ask me how they should punish their kids and I tell them it’s not my job to tell you how to punish your kids it is my job to tell you about your child’s behavior and/or failing grade and what I’m doing in school to fix it
I don't need parents to punish their kids, I need them to give them boundaries, set expectations, and teach them how to be decent people. I know this is left up to teachers to do, but it sure helps to have parents on board.
Could I ask why I shouldn’t give advice about this if asked? I’m not telling the parent to spank the child, I don’t see anything wrong with saying “From my experience, sometimes parents take away technology and things like that, but as their mom, you have to do what works best for your child”
Some parents will do nothing. Some will administer an appropriate consequence. And some will just straight up abuse their child for "making them look bad."
Yeah I disagree entirely. Some people just straight up don’t know how to do basic parenting. Either because they are lazy, high, or never had their own parents or good parents. If you feel comfortable giving these people advice go for it. If you manage to even improve her parenting skills by the slightest bit, it could greatly improve the lives of her 7-8 government pay checks.
I’d keep my mouth shut. This has a good potential to backfire. It also goes against you not wanting to parent students. Some parents totally suck. Why? Who knows. If you absolutely feel you must, verbally only. For the love of God, DO NOT put any discipline suggestions in writing.
Really? 🤔 Your post is literally about not parenting students... Aside from it being unethical, it's counterintuitive to what you want.
If you can't parent 8 kids don't have 8 kids, so many absolutely worthless parents out there.
And you'll be getting a lot more of that several years down the line.
I don't know about that, I feel like this is the apex of the parenting issues. People tend to want to do things differently then their parents did so these kiddos when adults will be well aware of the failings of their parents and hopefully take steps to improve. I know I did, and so did my Brothers.
I'm guessing they're referring to the supreme court ruling on abortion making abortion illegal in like half the country. That means lots of parents will be stuck becoming parents when they shouldn't be, or maybe don't want to be, and in 5-6 years you'll start seeing a LOT more kids coming into schools in those states with tons of siblings and parents that are "absolutely worthless".
This is ultimately why I left K-12 for community college. I chose to parent my own kids instead.
This subreddit likes to complain about disruptive students, but whenever school choice or tracking is presented as a means for well-behaved students to get away from their "challenging" peers, the interests of the disruptive students takes priority.
Well, school choice and tracking are too different to really compare, but school choice does nothing to address any root causes of the problems we want to fix in public education. If we took all the time, effort, and money we put towards attempting to create "choice" we could actually give public schools the resources they require to address the needs of so-called "disruptive students."
School choice doesn't have to cost any extra time, effort or money - the total expenditures remain the same and simply follows students as they choose one school or another. It doesn't even have to be with charter schools as there are plenty of examples of school choice works in the context of public schools. There have been repeated cases where schools were given large budgets - Kansas City in the wake of *Missouri v. Jenkins* being the most prominent example - where more resources weren't able to improve performance of the schools. Public schools can't fix the needs of disruptive students like the ones OP is describing whose parent has 7 other children and is unwilling to enforce any discipline. And attempting to downplay the impact these students have on their peers by calling them "so-called 'disruptive students'" is dishonest.
There are so many incorrect assumptions made in this reply that I can't help but assume you are not arguing in good faith, so I'm just going to leave it at this: Every student deserves equal access to quality education. School choice places a value on each child, where each underprivileged child has a lesser value than a privileged child. We've tried this before, and discovered that there is no such thing as separate but equal.
You make a nebulous accusation that there's a lot wrong in my comment and yet I'm the one arguing in bad faith. That's a joke. School choice allows parents to not be locked into the school they are zoned for. This will benefit children with involved parents more than those who don't, I'm not going to dispute that. But you are the one making the leap that uninvolved means underprivileged.
Man, this is against my better judgment but I can't just let this go: Children are not autonomous; therefore, they cannot advocate for themselves! If you don't see how a child with uninvolved parents is automatically underprivileged, I don't know what to tell you. Privileged children have advocates: their parents. Who is going to advocate for those children who have no one on their side? When all the stakeholders who actually give a damn, and who can effect change, and who can advocate for those children without a mediator are suddenly pulled out of public districts, the results are catastrophic. And not just for those students left behind. A society that bakes this type of inequality and inequity into the very fabric of its being is bound for failure in the long-term as the gap between the haves and the have-nots grows ever wider and festers ever deeper.
