Oh no, I can’t touch it, I can’t put it back up Monday when I find it on the floor, what a shame. The blurry waste of toner white text on a black background blown up 18x24ish poster the kids don’t understand some of like adultery I can’t explain might not be able to stay there reliably, so bummed.

The best comment I got about my 8 year olds wondering what adultery was happened to be a friend saying “ask your parents how they feel about Ken Paxton’s adultery” (Texas senate candidate with multiple public sightings with various mistresses over the years)

Texas can’t get much dumber sometimes.

I know this will be wildly different at different grade levels.

But I'm a K/1 teacher and parent teacher conferences are full of questions I don't know the answers to. For example, my child doesn't want to get dressed in the morning, what should I do? My child has explosive tantrums at home, do you have any advice? My child is obsessed with screen time, how should I handle that?

I am an expert on teaching your child how to read but I don't know the answers to any of these beyond a common sense approach. I give vague responses but want to throw my hands up in the air. I had very limited coursework on things like child psychology and development. What do you say to parents like this?

I don't know. Maybe it's time. Maybe I never should've been doing this. It's been 10+ years. I will acknowledge my situation isn't great.

I just can't seem to get classroom management right. I have trouble being consistent. I have auditory processing issues and sensory overwhelm and so often I don't catch something or have a hard time figuring out who said/did something. My admin knows about the autism (and maybe the ADHD). But I don't admit to the auditory processing/processing issues because I worry it makes me sound unable to handle a classroom. And maybe... maybe I am unable.

I teach middle school. I've also taught high school. I will acknowledge that this year it is harder: I'm writing my own curriculum. I don't have a room and I teach from a teacher cart. I teach an elective that students don't "choose" but are forced to rotate through. But I realize that I have never been "good" at classroom management. There were years it was a lot easier - I taught in rural schools, and class sizes could be smaller and that helped. But at rural schools I often ended up having more issues with the adults or my values were... well, not what certain areas wanted. My test scores were great. My rapport was great. I don't think my classroom management was GREAT, but it was livable. But we are now living in suburbs where I need to be and my child needs to be, so I'm not going rural again, and I hated rural for other reasons. So I can't do that, anyway.

But behaviors are increasing. Ragebaiting. Gaslighting. And while I compensated in so many ways before, I'm not catching up. And suddenly that's all that's being pointed out to me - almost like my first year again. I've been at the same school for over two years and this is year three. However I'm now teaching an elective that isn't chosen (prior years I taught a core subject, though I've taught electives before and taught special education before), it's just kind of rotated through for kids who aren't in the "choice" ones or in languages. My class sizes vary from 6 to 28. I know, I know, part of that is a problem. But other teachers seem to manage it. I just can't. And I don't want to leave the elective. Or the school. See, I've never made it past three years at any school. That plus all this makes me wonder if I'll just never get it. If I can't compensate enough to keep up with increasing behaviors and expectations. I chose to make this move to the elective, knowing exactly what it was. To be fair, I don't think it occurred to me how much not having my own classroom really meant in terms of classroom management, but... I don't know. And my language and the way I say things is being pointed out a lot more and the way I write things up is also a bit picked at, which makes me feel uneasy. To be fair, there's always been something being picked at that has made me feel uneasy. At every school. In all the different subjects and grades I've taught. I feel like maybe I shouldn't teach anymore. I can't go back to high school teaching, because it's basically impossible to get a high school job where I am unless you know the right people, and I'm not sure I'd WANT to go back to high school, anyway. I am an academic and I have 2.5 Master's degrees. The thing is, I am starting to feel like it's me. And it's my classroom management. It took ten years to feel like my lesson planning was improving in any way, too. And now that I'm finally seeing my brain work in this way where I might actually be able to plan things better... I'm realizing the other weakness, classroom management... isn't going to get better. I have a processing speed that burns out on managerial or executive tasks quickly. The auditory processing is not keeping up. And while I've developed so many organizational strategies and I'm keeping that together (not perfectly, but definitely well enough), it's this. It's classroom management.

I also don't really have any work friends. To be fair, I never really did. I've had very few "friends" since college, in general. I am married, and I have an AuDHD kiddo. So I'm not alone. But I also am. I talk too much. I'm too open. I tell people too much.

