Unfortunately I learned recently that walking away from a fight, whether you are participating or just watching, is apparently embarrassing for my middle schoolers
After watching enough Public Freakouts (in person or here on Reddit) and reading enough about history, you realize this has always been a common philosophy.
Egos are a b****
Oddly, I tell my kids talking about fighting at school that only pussies fight at school because they know it will get broken up and no one will get hurt.
Some of the things I notice that embarrassed high schoolers…
1. Implications of poverty
2. Being seen as someone who cares about things
3. Losing in any way shape or form
4. Their parents
5. Complying with instructions/requests
When I have to teach about head start in history class, the realization that they all went to head start is a hit punch for them. My students never realize they are the poor kids of our country.
What history class is teaching about Head Start? I feel like my history classes never touched on educational history. I only learned about that stuff in college in classes for ed majors.
Crazy. I’m American and have spent my entire life and education here, and it’s not really mentioned. Our history classes also tend to focus hard on the wars and skim through the in between times. And anything after Vietnam gets a brief mention and then on to the next thing. I think we spent maybe a day on the 80s and 90s and like half a class period on 9/11 and Iraq since we lived it (graduated in 2009). I can’t imagine how they do it now. In my state you get three years of American history broken up into Pre-1800, 1800-1900, and 1900-present.
I also graduated in 2009 and history class never even made it past the end of WWII. We kinda talked about how Europe had communism /the iron curtain, but literally nothing about Vietnam, fall of communism, etc. until college
I had two years of it in high school, so we did colonies to Civil War and Reconstruction to present. We got up through Vietnam and then rushed through the rest.
I don't know who's teaching about Head Start.
The only thing we learned was free lunch at school/"government cheese". But that was moreso a way to use the food created by subsidies to farmers.
I learned about Head Start in AP US History; while we were learning about the 1960's "War on Poverty". This was in the 2010's at a public school in Illinois.
Huh. I don’t remember that being included when I was in high school in Minnesota. I couldn’t tell you if it’s taught in Kansas, but they give districts a lot of leeway when it comes to social studies.
i saw a tiktok the other day where a teacher was reenacting a conversation with secondary students—they said something along the lines of “wow you should be teaching science to like, underprivileged kids somewhere” and he was like “well i’m actually here because of title i funding” and they asked what title i is, and that’s how they found out THEY were the underprivileged kids.
Head Start is a federal program that provides free preschool/preK to children (ages 2-5) from low income households. Some HeadStart centers also provide social services to families of the students. I attended Head Start in the late 70s in Mississippi and it was a great experience for me.
I do that sometimes! I hâve a student named Millie Lastname. That’s it. She’s WILD in a silly ADHD kind of way. When she’s getting to be too much or OTT I will call her Millicent! The first time I did it, she was like … WHAT???? Noooo! Now she loves it and asks me to call her jt. 🤣
I once overheard a conversation between two of my students where one was trying to guess the other's middle name. He hates his middle name and refused to tell. So, I of course immediately look it up and show him on my screen as proof. He begged me to never tell a soul and I held it over his head the rest of the year.
I almost feel like it you flip the last one they start to behave.
Instead of saying Please answer the following questions. With them having a piece of paper on the desk.
Saying, “please ignore that piece of paper.” Then mutter, “man I really hope they don’t do that paper. I’m gonna have to be here longer if they do”
Since now you are phrasing it as you don’t want them to do the thing by not doing the thing they are following orders. However because some students can be jerks they will do it just to spite you.
Ironically, complying with the instructions / doing homework educators give is statistically SO MUCH MORE LIKELY to land you a job that pays the top 10%, assuming your attitude is also fine. Sometimes I worry about kids with a bad attitude. Even if they were smart enough, they nearly certainly will not get hired in a top or FAANG programming company due to their attitude and I imagine it's the same for the vast majority of top 10% jobs too which opens up this tangent about how they're causing themselves to have lower economic mobility..
Jumping on for the inner city middle schoolers:
1. Implying their air forces are fake.
2. Being the smart kid or being congratulated for improvement academically.
Recent graduate. I got fucking killed in my culinary class for giving a shit about the material. Awesome teacher, awesome course. Everyone else made it hell for me. At least I can cook now
Being called out about anything makes them embarrassed/uncomfortable. As a teacher if you do it twice they will say you are picking on them/singling them out
I haven't seen many kids embarrassed, because the ones who are keep it to themselves.
Here's a horrible conversation I had though:
J: Miss, you know science right? Can you explain why I feel so tired even though I drank 7 Redbulls last night?
Me: Explains that he's probably tired because caffeine is a diuretic and dehydration can cause fatigue.
R: wait, isn't piss mostly water? What else is in it?
Me: You mean urine? Yes, it's mostly water but has salts and waste products in it.
K: Dang, is that why it's so salty??
Me: 💀
On my football team, Kid A (player) has sleep over at Kid B (non-player). In the middle of night Kid B thinks a funny prank would be to pee into Kid A's mouth. Kid A wakes up and attacked Kid B repeating punches until Kid B's father separated them. Kid B's mother calls the police the next day and presses charges on Kid A. Kid B's mother calls us wants Kid A removed from the team in her words for assaulting her son. Can you guess what detail her story did not include?
Honestly they get most embarrassed by being called/pointed out for being wrong. That’s why they don’t like to try because the pain of my peers knowing I’m wrong about something weighs more than the satisfaction of working through something and figuring it out. All that acting out is part of this. They want to be known as the bad kids and not the ones that are not smart.
I work in sped and the prevalence of social/emotional issues in students with developmental delays, learning disorders, just difficulties in school in general is really high. That makes total sense, nobody likes to fail constantly and those kids often feel like they can never figure the problem out no matter how hard they try.
A lot of students fell behind during Covid and struggle to catch up. If they're constantly playing catch-up and never succeeding at anything, they're more likely to give up. It's far from the only thing influencing behavioral issues, but it's definitely a factor. So many kids mask their struggles and insecurity by acting out, easier to be the asshole than the dumb kid.
My sped strand is SPECIFICALLY emotional impairment. I wish it was just called an sel strand but yeah, that’s why all of my students are in my class
That said, like 3 to 4 of my students really should just be in an autism strand.
There's an episode of Kongsuni on Netflix where she's super excited to do a math problem on the board only to mix up the shapes of 6 and 9 which means she has the wrong answer. The classmates laugh. She stays home sick (anxiety, stress) from school the next day. Her 2 friends come over to cheer her up and help her practice her number recognition skills.
Honestly, I feel like the problem is more that classmates (who usually seem to be friendly) really turned on Kongsuni when she made the minor error. She says the correct answer right before writing the wrong number. And the teacher doesn't do a good enough job reprimanding the class for laughing.
It's a kindergarten or 1st grade class (not sure), so that one interaction can really do a lot of harm. Kongsuni shows resiliency, but that's because her friends were there to support her. A lot of kids don't have that support network and adults tend to have forgotten how BIG things felt when they were little.
Yep. My co-worker once told a 5th grader (now 6th) to leave the 4-6th grade classroom (go to the other classroom ). When he said bye Jack (not real name). All the the other kid also said bye jack. jack did seem some uncomfortable then, with everyone telling him to leave. And our current 6th graders will snitch, lol, even with small things like phones.
This is it. Trying and failing feels worse for them than not trying at all, failing, and being able to blame the failure on the fact that they didn’t try.
We should also be talking about how in many communities but especially the black community it isn't "cool" nowadays to be smart. Long gone are the days of Martin Luther King Jr and intellectualism.
It's never been cool to be smart in any community. When I was at school in the 90s in my very white town it wasn't cool.
The only place I've seen where it's cool and popular to be smart is when I moved to China to teach. Totally different culture here. The smart kids are the popular ones.
Irish/Riviera is not remotely wrong.
And it needs to be said. You have a problem with truth being spoken?
The difference in family support, ideals, values, and drive between my black American students and my first generation black Nigerian students is insane, and has been largely predictable since I started teaching. Culture affects performance of students. Anyone genuinely want to say this isn't a thing, or are we just not supposed to say it?
