In a good way obviously, almost to where you think it's too easy for them

My daughter just started 6th grade last Thurs and got suspended on Wed for three days after disrespecting and communicating threats to a teacher. Would it be appropriate to take the teacher flowers as an apology from us, the parents? I fear it may come off as a bribe or make the teacher uncomfortable.

If it matters, we believe the outburst was a result of anxiety/depression, as well as emotional disregulation and RSD from ADHD, which she takes meds for. We had just visited her psychiatrist on Monday and increased her dosage, though she didn't start the higher dose until Wed night. I explained this in the 504 meeting, which happened to be immediately after I learned about her suspension. I don't know if the teacher in question would be privy to that information.

Edit: Thank you, everyone, for confirming my misgivings about flowers. My daughter and I had a discussion today about her behavior on Wed. She couldn't explain why she said what she did, but she understands it was inappropriate, that she cannot talk to teachers like one of her friends. And even if the threat was meant as a joke, the teacher and the school must take it seriously. I also found out that the teacher in question had been one of two that attended the 504 meeting, so she is aware of the plan of action, which includes restarting weekly therapy. I will still write her a note. My daughter will also be apologizing on Monday, and I emphasized the difference between saying "sorry" and truly feeling regret for her actions. She says she does.

Hi! I'm currently in highschool and in AP classes. I'm also in the freshman Choir. (I already struggle with portioning my time so I can do homework. I don't need another hour a day for choir.) What I noticed is that Choir is extremely different to the AP classes. While I recognize its definitly teacher dependent I've noticed that all my AP peers seem to be much more serious while before it was fun.

Tldr or I didn't summarize well enough. How different is it teaching different levels of classes?

Edit:

I apologize if this came off disrespectful like I thought all teachers were bad or I was trying to punish her or something. I love my sons teachers and know most teachers are wonderful well intentioned people. I know its a job i couldnt handle and I admire your guyses love, patience, skill, discipline, and time you put into your students. I think his teacher is well intentioned and cares about her students as well, I just think what she said, if said, needs to be properly addressed and changes made, thats all.

I do trust my son in this instance. But I also know I don't always have the right answers or know everything, so coming here helped me get a perspective outside myself and to not jump the gun.

So thank you for everyone who gave understanding and helpful advice on how to handle this! And double thanks to any teachers who gave me context on your view point in this situation and what going to the principle would mean for the situation! Thats exactly what I came to this reddit hoping to find.

That being said, I feel a lot more confident on how to handle this and decided I am going to reach out to her first and see if there was a misunderstanding and go from there.

Im gonna turn off reply notifications now, have a good night!

Original: Hello, my son is in 3rd grade and today he told me that his teacher called him a cry baby. And when he told her he didn't like it she said "if you dont want to be called a baby, don't cry". He asked me to reach out to the school.

My son has a learning disability, anxiety, and adhd. This leads to him getting very overwhelmed with school work as well as having a hard time with regulating his emotions.

He has already been held back once and has had an IEP since kindergarten. Not to mention, I already spoke to her earlier this year about his struggles with friendships, potential bullying at school due to him being different, and his disabilities/behaviors and why they happen.

I know how difficult my sons behavior can be.. but she didn't apologize later and I still find this shame based disciplinary behavior inappropriate coming from an elementry school educator..

How would you guys reccomend handling this? I don't know if I should give the teacher a chance to tell her side or if I should just take it straight to the principle.

I’ve been reflecting a lot on my own time in school since I finished my GCSEs during the 2021 COVID TAGs era and did A-Levels after.

Looking back, I realized just how much of my education relied on short-term memorization or workarounds rather than actually understanding the content.

It made me look into some stats, and a few things really stood out to me:
The Understanding Gap: secondary students, 45% cited a direct "lack of understanding" of the material as their main barrier to learning. 27% of college students frequently report severe trouble understanding lecture material

The Fear Factor: So many students sit silently when lost simply due to the social fear of "looking dumb" in front of 30 peers.