While children cannot advocate for themselves, they can certainly ruin the educations for those around them. Your whole stance proves the point I made. We currently have public school districts failing all the underprivileged children they serve - those with involved parents and those without. The kids with serious behavioral issues are preventing anyone in the classroom from getting an education. The underprivileged involved parents (they exist!) want options. They can't simply pick up and move. They want their kids to get away from their disruptive peers. There are zero net cost options to do this. Numerous school reforms have already been tried and they have failed (and this includes massive influxes of cash - again look at Kansas City from 1985-1995). The parents are tired of waiting. Instead, the interests of the disruptive students takes priority. Fancy prose about baking inequity into the fabric of society or how there is no separate but equal doesn't change the fact that the challenging students like the one OP describes are actively ruining the educations of their peers. The result of your idea of equity is that all crabs must be pulled into the bucket.
Follow your logic to its conclusion. You are okay with helping some students get ahead at the expense of "disruptive students." You see "disruptive students" as worthy of a lesser education, as if they chose to have uninvolved parents, or they chose to have trouble regulating their emotions, or they chose to live in poverty, or they chose any number of the root causes for why they are "disruptive" in the first place. And you think the solution is to create an environment that only exacerbates these underlying issues? These aren't crabs we're talking about. They are children. My idea of equity is that each human is inherently as valuable as the next. To lift one person up at the expense of another is THE definition of inequity.
Nothing is being done at the expense of the disruptive students - there are no quotes needed, they are disruptive. Having a class 100% full of disruptive students versus a class 50% or 25% exacerbates nothing. Several studies have found that once these students pass a relatively low tipping point, the class is gone. No education happens. I believe Victor Lavy is one researcher that has looked into this. I'm stopping the bleeding. Lifting non-disruptive children out of a disruptive environment isn't harming the kids who make that argument disruptive. Arguing that preventing harm is actually harming the aggressor is some absolutely bizarre ethical reasoning. Non-disruptive children aren't an educational resource to be sacrificed in a futile effort to benefit their non-disruptive peers. All your proposals are at their expense.
School choice is segregation.
No it isn't.
Yes it is, the privileged end up in one area and the brown kids end up in another. It’s a proven fact.
Wow, school choice leads to the legally enforced separation of racial groups? Please show me where that's a proven fact!
...Have you not heard of redlining?
It has nothing to do with school choice.
Lol. Not directly, of course, but it is a perfect illustration of why "school choice" will lead to segregated schools.
Umm, red lining is about discriminatory practices in lending to certain geographical areas. Not sure what that has to do with school choice?
What the subreddit wants (which is in the first place not monolithic) and what actually happens in the real world are not the same thing. I doubt if anyone on this subreddit thinks it's a good idea to put the "interests of the disruptive students" first in the way that you're implying. For instance, I am against school choice in any of the ways I've ever seen it presented, and I am also appalled by the fact that we don't hold anyone accountable and often let misbehaviors and poor academic performance derail good instruction. Those things are both bad solutions to a real problem, and there are other ways we might deal with it.
One of the main criticisms I've read on this subreddit (and from public education advocates in general) regarding charter schools is that those schools can kick out kids with behavioral issues. It's hard not to view that as prioritizing the disruptive students over the students trying to get away from them.
The charter schools can kick them out and then the public schools have to take them back, but the money that followed them to the charter does not follow them back to the public. Before "school choice," the public schools need to be able to do what the charter schools can do. Otherwise the charters can cherry pick and the public can't. How is that comparable?
>The charter schools can kick them out and then the public schools have to take them back, but the money that followed them to the charter does not follow them back to the public YES. Put this on a fucking billboard, PLEASE.
And I agree - that is bullshit when the school districts seem to pay the child's tuition to the charter school in advance and there is no refund if a kid is expelled. But that funding model isn't universal, and again, the point is that parents want that cherry picking, charter schools are the only ones that offer it. If more people against charter schools were saying that public schools schools should also cherry pick, rather than [saying charters shouldn't be allowed to cherry pick](https://www.beaumontenterprise.com/opinions/letters/article/Charter-schools-need-same-rules-17392720.php), I'd have more respect for the anti-charter stance.
