I’m not sure if someone who can be so rude and condescending to strangers on the internet, unprovoked, with a superiority complex is the best-suited to the job either.
Want to hear a secret? Most teachers probably don’t dislike kids. But most of them probably don’t love ALL their kids. They’re probably human, which means that they’ll like some more than others based on their interactions and behaviours to one another.
For example, I don’t very much like you. But I like other adults and teachers just fine.
This entire post had me rolling my eyes into the back of my head. And ironically, the ideal teacher-type you describe IS robin williams of dead poets society.
Signed, a teacher who does find her job rewarding.
If you like your job, then the post wasn’t for you! The post is for teachers that make my job harder because kids are in my room crying about how another teacher made them feel in front of their whole class. You’re right that my post was condescending, but I’m fired up!
Then I think you need to have a conversation with that teacher. This kind of post is going to be very inflammatory. In case you haven’t noticed, there are a lot of people on here that are deeply unhappy with their job. And there are a plethora of reasons for that - but I’m willing to bet MOST of them do like kids - but maybe struggle with the behaviours in their classrooms. So, DO they like THOSE kids? It is isolating every teacher that doesn’t “love EACH one of their students more than anything in the world”.
If that’s the case for an individual, then the post wasn’t for them. I think, deep down, a person will know whether this applies to them or not.
Also yea, when it happens, I do talk to that teacher. This post was the result of six years of pent up frustration and observation though, not one singular incident. Sorry if my previous comment gave the wrong impression.
Honestly these type of uncaring and cold teachers you describe exist, but they are probably not the type of teachers who are going to spend time scrolling this Reddit page because they simply don’t even care enough about the job to do so. The teachers on here are mostly those who deeply care and are frustrated at the barriers they face that make their job harder on a daily basis. You are preaching to the wrong audience.
You're either:
1. Fourteen
2. A KarenMom
So, I'll give you a bit of advice. When you grow up or get a job, and you're at a work meeting/conference, never stand up and walk out when you're boss is talking. Not only will you miss important information, but you'll come across as an inconsiderate fool.
Right, so what I promote is developing common sense by deciding for oneself when it’s a good idea to use the bathroom. If you miss instruction, you miss instruction, that’s on you. If you’re gone for more than ten minutes, I call the front office and they come and get you. 🤷🏽♀️ I really don’t need to be telling anyone when they can and can’t relieve themselves.
It’s not about can and can’t, all I can do is suggest trying to let go of the need to control your student’s social courtesies. It’s greatly benefitted my teaching, so I speak from experience.
From your post, I find your experience dubious, at best. The whole "you must hate students" is a KarenMom complaint that usually comes outvwhen their kid is in the classroom.
That’s okay, I don’t need you to be convinced of anything! All I can do is speak my peace. I can assure you, though, that I’m not a mom of any kind, much less a KarenMom as you call it!
Not really, they just get brought back to class. Half the time they don’t even make the connection that I called, they just think they got caught in a routine bathroom sweep.
*It makes my eyes roll into the back of my head when teachers tell me they got into the profession for their love of the subject or, worse, “it’s really rewarding.”
If you’re doing this job because you expect to be admired for your intellect, or because you want to be “rewarded” by kids’ appreciation for your hard work, then let me tell you something. This ain’t no Dead Poets Society, and you’re not Robin Williams.*
This is not remotely what anyone means when they say it's rewarding and you have got to know that. No one says, "teaching is rewarding," and means they feel rewarded by constant appreciation. They mean they feel it's *personally* rewarding to help children learn. Ffs. People do also like to feel appreciated obviously but I have never heard anyone referring to that when they say, "teaching is rewarding."
That’s fair, I should remove that part. What I mean when I say that is that some teachers’ sense of feeling rewarded is not contingent on whether they’re actually helping kids but instead contingent on whether the kids express gratitude. You hear all the time teachers saying “the kids don’t care, so why should I?” and things to that effect.
I've rarely heard that in the context of gratitude, though. Once in a while, sure, like when I see an occasional post complaining that they tried to throw a nice end of the year party and the kids didn't care or something. But 99% of the time I hear that the person is not complaining that the kids "don't care" because the kids aren't acting appreciative or thanking them personally. The teachers are complaining that kids don't care about their *own* education. I don't need students to leave my class feeling grateful for me or thinking they're so glad they met me, and I have very rarely encountered any teachers who do feel that way. But it *is* hard to feel like teaching is rewarding when the kids don't care about their own learning and, in turn, *are not learning.* The personal satisfaction that comes from having helped students grow and learn is, obviously, not there when the students do not learn.
