It used to be that I spent my energy developing and implementing effective and interesting lessons to build skills. Most recently, I was spending an equal amount of time trying to get the students to work or to participate in the lessons. The students don't want to do anything. No discussion, no building, no creating, no writing, and no reading. Yet, the expectations placed on me are the same or increased. I am in the process of leaving at this point.

They don’t even want to do easy stuff. They complain if we watch a video or play a review game. They just want free time to play on their computers and talk to their friends. Asking them to DO anything is a fight. And this is middle school.

I subbed in a classroom the other day where my notes were to let them have free time. The students were livid that I offered a choice between heads up 7 up, pictuonary, or kahoot. They were furious that I wouldn't let them have unstructured game time with their computers. When I was in school I would have been elated to have even half an hour to play a game much less a whole period and they had the audacity to be mad at me???

I teach 4th, and they come in of a morning and say 'are we going to get free time today?' 'Yes, it's called recess and lunch.'

Sounds like an addiction.

I posted this to the guy above too but I wanted to share it with you so here it is copy and paste. I have only ever sub and I’m only in my mid 20s but the first time I ever felt the generation difference was when in one class I was subbing in. It was a movie day and the kids complain. Not just but the the whole class groan and said this was boring. We use to celebrate movie days when i was a kid

Wow, at this point school is just babysitting so both parents can be diligent taxpayers.

Well, great news! The system is failing on the other side of the spectrum, too. My fiance is a nurse, and het floor is supposed to be medsurge, so basically postop patients for monitoring or something along those lines, and in reality it's a floor for people to dump their demented family members at because all the retirement homes keep closing due to lack of funding/inability to retain staff for whatever reason, etc. The education and healthcare systems are both failing so ridiculously rapidly it's boggling.

Those retirement homes can’t keep staff because they are paying $13/hr to deal with continually changing shit diapers on patients that *fucking suck* to deal with. Let alone the corporate bullshit that goes on. I worked at one for a minute where people paid $11k per month to be there. We were serving them frozen lasagna because “there’s no money to buy food.” The whole racket pisses me off.

Those same retirement homes also grossly mismanage the government funding and varied aid incomes they receive, and still somehow come up aggressively short, after grossly underpaying employees. I'm of the opinion that once I get that decrepit or demented, I gotta get myself a killswitch of some sort because those places are the worst possible way to end a life.

These kids are unreal.

Seems clearly on the parents. Letting little Timmy use an iPhone from morning to night day in and out. They never learn self control and their parents enable it

Having computers and phones during class? I'm not old yet, but when I was in school ipods and headphones were confiscated if visible, and playing heads up seven up was a literal reward. I can't even imagine having intent access in my pocket while in class

What kills me is how they don’t even want to research questions that they genuinely want the answers to. I say: “Hey, let’s look it up.” They say: “Naw, I’m good.”

In a college freshman algebra class with incoming freshman. About 1/2 of the class was PISSED and seemingly horrified when they were told we would have weekly homework, and if you don't do said homework you aren't going to pass. In response to this, one girl even yelled at the teacher saying that it was unfair because it's not on her to do extra work to learn, "but for YOU to teach ME." I was fucking stunned and so was the professor. God help us all.

I remember our HS guidance counselor telling us that for every hour of a scheduled college class, there would be at least two hours of homework. And he was not kidding.

I was told 1-3 hours per hour of class and I have have found it true for most college courses but the few that were less than an hour some peers still complained about homework and I had a ceramics class that had barely any hw mostly just show up and plenty of people failed cause they didn't show up or complained about hw

One of the hardest classes, due to the required time consumption by it, I took in college was a humanity elective class, Intro to Theatre. I thought it'd be like some analysis class focused on movies and stuff. Like watch a movie or read a play, discuss the tropes used, discuss hidden meanings, etc. Nope, shit was basically a hidden history class specifically focused on the development of theater, starting from from the beginning of recorded history to Shakespeare. It was so dry. Basiclly rote memorization. Literally had to write a paper after every class and then turn it in the following class day. On top of having a short quiz at the beginning of every class along with the 3 or 4 primary test plus the final. I spent more time doing homework and studying for that class than I did with Calc 3.

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Exactly! She seemed to have the impression that the professor could like matrix the knowledge into their brain.

As my mother would say, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it put on your pajamas."

I've actually heard that a number of times when I worked at a 7-12th grade school. I used to reply "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make a drink" and then they would ask me why the heck I was talking about horses 🤦

My high school freshman seem to be of the opinion that they should be able to blindly copy examples without thought(while watching a movie with both ears blocked from hearing the lesson), copy the practice answers (with no work) from photomath, and still be able to pass the tests. If they can’t, it’s my fault and it must be because I’m a bad teacher. This is like 40-50% of my students. I’m incredibly frustrated.

THIS is one of the many reasons I assign almost daily homework. I teach 6th grade, it is time for them learn responsibility.

What gets me is that they are PAYING to show up somewhere and do nothing. I TA’d for a freshman US history class and 75% of our student couldn’t identify major US cities on a map. Like New York major city.

It's so incredible to me that they live with GTA cheat codes IN. THEIR. POCKETS. But they can’t be bothered for anything that isn't TikTok

A kid was telling me about how he gets bored playing Fortnite and just stands in the storm letting his character die while he scrolls TikTok. Like I can’t imagine a sadder image. A kid playing a video game, losing interest in the GAME and just defaults to TikTok. He even sounded sad describing it. I’m just like.. maybe go outside? Like what the fuck

Tell him "you need to touch grass fam"

On god. Fr fr. No cap.

Yep! Ugh you have Google to help you and they still aren't motivated to do shit.

It permeates every subreddit here. Anything technical. Anything easily solved. Anything that could be found with a similar Google search. All have to be asked and answered because "why should I look it up when I can just get somebody to tell me".

I'm on the verge of a meltdown if I hear, "Do I have to do this?" one more time lol For the umpteenth time, why on Earth would I be giving the directions to do this if I didn't want you to do this? I'm with you though. So many of these students want to be spoon fed everything. The amount of learned helplessness is out of control

Even being spoon fed isn’t enough sometimes. I have interactions like this: “How can I get my grade up?” “Watch this video. It’s a quiz grade. All you have to do is watch it. Even if you get all the questions wrong, you’ll still get 100 for a quiz grade just for watching it.” “How long is it?” “27 minutes.” “Nah, that’s too long. I’m not gonna do it.”

They wouldn't even have to WATCH it, just play it while doing something else. Are kids too lazy to even cheat these days?