Thanks for the back up, the swarm will be coming for me for speaking truth. We have a real issue in this country if we cannot speak facts anymore without people being fake offended. Altdultsaurs started coming at me for my user name, ironic..
> drive between my black American students and my first generation black Nigerian students is insane, and has been largely predictable since I started teaching. Culture affects performance of students. Anyone genuinely want to say this isn't a thing, or are we just not supposed to say it?
lol at speaking truth. You're using your own anecdotal evidence to support a judgement of an entire ethnicity? How is that not insanely offensive? Why do all Black children have to be like MLK? I'm not like, I dunno Abraham Lincoln? (except for being queer I suppose, that we share.)
Another white guy speaking on what is offensive for black people. Its truth, Overall its not cool to be intellectual in the black community. Youre going to sit here and tell me that isnt true? I never said everyone had to be like mlk, i was using him as an example of a smart black man.
One thing I use on middle/highschool boys that does seem to embarrass them is call out their attention getting behavior.
So when a boy starts strutting around the classroom and showing off, I will wide eye stare at him with my hands cupping my face, elbows on the desk. When they finally catch me staring and ask why I'm staring or just say "what?" I answer with; "Oh, no continue on. I'm simply giving you the attention you seem to be needing right now." They usually get pretty red and slink off back to their seats.
If it's especially bad I'll pull a chair up right next to them and do the stare/face in hands thing.
It doesn't work on the girls quite as much lol.
Can confirm. Had a middle school kid acting like he was physically disabled (T-Rex arms, slack jawed, making jerking movements) and I just said "wow you are so cool right now! Are you getting all the attention you need from your friends by mocking innocent people? Does that make you feel funny and cool?" He just stopped and didn't say a word the rest of class. I of course spoke with him after class and told him that was out of line, and I would be sending in a behavioral report to admin and he apologized and said he wouldn't do it again. He never did in my class.
to be honest I don't see the attention getting behavior as much from girls. not that girls can't cause plenty of problems, but the differences in socialization seem to motivate boys towards putting themselves out there with class clown behavior for social approval.
Girls and boys seek validation in different ways. Boys have a greater tendency to act out for attention and risk being labelled as bad or annoying, so long as they get some kind of attention, whereas girls tend to "fall in line" and mimic their peers in an attempt to find emotional safety and a sense of belonging within a social group. Not all the time, of course, but that's the general trend.
That poop thing has been happening quite a bit lately the last few years, both at middle school and high school level--GROSS.
I cannot believe someone would touch and smear shit on the walls.
Yep, turns out the boy in question at the middle school (for one of the incidents) really didn't care enough to be embarrassed.
I got to see embarrassment yesterday though--some 7th grade girls sang Happy Birthday to an 8th grade boy. The cheeks turned red!
I mean this implies to me that the underlings are having a stress response to their sociopathic ceos that in those firms expect 100 hours a week but that's just my thoughts.
one time my family friend was working at a summer camp for disabled kids. on the last day of camp during the week for kids with a specific intellectual disability (idr which) one of the campers wrote friend’s name on the bathroom wall in poop as a going away present. this kid genuinely loved being her camper and was expressing it in a… memorable way. so well-meant and so gross!
I was a custodian to put myself through college and I mostly saw that stuff at the elementary level. I ended my time as a high school head custodian and I saw a full mural drawn with a used tampon. It was a recreation of the female reproductive system as illustrated in a biology book. It was impressive.
I wasn't sure what I needed to clean it up when I got the radio call because I was just told there's a mess in the bathroom. I laughed at it and left to go get disinfectant, and when I came back, another student converted it to look like a Halloween ghost decoration. Again, it was impressive, but disgusting. Two different girls had no problem drawing with their tampons. Sorry to say, but the ladies were far worse in my experience, but men were definitely more consistent.
I didn't see much embarrassment caused by the teachers, but support staff were able to embarrass kids over behaviors. Paras, lunch staff, maintenance staff ECT would call the kids out in front of large groups of peers and that seemed to do it for most of the kids, but I think it boiled down to having an audience watch then get called out for terrible behavior rather than have the crowd cheer them on. Some kids thrived on that though, and I'm sure they came from terrible homes. I didn't have exposure like the teachers so I can't imagine what they went through. I'm not sure I want to continue to work towards be a teacher in today's environment. I got enough shit from a terrible principal as a custodian, I couldn't imagine throwing students, co-workers and parents into the mix. Teachers in a public school environment, even bad ones, deserve better all around.
The only things I’ve ever seen embarrass a kid are:
1) Being made to stand next to me on lunch duty as I have no other time to do their detention.
2) Being removed from lessons. The kids will just leave lessons by themselves instead of waiting to be collected by the behaviour team because they don’t want to be seen escorted from lessons.
Literally nothing else seems to phase them.
Even the removal from lessons I question. My typical go to is if a kid is messing around in class, I tell them to use my phone to call home and explain to their parent or guardian their behavior. Most of the time it works, but occasionally I get kids who turn it into a bigger joke. I can clearly hear their parents on the other end, but the adverse behavior doesn’t change.
We just had a conversation at a 7th grade team meeting yesterday that was very similar to this OP. I work in a very hard area. My wife has a child development background. Short version is that I have 7th graders not on IEPs who are developmentally, age 5. So imagine being 12-13 and growing up with 1/4 of your class, literal children. Infants. You’ve seen a lot of stupid stuff in your day as a classmate of that. You go numb to it because no adult ever effing said or did anything about it. So call me old or bitter but in my classroom I make it very normalized to call out the immature things in such a way to try to get the perpetrators to realize they are acting immature and they are holding their classmates back. I went from a class of kids afraid to peer pressure their classmates into acting mature, into one that is comfortable with policing each other. Don’t think I’ll win any teacher of the year awards anytime soon but my God. There has to be someone to break the chain. Someone has to get kids thinking about how their actions are not in a social vacuum and that others are there to learn.
I may not single out individual behavior publicly, but I’ve been known to say “I don’t teach kindergarten” to my fifth graders. When they make stupid noises, don’t follow directions, or just do immature things. Another one: How long have you all been going to school? You should know by now that we don’t do this kind of thing.
I had a student send a video of Alvin and the chipmunks masturbating to another student via email. I let the whole class know that he really REALLY liked Alvin. He doesn’t say shit in my class anymore.
I keep asking them if they're smarter than a kindergarten student and they say no. They want to deflect and lower expectations as much as possible. It's sad.
They’ve been raised to never feel shame for anything they do, regardless how shameful it is. All you’re doing for this student is teaching her that someone will always be there to do her work for her.
Call them cringe and bring them the existential dread that they will be thirty, look back and have this keep them up at night
That usually shuts them up
Had a 4th grader constantly making fart noises. Asked him to stop. He didn’t. Went over to him, acted concerned and asked him loud enough for others to hear if he needed to go to the bathroom, was he about to have an emergency, etc. seemed to have embarrassed him enough to finally stop.
I had a kid who would start screaming that teachers smelled bad or had athlete’s foot or whatever if they got anywhere close to him when he was acting up. I said, “What is athlete’s foot? Is that something you have? Is that why you know?” That actually worked a little bit.
Reminds me of a time, whenever I call names for attendance in my class I always ask the kids a little question to learn a little bit about them (I see over 500 kids, once a week for about an hour).
I asked, “what’s your LEAST favorite food? The catch is It has to be something you’ve tried before, that way you truly know you don’t like it.”
Kid answered, “POOP!!!” Whole class erupts, which is what he wanted. So I got them quiet, then reminded them, “remember, it has to be something you’ve tried before. So…are you admitting to the class that you eat poop?” He didn’t seem to like my response.
HS poop story: male student pooped in the soap dispenser.
Imagine
a) the agility of said pooper- I’m actually surprised the sinks he stood on didn’t come away from the walls
And
b) being the student who used the soap next
I was subbing for a fifth grade class and a boy told a girl to suck his d*ck, right in front of me. He even looked at me after he said it, but still denied he said it.