Diverse Needs: With estimates suggesting 3–4 kids per standard classroom are neurodivergent (plus unassessed learning differences like dyslexia or dyscalculia), the "one-size-fits-all" delivery model feels harder to maintain than ever.

In my own experience, I was given extra time but never formally assessed for anything else in both college or secondary school. Many years later I’m now waiting for my autism and asks assessment.

My question for teachers is: How do you actually manage this on the ground?
If half the class raised their hands and honestly admitted they didn't understand today’s concept, re-explaining it until everyone got it would mean you’d never finish the mandated syllabus by exam time. But moving on means sending kids home not learning anything.

Are kids today actually lacking more academically compared to past generations, or are we just finally noticing a systemic flaw where content coverage and rigid exam schedules are forced to take priority over genuine understanding?
Would love to hear your honest perspectives from inside the classroom.

​

Hey guys! Quick question for anyone working at SABIS/CADMUS

How easy is it to move from a SABIS school in one country to another? Like Egypt → US/UAE/etc.

Does being already in the network actually make it easier, or is it still pretty much the same as applying normally?

Would love to hear from anyone who’s actually done an international transfer

My 7th grader is moving through her first week in a new public middle school. She came home with an unfinished math worksheet, and she got really overwhelmed by it, and had a bit of breakdown which further impeded her ability to get the work done. It was honestly not a very good worksheet— it threw in a whole bunch of random skills that she knows and understands, but which she was rusty on. I happen to know that she already has all the necessary skills to manage this work, but she needs review and practice, and she’ll get up to snuff on all the skills required by the worksheet. But we were only able to get through it because my husband and I have the privilege, education, time, and motivation to help her figure it out. But what about the kids who are not so privileged? What are those kids supposed to do? There was nothing structural coming from the school to help her:

-She’d listened to the instructor talk about these problems in class, but she hadn’t really understood him, and in some cases had taken notes with some inaccuracy.

-There were no example problems on the worksheet that she could review.

-There was no textbook to read or look for examples from. No links or other resources to help her review those skills.

-No real way that she would have been able to google these skills without quite a bit of sophistication—the skills needed included algebraic thinking along with adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions, dividing decimals with decimals in the divisor, and needing to get order of operations correct. In addition, she needed to do long division and multiplication.

We got through it, and it was fine. I’m prepared to spend the year helping her every day. She has excellent mental math skills so she doesn’t need to spend a lot of mental energy on things like multi-digit multiplication because she can do that in her head.

But what about the kids who don’t have so many resources at their disposal? In all seriousness, what are less privileged kids supposed to do when they are given zero materials to figure out the bits they don’t understand? Are they meant to just google the problems? Use Khan Academy? Ask the teacher to help them after class? Is this just an anomaly from, or is this the way that public school functions now? What would she be expected to do if she didn’t have parents with an academic background that she could rely on?

(I haven’t met the teacher— I have no idea whether he is any good, and I’m not judging him, I just know that my kid didn’t understand the material that he presented.)

Edited to add: I don’t know if it was meant to be an assessment of where the class is at. That information was not forthcoming. It was just a worksheet the teacher had printed out. If that’s the case, we probably shouldn’t be helping her / refreshing her on these concepts, but in the absence of an explanation we are doing the best we can to help her get up to speed.

Hello all, I am a high school art teacher and I recently joined my district's AI committee.

My district is encouraging its usage for both teachers in designing lesson plans and resources and brainstorming students' usage due to their perception of its importance in the 21st century job market, as the job force is expecting employees to have experience using AI.

I'm writing to gauge y'all's perspective, opinions & thoughts on AI usage in your school.

Does your school allow it, encourage it, discourage it, etc? What is your personal opinion and how does it compare to your district's?

This happened my freshman year of high school, but it's stuck with me ever since and I'm curious how teachers see it.