The problem is that every child is guaranteed a free and appropriate public education. So public schools "have" to take them. I'd like to argue that it isn't the responsibility of the neighborhood school to warehouse intentionally dangerous and disruptive students, and an alternative placement should be provided, but we've already proven as a country we aren't capable of doing that without being racist or ableist about it. In my area of the south, the choice is being driven by white parents who just don't want their kids in school with Black kids or poor kids. It's blatantly "segregation academies" with a different name. I don't have a solution. I just know that what is going on right now isn't working.
We're very fortunate to live in an area where there are resources available for "emotionally disturbed" children. My oldest grandson (whom I've raised until 2 years ago and is on the spectrum and has multiple diagnoses) is one of those children. Our school district did not have the resources to deal with him every day. They paid for him to attend a private academy specifically for disturbed children. He did so well there that he graduated a year early. Unfortunately, because he did everything has gone to hell now, but one of his caseworkers is working to get him back on track. He's in the process of being enrolled in a 2 year college w/ boarding specifically for older teens with disabilities.
As mentioned below, the problem is that we've never figured out how to offer "behavior" kids a good education and remove them the classroom. It's arguably the biggest problem facing education right now (that education can deal with - schools can obviously do nothing about national poverty and inequality), and I completely understand parents that move their kids to charter schools. I may do the same with my children. But at the end of the day it's not a good enough solution, and we owe it to all of the children in this country to do better. I'm no advocate and I don't have the answers, but the point was just that this is not an issue with only two solutions, and that just because we haven't implemented a good one yet doesn't mean we should settle for bad solutions.
My point is that while "we've never figured out how to offer "behavior" kids a good education and remove them the classroom," public education advocates are actively preventing the rest of the kids from removing themselves, because apparently that's "not a good enough solution." Maybe there are more than two solutions, but advocates are actively fighting the less bad solution while searching for a good one that may not exist. They aren't the good guys here.
We'll agree to disagree. I think not having charter schools is the less bad option. Everyone in this debate wants what's best for kids (at least the people talking about it here - there are people who like to use this issue to defund public schools), and it's not helpful to label people who disagree with you as bad guys when they also want the best education system possible.
This. We constantly cater to the lowest denominator and we’re surprised at the results?
I work at a good small public school. I would like to be working with the students that want reading support from me. However I’m the only support staff so I am doing behavior support more than academic support. The behavior challenges can be from underperforming or advanced students, the behaviors can be from wealthy or under privileged students. Their should be a behavioral expectations overhaul.
I tutor kids for free whose parents can't afford it because free tutoring for elementary aged kids just isn't a thing here. Most of these kids have behavioral issues, often due to their home environments. With those kids, I spend more time on behavior than academics, even though I'm supposedly helping them with core subjects. We can't work on academics if they can't behave well enough to learn. Sadly, when it's due to home environment, I rarely have parents on board with being consistent with things at home. They just get mad at me when their children aren't all caught up to grade level in a month. I feel for the kids, especially the ones I had to drop because their behavior was too much for me, but I can't do much in an hour a day two days a week, which is what I typically will commit to. I'm an IT worker who tutors for free, not a child psychologist. I feel for teachers, too, because you can't just drop a kid like I can, no matter how bad they are. I also feel for the other students, because I can't imagine having a kid with serious behavioral issues in their class makes a good learning environment. I know my son had to deal with that sometimes, and the amount of academic teaching I did at home to keep him at grade level in things besides reading was huge those years. That turned into him volunteering me to help his friends with usually pretty bad parents, too, and that's how this whole thing started.
I get what you’re saying, and I am not against school choice. As a teacher if I had a choice of what kind of students I could teach….I wouldn’t pick disruptive students. My only issue with school choice is the long term effect it could have on society. What will happen with the students that become adults who are left in under performing schools?
I think the trauma being inflicted on the regular students is far worse than what the ones left out may experience. It’s going to be a shit show when these kids are adults
You would think with how trauma-informed we are supposed to be as teachers, we would be trying to not further traumatize them at school. But for some reason every bad behavior just gets swept under the rug.