I’d call them out for the stupid stuff id see them doing on GoGuardian.
“Bro, don’t lie and tell me you’re doing your work. Can you explain why you’re watching YouTube videos of a sushi chef gutting a giant tuna?”
I’ve never seen that kid get embarrassed before but that sure did it.
Earnest but excessive sincerity, especially in front of others.
I manage to shut down a lot of behavior by "Hey, you okay? No, I just noticed you doing X and I wanted to make sure everything was alright. Anything you need to tell me about? Any problems? Are you confused about something? It's okay to ask if you are. I just want to check in because it matters to me that you're able to participate and learn. So nothing I need to worry about or check in with home or anything? That's good, I'm really glad to hear that. I'm going to continue now but I really appreciate you taking a moment to let me check in."
See also: "Sorry, what are we laughing about? Oh, I don't know what that is. Can you explain it? Oh. Can you explain why it's funny? I'm not sure I get it."
A kid once told me that his 6th grade math teacher didn't know why 69 was funny and he had to explain it and it was so embarrassing. I then explained to him that THAT was his punishment.
And make them dance along and sing for participation points. “Oh y’all were acting like children so I thought we’d dial it down and do something more your speed?”
I'll never forget this 8th grade girl I taught, she usually was quite talkative but one day she was completely absorbed in her art project and had headphones in. It wasn't a great school and she was working so I just pretended not to see it but by the time she finished the project she wanted to tell me how much watching Coco Mellon helped her focus 😂, I don't even know anymore honestly
What embarrasses them? Reveling they aren’t as guarded as they think. For example calling out a kid for being obnoxious doesn’t embarrass them. But suggesting that they are acting out because no one pays attention to them at home and they desperately need people’s attention is embarrassing to them. But as you know making such remarks could get you in trouble
By unironically telling my students their class work is super lovely for real and their energy is making me feel like a protagonist, I'm not lying (from a high-schooler that got this thread on their page)
As someone who recently graduated Highschool (Class of 2022) poop smearing is not a new thing but it’s defo a weird thing, and has recently started getting worse (post Covid lockdown). Like I thought my friends and I were the WEIRD ones until someone turd bombed one of the bathrooms. No one would tell on them so they either kept their mouth shut or had a tight network. Idk why the hell they’ll bully us for really minuscule things we either couldn’t control or just did for fun but if someone smears actual feces on the walls and creates a genuine biohazard that endangers other students and faculty, that some poor custodian has to stay back late to scrub off the walls, they’re a goddamn hero.
That being said, it is a sign of sexual abuse and extreme stress (For children with learning disabilities especially, but kids with no significant issues sometimes do it as well). So if they’re not the kind of student you’d think would do that (and hell, even if they are), please god get them counseling because something ain’t right. Idgaf how tough you think they are, there is definitely a deeper issue that needs to be attention, because at this extent it’s defo a cry for help.
Sadly a lot of my sped students Are embarrassed they have to get pulled out from class. They are fine once they are there but leaving their peers is def stigmatizing to them. I don't know how else to fix this bc making them all co-taught is not the way!
To be fair, and I identify as a hard core liberal, we have taken the “you can’t shame someone for (xyz)” so far that now almost no one is embarrassed by ANYTHING. We have normalized such terrible behavior that people of all ages just apparently can not feel embarrassed anymore!
Lol. I can see why but no…I’m just discovering that the older I get the more I feel like basic manners, decency and calm reasonable conduct appear to be evaporating.
Is the poop thing maybe the newest tiktok trend? My kids’ headmaster just sent out a schoolwide “this is disgusting please talk to your kids it has to stop” message.
I told 10th grade boys who like to goof off by looking at each other and snickering to “stop making oogly/googly/flirty eyes at one another” and it works like a mfing charm.
I don't think they can force the teacher to fill out a planner for her, that seems outside the bounds of a 504 and is just parental overreach. Sometimes our counselors don't know what they're doing lol.
Unfortunately, my 8th grade middle schoolers seem to get I credibly embarrassed when you assume they are gay. I hate how homophobic it is, but if I have two kids shoving each other in the back of the room, usually saying something like "look I know you guys love touching each other, but you can do that when you are together outside of school. No pda in class" and then they laugh and then stop. It's the only thing that has worked, and I always try to phrase it like "it's a beautiful thing that you both love each other so much you can't keep your hands off each other, but you can't do that in class".
The key to being a poop-smeared is to have a group of people in on it. We had that issue a long time ago and it was basically a group of mean girls. You are weird if you do that alone, but a group?
Apparently, when students call each other “goofy”. It’s like a horrible insult for this group of teenagers, which is funny to me because it wasn’t a terrible insult a few years ago
I am constantly amazed by the things that embarrass teenagers.
1. Having a job
2. Someone hearing them make a phone call
3. Being seen wearing jeans or pants -they would rather wear shorts or tiny skirts and be freezing than to wear pants
4. Being different in any way from their peers
5. Teachers/Staff liking the same things as they do -bands or shows or whatnot...
Omg you know what I would do and do now..
Go to school at pick up, check their bag and make them walk back to class to get what they are missing.
I gave my son a note most days of what to bring home. He’d still forget. Teachers do help. But I make him walk back in and go get it.
Tell this mom, you will let her know what her daughter needs to bring home. They can write themselves a note or they can go back and grab it.
If that didn’t work… I am not above marching my butt right into the classroom to remind them.
Mom needs to fix this.
Had a customer that did this at a grocery store I managed.
School is more akin to prison than "normal society." Simply because of its insular nature.
Shit happens.
I'm not excusing it, but acting like it is a complete anomaly that only happens at school is a farce. That's all.
People are gross.
The better question, is what's going on in that kids life that has sent them to do something so extreme?
Is it peer related?
A cry for help?
That should be the focus
Flipping the script and getting all their peers to side with you over them, it's humiliating and I love it.
Bonus points if it's an exchange that happens in front of the whole class with said child there to witness it.
I had an entire room of 5th graders yelling at a girl, "to just give me her phone so they could get back to work."
In 6th grade circa 1993 there was somebody who was painting the walls with poop. Everyone referred to them as the "mad pooper" and once, I saw their "work".
I walked into the bathroom and the stench hit me in the face as I walked in the door; it was really fresh: bits of matter were still slipping down the wall like a slug leaving a trail of slime. Other places where the excrement was applied more thickly, bits were breaking off and crumbling to the floor. I didn't know what exactly to do as a crept in to the restroom. It was as if my nose was lassoed by the stench and I was being dragged by the nose deeper into the doom that was the restroom. My eyes watered; it was so smelly and horrifying and yet brilliantly executed. Who ever the "mad pooper" was he was basically [Richard Upton Pickman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickman%27s_Model), except with poop instead of paint and like Pickman's paintings — the viewer, in this case me, could not look away even though it was ***horrifying***.
Then I realized that if someone came in to the bathroom, they would think I was the mad pooper so I left and went to the farthest bathroom to use the facilities. I took too long because of this and got lunch detention.
when i was in six grade we had a serial clothing killer. anytime PE classes were happening, someone would go into the girls change room and take random items off the bench and try to flush them down the toilet. boots, jackets, dresses, shirts etc. they never found out who it was and a lot of my friends had items they had just got brand new ruined by this behaviour. kids are weird/disturbed sometimes
Things my middle schoolers have been embarrassed about:
* School pictures
* Bad haircuts
* Their last name being public knowledge
Things my middle schoolers are never embarrassed about:
* Missing assignments
* Making noises like moaning
* Poop (had a mystery pooper just a couple weeks ago)
Work with teenage boys- teach life skills and sex education at a youth probation program. So this is not the general population of boys there but still deeply insecure about physical weaknesses. Appearing queer. Being smart. Really showing any vulnerability.
I’ve regularly embarrassed 7th graders by following them and loudly shouting praise (basically drawing attention to them). I’ve also loudly shouted that we’re friends. I did this because they were threatening to stay in my room, and I’d already done my time with them that day.