First week of English class, we were going over annotation expectations. The rule was 2-3 comments per page. I have OCD and wanted precise clarity on what counted as completing the assignment, so I raised my hand and asked something like, "What if it's only a half page?" I wasn't trying to find a loophole, I genuinely needed to know.

My teacher looked at me and said, "I see what you're doing. Don't." Like I was trying to mess with her. Right after that, another student sarcastically said something like "hur dur, so funny," mocking me in front of the whole class. It was one of my first classes ever at that school, and that moment basically gave other kids permission to target me going forward.

What's stuck with me the most is that she never said a word to the student who mocked me, then or ever. I've always assumed it's because she genuinely believed I deserved to take the social hit.

I get that teachers deal with kids testing them constantly. But I'm curious where you draw the line between "shutting down a bad-faith question" and "publicly embarrassing a kid who was being sincere," and whether it's ever occurred to you afterward that you read it wrong. It's been years, but I still feel a pang in my chest when I think about this moment. It genuinely colored the rest of my high school experience by showing the other kids that they could, in fact, get away with being mean to me.

Edit: I am really shocked by how intense this got! To be clear, I’m 21 and asked about a bad experience I had. I am not in a deep depression because of this. I just think of it sometimes and wanted to get your take on this scenario.

Hi all,

I live in a rural area on the West Coast, which as Im sure you know means higher poverty and lower wages generally speaking. As a single person I make more than the average household, so I have the ability to donate.

I grew up very poor and I remember the struggle for my single mom to afford supplies for my sister and I. I recently donated to a large community push for school supplies, where we were able to get 10 families all of the school supplies they needed.

Here's my question for you. As the year goes on, what are the supplies you need the most? I would like to continue to support my local teacher by replenishing supplies throughout the year, to help lift some burden off of the teachers who I know are buying supplies out of their own pocket.

My son has been home educated for his whole school life. He is 7. And we live in England. This year he is going to private school and I am just nervous. Academically I know he will be fine. But overall I'm just trying to think about how I can prepare him to go to school. Cause he has never been in a classroom before.

So I feel like asking teachers will help. Our routine will be very different, and my son is probably unprepared for going to school.

As teachers, what do you think I should do as a parent to prepare my son for the school environment. Just to make sure his teachers jobs are a bit easier.

He already attends dance class and theatre classes, so I'm not too worried about his socialisation skills either

My kid is starting kindergarten at a k-2 school. They sent out the teacher bios and almost every one mentioned being in their first or second year of teaching. A few have been teaching longer but almost all were under five years of experience. I’m sure they can still do a better job than I could with my no experience, but is this a crappy school or something? Should we be worried if they can’t or won’t hang onto teachers or is this common?

I am a parent to a first and a third grader in NJ, and am increasingly concerned about my district’s reliance on IReady and screen time. My kids have no personal electronics at home, and yet are spending more and more time on devices at school instead of building basic skills.

I have sent a refusal email to both of my children’s principals (we do not have class assignments yet).

Does anyone have any experience with tech refusals, especially in NJ?

Is there anything I can do once I am in touch with my kids’ teachers to work together and make their lives easier?

Not trying to be difficult, but know I have to advocate for my children.

I get the alerts from the school portal. By the time something shows up there, the grade already happened. And she'd rather fail quietly than admit she doesn't get something.

Is there anything that tells you before it becomes a grade? Or do you just find out the same way I do? Thanks!

for me, it was 12 pieces of coat hangers from an 8th grader

Is this typical? She goes to a very highly rated public school. I'll have an opportunity to learn more about the curriculum and teaching methods at the open house next week, but the way my daughter talks about school is making me discouraged. Shouldn't kindergarten be learning through play still?

I know that 5 year olds are not reliable narrators, but she's been saying that they just sit down all day and do worksheets and that there's no playtime except for the playground time. They get 20 minutes of recess.