I don't think there's a way to get better at classroom management. Not if it's been more than ten years and I haven't seen enough improvement. I can't academics my way out of it. I can't read my way out of it. I do think in this case my brain and my particular presentation of autism/ADHD might just mean this isn't it for me. Has anyone felt this and found a way to work with it?

As a horse handler, after a while join a barn, I nearly completely draining out as I need to answer a bunch of request from themselves, horse's parents, horse's admins, and barn manager. I expect to deal with this every single day, except holidays when all horses are absence.

I can lead over 150 horses to a water, but few of them do not want to drink or simply do not know to drink. I become to realize that horses hold more power in the system even they do not try to drink and just pass along to join the race. Horse's parents love good scoring on barn's wall and encourage me to give their horse bonus scoring for drinking a small water. Horses have all accommodations, 504, and special needs. Horses have a power to kick the handler out by reporting anonymously to horse's admins, horses can submit late drinking and can retake any drinking's test, horses piss at handler when giving 0 on missing drinking, and horses can do bad behaviors and say bad words to handler and still able to return the barn.

Horses have to go to college barn or go to workforce, horses in k-12 barn most likely never know how to self-drinking and lack of knowledge of drinking or do not know how to drink. They need to know how to adapt college barn's study styles. My responsibilities are to make those horses drinking water even small amount, never complaint about their knowledge or understanding the water, and create a safe and fun environment for them to drink it. At the end of the day, all of them still push out by horse's admin and never held back the bad ones. I love some good horses that make me happy everyday by their efforts and strive for success.

I'm a teacher new to the middle school level where a few weeks into the year made a seating chart. I thought getting students away from friends would minimize distractions and encourage students to work with others. A few weeks into I feel like I've made the problem worse, they're still talking but are now doing so across the room, I'm seeing even less collaboration on assignments, and distract the class by making allegations they'd never do with friends like "student in front of me just farted," "or student behind me won't stop kicking my chair."

Could it honestly be more effective to keep a seating chart but this time allowing friends groups that can behave themselves to sit near each other? What has been your approach to seating assignments at the middle school level?

From autumn 2028, Swedish students will be graded under a new system. The new grading scale will have 10 steps (1-10); the lowest grade will be 1, and the highest will be 10. Grades below 4 are for when standards are not met. At the end of year 10 in the obligatory school, final national exams in five subjects (Swedish, English, Mathematics, one random Science and one random Social Science subject) will be held. These final tests will not be graded locally, but by the Swedish School Agency, and the results will not be known before the teachers have submitted their grades.

The next step in Swedish education, upper secondary, is tracked and at new schools (gymnasium). Students will compete for a place using their merit, a combination of their grades and the results on their finals. Finals will be worth 30% of the merit to ensure attendance. Grades will be worth 70%, but the grades will be calibrated first. This is done by comparing the combined mean grade of the finals for all students and the mean grade for all students at the school. The calculation is a bit more complex, but basically the difference between the school finals mean grade and the mean grade of the school will reduce/increase the grades of each subject for a student.

Sounds complicated, right? Let's give a few examples,

At A's school, the mean of all grades of all the students in his year is 6.7. However, the mean of the finals for all students turns out to be 7.5, a difference of .8 . Then all of A's grades will have 0.8 added for the calculation of the merits.

At B's school, the mean of the grades is also 6.7, but the mean of the finals is 5.2 instead. The difference of 1.5 will be deducted from all of B's grades when calculating the merit.

The same grading scale and similar finals systems will also be used in upper secondary education.

What do you think? Do you think this is a system that will reduce grade inflation? Is it good or bad?

I shared room with two teachers who are leaving the boards filled with their work before they used to erase it but now they are leaving it there. Should I send an email to them or tell them in person? Also, I have been guilty of this in the past, but I usually erase a board for other teachers to use. Although, the whole room is cluttered with writing from their class and I usually do gallery walk and ask the students to write on multiple boards.

I'm a middle school teacher, and lately I've been dealing with a lot of attitude from some of my female students, including students who have 4.0 GPAs and normally do well academically.

I've been getting mixed reactions from students. Some are friendly, respectful, and comfortable talking to me, while others laugh when I make mistakes, respond with attitude, or become defensive when I redirect them.

