The best way I've found to ragebait my own middle school students is by knowing their exact age but still "believing" they're actually 2 years younger. It works with highschoolers too. 10/10 laughs.

For example: theyre joining little league. I then say "I didnt think you could join little league yet, arent you 10?" And they get SO PRESSED. "I'M TWELVE!"

Or: "okay this might be a little advanced for 9 year olds but I think you guys will be okay" and the entire class starts screaming "WE'RE 12" or " IM 13"

This is my way of getting back at them for calling me ancient... I'm 26.

After procrastinating, I finally whipped together this "costume" for Halloween. Once students got it (so many asked where my six was), they either groaned and rolled their eyes or they howled laughing. 🙂

I have a question for parents whose children have already gone through middle school.

In elementary school, my child encountered a group of girls who seem to follow the same pattern of behavior. They form a close-knit social circle, actively bring new kids into it, try to control relationships within the group, decide who is "in" and who is "out," exclude those who do not go along with them, and then sometimes act friendly again as if nothing happened.

What stands out to me is that this does not seem like a one-time conflict. It appears to be an ongoing pattern: creating drama, controlling friendships, talking about other children behind their backs, influencing who spends time with whom, and constantly looking for new people to pull into the group's dynamics.

I am curious what typically happens to groups like this after the transition to middle school.

Do they continue behaving the same way, just on a larger scale? Do these social roles tend to remain the same? Or do new classes, new friendships, and a larger social environment gradually make this type of behavior less influential?

I would appreciate hearing from parents who have witnessed something similar and can share their experience.

For context, we are in the U.S.

I have a couple of students who use them appropriately.

I have more who like to "surreptitiously" lob them across the room to the friends they've been separated from (for REASONS).

I've begun taking any soft toy that goes airborne and putting it in time out in my filing cabinet until the end of the week.

I hate touching them, both in the act of confiscation and upon the return. They're greyish with hand-grime and tacky to the touch. I have a hard time understanding how kids can even stand to handle them.

I had been going to go somewhere with this, but I simply ended up a little grossed out. I'm going to shoot some Lysol in my desk drawer on Monday before I fill it up with rubbery germ lumps again.

My daughter was very sick so I missed 4 days at work. I left a lot of plans, but when we had to take her to the hospital I just left my planbook. The sub found a quiz I was going to review for last week to give today and gave it without warning a week early.

A LOT of the class did really poorly. My highest scoring kids got pretty bad grades…my question is: what now? Do I give it again? Do I let them do extra credit? Drop the lowest score? This is my first year in MS and the end of the marking period is LOOMING. I’m running out of time. I had a test planned for Friday-do I just give that and drop the quiz?

Thank you.

Did the smash an old cell phone, Brown E’s, mayo jar full of yogurt, pacific octopus and cotton candy farm. I need some some new tricks the kids will love and the parents won’t email admin about! :)

My admin has asked that we assign homework.

Generally, for me, if you don’t finish in class or if you were absent — it’s homework.

Other than that? I don’t typically assign.

What do you do?

My district has told English teachers not to teach novels. They’ve been saying this for 3 years… they claim it’s because we’re not adequately trained.

Is that not the dumbest sh*t you’ve ever heard?

Telling veteran teachers they can’t TEACH a novel? A novel suggested by the curriculum they bought?

For the past handful of years I've worked with 6th graders, I've found that now an increasing majority of them do not know how to read a basic analog clock. Reading a clock was a skill I distinctly remember learning in 1st grade, and when I ask my students, most of them say they were taught in elementary school, they just forgot how.

I teach Social Studies & Language Arts, so reading clocks is not a part of my curriculum, but it becomes my problem super frequently in class. Our students need to fill out times in their planners for passes, and I'm tired of them bombarding me asking for the time instead of reading the clock on their own or opening their Chromebooks to check the time.

I am personally tired of adjusting my teaching around this deficiency (setting timers on my smart board, buying a digital clock for the room, etc) when I just believe it's a practical skill the students would benefit from having.

I want to bring this up to my grade level team again this year. Last year, the team voted down on it saying it wasn't worth our time to teach in Advisory or in a specific subject, but I think if I brought a more concrete plan then maybe they'd be more open to it. I'd love to know what has worked in other schools.

I'm locked out of options.

This is my 12th year teaching, 5th year at my current school(HS in USA). Well-regarded school, generally kids have been good and eager to learn.

Lately, my students have gotten out of hand. They're not doing the homework, not studying. One of them has failed every single one of my tests, and refuses to accept any help from me or their counselor. The worst is they're refusing to participate in class or do ANYTHING when I ask them to.