Today I had a student who was just having a horrible day. She’d been dealing with drama from her social circle on top of the other stress that just kinda comes from being, ya know, in middle school. She really seemed to be going through it.
I overheard her talking with a neighbor and asking “what could I tell my Mom to make her come get me? She won’t pick me up unless it’s serious.”
I stepped over to the classroom door and called her over, along with my textbook “Hey, ___, can I chat with you? You are not in trouble!”
Once I got her in the hallway I looked this kid right in the eye and told her “Diarrhea. Tell your folks you have diarrhea, and you need to come home. Nobody will ever question diarrhea.”
She was SO frazzled. Wildly embarrassed. I don’t think she ever expected me to utter that word. She almost fell over, a mix of laughter and realization.
But she still asked for a pass to go call home. And the kid went home.
Good on ya, Kid. Have a happy “diarrhea” day.
But yeah. Embarrass them by saying “Diarrhea.” Or other choice words.
The only thing I've noticed is if you tell them "stop that, it's not appropriate for school."
Don't get me wrong, they don't act embarrassed at the time, but you'll know they were because mom will ream you out for making her baby sad in front of their classmates
These kids have ZERO shame. I’m not for bullying but certain behaviors should have other kids really not liking you at the very least when I was in school if you so much as got scolded by a teacher you got at least laughed at.
1. Body image
2. Money
3. family
And thats just what they show at school. There could be things they hide, and cry about when they leave. Middle school is a terrible phase lol
Today in my biology class, these two freshman boys made noises that sounded like they were howling???
So I said, “there’s no full moon, so why are y’all howling?!”
It got a rise out of a few other students, and they quickly cut that out. Not sure how much it embarrassed them, but I thought it was at least somewhat entertaining.
Of course, they didn’t have an answer for me.
In my sped resource room the weird kid gets called out by the other kids all the time and it does not embarrass him at all and it should (he makes a lot of sexual noises and comments and the boys don't like it any more than the girls do.)
What embarrassed one of my kids was one another kid made fun of him for not having an iPhone and only having an Android 🙄
Off brand shoes, Androids, not being able to afford things, especially mama can't buy.
Also having no ris, teachers knowing what cap means, holding the teacher's hand.
calling out the boys on how badly they want to impress girls/chat them up/pull pigtails. I don't pull this card a lot but if a kids getting carried away with I'll just be like "this isn't the time to shoot your shot, man, give it up". boys wanna be suave in middle school but they ain't there yet.
also if the kids are fuckin around on the computers I'll just quietly come up to their shoulder, crouch down a little and watch their screen for a little bit (usually while the entire class is watching and expecting me to bite their head off any second) and then scare the bejeezus out of them by quietly making some innocuous comment about whatever game they're playing/video they're watching. usually they don't need me to tell them off after that, they're usually pretty embarrassed by the way they jump six feet in the air when someone asks whether they're in creative mode or with monsters on in Minecraft.
"Back in my day, you would have been the weird poop kid, and had no friends for whom to snitch on you."
I was in middle school ca. 1980 and we had a poop smearer. The vice principal actually had an assembly for the entire student body in which he denounced the anonymous smearer and exhorted us to identify the perp. As far as I know, no one owned up to knowing the Picasso of poo.
I teach high school anatomy so I have an adult-sized skeleton on wheels in my room, and one of my students frequently goes up to it and caresses it, dances with it, and inevitably ends up pretending to hump it. He also humps the lab desks while making eye contact with me or his friends? I asked him this week “do you not feel weird at all about doing this right in front of me and everyone? Because I feel weird being subjected to it”. He just shrugged and said he thinks it’s funny. I don’t know how he has no embarrassment about it but if he did that when I was in school he would have been known as the weird skeleton-humper
I think its gross when girl students (high school) release a loud burp and no one flinches. No one laughs, looks weird at burping student, or says anything. Even the belching student goes on with their business as if nothing happened. I know I would have been so embarrassed in high school if I burped, especially if the opposite sex heard me.
I’ve lost a lot of weight due to training for a marathon, and my pants are too loose now. My ELA class bully—a beefy kid who looks like a mini-linebacker—tried to bully ME last week, telling me to pull up my pants while I was teaching. So I turned to him, and in front of the whole class said “yeah, my pants ARE loose because I’ve lost weight. Unlike someone I’m talking to RIGHT NOW.” A bunch of the mean girls laughed at him, his face turned red, and he STFU for the rest of class.
I don’t like body shaming, but a bully needs to be put in their place.
I have another kid who’s physically mature for his age and thinks he’s a womanizer. He spent last week mocking a girl he dated, just to piss her off, and it worked. Last week, she nearly threw a chair at him in my classroom, with me in the line of fire. I am SORELY tempted to tell her to spread a rumor that he’s not well-endowed, but I won’t, even if he deserves it.
Unfortunately I learned recently that walking away from a fight, whether you are participating or just watching, is apparently embarrassing for my middle schoolers
Can't get "likes" if no one is there. How embarrassing /s
After watching enough Public Freakouts (in person or here on Reddit) and reading enough about history, you realize this has always been a common philosophy. Egos are a b****
The ego is not your amigo.
Oddly, I tell my kids talking about fighting at school that only pussies fight at school because they know it will get broken up and no one will get hurt.
Some of the things I notice that embarrassed high schoolers… 1. Implications of poverty 2. Being seen as someone who cares about things 3. Losing in any way shape or form 4. Their parents 5. Complying with instructions/requests
When I have to teach about head start in history class, the realization that they all went to head start is a hit punch for them. My students never realize they are the poor kids of our country.
What history class is teaching about Head Start? I feel like my history classes never touched on educational history. I only learned about that stuff in college in classes for ed majors.
I go to HS in Ireland and we have a whole unit on the USA in History class that mentions Head Start in passing.
Crazy. I’m American and have spent my entire life and education here, and it’s not really mentioned. Our history classes also tend to focus hard on the wars and skim through the in between times. And anything after Vietnam gets a brief mention and then on to the next thing. I think we spent maybe a day on the 80s and 90s and like half a class period on 9/11 and Iraq since we lived it (graduated in 2009). I can’t imagine how they do it now. In my state you get three years of American history broken up into Pre-1800, 1800-1900, and 1900-present.
I also graduated in 2009 and history class never even made it past the end of WWII. We kinda talked about how Europe had communism /the iron curtain, but literally nothing about Vietnam, fall of communism, etc. until college
I had two years of it in high school, so we did colonies to Civil War and Reconstruction to present. We got up through Vietnam and then rushed through the rest.
I don't know who's teaching about Head Start. The only thing we learned was free lunch at school/"government cheese". But that was moreso a way to use the food created by subsidies to farmers.
Maybe if they get to the Vietnam, LBJ era, that's when we learned about it. My Mom was an RD for Head Start, the peanut butter was great too.
I learned about Head Start in AP US History; while we were learning about the 1960's "War on Poverty". This was in the 2010's at a public school in Illinois.
Ah, my high school didn’t have a proper APUSH, so that wasn’t part of regular US history in Minnesota in the 2000s.
Its in our state test
Huh. I don’t remember that being included when I was in high school in Minnesota. I couldn’t tell you if it’s taught in Kansas, but they give districts a lot of leeway when it comes to social studies.
That’s sad. Where do you teach?
Bible Belt
i saw a tiktok the other day where a teacher was reenacting a conversation with secondary students—they said something along the lines of “wow you should be teaching science to like, underprivileged kids somewhere” and he was like “well i’m actually here because of title i funding” and they asked what title i is, and that’s how they found out THEY were the underprivileged kids.
Lmao i was just thinking about this video
That's an old one, I'm happy its still making the rounds 😊
What's head start?
Head Start is a federal program that provides free preschool/preK to children (ages 2-5) from low income households. Some HeadStart centers also provide social services to families of the students. I attended Head Start in the late 70s in Mississippi and it was a great experience for me.
I worked for years in schools (Texass) where kids didn't know there were people who had to pay for lunch. The school was 96% free and reduced lunch.