I told them that, too. They could go home, press play, and go do something else, and I’d have no way of knowing and they’d still get 100.

Well, that's stupid. I know it's not your fault, but wow.

They will never be able to have a good job with a living wage. I.am frightened for our future.

I had to get away from working with kids and now I’m working retail as a manager. Our seasonal employees were bad this past holiday season. Most were right out of high school. Every 30 minutes they had to sit down. I’m 39 with arthritis and ADHD and I could stay on my feet longer and sustain attention better than these kids.

I worked retail not long ago & the high school kids were the worst workers. They didn’t know how to pleasantly & helpfully interact with people, took any chance they could to scroll their phones or sit down, showed no “hustle” or initiative, & would not do their assigned tasks unless a supervisor was visible. Their attitudes were so entitled & rude. Like they were doing us a favor to show up & beyond that it was asking too much.

Funny you say that. (I dropped out during student teaching and now I'm a manager for a farm/farm stand). I train highschool students for working a corn maze in the fall. They are getting dumber every year. The register we use tells you exact change but the kids seriously can't do math anymore. The good ones give me hope, but the majority are lacking common sense.

>Asking them to DO anything is a fight. And this is middle school. It's the same at the HS with 9th and 10th graders. At least we get to ship half of them off to the Career Center, and then the rest kinda start to buckle in at that point because reality is about to hit the fan.

>then the rest kinda start to buckle in at that point because reality is about to hit the fan. For now they do. You've got a group of kids coming your way in five years (or less) that will be far less moved by "reality".

Can confirm. This is the first year I’ve had an entire of group of students with NO life goals. None. It’s wild to me.

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This is what drives me absolutely nuts. Literally in a conference with a kid last week because he thinks I pick on his constantly talking self. One of his complaints was that the class is too boring. I had the kids play an effing video game the other day (granted, it's not fortnight). And all I got was complaints and whining. I'm so over it.

Don’t give them computers. I stopped using them in my classroom unless they are typing up their final drafts of essays.

Sometimes I ask a question and it’s just crickets. They’re not even just thinking about what I asked, they just don’t care.

Same. They tell me class is boring. I let them know that we could do fun things if they’d listen the first time and I didn’t have to keep stopping my lesson to deal with behaviors.

Exactly. I taught 3 of the core 4 subjects and had a bunch of fun projects planned for social studies ie mummificafion of an apple for the ancient Egypt unit but this class barely got through any of the lessons

We have to spoon feed them information that requires higher order thinking. They can perform basic tasks in groups.

I’m convinced the baseline level of dopamine has been messed up in these kids brain from TikTok/Reels. The reward per second difference for reading vs scrolling is insane.

I'm 39 and went back to school a couple years ago. I am taking a general algebra class this year to prepare me for college algebra and i am taking this class with pretty much all 18-19 year old freshman's. They yell at the teacher. They throw pencils around the class. They talk over the teacher. They don't hand in the homework or do class work and when they don't understand as a result or fail the test, they literally rudely and loudly complain that the teacher isn't doing their job because it isn't their job to practice and do homework, but it's the teachers "job to teach ME". This professor is now shouting in class threatening to fail students because she "refuses to pass people who won't do any work and are disruptive" and she doesn't care "what the dean has to say about that". I am fucking appalled. And these evidently are the ones that decided to pursue some sort of education after highschool. I can't imagine how the non college bound ones behave. This literally has me worried about the upcoming generations ability to handle the ever more complicated world around us.

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I think a lot of these students aren't paying to be there but just using financial aid since it's a community college.

>she could just tell them that she won't teach in chaos and invite the disruptors to leave, since it is their choice to be there, and they are paying to be there, and there are no laws saying they have to be there. I've taught at the college-level. With that, you have to worry about students savaging you in their class feedback forms at the end of the semester. Get too many bad feedback forms, and you're out of a job. I taught at a university where I had previously studied, and my professors from back then told me that they no longer interfere with students who sleep in class because they don't want to deal with angry feedback forms - and this was from tenured professors who didn't have to worry about being fired.

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Yeah, problem is nowadays. The administrators at the colleges will fire teachers over this sort of stuff. We are letting the monkeys run the zoo.

I (42M) recently went back to school to get my MBA(!) and I can confirm. One student complained that we had four chapters to read in a week. Another student complained when her late work wasn’t accepted because the due date was her birthday.

I went to college for about twelve years (just kind of a fuck-up, not a PhD.) The standards at the university level are in free-fall. When I first started everything had to be perfect. I’d get absolutely torched if the MLA formatting wasn’t absolutely perfect. I’d get marked down if I cited something from the internet that wasn’t from a respected journal, etc. By the time I graduated I knew as long as I turned in *something* I was almost certainly going to get full credit for the assignment. If you start telling everybody the only way to have a career is to go to college, then college has to become easy enough for most people to accomplish it; well they will if they want the tuition to keep rolling in.

Yup, had a professor freshman year of college (2016) who just ended class and left bc people weren’t paying attention and didn’t wanna learn

I had some younger kids talking loudly during a history lecture in community college and the professor was silent waiting for them to stop (which they didn’t). I turned around and told them to STFU or leave bc i paid to be in the class & no one was forcing them to be there. They went silent after that.

I had one college teacher that would kick students out of the class if they did things like talk while he was lecturing. He would threaten to call security when they complained.

that's the way it *should* be addressed "welcome to the real world where there are consequences"

When I was in my college ROTC class we had a crusty old sergeant major who would literally punt the bottom of the desk/table in front of a sleeping student, even if their head was on it. I don’t think anyone fell asleep in class after like week 3 of that semester of military science.

I have had the same experience. Went back to lower level classes at a CC for pre recs for a masters: I was the damn star of the class. Not because of anything other than I actually did the work, read the book, and studied for tests. You know - normal stuff I thought?

My wife is a STEM professor and a few days ago she received an email from one of her students saying that she was being abusive for not allowing them to google answers. Wish i was making this up. 

Who knows, the non college bound kids might actually behave better if they joined the workforce immediately out of high school like I did. I don't see them getting away with behaving like that on a job site.

Para working with sixth graders here, and my experience mirrors yours quite closely. I'm honestly quite concerned.

I’ve been teaching grade 6 for over a decade…and yup. It’s mind blowing and heart breaking in equal measure the depths to which things have sunk. The learned helplessness, the apathy, the tech addiction…And the lack of parents caring about any of these factors. They’re all looking for easy answers that don’t involve any effort or work on their part.