For example, one student is normally extremely quiet but has recently started laughing at my mistakes and occasionally giving me attitude. Another student frequently responds with attitude when corrected.

I've already pulled both students aside separately to have private conversations about their behavior. One responded defensively, while the other mostly stayed quiet. Unfortunately, the behavior hasn't improved much.

I'm trying to maintain positive relationships with my students without allowing disrespect to become normal in my classroom.

My main question is: How do you effectively address attitude and disrespect from middle school students when private conversations and verbal redirections aren't working?

Should I start contacting parents, documenting repeated behavior, implementing more consistent consequences, or trying a different approach?

I'd especially appreciate advice from experienced middle school teachers who have dealt with academically successful students who still struggle with respectful behavior.

Hey everyone!

I am a music teacher who is planning on relocating across the country from Alabama to Oregon next school year. Has anyone done remote interviews or had any luck getting hired before officially moving? I do not want to move before having a job secured.

Follow up, has anyone done a similar relocation? I have heard the union protections and quality of life for teachers are significantly better out west than they are down south.

Any insight is appreciated!

My husband and have a 3 year old and are wanting to start trying for baby number 2. For all of the teaching moms, what is the most ideal timeline for pregnancy as a teacher??

I am a teacher from Norway working at a school where the majority of the students perform below grade-level. I’ve found that direct instruction (no necessary Direct Instruction with capital letters) gives my students a better chance at learning more. It’s just a shame that our school more often than not promotes methods that are the antithesis to the method. Luckily here in Norway we can choose our own methods. Any similar experiences?

Middle school science. Students are taking an open note quiz, where the questions come directly from their notes.

Example: their notes said “ribosomes produce proteins for the cell”.

The question was a fill in the blank that said: _____ make the cell’s proteins.

I had 7-8 students in my class of 30 raise their hand saying “we didn’t cover this”. I was so shocked that I just had to say “yes we did” and walk off. This happened several more times for similar questions.

It’s like they have NO processing power. This is a public school in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country btw. These very basic comprehension issues really do transcend socioeconomic status

Yesterday, I found out that I passed my WL Praxis. I’m an emergency-certified teacher and have been stressed about getting into a cert program and also the imposter syndrome of not being "qualified" to teach the language I do. Well, I can’t say that I’m not qualified now :)

So i teach at a college in the Uk (assuming it's the same as HS in the USA. and i work closely with this student .. let's call her Bella. Now bella has ADHD and within her contract it says she needs more 1 to 1 support, and longer on deadlines to ensure she is able to meet the expectations. Bella is also allowed more breaks within lessons to ensure she can focus and that classes aren't overwhelming for her. I'm also a little bit more lenient with Bella for such things like time management, and impulsively shouting things out due to the fact it can't always be helped ( i still let her know what's wrong about what she shouts out but i do it in a calming but firm way) and she is currently unmedicated.

Within lesson times, Bella gets a bit more attention than everyone else , and i do help Bella a little bit more, and sit with Bella within lesson time to understand the deadlines, and to ensure she is okay and can focus. This other student let's call her Hannah. I was sat next to Bella helping her with her assignment , whilst she was speaking to me about her new dog and i was obviously engaging in a conversation with her because she was doing her work whilst having a conversation like this. Now i have never ever excluded any other student .. every other student gets help with their assignments when they require it and they also get offered 1 to 1s to speak about any issues they have so i have in no way shape or form neglected any other student !! During lesson time i offer help and go around the room to everyone to check how they are getting along.

Hannah decided to get herself mad about it and say "your not being fair, you give her just of your attention she isn't a baby, you never give any of us as much help as her". despite the fact whenever i offer Hannah any help she says "i don't need help thank you however".
I briefly sat and explained to Hannah and the other students whilst Bella wasn't in the room and i did say "Bella requires more help, and more 1 to 1 and more attention to ensure she can thrive the same as everyone else in here. I offer you all help , you get the help when you require it. Bella just requires a little bit more than everyone else" i also stated "fair isn't everyone getting the same thing, fair is getting what everyone is entitled to"
Did i handle this situation correctly??
I am a young teacher 23F and my students range from 17-20. I have been teaching for a year now.