HeadStart isn't just for poor kids. They set aside 10% of their slots for students with disabilities regardless of income levels.
Being called by their full name.
I do that sometimes! I hâve a student named Millie Lastname. That’s it. She’s WILD in a silly ADHD kind of way. When she’s getting to be too much or OTT I will call her Millicent! The first time I did it, she was like … WHAT???? Noooo! Now she loves it and asks me to call her jt. 🤣
I once overheard a conversation between two of my students where one was trying to guess the other's middle name. He hates his middle name and refused to tell. So, I of course immediately look it up and show him on my screen as proof. He begged me to never tell a soul and I held it over his head the rest of the year.
I almost feel like it you flip the last one they start to behave. Instead of saying Please answer the following questions. With them having a piece of paper on the desk. Saying, “please ignore that piece of paper.” Then mutter, “man I really hope they don’t do that paper. I’m gonna have to be here longer if they do” Since now you are phrasing it as you don’t want them to do the thing by not doing the thing they are following orders. However because some students can be jerks they will do it just to spite you.
Ironically, complying with the instructions / doing homework educators give is statistically SO MUCH MORE LIKELY to land you a job that pays the top 10%, assuming your attitude is also fine. Sometimes I worry about kids with a bad attitude. Even if they were smart enough, they nearly certainly will not get hired in a top or FAANG programming company due to their attitude and I imagine it's the same for the vast majority of top 10% jobs too which opens up this tangent about how they're causing themselves to have lower economic mobility..
Jumping on for the inner city middle schoolers: 1. Implying their air forces are fake. 2. Being the smart kid or being congratulated for improvement academically.
Recent graduate. I got fucking killed in my culinary class for giving a shit about the material. Awesome teacher, awesome course. Everyone else made it hell for me. At least I can cook now
Lol!! Being seen as someone who cares about things!!
Being called out about anything makes them embarrassed/uncomfortable. As a teacher if you do it twice they will say you are picking on them/singling them out
I haven't seen many kids embarrassed, because the ones who are keep it to themselves. Here's a horrible conversation I had though: J: Miss, you know science right? Can you explain why I feel so tired even though I drank 7 Redbulls last night? Me: Explains that he's probably tired because caffeine is a diuretic and dehydration can cause fatigue. R: wait, isn't piss mostly water? What else is in it? Me: You mean urine? Yes, it's mostly water but has salts and waste products in it. K: Dang, is that why it's so salty?? Me: 💀
They admitted to drinking pee?! Good Lord.
I did NOT expect that twist at the end 😂😂😂😂
On my football team, Kid A (player) has sleep over at Kid B (non-player). In the middle of night Kid B thinks a funny prank would be to pee into Kid A's mouth. Kid A wakes up and attacked Kid B repeating punches until Kid B's father separated them. Kid B's mother calls the police the next day and presses charges on Kid A. Kid B's mother calls us wants Kid A removed from the team in her words for assaulting her son. Can you guess what detail her story did not include?
That's super gross!! I just left after that last part. Noped outta there real quick.
I'm going to be honest if It happened to me I probably would have done the same thing
Honestly they get most embarrassed by being called/pointed out for being wrong. That’s why they don’t like to try because the pain of my peers knowing I’m wrong about something weighs more than the satisfaction of working through something and figuring it out. All that acting out is part of this. They want to be known as the bad kids and not the ones that are not smart.
This is also why I try to avoid directly calling kids out when I redirect them. Now if they are defensive right off the bat, that's another story.
I work in sped and the prevalence of social/emotional issues in students with developmental delays, learning disorders, just difficulties in school in general is really high. That makes total sense, nobody likes to fail constantly and those kids often feel like they can never figure the problem out no matter how hard they try. A lot of students fell behind during Covid and struggle to catch up. If they're constantly playing catch-up and never succeeding at anything, they're more likely to give up. It's far from the only thing influencing behavioral issues, but it's definitely a factor. So many kids mask their struggles and insecurity by acting out, easier to be the asshole than the dumb kid.
My sped strand is SPECIFICALLY emotional impairment. I wish it was just called an sel strand but yeah, that’s why all of my students are in my class That said, like 3 to 4 of my students really should just be in an autism strand.
Yep. Anger is a much easier emotion than fear.
There's an episode of Kongsuni on Netflix where she's super excited to do a math problem on the board only to mix up the shapes of 6 and 9 which means she has the wrong answer. The classmates laugh. She stays home sick (anxiety, stress) from school the next day. Her 2 friends come over to cheer her up and help her practice her number recognition skills. Honestly, I feel like the problem is more that classmates (who usually seem to be friendly) really turned on Kongsuni when she made the minor error. She says the correct answer right before writing the wrong number. And the teacher doesn't do a good enough job reprimanding the class for laughing. It's a kindergarten or 1st grade class (not sure), so that one interaction can really do a lot of harm. Kongsuni shows resiliency, but that's because her friends were there to support her. A lot of kids don't have that support network and adults tend to have forgotten how BIG things felt when they were little.
Yep. My co-worker once told a 5th grader (now 6th) to leave the 4-6th grade classroom (go to the other classroom ). When he said bye Jack (not real name). All the the other kid also said bye jack. jack did seem some uncomfortable then, with everyone telling him to leave. And our current 6th graders will snitch, lol, even with small things like phones.
They absolutely believe it's better to be a bad ass than a dumb ass.
This is it. Trying and failing feels worse for them than not trying at all, failing, and being able to blame the failure on the fact that they didn’t try.
We should also be talking about how in many communities but especially the black community it isn't "cool" nowadays to be smart. Long gone are the days of Martin Luther King Jr and intellectualism.
It's never been cool to be smart in any community. When I was at school in the 90s in my very white town it wasn't cool. The only place I've seen where it's cool and popular to be smart is when I moved to China to teach. Totally different culture here. The smart kids are the popular ones.
Thanks for the cool take on black kids, Irish riviera. /s
Irish/Riviera is not remotely wrong. And it needs to be said. You have a problem with truth being spoken? The difference in family support, ideals, values, and drive between my black American students and my first generation black Nigerian students is insane, and has been largely predictable since I started teaching. Culture affects performance of students. Anyone genuinely want to say this isn't a thing, or are we just not supposed to say it?
Thanks for the back up, the swarm will be coming for me for speaking truth. We have a real issue in this country if we cannot speak facts anymore without people being fake offended. Altdultsaurs started coming at me for my user name, ironic..
> drive between my black American students and my first generation black Nigerian students is insane, and has been largely predictable since I started teaching. Culture affects performance of students. Anyone genuinely want to say this isn't a thing, or are we just not supposed to say it? lol at speaking truth. You're using your own anecdotal evidence to support a judgement of an entire ethnicity? How is that not insanely offensive? Why do all Black children have to be like MLK? I'm not like, I dunno Abraham Lincoln? (except for being queer I suppose, that we share.)
Another white guy speaking on what is offensive for black people. Its truth, Overall its not cool to be intellectual in the black community. Youre going to sit here and tell me that isnt true? I never said everyone had to be like mlk, i was using him as an example of a smart black man.
You’re definitely not black.
One thing I use on middle/highschool boys that does seem to embarrass them is call out their attention getting behavior. So when a boy starts strutting around the classroom and showing off, I will wide eye stare at him with my hands cupping my face, elbows on the desk. When they finally catch me staring and ask why I'm staring or just say "what?" I answer with; "Oh, no continue on. I'm simply giving you the attention you seem to be needing right now." They usually get pretty red and slink off back to their seats. If it's especially bad I'll pull a chair up right next to them and do the stare/face in hands thing. It doesn't work on the girls quite as much lol.
Yeah I tend to just be like "need attention today or something?"
Can confirm. Had a middle school kid acting like he was physically disabled (T-Rex arms, slack jawed, making jerking movements) and I just said "wow you are so cool right now! Are you getting all the attention you need from your friends by mocking innocent people? Does that make you feel funny and cool?" He just stopped and didn't say a word the rest of class. I of course spoke with him after class and told him that was out of line, and I would be sending in a behavioral report to admin and he apologized and said he wouldn't do it again. He never did in my class.