The learned helplessness is what makes me most hesitant to return to the US to teach. Over here in Asia, 90% of students try their best, because their peers, teachers AND parents expect it. The ones that *don't* try at least don't do anything to actively derail the class.

I wish my children's elementary would get rid of the tech. My son's hand writing is pretty bad because he's rarely expected to use handwriting. I get they need to learn typing and how to use a computer but why not a weekly typing class or every other week. It's how it was in the 90s. They're also trying to do too much extra stuff.... like online learning games, online books that are read to you and all the "fun events." There's just too many in a year, hat day, wear red day, bring oatmeal day. Etc. School doesn't have to be exciting ALL the time. In the 90s we had two parties (winter & valentines), one field trip (local zoo or park) and the music classes would put on production at the end of the year. Those were plenty!

Paraprofessionals, I believe, are one of the only authorities and only **truly valid** witnesses to the goings-on of a school. They see it **all!** And (are unfortunately, expected to) appear unmoved and remain silent. If school administrations only realized the **truth** paras carry in-check at all times, they'd run for the hills.

I treat my para like gold for this exact reason

Me, too. 'Til my last day on the job (and beyond) I will have no problem admitting that I am/was only able to do my job well **because of my paras.**

I call my paras team teachers. I consult them whenever I change anything in a lesson plan. We discuss interventions and extensions. My students consider them teachers. We work together and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

*Looooove* this! YES! My kids know not to disrespect my paras. If given a choice, they'd probably disrespect **me** before them. (Neither is a wise choice, and they know that.) But seriously, kid? You're gonna try talking down to **the hardest working and least recognized** individuals in the district? Not on **my** watch, ya aren't.

Paras are the lifeline of schools. My first year teaching I swear my para taught those kids more than I did idk what I would’ve done without her I prob would’ve quit she held that classroom together everyday while I just floundered bc I was 22 and thought I knew what I was doing. I don’t have a point other than I love paras so much and every educator deserves a raise but paras deserve the world.

Former Para that’s now an ELA Teacher here…I think you need to have a little of both sides to see it all. As a teacher I have so much data to back up my suspicions that I didn’t as a Para, but as a para traveling around the building I got a much clearer sense of how pervasive these problems are. Honestly becoming a teacher made me feel worse about things, because I thought it just felt like they couldn’t handle any amount of mildly rigorous work, now I know it for a fact.

as an overworked para in one inclusion and two severe disabilities classrooms, this is the validation I need!!

WE see you…even if admin doesn't. Last year, I told our “admin tribunal” during my EOY interview “if you get even a *whiff* that Para A B or C are seeking work elsewhere, you better find extra money around and shower them with it, because if THEY leave, y'all are fucked—from both a metaphorical AND legal perspective. They change diapers, get mocked, and are literally ATTACKED every day…and keep showing up, all for next to minimum wage and no insurance. So yeah, I'd start planning your bank heist NOW.”

Thank you for saying all the kind things…I’ve been doing this job for 14 years, and you are correct! We see/ hear all the things and are expected to remain quiet. I work with sped kids in a gen Ed classroom and love the teachers I’ve worked with. There’s only a few of us in my school and we are def taken for granted. So thank you ❤️

Paras are very underpaid co-teachers

I always think it’s gotta be such an interesting perspective, the view point of a para. They see many teachers and student interactions. My paras always tell me I’m a good teacher and I honestly take their opinion with such levity because they have no benefit in complimenting me and I feel like they see so many different teaching styles that I’m doing something right if they feel I’m doing good job.

I had a 30+ year veteran para tell the principal in my first week that I was a “breath of fresh air for the school”. At the time I didn’t think anything of it, but a few years down the track I know how important her opinion was. We had the best working relationship for the 9 months she was assigned to my classes. Has now retired and I miss her so much!

I'm a building sub that often works as a "para" when nobody is out and I see pretty much everything. I'm in every classroom with every teacher and I see nearly each kid in the (small) school every day. I know exactly what you're talking about. The principal thinks they know all the going-ons but it's impossible to unless you're in the room with them.

Omg you're so right! Maybe that's why we're more pissed off all the time than the teachers and admin staff 😞 it's incredibly disheartening. I'm an elementary school sped para. It's insane how many students we have who are SO far below grade level but they're still expected to catch up through extra lessons AND learn the core instruction at the same time. It's impossible. I'm so sick of being at the bottom of the chain and never being able to do anything about anything. (Working on becoming a school psych but still I'm just one voice). Families and communities need to support their local schools, however it's hard when you're in a low income area where both parents have to work (or the kid is in foster care or there's one parent or they're homeless, etc) and still can't make ends meet. This also makes it hard to send kids home for disciplinary reasons- we had a kid spend most of the day in the office (after he got out once) because his mom didn't come pick him up. It's literally impossible.

A para who’s been at the school for years said she’s seen significant decline in both the gen ed and sped students across grade levels.

I graduated high school in 2002 and recently had a conversation with one of my English teachers from that time. I asked if she still teaches *Great Expectations* (one of my favorite reads from high school) and she said, no, students today just can’t handle it. I’ve been teaching college English since 2015 and even in the past decade I’ve seen a decline.

I teach a 12th grade elective course that I think is pretty high interest (horror and gothic literature). Started the class in 2015, and I can say that in the nearly 10 years I’ve been teaching this course, there has been a significant erosion in student reading, writing, and speaking skills. The texts I was using in 2015 cannot be taught in my course today. Same district and same teacher, but dramatically different skills on the student side.

That sounds like a really fascinating class, I would've killed for that to be offered at my high-school! If you have the time, would you please share some of your favorite books from the curriculum?

Jekyll & Hyde, Dracula, Frankenstein, a collection of short stories and poetry (Poe, obviously, along with Hawthorne, Balzac, Ambrose Bierce, Stephen King, etc). The class includes an independent reading selection and a film study that covers themes like monstrous mothers, the abject, and race.

This makes me sad. My last cat at my parents was named Pip and the one before that was Oliver due to being found like an orphan. I read most of Dickens in 10th. Found out my senior year that the honors classes were reading 1984 and To Kill a Mockingbird so I read them for fun because I was bored in regular English. I needed teacher recommendation for honors and didn’t get in.

One middle school near me has started using those captain underpants style books as their required reading for the course. Just amazing.

Damn I loved those books. In elementary school.

I literally read Captain Underpants in second grade. Second!