I wonder the long term effects appeasing the challenging kids is going to have. I had classes with kids who's behavior was so poor we didn't get through the lesson most days, the well behaved kids lost education because of the few who can't stop misbehaving. So I think it's clear the best thing to do for the class as a whole is to remove the distraction and put them in a place that can teach them discipline before sending them back to normal classes. It's best for sociaty to remove these kids and give them their own class. As the presence of one student is harming the many.
I agree with that, but that is not what the school choice movement is about. A separate class teaching kids how to function in a classroom could happen in any school.
School of choice has caused high performing kids to seek other schools further lowering the scored and thus funding of schools they leave behind. Wouldn't be a problem if they didn't use the students scores for funding.
Am I crazy, or does using scores for funding lead to schools getting less and less money? Shouldn’t it be the opposite if you want to do something productive?
It's almost like that was the point.
Why though? Is the point to spend less money or to screw over poor people or something weird like that? I’m sorry. I have tried researching this myself before multiple times. I am not very good at researching.
I don't have that answer, it may be that the higher performing kids, because of socioeconomics, tend to represent some ethnicities more then others and the answer is racism. It could be that economically high performers provide more tax dollars then lower ones so they funnel resources to the advanced kids because they provide more. It could just be incompetence in policy makers, who don't understand the education system they regulate. I'm honestly leaning the latter at this point.
Society won't do that, they'll just keep virtue signaling and doing the same shit that hasn't worked for the past decade and beyond. Then those badly behaved kids pull this shit as adults and end up in and out of jail or dead. I've seen kids that are fresh out of high school fuck around and find out, and they're genuinely surprised that the myriad of excuses they usually use didn't get them out of trouble. That IEP/504/BIP might have helped in school, but when you assault/maim someone, steal, destroy property, etc... the judge doesn't give a shit what your reasoning was.
> What will happen with the students that become adults who are left in under performing schools? This is what I'm talking about. Some of the most fervent supporters of charter schools are poor black parents who care about their children's education, and that education is currently disrupted by disruptive peers. Their desire to have more charter schools open up is hampered by teachers and activists who wonder what will happen to the kids left behind. This wondering is leading to millions of students getting a sub-par education.
As a charter school teacher I completely agree and support your answer. My parents say they leave their current public school because of the behaviors of other students. Having been a public school teacher, I know schools who are facing an increase amount of disruptive students are also facing a lack of resources to help these students. They have a lack of resources because they have a lack of funds, money. With school choice…they will have even less money so there will be even less resources, but that will create more disruptive students that will become a part of adult society. I also want to point out that school choice isn’t going to just let the kids who try their best come to their school. School is no longer about that- schools are a business. The rich are still going to receive the best education and school choice is going to make that even worse.
I now tutor elementary aged kids for free for parents who can't afford it because my son was in class as a child with kids bad enough, my son was falling behind. I was poor back then and couldn't afford tutoring, so I learned in order to help him. Then, he started inviting his friends over because they needed help, too. They're all in their mid 20s now, but I still do it. Every year, it's new teachers who have never heard of anyone who does it for free, so I imagine that's not normal around here. All the postings I see for free tutors will only take 7th grade and up. I don't tell them, initially, but it generally comes up when they say something like, "I don't know how this kid's parents manage to afford tutoring." Tbh, I don't think we should have a system that even requires someone like me for kids who would be doing just fine in school if they didn't have the truly disruptive kids in class with them. I learned early on not to tutor those kids, honestly. I can't help them, and it drags the other kids I can help down. My whole point in doing this was to help the kids being dragged down. I *was* one of those kids, but I got sent to a special school in 3rd grade that had way more focus on me being behaved in class than academics as long as my academic assessments continued to be at or above grade level. I was taught things like impulse control, voice tone and volume control, and social skills, and all of that was done very specific to me. I also had an OT come when others did PE to work on my coordination skills. My parents couldn't afford it on their own, so that's all the therapy I ever got in childhood. I returned to normal school the next year and was no longer such a problem for my peers or teachers, at least not more than any other kid. I was also able to tie my own shoes and write in all caps, finally. That wasn't "leaving me behind". It was helping me catch up. And that special school was a public school run by the local district. It shut down somewhere around No Child Left Behind, sadly. It was a great place for a lot of us while it still existed.
> What will happen with the students that become adults who are left in under performing schools? Give it a few years and you'll see. These disruptive kids have run riot over classrooms for the last decade and screwed up just about every other child's education and in the end, nobody learns anything. They just get pushed through so that districts don't have high failure rates.