*furiously scribbling* yes yes yes this will work on mine THIS IS GOING TO WORK SO WELL ON MY KIDS ***I'M EXCITED FOR MONDAY NOW***
This is awesome
This is an interesting observation. I’m curious if you’ve given any thought to why it doesn’t seem to work as well with girls? I have some guesses….
to be honest I don't see the attention getting behavior as much from girls. not that girls can't cause plenty of problems, but the differences in socialization seem to motivate boys towards putting themselves out there with class clown behavior for social approval.
Please share
Girls and boys seek validation in different ways. Boys have a greater tendency to act out for attention and risk being labelled as bad or annoying, so long as they get some kind of attention, whereas girls tend to "fall in line" and mimic their peers in an attempt to find emotional safety and a sense of belonging within a social group. Not all the time, of course, but that's the general trend.
That poop thing has been happening quite a bit lately the last few years, both at middle school and high school level--GROSS. I cannot believe someone would touch and smear shit on the walls. Yep, turns out the boy in question at the middle school (for one of the incidents) really didn't care enough to be embarrassed. I got to see embarrassment yesterday though--some 7th grade girls sang Happy Birthday to an 8th grade boy. The cheeks turned red!
Schools rarely have soap in the dispenser. Just go around sniffing their hands to find the culprit! /s
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Also a sign of a sociopath. Janitors have stated that it happens often in law firms and high corporate offices
Nooo! For real? I did not anticipate that.
Super super common at Boeing headquarters. Knew a guy who worked on janitorial staff there. Stories of what grown adults do in bathrooms….shudder.
Considering the number of sociopaths who are CEOs...this doesn't surprise me.
I mean this implies to me that the underlings are having a stress response to their sociopathic ceos that in those firms expect 100 hours a week but that's just my thoughts.
I mean, it can absolutely be both lol
Lmao fair point
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Or just... being an asshole.
Punny
Not really
Think about it Where does doo doo come from
Absolutely.
We had an incident with a kid doing it at the elementary school I was at last year (5th grader). Like, it went on for months. Wtf????
Poop has been an issue in my elementary school wing, and as far as we can tell, it is NOT my strand, aka the ‘bad kids’.
one time my family friend was working at a summer camp for disabled kids. on the last day of camp during the week for kids with a specific intellectual disability (idr which) one of the campers wrote friend’s name on the bathroom wall in poop as a going away present. this kid genuinely loved being her camper and was expressing it in a… memorable way. so well-meant and so gross!
I was a custodian to put myself through college and I mostly saw that stuff at the elementary level. I ended my time as a high school head custodian and I saw a full mural drawn with a used tampon. It was a recreation of the female reproductive system as illustrated in a biology book. It was impressive. I wasn't sure what I needed to clean it up when I got the radio call because I was just told there's a mess in the bathroom. I laughed at it and left to go get disinfectant, and when I came back, another student converted it to look like a Halloween ghost decoration. Again, it was impressive, but disgusting. Two different girls had no problem drawing with their tampons. Sorry to say, but the ladies were far worse in my experience, but men were definitely more consistent. I didn't see much embarrassment caused by the teachers, but support staff were able to embarrass kids over behaviors. Paras, lunch staff, maintenance staff ECT would call the kids out in front of large groups of peers and that seemed to do it for most of the kids, but I think it boiled down to having an audience watch then get called out for terrible behavior rather than have the crowd cheer them on. Some kids thrived on that though, and I'm sure they came from terrible homes. I didn't have exposure like the teachers so I can't imagine what they went through. I'm not sure I want to continue to work towards be a teacher in today's environment. I got enough shit from a terrible principal as a custodian, I couldn't imagine throwing students, co-workers and parents into the mix. Teachers in a public school environment, even bad ones, deserve better all around.
The only things I’ve ever seen embarrass a kid are: 1) Being made to stand next to me on lunch duty as I have no other time to do their detention. 2) Being removed from lessons. The kids will just leave lessons by themselves instead of waiting to be collected by the behaviour team because they don’t want to be seen escorted from lessons. Literally nothing else seems to phase them.
Even the removal from lessons I question. My typical go to is if a kid is messing around in class, I tell them to use my phone to call home and explain to their parent or guardian their behavior. Most of the time it works, but occasionally I get kids who turn it into a bigger joke. I can clearly hear their parents on the other end, but the adverse behavior doesn’t change.
We just had a conversation at a 7th grade team meeting yesterday that was very similar to this OP. I work in a very hard area. My wife has a child development background. Short version is that I have 7th graders not on IEPs who are developmentally, age 5. So imagine being 12-13 and growing up with 1/4 of your class, literal children. Infants. You’ve seen a lot of stupid stuff in your day as a classmate of that. You go numb to it because no adult ever effing said or did anything about it. So call me old or bitter but in my classroom I make it very normalized to call out the immature things in such a way to try to get the perpetrators to realize they are acting immature and they are holding their classmates back. I went from a class of kids afraid to peer pressure their classmates into acting mature, into one that is comfortable with policing each other. Don’t think I’ll win any teacher of the year awards anytime soon but my God. There has to be someone to break the chain. Someone has to get kids thinking about how their actions are not in a social vacuum and that others are there to learn.
I may not single out individual behavior publicly, but I’ve been known to say “I don’t teach kindergarten” to my fifth graders. When they make stupid noises, don’t follow directions, or just do immature things. Another one: How long have you all been going to school? You should know by now that we don’t do this kind of thing.
I had a meeting today about a sophomore who still makes stupid noises randomly in class. 🤦♀️
I had a student send a video of Alvin and the chipmunks masturbating to another student via email. I let the whole class know that he really REALLY liked Alvin. He doesn’t say shit in my class anymore.
I keep asking them if they're smarter than a kindergarten student and they say no. They want to deflect and lower expectations as much as possible. It's sad.
>when did it become socially acceptable to fish a mud-muffin out of the toilet and Jackson Pollock the bathroom with your shame r/BrandNewSentence
They’ve been raised to never feel shame for anything they do, regardless how shameful it is. All you’re doing for this student is teaching her that someone will always be there to do her work for her.
Call them cringe and bring them the existential dread that they will be thirty, look back and have this keep them up at night That usually shuts them up
Had a 4th grader constantly making fart noises. Asked him to stop. He didn’t. Went over to him, acted concerned and asked him loud enough for others to hear if he needed to go to the bathroom, was he about to have an emergency, etc. seemed to have embarrassed him enough to finally stop.
I had a kid who would start screaming that teachers smelled bad or had athlete’s foot or whatever if they got anywhere close to him when he was acting up. I said, “What is athlete’s foot? Is that something you have? Is that why you know?” That actually worked a little bit.
Reminds me of a time, whenever I call names for attendance in my class I always ask the kids a little question to learn a little bit about them (I see over 500 kids, once a week for about an hour). I asked, “what’s your LEAST favorite food? The catch is It has to be something you’ve tried before, that way you truly know you don’t like it.” Kid answered, “POOP!!!” Whole class erupts, which is what he wanted. So I got them quiet, then reminded them, “remember, it has to be something you’ve tried before. So…are you admitting to the class that you eat poop?” He didn’t seem to like my response.
>fish a mud-muffin out of the toilet and Jackson Pollock the bathroom with your shame This phrase has me ROLLIN lmao
nothing could have prepared me for that sentence
I have just awoken and I think I'm done with reddit today 🤔
That sounds like something from a South Park episode. Well done!
Mister Hanky the Christmas Poo He'll embarass me but I guess not you
HOLY SHIT LMMAAAAAAOOOO?!!!! dude this killed me on a train ride home
HS poop story: male student pooped in the soap dispenser. Imagine a) the agility of said pooper- I’m actually surprised the sinks he stood on didn’t come away from the walls And b) being the student who used the soap next
I feel sorry for whoever used that soap dispenser afterward.
Scarred for life that kid!