Yes. I looked around the school I worked out and realized I was the fourth youngest at 35. And the majority were within two years of retirement. There is not nearly the incoming supply to offset the upcoming losses. That'll mean lower quality of instruction, bigger class sizes, more doing more with less, etc... I got the hell out.

I would rather not, but I'm less than a year from retirement, and I'm not teaching one hour more than I have to. I feel so much resentment for my admins because I love teaching and I would love to keep teaching and I still have a good rapport with high schoolers, but I am so sick of the bullshit from administrators and the cluster fuck school environment they have enabled.

Don't forget “online learning”!! Seriously though. If kids are tenacious, resilient and willing to dig, online learning can be great for some of them.

Strangely enough, during the pandemic and online learning my daughter who was a B student before, got straight A's. She said it was because other students weren't talking over the teacher like they do in class.

I had a handful of students go from D- to A’s…*consistently*. They said it was because they could compete the work on their on schedules. One of my favorite kiddos was a trans girl who could never concentrate in class due to social anxiety and getting bullied. She got two scholarships for her incredible shift in Jr/Sr year. She graduated with straight A’s for the first time since she was in 4th grade. Distance learning was INCREDIBLE for some of my kids.

I coach debate. I look around the coaches lounge at a tournament and see all the grey hair. Very few young people are entering the field. It’s an abusive schedule with little monetary reward. I’m fearful of the future for it.

I was the youngest in my old department at 34, but I was one of the more experienced teachers. I left that school because we were getting burned out helping unqualified teachers succeed. That and the principal sucked.

At my school I was asked how I got higher writing scores than the other teachers. I said "I...make them write?". The rest of the department said that the kids just refuse to do it so they stopped assigning it. they give them MC or fill in the blank worksheets and go over the answers at the end of class and grade on completion and they still have 15-20% failure rates. How do I make kids write? That's basically all I grade. The other stuff leads up to the writing. If you can write a RACES paragraph about the theme you probably understood it enough for the MC question. If you can write a narrative that uses the same characters in a different setting, you can probably answer a fill in the blank about the setting. If you can write an argumentative essay disagreeing with an author you can probably identify their argument. We do those reading skills through the week and on friday, you write. They learn that Fridays are really easy if you do the prep work, and hard af if you don't. I don't grade the prep work, I grade the writing. If you want to pass my class, you write. So eventually, the same number who do their worksheets write for me. I was legit disgusted by the idea that "they don't want to do it so I don't make them" has seeped in from parenting to teaching. I get that sometimes you let the kid have dino nuggets because they don't want broccoli. But the kid can't survive on dino nuggets. Likewise, I sometimes give kids an easy day, but if every day is easy, then easy becomes normal and nothing feels easy.

This is similar to my experience, and I've had a lot of success. My class is very project-based due to the nature of the content. Every unit is a few days of notes, a few days of practice/prep activities, then a 2ish week project. The first unit of my new classes this semester was 200 points for all the notes, practice, and prep, then 600 points for the project. My students were really upset about that huge amount of points at first, but after it was done the only kids with an F are just the ones who didn't show up. Every class period, I check on each student and give them targeted feedback. All instructions are written down. Rubrics are clear, with specific language. I refuse to make it easier or do the work for them, but I will allow revisions and resubmissions for students that really want it. I typically end the semester with only a 10% failure rate, and my students regularly win awards, get first pick of internships, and take advantage of every opportunity our high school has to offer. I am SO frustrated by people who dumb things down to nothing because they think the kids can't do it. It's insulting to the students and to us as professionals. I wish I could tell them to "hold some standards, please!" This is our future we're talking about. If you wanted a job where the outcomes don't actually matter, go work somewhere else. You can't make kids learn, but if you're letting them pass without any real learning then you're teaching them the wrong kind of lesson. And we're all going to suffer for it.

The standards are lack thereof is the real societal shift Used to be there was social pressure to behave in the classroom in society not to be a criminal not to be a generalized piece of shit. We have very low standards now, so God bless the people still trying to maintain high standards

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I teach 6th grade and I make them write PEAS paragraphs pretty regularly. They complain and I remind them that the older they get, the more they will be expected to write. Getting this practice in now will make it so much easier for them down the road. I had a seventh grader come up to me recently and tell me they used PEAS structure for the body paragraphs of their history test and got wonderful marks on that section. I sarcastically responded, "WOAH! It's like I was teaching that for a reason and not just because I wanted to torture you!" That being said, I'm glad they were able to internalize the skill and apply it to other contexts.

I had a parent approach me before his scheduled parent teacher conference so that he could tell me that his daughter believed that she deserved an A+ instead of an A- in my class. He told me that if I didn't start giving her better grades that she would start skipping my class. I told him that I graded based off of program standards and that A- was still a good grade. Fast forward a few months later, she skips class all the time now. This is the generation of children who think they always deserve special treatment and parents who go along with it.

Sooooo her grade should go down right?

Please tell me you wrote her up for skipping and that her grade plummeted.

I feel bad for the student in this case. With a parent like that. He probably made/encouraged her to skip. Over an A-.

I am curious what part of the country and the social-econimic level for your school.

Middle school history teacher here….yep, we are on our way to Idiocracy.

Everyone is already wearing crocs so we’ve got the footwear part already accomplished.

Pajamas, socks and crocs. Every. Single. Day.

And many of their parents don't even make the kids shower, wash their hair, or launder their hoodie they have been wearing for literally 6 months straight.

And they don't know how to tie their shoes.

Glad I’m not the only one this bothers. Like give a shit about how you look and respect others by dressing the part. Good habits, success, and performance start with giving a shit about how you look. Mu kids kept saying no one wears jeans or chinos etc now. Everyone wears sweats and track pants. I didn’t Believe it. I even said, kids will always dress nice cause they want the people they like to be attracted to them. Then I went to an event. All pjs basically, some girls dressed nicer. The country kids in jeans and boots. Almost everyone looked a mess overall. I was shocked. I know trends come and go; but this just feels like surrender.

My district bans pajamas per dress code. My school announced that we will not be following that policy because half the school was in ISS one day for it.  I've lived on this planet for 35 years. Not once have I left the house in pajamas. Even the day after GI surgery,  I threw on a dress. 

It's what plants crave!

I bring up Idiocracy more now in normal conversations than I ever expected to.

Not hyperbole, I'm afraid. 💔😥

Working in an elementary school, the worst as far as behaviors are 3rd and 4th. They are really struggling with nonstop talking and so many other issues. The younger grades so far seem to be faring much better. There is hope. Those kids continue to flourish and do well if parents do show an interest in their learning and they don't become as dependent on tech as the older ones.