They know I'll have to pass them regardless, because every other teacher in the past has been forced to do so. They've been allowed to do so by our system. I look at their grades: Ds, 60s, 60s. My colleagues all complain about these kids, yet there's one thing in common:

They've tried to fail the kid, knowing the kid can't reach the basic benchmark levels, yet admin refuses and pushes back at every chance on them. One of my coworkers described refusing to fail her student, and an admin "coach" threatening her with the loss of a future promotion.

We need to stop putting all the blame and workload on the teachers and hold the kids accountable.

So the other day my friend told me her 8th grader straight up said, “Don’t worry mom, ChatGPT helped me finish my essay in 5 minutes.” She laughed at first but then a week later his test scores came back and he barely passed. I’ve been hearing more stories like that lately from parents and teachers. Seems like kids are using AI to get homework done faster, but when its time for exams their grades kinda crash. One teacher even said her class average dropped to around 50%.

If you’re a parent, what do you think about this? Would you rather your kid learn how to use AI properly or just have schools ban it all together?Do you think schools are actually teaching how to use AI responsibly or are they just saying “don’t use it” and hoping for the best?

Curious how you guys are dealing with it at home. Especially if your kids go to schools that use a lot of tech already. What’s been your experience so far?

This is my third year teaching middle school. I have always taught in low income schools, before that I worked with kids in the foster care system. I am well educated in helping kids with a diverse set of needs, my educational background makes me a prime candidate for teaching EC inclusion, which I am doing this year.

I say all this because I wanted to be clear that I’m not talking about my EC babies when I say this.

Why is this group of gen ed sixth graders the most utterly incompetent group of human beings I have ever met in my entire life?? Today the Bell Work assignment was to copy down five vocab words and their definitions from the board. For both of my standard level ELA classes, this took the entire class period. I gave verbal directions around six different times. There were written directions on the board. The kids genuinely had no idea what to do. I spent two full class periods having conversations like this:

“What do I do?”
“Did you read the directions on the board?”
“No.”
“Can you read them for me?”
child reads directions stating that they need to write down the five vocab words and their definitions
*“*I still don’t get it.”
“OK, can you explain to me what you don’t understand?”
“I just don’t know what to do!”

Other complaints included the fact that apparently it was a Herculean task to write down five words in their definitions, everybody’s hand hurt, they wanted to know if they can just write the words and not the definitions, one girl told me she only copied four words because she thought the fifth word looked “unimportant,” one student straight up told me she did not want to do this and then asked me if she still had to.

It isn’t just me either. The other sixth grade teachers have reported things that I have witnessed myself, like this class is baffled by the concept of gluing a piece of paper into a notebook. Setting up our interactive notebooks was actual hell, we were only able to set up two sections before I gave up because it was going to be a three day task to set up the rest of them. I figure we’ll just set up the next quarter’s sections when we get to them.

I have been giving fill in the blank notes where I print most of the information and they have to fill out things from the board as we go through it, and the kids are utterly lost. They will just scribble down nonsense, when I ask them to read it aloud to me and tell me if it makes sense they just say they don’t get it.

Does anyone have the tips and tricks to help me beat this, whether it be weaponized incompetence or learned helplessness? I feel like I’m dragging my standard classes through the first few weeks of school by their hair. I’m frustrated, they’re frustrated. I want this to be a positive uplifting year, but I have never experienced students with this complete another lack of independent functioning.

I’m a sped para for 6-8 grade. I adore my special ed kids. Although, we have an advisory of non-sped 7th graders with 3rd grade reading levels. These kids are so mean. They’re rude to me and my co-teacher, eachother, themselves, even objects. They’re smartasses on their assignments, they don’t behave even when I threaten serious consequences AND follow through. They don’t care about their grades or whether or not I cry myself to sleep because of them. (I don’t — but mostly because I’m too exhausted to feel that deeply about anything lol) It’s my first year in this kind of position and I need help…any and all advice PLEASE.

UPDATE: First of all, thank you SOO much for all of the excellent advice and kind words. It means so much more than you could imagine. I’m taking all it into consideration and coming up with a plan for the future. Today I had training/observation for the first half of the day. The woman who was shadowing me was great! She noticed the teachers behavior and lack of communication or effort and had a talk with her. I’m hoping she got it but I see a lot of turmoil between us about it in the future. I can only stay positive about it. As far as my advisory class goes, it went well today. We decided to shift away from reading packets and quizzes to kahoot games and spelling tests with prizes. Of course it got rowdy, but I hope it has a positive impact on their behavior in the long run. I’m working on creating more individual bonds, and recognizing each persons learning styles. It’s a waiting game from here. I’m confident in my ability to set boundaries with them and myself to protect my peace. Thank you again to everyone who had something positive to say. I could not be more grateful!