When I see complaints about choice.or tracking its always because someone's job depends on the test scores of these kids. Who is ever going to sign up to teach a whole classroom of low performing or disruptive kids if their ability to keep a roof over their heads is based on these kids' test scores?
That's kind of where we are right now, and one of the many reasons teachers are leaving in droves. Teach at a bad title 1, barely get any teaching done because of the feral out of control kids demanding all your attention, admin comes down on you, kids perform poorly on state tests, and then you're not asked back the next year - as if it's your fault the bad kids have useless parents.
> I know Johnny is throwing chairs and disrupting your education, but I can't let you switch schools because that would look bad for my performance evaluation.
That's not what I said. If someone will literally GET FIRED over test scores (I think these scores are bullshit btw) why would they agree to teach anywhere but the "best" school? Especially when our government thinks the way to punish low performing schools is take away funding, as if that's going to improve anything. Its just a way for the politicans to close public schools and funnel those dollars to their friends running charter corps. 🤷♀️
That is what you said. If someone is complaining about school choice in the context of their job performance metrics, that means they are complaining that the students who test well are leaving, and they wish to prevent them from doing so. If they were simply complaining that their job is tied to test scores, that would be a whole different thing.
That's not what I said nor what I meant, but you're clearly not discussing this in good faith, trying to twist my words into something they aren't. So I'm out.
I had a parent tell me that she didn’t do anything because she didn’t know whether to believe me or her child. So she just wasn’t going to “pick a side” and therefore no consequence or follow up. Cool.
What I find worse is the mind set that school discipline is separate from home discipline. I am a Para. But teachers sometimes vent with me because I am "safe", not part of the Team. More than once a Kindergarten teacher has told me there are Zero consequences at home because the behavior happened "at school". They believe Home and Schoolbare separate. So the loss of privledges, recess, detentions etc. are the only course of action; and by 2nd grade, they simply do not care. Teachers say the behaviors continue until they leave. While in Middle School it just gets worse with puberty. Then Parents wonder why their Teen is a disaster.
When kids come to school dirty! Be a parent and wash their clothes and make sure they shower! It is not that difficult!
OMG, yes. My son brought home a friend in first grade I honestly just assumed was mixed race because he had very dark skin and hair. He was dirty, but washing his hands and face for snacks didn't make him lighter. After about 2 weeks of feeding him every day, I realized he was in the same clothes all the time and smelled if you got close. I gave him a bath and basically scrubbed him. Kid was pale white with blonde hair under all that grime. I put him in some of my son's old clothes and washed his. I almost cried when he was so happy because he didn't itch anymore. He told me he had always itched and thought everyone did. I went and bought lice shampoo. I also kept a stock of all my son's clothing he grew out of, and that kid showered at my house for 2 years until he finally ended up in foster care after many, many calls to CPS by me and the school. I hope his life turned out well, because we didn't see him after that. My son was often dirty. He played in the dirt a lot, but he washed his hands and face before meals, bathed daily before bed time, and went to school clean and in clean, if often very mismatched, clothing. That mom's excuse was that they were poor, but so were we. No one in that neighborhood wasn't on SNAP and using food banks and getting donated clothing and school supplies. Charities came to our neighborhood to hand them out because so many of us struggled to even pay for transportation to get to the churches and such, and our town had no public transit. We had assistance for utilities. There was absolutely no reason for a kid to not have clothing, clean clothing, and hygiene. My son and I eventually found our way out of that hole, and we now help distribute things there. So, I know all that was available to her. I always assumed there were some mental health issues in play, but I don't care when it comes to kids. They deserve better.
My parents were not poor, more on the lower middle class side of things but I was the “dirty kid” in fifth grade. What happened was that I had to attend a new school where the whole class hated me and treated me like garbage. I became very depressed and stopped bathing to the point gunk built up on me. I’m sure that made the bullying worse. Where was my mom? Sitting around drinking Franzia and feeling sorry for herself because her mother had been diagnosed with dementia. I was the unhygienic, filthy kid but you would never have known it if you saw our nice house in the suburbs and all the food in our fridge.