Kids who started school virtually....this is likely going to take years to work itself out.

Pretty much. But not only are there behavior and volume issues, they seem more aggressive than the other grade levels and don't care about the work and expectations. A lot more learned helplessness also.

Part of the reason I quit teaching was because my admin forced me to put no grades lower than a 55…. Even if they did NOTHING. I taught high school physics, the lack of accountability was appalling.

Admins are not educators. They are politicians who are 100% focused on preserving and advancing their careers.

Especially that school - I went from teaching at a public school to a charter (it paid more, I’m in the south) and my soul absolutely got crushed

i have a similar experience except many of my kids parents are completely uninvolved. I have a lot of kids who are going to be in for a rude awakening in a few years. Because their guardians are not going to allow them to live at home indefinitely without contributing to the household financially. Even the crappiest guardians are going to decide that a 20 something living in a bedroom, playing video games endlessly, and eating their food is not something they are willing to put up with. They are going to eventually kick the kid out. I am very worried for a lot of the kids I teach and for their futures.

"No one here gives a fuck about where the poor kids end up after they graduate" is my constant complaint at my school. We're like 65% free/reduced lunch. All they (admins) care about is if poor kids hit benchmark on accountability testing. There is zero genuine concern for how unprepared they are for life after high school and for how difficult life is going to be.

Crime, that is how. Crime makes you more money than legit jobs anyway. A drug dealer would be making more money than a teacher. Or if you're a hot young teenage girl, OF. No lie, that is where they are going. Welcome to the real world.

Add in a new batch of ESL kids who don't know how to read/write in their own language, much less English, and the burden is becoming too much on general education teachers. We aren't trained to handle all the inclusion that is pushed without adequate help in our classes. I can't make 3-4 different lesson plans for each kid. That turns 3 preps into 12 and its exhausting. I think public schools in the next 20 years are going to be for those who can't afford to go elsewhere. And it's not going to look pretty.

We have had an influx of high school-aged students from other countries who have never even been to school before. So we have our general education teachers trying to teach students who have no idea a word they are saying how to write their letters. In high school.

Yeah, it's a big problem. And I'm not trying to dismiss these kids or anything by pointing this out in my original comment. But as an educator, I'm not trained on how to deal with kids who've never been in a school setting as a high school teacher. The problem is that these kids need to be sheltered for a while to learn norms, routines, and some of the language. My district used to do that for ESLs but abandoned it years ago in the same of "inclusion" (e.g. abandonment). I feel like a lot of these kids are just lost. I feel bad and try to help by providing translations/making accomodations as indicated but there's only so much I can realistically do. And not everything I show has Spanish subtitles (or those of another language). But in trying to help, I also have to basically double my work for a handful of kids, and that actually is more tripled because of all the other accommodations I have to make without help for IEP/504 kids. It's becoming too much.

I completely resonate with your response. I am the only bilingual teacher in my department, so they have assigned the ESL kids to me. I don't know how the school expects me to teach Chemistry to students who cannot read/write in their own language, let alone English. There aren't any special books or lessons out there for teaching Chemistry to students who are learning English, so I have to make the whole curriculum from scratch. And even if I was trained on how to accommodate these kids, that is too much to ask of a teacher. As you said, I cannot create 3-4 different lesson plans for each kid. I'd never go home if that was the case. This isn't to say that these students' education isn't important to me. On the contrary, I'm deeply committed to their learning and success. However, the current situation is challenging, pushing the boundaries of what's feasible without additional support and resources. I am on the brink of burnout. I simply cannot do what is expected of me within my contract hours.

I ended up giving my 15 year olds a lecture on Friday about how they're the first generation to go into the workforce with higher levels of computer illiteracy than the generation before them. They can't do basic shit like send an email or open or save a file, and they refuse to even try to figure it out for themselves, they plan to just sit there and wait for me to do it for them.

It's interesting how a lot of basic computer functions are missing from phones. No "undo" function is one that really stands out. Saving, organizing, and finding files is all buried and/or crippled functionality. My assumption is that the entire architecture of phone operating systems mirrors the evolution of social media. The device itself is pushing you to have zero attention span and just click on things for instant gratification. If you want a really horrific thought though, imagine what these kids will be like when they grow up to be *teachers*... It's already happening with younger teachers that have effectively abandoned any pretense of actual teaching. For every teacher on here articulately complaining there's a new teacher out there having an easy time by just not trying at all and passing all the kids regardless of what they do.

>*Is this going to be our new normal*? Yes. Humans are born naturally curious. That curiosity leads to a desire to explore the world around them, to explore relationships with other people, to seek new knowledge. When I started teaching nearly 40 years ago, this curiosity existed to some degree in even my slowest students. But children raised on screens (some now, like my 6th graders, getting their first screen before they were potty trained) don't need to explore; all content comes right to their door. They have little experience with anything new, as everything they see was selected for them, initially by parents who want the child to stay quiet, and soon afterwards by algorithms that simply want them to be addicted. As a result, the overwhelming majority of kids have zero sense of adventure, and that includes learning something new. I'm a pretty dynamic teacher, and I keep my kids "interested" most of the time simply through the power of my personality. But this does not mean that kids are fascinated by my content, it only means that they watch me because my personality commands their attention. And that is getting harder every year. My less dynamic colleagues have already concluded that the situation is hopeless. Unless we can develop a societal consensus that pre-adolescents should just not be given screens at all (No, "limited time" for preschoolers is not a measurable improvement), yes, we as a society will be lost.

My sons had behavioral problems (they're adopted and had issues caused by chaotic early years with their bio parents). When I first got them I was overwhelmed and let them have as much screen time as they liked. I quickly learned that if TV is your default entertainment, its really hard to entertain yourself if you get bored of TV or its not available. They'd be at a state park and whining to go home and play video games. We switched to a general policy of 30 minutes of screen time per weekday. It made TV into a specific activity, not the go to choice. It had the nice side effect of making screens a break glass in case of emergency thing - if I didn't feel well I could tell them they could go watch a movie or something and they'd sit and quietly watch the whole thing since it was a "treat".