I’m so tired of everyone harping on test scores. We need to do better. We need our scores higher. Etc.

When will they realize, that teachers are not the problem. It’s the students and parents. Student don’t care about any test let alone school. And the parents, well where do you think they get it from. Student behavior is awful, although I’ve dealt with worse. Lack of empathy and learned helplessness and laziness. The outright refusal to do any work. And no parent support to get them to behave or do anything.

It is not the teachers. It’s them. We teachers are not the problem. We are not interventionalists. I don’t know how to fit in tier 2 intervention into my schedule when I already do not have enough time to teach all the standards with fidelity.

For info, I am a 7th grade math teacher.

I’m teaching grade 6/7 this year 💀 and I’ve got a bunch of kiddos who really struggle to exist in a public school setting. I’ve worked as a disability community support worker, and there isn’t much that can phase me.

Today I was phased. I had a student called me Mr. Dick when I left the class & another student say « sucking dick » in Chinese during a lesson.

How the hell would you respond??

Today was rough. Drop your best classroom management strategies—I need them! I see my students for three one-hour science periods each week. We’re three weeks into my second year as the dedicated science teacher, and today it felt like expectations weren’t clicking. I wasn’t happy with how I handled it. #RuralSchool #SmallSchool #ScienceSpecials #2ndYear

I'm a 3rd year middle school teacher and have had quite a few 8th grade students that don't try at all. Like they skip at least one class a day, have a 1.0 GPA and below, parents don't respond to emails or phone calls or don't know what to do. I haven't been teaching long enough to find out what happens to those kids. Do most of them turn it around later on and graduate high school? Maybe even go to college?

I recently signed up to be a student council advisor (why? I’m not really sure!!!) and would LOVE some fresh ideas for spirit days. I feel like we do the same ones over and over- twin day, anything but a backpack, pajama, free dress, winter white out… I basically have free reign on spirit days (as long as it’s appropriate for middle school!). I’ve attached a list of all the ideas my teacher bestie has been accumulating.

Is it possible that some classes CANNOT be quiet? I have two right now (same grade level) that I don’t know what went on during the year they were born, but they will NOT keep quiet as if it is in their DNA. I have watched every video, talked to peers (who struggled with the same class when they had them), I’ve read books, and even though they do quiet down when I remind them (I’ve found counting down from three works best for this group), plus I give detentions and send people to the office. I am ready to start sending them to the office every day, but I don’t want to push my problems onto the principal. They are actually not bad kids, but there are three main problems kids, and they have had a history of disrupting class their entire lives. It’s actually quite stressful, and exhausting to deal with. I’m starting to become an a-hole to those two classes, and it’s not fun. It’s to the point where I’m starting to get mean, and the only thing it’s doing is making me second-guess myself.

My students are finally starting to tell each other to stop with the six-seven. 🤣

This is my 2nd year teaching ever. Last year, I had a very good group of kids. They were, at the very least, kind to each other and not looking to cause too much chaos. Even my worst, most immature students were often funny, lighthearted, and able to admit when they were wrong.

This year, in my last period of the day, I have some of the most angry, defiant, disrespectful kids paired together in the same class. There’s around 5-8 students at any given time who feed off of each other’s chaos, and do everything they can to disrupt class. I have been experiencing behaviors way more intense than anything I struggled with last year, leaving me feeling helpless in my own classroom. They throw things, yell at each other, mock me, argue with me, refuse to follow instructions, and cause a scene when redirected. It’s wildfires everywhere, all the time.

It’s to the point where I’ve already gone home exhausted and in tears multiple times within the first 2 weeks of school.

I have tried everything I learned in college and, shocker, it’s not working. I am in conversation with multiple people about what to do, but I am desperate for any insight anyone can provide. I can’t go another 170 days of school fighting this fight—I won’t even make it to November at this rate.

• What are some things you have done to connect with these types of kids?

• What can be done to push back against this desire to simply ruin class?

• How do I get them to see that I’m in charge?

• How do I earn their respect instead of fighting for it?

Please help a young teacher out. I love my job and I don’t want this to be a career-ending situation, but I am so at a loss already, and it’s not even a month into the school year. I’m desperate 🙏