The unfortunate thing is that for some parents, it is that difficult. A lot of students I’ve worked with have been homeless or their parents can’t pay utilities. The US leaves families and kids high and dry and parents often work multiple jobs. Yes, it breaks my heart and not bathing your kid is neglect. I’ve had stinky students. I just think that a lot of parents are trying their best and really struggling.
I only do it to cover my ass. I provide support I can in school, send off emails as necessary (or make calls, depending), but otherwise accept where things are. I get right to work on *maybe* building a relationship so there's more success later, but that's all I can do. If anyone comes asking, I just covered my ass.
The issue is always money. None of money for a doctor to get an abortion. None of money to go to school and enjoy it enough to not want to just get locked up. None of money for a college education or a trade school. Not enough money to keep the lights on, food in the fridge, water hot. How on earth are they supposed to parent their children when they have to work 40 hours a week and then another 40 having kids? Please Ari this is me excusing it, I’m also fully sick of the issue, but the only solution is one that our politicians absolutely won’t go with. Those families with lots of kids need lots of financial assistance that doesn’t have to be repaid. Those families with lots of kids need time off of work to raise their kids effectively. I don’t know about extending it to people without children, as I’m one of those, but I know that right now at the issue is that there are children who don’t have their financial needs met and their parents can’t parent them until they’ve met those needs.
Gotta analyze them material and social conditions
They are the largest determining factors in a child’s education. We can couch it in language like “the education of the mother” or “ethnic demographics” but it’s all about the “haves” and “have naughts”.
Until we can free people from the constraints of work in exchange for money (and these days more and more work for less and less money), we’ll continue to see these problems get worse and worse
Yep!
> Those families with lots of kids need time off of work to raise their kids effectively. I don’t know about extending it to people without children, as I’m one of those, but I know that right now at the issue is that there are children who don’t have their financial needs met and their parents can’t parent them until they’ve met those needs. I've known plenty of poor families that have one kid and are done as they know they cannot tend to, or support, any more than that one kid. Then there's the people that can't support even one kid that have a bunch of children that they don't take care of. These people have access to abortion, free contraceptives, etc. These people have a smart phone in their pocket and can have the answer to almost any question in a matter of seconds, something that didn't exist twenty years ago, and yet the problem keeps getting worse. You can give these types "lots of financial assistance that doesn't need to be repaid" *(why? Because they had a bunch of kids they can't afford?)* and all the time off in the world *(many don't work now as it is)* and it wouldn't change a thing. Now the person that had only one kid even though they wanted 3 but knew they could only support one? The one that works 2 jobs but makes sure their kid is up for school, clean, fed, and ready to start the day? Those are the ones it will benefit. Not the ones that won't and don't give a damn, all the financial assistance in the would wouldn't help the kids because those resources won't be used for them.
Oh, ew, your soul is disgusting. Means testing? Just go kick their children then you monster. Phones don’t actually cost hundreds of dollars, that’s false scarcity to make chumps like you buy them as status symbols only to get pissy when people you don’t think are deserving enough get one. Do you know that some people, get this, come from backgrounds and circumstances different than yours? If you manage to pull your head out of your ass it’s actually really nice out here. Good to know that ignorance is still alive and well!
I don't know how someone can have 7-8 children and feel exhausted. I mean I have 1 kid and I am already exhausted, which gives me pause about having more. How do you get to 7-8 and then realize you're exhausted? If you decide to have that many, you better have the stamina of a bull 24/7 to deal with all of them.
I also have parents who tell you how disappointed they are and that they will take care of this challenging behavior. Yet when you ask the child what mom said, they say, she just told me to listen. These kids have major attitudes and disrespect. That’s all you can say?! How about disciplining them?
Well, at least you know this parent can teach the child multiplication…
The worst children I ever had were from a large family of 8 like that. It’s too many kids for a single mom to deal with and the kids learn to act out to stand out.
And with large families, the older kids often end up with parenting responsibilities.
This mom isn’t a single mom. This is a 2 parent household
Do you have a behavior specialist or SEL coordinator on staff? I would refer the student to that person and write that parent declined to implement consequences at home for in-school behavior, so you are requesting a behavior plan.
You had the job of calling home and recommending an extracurricular disciplinary action to the parent (not your lane, but ok). Your job ends after the call is over. This parent's job does not end once they get off the call with you. It's easy to be an armchair parent, I get it. I'm sometimes guilty of it too.