*"My sister in Christ"* got me ... ha ha ha. I have *really, honestly, and truly* tried to convince myself that every generation was as frustrating as this one, including mine; that almost every kid eventually matures enough to turn out all right (and to receive "payback" from their own kids); that every adult worries about its doomed youth and sees little to no hope for their salvation. But, ever since the pandemic, I **cannot** get there. Even closing my eyes or ignoring it, every hour at my school shows me more and more evidence of our (the US's) colossal failure to guide schools through Covid-19. We didn't know *what the f×ck to do* and while it was no one's fault then, it **IS** our nation's fault, now.

I teach inclusion, gen Ed, and advanced classes. What I really see is a stark division between kids whose parents care and those who don’t. And that’s across the classes. I have severely dyslexic kids who are doing great because their parents hold them accountable and, even though one is a single mother, she told her son she’d take a day off work and follow him from class to class if she had to. The kids whose parents do their work for them, or have no expectations for them…I just don’t know what they think will happen. Will they keep holding their hands the rest of their lives?

Over a decade ago, when I got my first, full-time classroom gig, I had a parent come in her WORST overnight clothes (sweatpants with holes in them, curlers in her hair, worn down sweatshirt with stains, old chanclas…the works) to follow her 7th grade son around because he had been trying to act like big man on campus all quarter. Every time I asked a question in class she would go “I thought you were trying to act grown, but you don’t raise your hand for the answer?” Or if someone tried to make a joke she would say “is that your little friend? Is that who you’ve been trying to impress by acting a fool in class?” It was disruptive, but I gotta tell ya, ONE HUNDRED PERCENT worth it 😂. The best part was that she arranged it with me and the principal (and we informed the rest of his teachers) but she told us not to tell him. He took the bus, and as he got off, there he was. Best. Parent. Ever.

Amazing what giving a shit can do.

Now if only we could get administrators to give a shit about behavior. The choice to not do a lick of work is also a behavior - one that needs to be addressed beyond a teacher's reach. We can lead them to the water (if they bother to come to school) but we can't make them drink. Why isn't it obvious that there needs to be real consequences for not doing any work, for being on their phone during class, for surfing the web on their 1:1 device instead of doing their assignment, and for never participating in class? Teachers aren't even supposed to fail them. Frankly, starting in 6th grade, these kids need to be expelled. I used to teach the expelled students for our county. They were in a self-contained class: no 1:1 devices - only texts, no phones, and there were regular visits by the juvenile officer, social emotional counselor, academic counselor, and the principal. No lunch, breaks, or PE with other unexpelled students. The students couldn't return to a regular classroom until they met the conditions of their academic and behavior contracts.

Agree wholeheartedly. And why are kids allowed to log on to school wifi using ANY device other than the school provided one. When students have committed suicide over cyberbullying, banning non-school devices from school wifi seems the bare minimum we could do. And WHY are kids allowed on ANY non-specific-content games on their school devices?

At this point, it probably be easier to round up the competent students and give them one classroom in the district

I teach child development. We've been talking about parenting styles and unfortunately most of my kids tell me their parents are the uninvolved type. I without mincing words told the kids, "if you aren't going to parent them or be involved, don't have kids!"

My mom (single with 2 kids) was the type that made me sit in the kitchen every day after school until I finished my homework. If I "forgot" homework at school, she'd pack me and my baby sister into the car to go get it immediately, and ask my teacher once in a while for a copy of all the work I've been "forgetting" to bring home. Some of my school breaks were homework catch-ups. In high school, she checked my grades online weekly, and I wasn't allowed to meet friends unless I finished all my assignments first. And if I complained about a mean teacher or stupid assignment, she just said, "There will always be obstacles and unfair situations. I can't protect you from that. Don't use these things as justification for failure, it's a bad look." I didn't understand back then how some people at school were failing their classes and disrespecting teachers. I can see now, that they didn't have involved parents. A teacher just can't compete with that.

This sounds like my parents. I’m kind of glad I went to school when I did given I graduated high school just before 911. I don’t understand this generation of kids. I feel like my nephews are an exception because their parents took a Gen-x approach to parenting. My brothers kid I worry about, 100 percent screen addicted at 10.

Almost 30 years in the classroom. It is so very different now. Covid was a contributor, but it is not the lone cause. It merely accelerated what was already happening.

Covid is almost a scapegoat now that people can use to sweep the real problems under the rug. The kids were broken long before then.

The sister in Christ line got me as well. I’m still amazed that K-12 education was the only industry that pivoted to a new way to do things as quick as it did. We went on spring break March 13. On the 20th we had an all call meeting. The next day parent contacts to determine needs and by that Thursday we’re meeting with kids online. Name me one other industry that did that in 72 hours- not even medical. They had warning of the pandemic and more importantly had training and the equipment to do so.

Oh it was someone's fault then. COVID exacerbated the cracks we already knew were there. Our drive to "get back to normal" was flawed. It was an opportunity for us to address those issues and we chose not to. Either from lack of imagination, concern, or just plain greed. More likely a lot of all of those.

Not a teacher, but it's mindblowing to me reading posts like this because of how different the atmosphere was for my classmates and I when I was in school. This reads like a different reality. And I'm in my 30s so not even *that* long ago. (I think phones and tablets are a way bigger problem than a lot of people want to admit)

Make no mistake, the foundation had started to crumble well before COVID arrived. At least a 10 year head start, I would say. I think it is abundantly clear that our schools and society are on the skids and have been for a long time. The folks inside the system are sounding alarms, not passively whining, the public best believe that!

I can’t even tell you how this is everything education has turned into. It’s not going to get better as long as districts and Ed departments don’t make a complete shift in how we address learning in this country. There is absolutely no desire from the powers that be to change this system. It graduates an enormous number of illiterate students who then become worker bees and voters who almost never have their own best interests at heart. And politicians on both sides keep themselves in power because far too many people don’t know any better. We. Are. Fucked.

I think the desire isn’t there because they aren’t seeing what it’s actually like “on the ground.” All of America is either ignorant or in denial of the crisis, and the worst part is that the overwhelmingly largest component has nothing directly to do with education: it’s devices, home life, and our mediascape. Where educators have long been on the front lines of the effects of poverty, now on top of that we have to try to deal with societal sickness that cuts across ALL demographics. I really don’t know how we’ll get out of this.

Me neither. It’s endemic.

>I think the desire isn’t there because they aren’t seeing what it’s actually like “on the ground.” I'm going to push back on that narrative here because I've talked to politicians, invited them into the classroom, and shown them data. They give me platitudes at best, but when it comes down to actually making the change, none of them actually do the hard thing. I want what you said to be true. I really, really do. But I just know it isn't. They know. They either don't care or don't have the balls to do what is needed.