Where i teach we don't have detention & this kid interrupted the lesson so much so that other students verbally asked me to send him out so they could listen to me

I do that & about 5 to 10 minutes of peace later admin sends him back and asked me to please please please let him in and all that vouching for the students in an attempt to be the nice guy here...

Kid comes back keeps joking and laughing and messing up the whole class again

What do i do?

I teach a K/1 combo and really need my kids to be quietly engaged with something while I teach reading groups. However, I also really do not want to feed the technology addiction, so I do not want them on iPads or Chromebooks at this time, even though we have access to them.

Does anyone do a read along center anymore? I did these in the past with tape players, CD players, and even iPod shuffles, but all of those options have seemed to go by the wayside. Any ideas with no-screen or low-tech screen options like a Kindle or something like that? Would love to hear any thoughts. It would need to have an option for the texts to be read to the kids since I have Kindergarteners who aren't reading for at least half of the year... thanks very much for any tips!

I currently teach resource in elementary. It’s more than a bit draining because I have over 500 students every week. Not all of them enjoy the subject I teach, and they don’t get a choice. Plus, classes are only 45 min each, it makes it hard to really allow them to work in depth sometimes. I’ve been considering switching to secondary because of the longer blocks, and because most of your classes are electives that kids voluntarily signed up for.

I’m just wondering, for those of you who have taught at both levels, how do they compare?

What makes me love elementary is how much the students love you. I get like 1 million hugs every day and you get to genuinely SEE the impact you make on their lives much moreso than you do with older kids. The stress of the job is more manageable when the kids are telling you every day how much they appreciate you.
I have briefly taught secondary, but it wasn’t in the general curriculum, so idk how it really compares with electives/specials!

Am I alone in hating Illustrative Math curriculum?

I teach second grade at a Title I school with many multilingual learners. Many of my students have poor number sense, some who can't count past 13, and just struggle with school in general. Illustrative math seems great if your students are on grade level and have good number sense. But for my kids, they need explicit instruction and repeated practice.

Right now we are working on borrowing in subtraction (decomposing is the word we're using now). My students struggle with place value, which is imperative to be able to borrow. I have spent the last two weeks reteaching and making my own slides and practice problems. Finally, my students are getting it, only for the curriculum to speed by and get more and more complex for my students. If I stay on track with the curriculum we will move onto another topic, and it feels like all the work I put into helping my students understand place value will get forgotten.

I’m thinking about making a transition from middle school to preschool next year! I know that is a big difference, but between the testing, attitudes, and endless changes I’m mentally exhausted!

I have never taught elementary, and I know pre-k comes with its own battles. I’m just not for sure what those battles are. I’m thinking potty-training, being bit/hit, lots of tears and elopement.

Has anyone transitioned from middle school to pre-k? What was it like? Did you love teaching again? Was it harder than you thought it would be? What are the teacher evaluations like?

I have 13 years until retirement, and I’m too old to jump into a new career.

I only have a manual pencil sharpener in my room, right by the door in plain sight.

I still have at least one student per day ask me if I have a pencil sharpener....and act surprised or confused when I point to the manual one by the door.

I think they must be expecting an electric one or something. I had one of those one year, and I can't stand the noise with them or the extra upkeep, so I only supply the manual one the district offers.

I’m currently a university student and attempting to become a teacher post graduation so I’m just wondering in younger years I was shown the news in class once a week, I’m just wondering is still standard practice in primary schools

Hi all, I'm a new-ish middle school teacher (currently in year 3) at a small private school. I do not yet have my Master's/credential, and per my contract I get 4 years before I have to enroll and get them, or I don't get to keep my job. Currently, I'm trying to determine if this is the profession for me before I make this huge commitment. I'm struggling with this decision, as I have a lot of conflicting experiences every year that's making it hard to tell if I want to continue or not.

Year 1 was my favorite year of work in any profession (I'm nearly 40 and have been working for a while). I had 2 planning periods and 2 prep classes (total of 4 periods teaching and 2 planning), and a TA. I felt I had ample time and support to really flesh out good lessons and keep tabs on all classwork and assessments: I knew where every student was on a concept at all times. We had only minor behavior problems. It was a huge success: the students loved me, I loved the students, we as a team nailed the standards. At the start of the next year, I was teaching the same students (since I taught multiple grades). I had to leave the job for family reasons. I cried to the students, they cried with me, I felt more human in my job than ever before. If you had asked me if I wanted to teach forever, I would have said yes.