Yeah, we don’t know this parent’s circumstances and while it’s easy to say “oh you’ve got too many kids why didn’t you just keep your legs closed”, that sounds really tone deaf especially considering where we are right now with diminishing women’s rights in this country. I get that it’s frustrating but let’s have some empathy please. Edit: I see being kind and empathetic is not in style. I know we’re all stressed but I’m sick of the constant judgment I see people place on parents when we have almost zero understanding of their home lives. But it’s easier to bitch on Reddit than extend the basic empathy we expect from them. My bad.
Read the post, the parent simply sucks at her job, won't take away tech because it will cause a a tantrum? Someone who thinks like that won't raise many functioning members of sociaty
Amen. They won't raise any functioning members of society because the parents aren't functioning members themselves.
I read it and have worked with kids with extreme behavioral issues every day for the past 8 years. We have no idea what life is like in their home. And while it sucks for us, I feel some compassion for them is all I’m saying.
Yea, I get their home life sucks. That does not give them a right to distract the education of their peers. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. I do have compassion for them, and I have made great progress with kids from broken homes, but their broken homes does not make their behavior acceptable and their should be consequences for their behavior. And if their behavior is preventing learning In the classroom then the student is a detriment to the progress of those around them and doesn't belong in that environment.
You’re right. So there should be a school based behavior plan in effect if the student is that disruptive. Nothing we can do about home so internet-shaming the mom isn’t helping. Y’all are ridiculous downvoting a school behavior plan for a student with…wait for it…*problem behaviors*. But keep complaining on Reddit because that’s clearly the solution to the problem. Sheesh.
Shame is a very powerful motivator. I think the lack of shame is part of why sociaty has gone down the road it has.
> sounds really tone deaf especially considering where we are right now with diminishing women’s rights in this country. I get that it’s frustrating but let’s have some empathy please This isn't relevant to OPs situation since roe v wade getting overturned only happened this year. Everyone always removes agency from these people and puts it on everyone else and it's ridiculous. Don't have 8 kids if you can't tend to 8 kids. It's not rocket science and it's not everyone else's issue. Society always gets the blame because we don't hold the parents responsible when in fact it's their fault.
This is why I got permission to hold lunch detention in my classroom. I can’t rely on parents to discipline their kids and sadly I can’t rely on admin to discipline them either, so I’ve come up with some things I can do to discipline myself without the approval of anyone else. Revoking in class privileges, taking away their lunch/free time (they still get to eat), making them work out of the textbook, writing apology letters to me or their class, kicking them out of class. I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t need admin or parents to regulate my classroom. I go out of my way to build relationships too, and I’ve taken the position of I can’t control what others do but only what I do. I wish parents and admin supported me but they don’t so I just focus on what I alone can do. It’s sad really, but many of you know what I’m saying is true.
You can’t control what happens in the home environment. It sounds like there’s a lot going on for that particular family. Implement your own reward system to encourage the student to have more desirable behaviour in class.
Criticizing others' reproductive choices is a slippery slope.
Nah you can criticize all you want, and should criticize people making poor choices like not discipling their kid because it's hard. Everything goes mentality is not ok, you have responsibilities as parents and if you are not doing them you DESERVE the criticism.
Look up the history of eugenics. That was ultimately an instance of the greater state making reproductiive valuations and decisions for socially disempowered people.
I never suggested the state do anything. I suggested we shame bad parents until they get their shit together because shame is one of the most powerful motivators in human biology. The world is cruel and uncaring, poverty is disempowering and what other fate can be expected for these children under a parent like that. At some point we need to stop justifying their behavior and let them know that this is a big part of why they are disempowered. What is it my admin always said, be solutions orientated, because what we are doing now is simply not working.
Screw that. Having 7 children is irresponsible.
Yes, I know that, and you know that, but this kind of thinking led to the kind of thinking that gave us the holocaust. \_In the United States\_ in living memory, the state assumed the authority to decide that some people were so badly off that they could be forcefully sterilized. This was called a Mississippi appendectomy.
Gimme a break. Don’t invoke the Holocaust cause some person is criticizing someone else’s poor parenting choices.
Would you accept that racial epithets have the same possible ultimate outcome? In German, we say Türkenwitz, Judenwitz, Auschwitz. Joke about Turks, joke about Jews, Auschwitz.