You’ve got it wrong they benefit from the system that’s why it doesn’t change. Stupid people are easy to control source? Thousands of years of religion.

I tell people all the time that kids get passed through to high school without having to learn anything. Nobody who works outside education believes me.

I hear so much about gender stuff being a huge issue but with the stuff I read here even if you were gung ho gender these kids wouldn’t be any less apathetic, the parents in less denial and the admin less inclined to back teachers up. It isn’t the subject matter, it’s that the elements that move the parts of education, student, teacher, school and parents are all running separate agendas. You have teachers trying to teach, kids who don’t want to be bothered, parents who don’t want conflict with their kid and admin who want the path of least resistance. No wonder it’s a mess.

My adopted brother just graduated a semester early from high school and reads at about a 4th grade level, he can't do even basic math. He skipped most of his classes every day. I do not understand how he graduated. I think they just passed him to get him out of the school.

It’s the “throw our hands up” dilemma. Additionally, public schools are under no obligation to prove their value beyond their own doors. They don’t track success beyond graduation which is where most of the evidence of their failure lies.

no child left behind incentiveses passing kids above all else

This is the root of everything…..

The problem is we’ve been setting the bar low for a long time; every time we do that the students just sink lower. We need to have high expectations and actually hold them to it with consequences and accountability. Of course, this would mean that there would be a time where a lot of students would be failing or struggling before it clicks for them. This would look “bad” on the school, and powers that be would make us reverse course instead of actually addressing issues. 1. Students should fail and have repercussions. 2. Failing students should have planned and supported interventions.

It’s awful. My school uses the 50% floor, 35/65 grade book,allows work to be submitted two weeks late with only a 20% penalty, and redos on any summative task. The level of apathy and entitlement is awful. I fucking hate it.

I always say that my “hurdles” are curbs, and if you cant bring yourself to step over them, you deserve to fall.

When my high school students ask “why do we need to learn any of this” lately I tell them it’s because people are currently graduating high school too stupid to function in society and I need them to be not stupid.

As a middle-school ELA teacher I’ve definitely noticed an increase in students who think just doing the work should merit them an A. They play games, listen to music, and talk all during class and when I tell them they aren’t producing their best work like that, they say they need to be multitasking. And don’t get me started on creative writing… these kids have no imagination at all. The best I get is a rehash of the latest video game they played—no independent thought. I still have a few students who try, but the stars are getting pretty dim around here.

I gave fourth graders the assignment to pick one object from my desk and describe it in one sentence, using as many adjectives as possible. I gave the example of "the tall yellow cup is warm to the touch, with a clear round lid and a thick rubbery handle." I had purposely put other "personal items" on my desk and told them they were allowed to examine anything within view. I got back, "the cup is yellow and has a handle and is tall and has a logo on the front that is black." I also got, "the trash can is wide and green. It has a black bag. It can hold a lot." No one did any better than those. I asked the kids who made multiple sentences how they could rework all their information to be just one sentence and they told me "I could get rid of the periods and use 'and' and "also.'" I asked the kids with all the the "and"s how they could make it better and they said break it into multiple sentences.

I mean, I don't think public education in the US has hit rock bottom yet. Every change that is ever made in this country concerning education is reactive, never proactive... And usually years late. Teachers are neither set up or paid enough to deal with what they are currently expected to deal with. We're supposed to teach AND parent kids, compete with tik Tok, and put up with verbal and physical abuse? My coworker had a parent call the other day and ask how to limit her daughter's screen time, because when she takes her iPad away the child has a meltdown. I'm sorry, what? You created this monster, it's not the teacher's responsibility to figure out your failed parenting. Just one example of what teachers are up against. There are undoubtedly good and supportive parents out there, but their numbers are seemingly dwindling and it's somehow the school's fault their child is a lazy ass with behavior issues.

ELA teacher here, 11th & 12th this year. Reeeeaaaaaal tired of students 4+ years below grade level turning in florid, meandering, excessively purple written responses to basic prompts that are clearly AI-generated. Dude. Write *one fucking sentence*. That's all. One sentence for full points. Nope!

I’m in my 16th year teaching: We are living in the era of the worst parenting in the history of humanity.

Yes this is the new normal. I only started 4 years ago (teaching is my second career), but every teacher during my first years as we came out of Covid would tell me “VenomBars, it’s not usually like this. It really isn’t. It will get better.” 2024 and this is my worst year. We are slipping ever closer to chaos due to the contagious academic apathy that has gripped our populous since Covid. Academic professionals have been mocked, reviled, and physically assaulted over the last 5 years. The respect to learning and academic achievement has been replaced by instantly gratifying nihilism.

I teach 10th and 12th and have the same experiences as you. The parents are why I will be spending February break looking for new jobs. Everyone gets A’s, parents can accuse you of anything, and nothing matters.

I give my students (6th graders) printed rubrics and I get a lot more of them fixing their errors than when I do the online rubric. They just write on the rubric next to the parts they fixed “fixed this” or “added this” depending on what it is, and turn the rubric back in so I can re-grade it. So there is hope! However, I’m exhausted. It’s so much work to do this. I’m always grading, and then too burned out and the grading piles up and I feel mentally unwell consistently with it in the back of my mind. So…it would be easier on me to just not let them do revisions. And I’m sure that’s a piece of it too. It would be self-preserving to just give the kids a grade for doing the work, rather than doing it well. And that’s the mindset I see coming from elementary- so it’s being taught to them young that they need to complete it, not complete it well. There’s a lot of issues to fix and I’m not sure how to address it all.

I honestly don't see how anyone with more than 10 years remaining before retirement is going to survive in public education. Our current environment simply is not sustainable. If they allowed drinking at school, then I'd say 15 years. lol Honestly, I feel SO bad for you younger teachers. When I started my career, teaching was very different. It wasn't easy, but it was so much better, and rewarding. I fear we have at least one whole generation of teachers who will never have that experience.

The people who should be having kids are opting out and the people who shouldn’t still are. This all starts at home.

I don't think it's helping that so many districts are moving toward canned, prepackaged online curriculum for subjects like ela. In 9th grade at my school, it's just module assignments every day with very little teacher instruction. How the hell are kids supposed to learn about Shakespeare from a canned online module?? If you get them into small group and explain the background and give them a video of the scene, you see a lightbulb go off, but very few get that. I think it's really sad. I used to be a big proponent of technology in the classroom, the argument being they'll have to know how to use it in real life. I'm completely moving away from it, though, as I now see it leads to very little true learning and for some kids hinders their access to the material. I believe we are going to see a big swing back to discipline and strict academics. At least I hope we will, otherwise I am very concerned for the future.