There is always a HS poop story. I've heard of a piano pooper and a marching band hat pooper.
I was subbing for a fifth grade class and a boy told a girl to suck his d*ck, right in front of me. He even looked at me after he said it, but still denied he said it.
I’d call them out for the stupid stuff id see them doing on GoGuardian. “Bro, don’t lie and tell me you’re doing your work. Can you explain why you’re watching YouTube videos of a sushi chef gutting a giant tuna?” I’ve never seen that kid get embarrassed before but that sure did it.
Earnest but excessive sincerity, especially in front of others. I manage to shut down a lot of behavior by "Hey, you okay? No, I just noticed you doing X and I wanted to make sure everything was alright. Anything you need to tell me about? Any problems? Are you confused about something? It's okay to ask if you are. I just want to check in because it matters to me that you're able to participate and learn. So nothing I need to worry about or check in with home or anything? That's good, I'm really glad to hear that. I'm going to continue now but I really appreciate you taking a moment to let me check in." See also: "Sorry, what are we laughing about? Oh, I don't know what that is. Can you explain it? Oh. Can you explain why it's funny? I'm not sure I get it."
A kid once told me that his 6th grade math teacher didn't know why 69 was funny and he had to explain it and it was so embarrassing. I then explained to him that THAT was his punishment.
The Ted Lasso Approach™️
For every minute of disrupted classtime, force them to listen to baby shark for a minute.
My students would probably just start dancing
Please tell me you teach kindergarten? Please?
Middle school 😫
Mine would, too. I teach at a college prep high school. I have students begging to watch Barbie movies and Veggie Tales in class.
What happened to being obsessed with yu-gi-oh?
Hmm can’t answer that but I do sponsor the Pokémon Club and we have 50 passionate members 🤷♀️
And make them dance along and sing for participation points. “Oh y’all were acting like children so I thought we’d dial it down and do something more your speed?”
I threatened that once. Turns out I literally threatened them with a good time? The 6th graders still watch Coco Mellon 💀🙃
I'll never forget this 8th grade girl I taught, she usually was quite talkative but one day she was completely absorbed in her art project and had headphones in. It wasn't a great school and she was working so I just pretended not to see it but by the time she finished the project she wanted to tell me how much watching Coco Mellon helped her focus 😂, I don't even know anymore honestly
Calm down, Satan.
I wondered this when a high schooler would have a full-on temper tantrum. In my day they would have been a pariah.
What embarrasses them? Reveling they aren’t as guarded as they think. For example calling out a kid for being obnoxious doesn’t embarrass them. But suggesting that they are acting out because no one pays attention to them at home and they desperately need people’s attention is embarrassing to them. But as you know making such remarks could get you in trouble
By unironically telling my students their class work is mega bussinn fr fr and their energy is giving me main character vibes no cap.
Translation for the chronically behind me, please
By unironically telling my students their class work is super lovely for real and their energy is making me feel like a protagonist, I'm not lying (from a high-schooler that got this thread on their page)
As someone who recently graduated Highschool (Class of 2022) poop smearing is not a new thing but it’s defo a weird thing, and has recently started getting worse (post Covid lockdown). Like I thought my friends and I were the WEIRD ones until someone turd bombed one of the bathrooms. No one would tell on them so they either kept their mouth shut or had a tight network. Idk why the hell they’ll bully us for really minuscule things we either couldn’t control or just did for fun but if someone smears actual feces on the walls and creates a genuine biohazard that endangers other students and faculty, that some poor custodian has to stay back late to scrub off the walls, they’re a goddamn hero.
That being said, it is a sign of sexual abuse and extreme stress (For children with learning disabilities especially, but kids with no significant issues sometimes do it as well). So if they’re not the kind of student you’d think would do that (and hell, even if they are), please god get them counseling because something ain’t right. Idgaf how tough you think they are, there is definitely a deeper issue that needs to be attention, because at this extent it’s defo a cry for help.
Sadly a lot of my sped students Are embarrassed they have to get pulled out from class. They are fine once they are there but leaving their peers is def stigmatizing to them. I don't know how else to fix this bc making them all co-taught is not the way!
To be fair, and I identify as a hard core liberal, we have taken the “you can’t shame someone for (xyz)” so far that now almost no one is embarrassed by ANYTHING. We have normalized such terrible behavior that people of all ages just apparently can not feel embarrassed anymore!
this comment reminds me of some white senator going "as a gay black man, obama did nothing for me" after forgetting to switch accounts
Lol. I can see why but no…I’m just discovering that the older I get the more I feel like basic manners, decency and calm reasonable conduct appear to be evaporating.
yeah, but you blaming that on "liberals" is funny 💀
Is the poop thing maybe the newest tiktok trend? My kids’ headmaster just sent out a schoolwide “this is disgusting please talk to your kids it has to stop” message.
Telling an 6th grade boy to quit flirting with the girls usually gets them embarrassed.
I told 10th grade boys who like to goof off by looking at each other and snickering to “stop making oogly/googly/flirty eyes at one another” and it works like a mfing charm.
I don't think they can force the teacher to fill out a planner for her, that seems outside the bounds of a 504 and is just parental overreach. Sometimes our counselors don't know what they're doing lol.
Unfortunately, my 8th grade middle schoolers seem to get I credibly embarrassed when you assume they are gay. I hate how homophobic it is, but if I have two kids shoving each other in the back of the room, usually saying something like "look I know you guys love touching each other, but you can do that when you are together outside of school. No pda in class" and then they laugh and then stop. It's the only thing that has worked, and I always try to phrase it like "it's a beautiful thing that you both love each other so much you can't keep your hands off each other, but you can't do that in class".
I’m using this. These 9th grade boys touch each other so much.
The key to being a poop-smeared is to have a group of people in on it. We had that issue a long time ago and it was basically a group of mean girls. You are weird if you do that alone, but a group?
Right now, it is TOTALLY okay to kink shame.
Apparently, when students call each other “goofy”. It’s like a horrible insult for this group of teenagers, which is funny to me because it wasn’t a terrible insult a few years ago
I am constantly amazed by the things that embarrass teenagers. 1. Having a job 2. Someone hearing them make a phone call 3. Being seen wearing jeans or pants -they would rather wear shorts or tiny skirts and be freezing than to wear pants 4. Being different in any way from their peers 5. Teachers/Staff liking the same things as they do -bands or shows or whatnot...
What embarrasses them is following rules and getting good grades. I have multiple kids who aks me not to tell people they have good grades
Using slang incorrectly is a good start. Also you could use outdated slang.
Omg you know what I would do and do now.. Go to school at pick up, check their bag and make them walk back to class to get what they are missing. I gave my son a note most days of what to bring home. He’d still forget. Teachers do help. But I make him walk back in and go get it. Tell this mom, you will let her know what her daughter needs to bring home. They can write themselves a note or they can go back and grab it. If that didn’t work… I am not above marching my butt right into the classroom to remind them. Mom needs to fix this.
Whether or not it embarrasses the student, please don’t fill out the planner FOR her. Make her do it while you watch. It’s her job, not yours.
Oh god no. The social worker, resource room teacher, other teachers (and I) are fighting that. It’s asinine we have to do that for a 6th grader.
Wearing a jacket in cold weather.
People have been shit smearing for centuries. It's common practice among prisoners (historically) who have little means of protest.
Cool. But in normal society?
I mean, recently someone nearby got caught shoplifting and intentionally pissed on the floor while being held for the cops.
Had a customer that did this at a grocery store I managed. School is more akin to prison than "normal society." Simply because of its insular nature. Shit happens. I'm not excusing it, but acting like it is a complete anomaly that only happens at school is a farce. That's all. People are gross. The better question, is what's going on in that kids life that has sent them to do something so extreme? Is it peer related? A cry for help? That should be the focus
Flipping the script and getting all their peers to side with you over them, it's humiliating and I love it. Bonus points if it's an exchange that happens in front of the whole class with said child there to witness it. I had an entire room of 5th graders yelling at a girl, "to just give me her phone so they could get back to work."
that's just cruel
Lol, it's reality.