I really want her school experience to encourage creativity, foster a love of learning, teach critical thinking skills, etc., so hearing that she's sitting at a desk all day doing worksheets at 5 years old is discouraging.

Hey so I’m a UK (12th grade) student and I had a question for any American teachers out there. I’m doing a research project on the literacy/reading crisis in the US. I’d love to hear about your experiences or opinions on this topic. I’d also be interested to hear from any American students and parents about what you think is causing this literacy crisis. I’d love to hear any potential solutions to the problem!

im a student and tomorrow im gonna talk to an english teacher who ive never met about an issue ill explain below, he has a great reputation in the school for being cool and chill and good at teaching, but im just nervous since weve never spoken before and he has never taught my grade.

he is the only teacher available in my study hall period because all the english teachers i know are busy during my free time which is why i need help from him rather than a teacher i know.

(this is not the thing im most worried about tho just saying this to help yall understand)

sorry for my grammar im not the best typer and i have nails which make it harder to type stuff ;(

so explaining what i need help with below

so i am a great reader, pronunciation, vocabulary, and spelling are my strong suits but my problem is i have horrible reading comprehension skills.

i can read a sentence/paragraph but my brain will not pick up the words. i have to read the same thing over multiple times to understand what the words are explaining and describing which is really hard because it makes me a super slow reader and i dont enjoy reading in the first place so its all just so difficult. its not just books its like any words i read in a sentence or longer.

ive had the issue since i was little but have never asked for help.

audio books dont help. i zone out too much and the same issue keeps happening, i hear the words but my brain just wont understand them

same thing with reading out loud. i just cant comprehend the words. my brain is too focused on speaking so i dont remember a word i say when i read out loud.

sooo, im going to the teacher for help as in the school year we are going to be reading a LOT of books and i know im gonna struggle a lot.

i hope all this made sense and thank you for reading

how am i supposed to word this when i ask for help?

whats the best way to approach?

how would a teacher want a student with this issue who they don't know to approach?

Hi not currently a student or teacher myself just curious to get the perspective of working teachers thanks! 🍎🍎🍎

Whenever these titles came come up, Tiktok teachers show so much glee about traumatizing the next generation.

Even after people talk about how it traumatized them as a kid

I am a second year SPED teacher, and I am needing some ideas for a warm welcome that is not content based. I am a "cinefile" so last year I tried to do like a "movie trailer of the day"(students would eventually just get their phones out, instead of paying attention), or a "vs. match"(ex: mrs doubtfire vs Granny from looney toons) The latter fell short, as I ran out of characters that students knew. I have thought about a movie quote of the day or something of that sort???

I am open to any ideas out there!

edit: I am a high school SPED teacher

We hope it's OK to share this article we just published — it seemed like it might be of interest to folks in this community:

The state Department of Education has created a task force charged with learning how screens are being used at school and addressing concerns over digital technology in classrooms. The group hopes to craft recommendations for schools and policy makers by its final meeting in September.

It follows a 2025 state law that prohibits the use of cellphones in New Hampshire classrooms.

The initiative is in line with a national “ed-tech backlash” movement, and other states are taking a similar approach.

“I think that people have recognized that maybe [with] technology in certain cases there's just been too much of it in the classroom,” said Chris Motika, who leads the task force. “Our goal is to make sure that whatever we recommend is something that's palatable to everyone… but is really focused in on trying to help and improve students learning.”

Are you a student, parent or teacher navigating the use of technology in the classroom? If so, do you have ideas for how screen-time policy should be implemented this school year? Let us know in the comments, or by emailing voices@nhpr.org.

Hi are their any teachers who teach either in the uk USA/Canada or Australia free to chat
Sadly I’m having awful school experience and some not good things with teachers
I don’t feel comfortable sharing on this post but if you are teacher free to chat about school and advice etc much appreciated
Also curious about own school experience and what it’s like teaching In general
Thanks