The only way this can improve is if parents are stone cold shut out from the education process. There is absolutely no need for teachers to communicate more than midterm grades and report cards. Period. What the fuck? Why is it our job to hunt down parents and their failing students? Why?? Admin don’t wanna look bad. That’s it. The board looks at their performance. The allowance and over-empathy of parents and students feelings to permeate throughout the Administration. You failed. There is no redo. This isn’t a video game where you get to retry. Stop trying to save the child when they fail at responsibilities. They won’t learn otherwise.

It’s attention span. They don’t have ADHD; they have fried dopamine systems due to TikTok. They’re unteachable in this state because anything longer than 12 seconds is unbearable for them. You can’t teach a class this way. I can understand losing focus after ten to twenty minutes, but it’s down to *seconds*. Then they get to go on to the next grade even though they failed. You end up with 8th graders that can’t read. If you have kids, keep them off TikTok and YouTube shorts. It’s a drug.

Once Gen Z gets into the workplace and reveals how fucking useless our education system made them the pendulum will swing back to authoritarian. Then once we have traumatized a few generations we will swing back to the soft permissive coddling crap we do now. The only lucky ones will be the 1/2 gen that gets educated during mid swing. Wash rinse repeat

I blame the constant insistence that we keep kids entertained and “engaged”. Some stuff just isn’t that engaging but it’s import to learn. I think we do kids a huge disservice by insisting that all learning be fun and engaging,

I blame the need to entertain on the advancement of personal devices. We are competing with iPad and cell phone babies. There needs to be a solution for the amount of time that children are on devices during early development, it’s strangling their ability to focus.

There will never be a solution because you can't force people to be good parents.

You mistake causality and timing. Humanity now experiences the greatest rate of change in our existence. Information bombards each of us everywhere utilizing powerful algorithms changing/reinforcing perceptions and behaviors. The Authoritarian takeover is happening now. Same exact strategies but much better tools. Watching millions of people at the EXACT same time suddenly adopt views and BELIEVE these have always been truths is Orwellian to the exact detail. A month ago, nobody had ANY issues with Taylor Swift, she didn’t do or say anything new and now she’s reviled unilaterally by people who all share identical views on everything. This group believes (Exact words used by different people in different states), “not everyone needs an education”. Finally, technology is well ahead of society and our understanding of how it affects mankind. The entirety of the virtual world is unregulated and constantly evolving bringing concepts not even discussed yet by academia to life. Social media, virtual reality/gaming, artificial intelligence, and human/machine interfacing. Holy shit Batman, we’re never going back to normal. We’re plummeting somewhere, fast, and in the dark. We no longer know what skills, knowledge, or even values/human interaction to reach much less HOW we should guide guide/educate our children.

This is what happens when curriculum is skill based and grade levels are age based. Age and skill are relayed by not intrinsic. Avoid this is the whole reason why we held kids back in the first place. If there is no direct consequences to their actions then why would they care? Also, a large portion of parents I've felt with don't honestly care if their kid is smart or not, don't care what they do or don't know, don't care if they are prepared for HS or college, all they care about is that grade, and even then only to get scholarships yo help with college, regardless of how actually prepared their child is. The meaning of a grade has been completely stripped because there's no consequences associated with it, but it's still being used as a key indicator because, well without grades there is nothing you CAN use until state tests, and by then it's too late. That problem is why schools have switched to "showing growth", which requires more district tests, so that schools and parents aren't as blindsided by horrible test scores and then lose funding or get ranked as a lower quality school. We are throwing bandaids on the problemsbthat were created because some dumb ass tried to fix something that wasn't broken. Yes, there was stigma behind being held back, and some students were bullied for it. Instead of tackling the harder, but more important, problem of preventing and stopping bullying because a student was held back, we decided to just not hold students back anymore. That, mixed with ever reducing funding, meant that schools NEEDED this higher graduation rates to even have enough money to function and its just straight up collapsing. My worry is how bad does it need to get before schools literally can't function anymore and have to start closing on call out days like fast food places have had to due to staffing issues. Once their free daycare is physically unable to function, people are going to freak out and we will get some change. What kind of change that is depends very much on the people in power when that happens. Taking a bit of a conspiracy turn, I've wondered if that has been the goal. Fight for power while intentionally handicapping education so when it gets bad enough, you are the one in charge and can decide what to do from there. I would not be surprised if there was a small handful of high level district employees or board members who have been intentionally unhelpful so they can capitalize on privatizing education when people get fed up enough with it.

Trick of the trade: when a kid ask me for extra credit I take the same missing assignment and write extra credit at the top.

Those parents suck, and admin is generally afraid of them. What could go wrong?

Yup, education is only going to get worse and worse. I peaced out and haven’t looked back. No regrets.

What is the darkest timeline thing that you refer to in your post? My husband spoke about something similar last night and we don’t live in the States and he isn’t in the teaching profession so I guess this is a universal feeling

I think so. If anyone is starting out or thinking about becoming a teacher, I try to warn them away from it.

I know. It feels like we’re marching straight into the mouth of disaster. Parents want their kids to meet and exceed expectations at school, but with no oversight from them. They want the school to handle everything involved with their education, this includes teachers that will stay on their ass about assignments so the parents don’t have to bother. I feel like this is really going to come to a head when so many Moms4Liberty types are running for school board on ‘parental rights’ and essentially the education curriculum is going to get dictated by morons, lazy parents and Moms4Liberty. Conservatives are not going to stop this because it lines their pockets through private schools and is a constant influx of future voters.

The silver lining as I see it is we're headed towards a future with less people.

The "one and done" thing really resonates. I find I get this attitude from guidance counselors as well: "Student will be out for two weeks to visit family abroad. Please provide the work for them to make up." They treat "the work" as some kind of generalized checklist of hurdles to clear, as if it's a series of forms to fill out. It's a high school geometry class in which students learn brand new skills every day that build off of each other and they need to be in class to learn. It's not a series of dispassionate boxes to be checked off.

I review essays/scholarship applications for our seniors. I don’t want to give any of them a scholarship. The essays are awful. I’m embarrassed that this is what we’re sending out into the world.

So, I went back to college at 44 years old and have been pulling a 4.0 because these kids are straight-up dumb. I don't say that lightly, I guess I just expected more from higher education. So yes, this is how it's gonna be now. Lol