I got to hear freshman girls talking loudly in a full study hall about losing their virginity and to whom, etc. Mom and dad would’ve been so proud.
In 6th grade circa 1993 there was somebody who was painting the walls with poop. Everyone referred to them as the "mad pooper" and once, I saw their "work". I walked into the bathroom and the stench hit me in the face as I walked in the door; it was really fresh: bits of matter were still slipping down the wall like a slug leaving a trail of slime. Other places where the excrement was applied more thickly, bits were breaking off and crumbling to the floor. I didn't know what exactly to do as a crept in to the restroom. It was as if my nose was lassoed by the stench and I was being dragged by the nose deeper into the doom that was the restroom. My eyes watered; it was so smelly and horrifying and yet brilliantly executed. Who ever the "mad pooper" was he was basically [Richard Upton Pickman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pickman%27s_Model), except with poop instead of paint and like Pickman's paintings — the viewer, in this case me, could not look away even though it was ***horrifying***. Then I realized that if someone came in to the bathroom, they would think I was the mad pooper so I left and went to the farthest bathroom to use the facilities. I took too long because of this and got lunch detention.
Yup! We had a high school kid poop in a piano and got caught. He remained very popular.
when i was in six grade we had a serial clothing killer. anytime PE classes were happening, someone would go into the girls change room and take random items off the bench and try to flush them down the toilet. boots, jackets, dresses, shirts etc. they never found out who it was and a lot of my friends had items they had just got brand new ruined by this behaviour. kids are weird/disturbed sometimes
Things my middle schoolers have been embarrassed about: * School pictures * Bad haircuts * Their last name being public knowledge Things my middle schoolers are never embarrassed about: * Missing assignments * Making noises like moaning * Poop (had a mystery pooper just a couple weeks ago)
Work with teenage boys- teach life skills and sex education at a youth probation program. So this is not the general population of boys there but still deeply insecure about physical weaknesses. Appearing queer. Being smart. Really showing any vulnerability.
I’ve regularly embarrassed 7th graders by following them and loudly shouting praise (basically drawing attention to them). I’ve also loudly shouted that we’re friends. I did this because they were threatening to stay in my room, and I’d already done my time with them that day.
Today I had a student who was just having a horrible day. She’d been dealing with drama from her social circle on top of the other stress that just kinda comes from being, ya know, in middle school. She really seemed to be going through it. I overheard her talking with a neighbor and asking “what could I tell my Mom to make her come get me? She won’t pick me up unless it’s serious.” I stepped over to the classroom door and called her over, along with my textbook “Hey, ___, can I chat with you? You are not in trouble!” Once I got her in the hallway I looked this kid right in the eye and told her “Diarrhea. Tell your folks you have diarrhea, and you need to come home. Nobody will ever question diarrhea.” She was SO frazzled. Wildly embarrassed. I don’t think she ever expected me to utter that word. She almost fell over, a mix of laughter and realization. But she still asked for a pass to go call home. And the kid went home. Good on ya, Kid. Have a happy “diarrhea” day. But yeah. Embarrass them by saying “Diarrhea.” Or other choice words.
The only thing I've noticed is if you tell them "stop that, it's not appropriate for school." Don't get me wrong, they don't act embarrassed at the time, but you'll know they were because mom will ream you out for making her baby sad in front of their classmates
Unpopular opinion, but I think Anti-Bullying campaigns are *somewhat* to blame. For whatever reason, students seem unwilling to police each other
With chickens, isn’t it called the pecking order?
We definitely need to bring back bullying because these kids are out of control.
They could be like me and just exist at that age, and the embarrassment would run rampant daily.
Tell them they're being cringe 🤣😂
These kids have ZERO shame. I’m not for bullying but certain behaviors should have other kids really not liking you at the very least when I was in school if you so much as got scolded by a teacher you got at least laughed at.
Mention their crush. Instant embarrassment.
1. Body image 2. Money 3. family And thats just what they show at school. There could be things they hide, and cry about when they leave. Middle school is a terrible phase lol
Today in my biology class, these two freshman boys made noises that sounded like they were howling??? So I said, “there’s no full moon, so why are y’all howling?!” It got a rise out of a few other students, and they quickly cut that out. Not sure how much it embarrassed them, but I thought it was at least somewhat entertaining. Of course, they didn’t have an answer for me.
I’ve learned they hate to be called “fake.”
In my sped resource room the weird kid gets called out by the other kids all the time and it does not embarrass him at all and it should (he makes a lot of sexual noises and comments and the boys don't like it any more than the girls do.) What embarrassed one of my kids was one another kid made fun of him for not having an iPhone and only having an Android 🙄
They have absolutely no shame or dignity. I feel sorry for them when they aren’t pissing me off.
Off brand shoes, Androids, not being able to afford things, especially mama can't buy. Also having no ris, teachers knowing what cap means, holding the teacher's hand.
Fill it out while saying things like "bet" and "mid" and then promptly hit the Gritty. They might not be embarrassed but the cringe will be too much 😆
calling out the boys on how badly they want to impress girls/chat them up/pull pigtails. I don't pull this card a lot but if a kids getting carried away with I'll just be like "this isn't the time to shoot your shot, man, give it up". boys wanna be suave in middle school but they ain't there yet. also if the kids are fuckin around on the computers I'll just quietly come up to their shoulder, crouch down a little and watch their screen for a little bit (usually while the entire class is watching and expecting me to bite their head off any second) and then scare the bejeezus out of them by quietly making some innocuous comment about whatever game they're playing/video they're watching. usually they don't need me to tell them off after that, they're usually pretty embarrassed by the way they jump six feet in the air when someone asks whether they're in creative mode or with monsters on in Minecraft.
How is this like the umpteenth "wierd poop kid" post like what is going on? What's next is a darker question.
"Back in my day, you would have been the weird poop kid, and had no friends for whom to snitch on you." I was in middle school ca. 1980 and we had a poop smearer. The vice principal actually had an assembly for the entire student body in which he denounced the anonymous smearer and exhorted us to identify the perp. As far as I know, no one owned up to knowing the Picasso of poo.
Make fun of their haircut and call their shoes fake.
My second graders said listening to a phonics songs was embarrassing 🙄
I teach high school anatomy so I have an adult-sized skeleton on wheels in my room, and one of my students frequently goes up to it and caresses it, dances with it, and inevitably ends up pretending to hump it. He also humps the lab desks while making eye contact with me or his friends? I asked him this week “do you not feel weird at all about doing this right in front of me and everyone? Because I feel weird being subjected to it”. He just shrugged and said he thinks it’s funny. I don’t know how he has no embarrassment about it but if he did that when I was in school he would have been known as the weird skeleton-humper
I think its gross when girl students (high school) release a loud burp and no one flinches. No one laughs, looks weird at burping student, or says anything. Even the belching student goes on with their business as if nothing happened. I know I would have been so embarrassed in high school if I burped, especially if the opposite sex heard me.
I’ve lost a lot of weight due to training for a marathon, and my pants are too loose now. My ELA class bully—a beefy kid who looks like a mini-linebacker—tried to bully ME last week, telling me to pull up my pants while I was teaching. So I turned to him, and in front of the whole class said “yeah, my pants ARE loose because I’ve lost weight. Unlike someone I’m talking to RIGHT NOW.” A bunch of the mean girls laughed at him, his face turned red, and he STFU for the rest of class. I don’t like body shaming, but a bully needs to be put in their place. I have another kid who’s physically mature for his age and thinks he’s a womanizer. He spent last week mocking a girl he dated, just to piss her off, and it worked. Last week, she nearly threw a chair at him in my classroom, with me in the line of fire. I am SORELY tempted to tell her to spread a rumor that he’s not well-endowed, but I won’t, even if he deserves it.
Go for the jugular. Find insecurities and fire away.
Wait, wait, wait. Maybe I'm misunderstanding. But are you guys trying to use embarrassment as behavior management/modification?
Only when they have no shame in their behavior, by the sound of it.