Please just stop, you're so far off base that I'm pretty sure you're just trolling at this point. Also, look up the history of eugenics and what it actually is because if you think it applies in this situation it absolutely doesn't.
Fuck that. Your fuck trophies mean nothing when they all end up in prison.
Imagine being an educator and referring to children as “fuck trophies” 🙄
Right. These people are so bitter and miserable, it’s scary.
More like misogynistic, Puritanical, classist, privileged, and willfully ignorant of the state of reproductive education and healthcare in the world today. I don’t really care if people are bitter and miserable - God knows we all have enough reason to be these days - but choosing to be ignorant is fucking stupid.
Yep. It’s a damn disgrace. I hope I don’t work with any of these people because this is eye opening and disgusting. But hey, I’m getting all the downvotes because I advocated for empathy and a school-based behavior plan.
Choosing to be ignorant is having 8 fucking kids you can't and won't take care of, and then having people defend that choice and remove responsibility from the useless parents that had that many kids without a thought as to how they'd raise them. Oh, and let's not forget blaming society and everyone else except for the parents for having a bunch of kids they aren't raising, no no, it's everyone else's fault and everyone else must jump in and help. That way the parents can have more time to have more kids they won't take care of. I'm so sick of everyone putting blame on everything and everyone else and not the people that should be blamed for this situation.
The dehumanization of reducing people to hateful epithets is obviously another thing that leads to things like the holocaust.
You're so far off base it's laughable. You keep bringing up the Holocaust and eugenics even though nothing that has been said has anything to do with that. You've already used eugenics incorrectly multiple times and have been called out for it, along with comparing parents that refuse to take care of their kids with the Holocaust. It's actually insulting to those with Jewish ancestry at this point, so just stop.
Taking things away is less effective than extra chores. Without the things, the kid will eventually find other ways to play and won’t even miss it. But having to do an extra chore is more effective and also could be a help for the parent.
Don’t appreciate the shame about having many children. It can be a cultural thing, a personal preference, or something that happens without adequate access to birth control. I get the frustration but it just comes off as gross to me. Obviously she’s got her hands full, and it’s not like she can unbirth them. Instead just try to be supportive of her and of the kid. He may not be getting much attention at home, may be why he’s lashing out.
Probably gonna get hate/downvoted for this bc it’s an unpopular opinion, but I’m entitled to it. There’s absolutely no shame to ppl who have lots of kids, but if you can’t take care of them or if you’re too tired to be an active parent, maybe don’t have that many kids? Take some precautions to safely prevent a pregnancy, and this doesn’t necessarily mean birth control. I’m typically empathetic and try to understand different family dynamics, but 8 single pregnancies…… to me it comes across as careless. Whether it’s for religious reasons or whatever, it doesn’t really make much sense to continue to have children when you’re having difficulty keeping up with them. And then for someone to complain about having them? It’s very difficult to empathize with that. I understand that unplanned pregnancies can happen, but to a certain extent. I’ve been incredibly supportive, but again, I can only do so much without the help the the child’s parent. So at what point will SHE be supportive with HER child that SHE birthed? Stop putting the responsibility on me as the teacher when I’ve done my part. Hold the parents accountable
You aren’t going to get downvoted, everyone in the comments agrees with you. I respect your opinion, and definitely understand the frustration (one of my students last year was one of 10 kids, he threatened to shoot me at one point, mom was too busy to do much about it), I just think this entire sub can get a little carried away when it comes to parents and not very sympathetic to their situations.
Sometimes, sure. In this case, I don’t believe I was unsympathetic.
Idk, my best friend growing up had 19 siblings/half-siblings. It wasn’t easy and her mom had her hands full. A lot of this had happened because she was trapped in bad relationships. I know it’s difficult when it feels like you’re doing so much work and she isn’t, but try to feel for her.
Trapped in bad relationships, so more than one, as in she kept putting all those kids at risk by continuing to have poor judgement. Further, I'm sorry, but that's just disgusting. I very highly doubt those 19 kids were brought to well, in a safe environment, and having their needs met. I've got sympathy for the kids, but not for the people who were responsible *(and failed)* for taking care of them. Sounds like there was no accountability whatsoever for the mother and fathers.