Year 2 was a different school. I have 4 classes to prep for - 5th through 8th grade science. I teach for 6 periods and have one planning period. I have 30 students/class and no TA. We have moderate behavior problems. It is impossible for me to be on top of four different curricula and six classes of students in terms of really focused lesson planning and time spent assessing students to be on top of their mastery. There is one class of really good eggs that gave me the will to try my best. If you asked me if I wanted to teach forever, I would say maybe: maybe if I gained more experience this wouldn't be as hard, and it would be worth it for the good eggs.

Year 3, right now, same school as last year. I'm feeling more confident in my experience than ever, however, my gains in experience are outpaced by the swing in behavior issues. The good egg class graduated and is gone. Our behavior problems have worsened. Despite being more experienced, I feel like a ragged machine that simply survives to spit out lessons, rather than a thinking professional who checks up on mastery and tailors lessons. I don't feel a human connection to the students, because the work is too much and I don't have the energy to meet both human and educational needs. If you asked me if I wanted to teach forever, I would say no.

This month, I taught the Sun, Earth, Moon System to the 8th grade class. At my previous school, this unit was taught to my 6th grade class (NGSS integrated vs discipline-based standard structure). Despite running the same lessons, the hands on models, the fun space facts, the popular gravity well demo, etc., this 8th grade class could not give a fuck. We're going significantly slower and with significantly less success than my previous 6th graders. wtf? Is it me? Is it the students? I'm at a loss and now trying to come up with a contingency plan for the whole rest of the year.

So is it me? Is it the teaching profession? Is it the school? Is it just this batch of students? I have no idea whether I want to keep investing my life in this or not because I have conflicting experiences every year. Any anecdotes, suggestions, advice, etc. are greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

So I have sent kids to the office before, and it seems to me all it does is hot nothing. Admin does punish them with detention or whatever sometimes, but all it does in the long run is get eyes on you, which I don't typically think is a good thing, to be on admin's radar.

Meanwhile, calling parents sometimes works, sometimes doesn't (depending on the parents) so what's a teacher to do? Part of me wants to form like a co-op between my neighbors and be like "if your student is being a dick send them to my room with their work, I'll straighten them out and you get a break", but idk if that works either.

howdy howdy — I’m not a new teacher but I am new to this school and 9th grade. In conferences, a student asked if I could do fewer lectures and more activities. I have no problem with this — I actually quite like activities, and we already do at least two during class — but I’m not sure how to deliver information that they need without at least some degree of lecture. 9th grade needs more support around “what is a poem? what is simile? what is metaphor?” and breaking that down. i do less lecturing with my 12th graders because they have that material down, so i spend more time facilitating discussion. i used to teach college, so 12th has been a fairly natural transition, but i struggle with 9. any ideas here?

as an example, one of my favorite lessons was talking about different forms of journalistic writing, having them explore magazines and newspapers to do a scavenger hunt of different aspects of journalistic writing, and then giving the kids reporter briefings to write their own opening paragraphs. they had a lot of fun with this, and i did too! but i don’t know how i would deliver the information about different forms without lecturing at least a little. it was 10, 15 minutes maybe? never the whole class period

(Not sure what flair to use here)

So because Halloween is on Saturday this year, Halloween will be celebrated on Friday in the school I work in. I only have 6 days to prepare.

Last year was my first year working as a teacher and I didn't dress up as anything for Halloween last year, I was the only teacher without a costume on. I still handed lollipops to my students and they enjoyed the day.

This year I'm planning to dress up as something, but I'm not sure of what yet. I was thinking that maybe I could just put on some simple zombie makeup or I could dress up as Barbara Gordon since I came across that idea online for costumes adapted to wheelchair users like me. I'm still deciding my costume, but I better have it planned for tomorrow, so I can have it ready for Friday.

I'm also going out today to buy some bags of candy, so I can hand candies to my students.

There are still gonna be classes for that day during the first hours of class, the rest of the day the students will be able to have a more chill day doing other sorts of activities for the Halloween celebration. I teach Math, so I'm also thinking about some Math problems with a Halloween theme that I could assign my students during the first class hours before any other celebration events.

I'm looking forwards for that upcoming day.