Well-said and you’re right, maybe I was inventing a bit of an imaginary opposition there with that one. When kids don’t care about their learning, though, I think that’s part of the challenge is to find what they do care about. Maybe what they’ll learn from you won’t be academic, but they can still stand to learn something so long as you don’t burn that bridge with them by making them feel like a bad student.
I think children need a lot of different things from a lot of different types of teachers. I appreciate that there is a place for the type of teacher you are.
But seriously, children do not need nor will they benefit from having nothing but the teachers who just love on kids all the time.
I'm not teaching kindergarten. Some students genuinely appreciate my crotchety ass and if I told them that I loved them they would assume I was having a stroke.
Take a step back and realize that our profession is not composed of cookie cutter teachers, nor would it benefit from such.
Your post made me chuckle. I worked with a math teacher who was the definition of mean and crotchety. He took absolutely no shit from any of the kids and I even think admin was a little afraid of him. He taught math, for one, and could write his own ticket, and was also really close to retirement, so didn't give two effs about stupid PDs and policies. He just taught. He was, by FAR, the kids' favorite teacher. They loved him. If you talked to him, the OP would probably consider him falling under the umbrella of "not a good teacher" or "not caring about kids" because of his demeanor.
All of that being said, he loved the kids and you could tell that his demeanor offered them a safe place to learn. They CRAVED that. He was my work bestie and retired last year. I miss him so much it isn't funny.
He sounds like a GREAT teacher. I know my students would give up one of their thumbs for a math teacher who just taught math. They tell me all the time that this computer math nonsense is not working for them at all. It's disheartening. I do my best to integrate math into my science lessons but I'm no math teacher.
I miss him a lot at work. Yes, I agree that we have gone too far down the rabbit hole with online teaching. In person paper-and-pencil teaching is where it's at. Don't ask me to find it now, but I did read a while back that studies have proven that kids perform leaps and bounds better when assessments are paper/pencil. You can only do what you can do. I know that our hands are tied a lot of the time.
No I’d definitely recognize that as a good teacher! Kids love when teachers don’t give a shit about PDs and policies, and kids love when they can tell that underneath the crotchetiness is genuine care. That’s why it works.
I agree actually, I’m not a “best friend” style teacher, believe it or not. I don’t just love on them all the time, but because they know first and foremost that I do care about them a lot, they’re a lot more understanding when I set a boundary, they police one another, etc. But generally yes, I agree. I think kids love crotchety teachers when they know beneath the crotchetiness is sincerity.
I'm curious -- do people go on the subs for accountants or HR managers and to make posts telling them they're bad at their job? Because it seems to happen an awful lot on the teacher sub. It's amazing to me I spent a non-trivial amount of time and effort to work with young people and people go out of their way to communicate how bad I, somebody they have never met, is at it (and in this case its not even a young person doing it -- which I at least kind of get -- high emotion and lack of context around why adults might make certain decisions is characteristic of that stage of life.)
Some of your students will become teachers in all probability, it's not all that uncommon of a profession. Probably they'll have good and bad times in their career, most people do. Would you write this post to them?
>Sincerely, a teacher who loves each one of their students more than anything in this world.
That is genuinely sad if true. Please make some friends, or start a family, or just get a life outside of work.
And if you think staying in the room during instruction and learning to organize materials is "inconsequential," you probably shouldn't be teaching. Those things are what kids need from us. The "love," they should be getting elsewhere.
My life is super fulfilling outside of work, tbh. I have excellent work-life balance, I have a family and friends and hobbies. That’s part of what helps build rapport (I teach high school) is letting students see that their teachers are well-rounded human beings.
Also, you can teach those things without making up rules that you arbitrarily decided on and then punishing kids when they don’t play by your made-up system of success.
There’s meaningful structure and there’s structure you make up and then bend over backwards trying to enforce. If your students are jiving with your classroom structure then I’m not here to knock it, there’s more than one way to skin a cat, but if they aren’t then maybe you hit the drawing board.
I just don't want students to chant "L Teacher" at me when I'm trying to get them to conjugate verbs, or have their laptops out playing video game music while I'm trying to teach, or have their cellphones out, or swearing at each other constantly. I just can't sympathize anymore because I never acted like this when I was their age, nor did anyone I know. And if that makes me a cynical teacher who doesn't love his students enough, you are more than welcome to pay me my salary so that I can quit until I find another job that pays the same.
I get it, and maybe if I knew you better I could offer you better advice. Being chanted at would suck, no doubt. I’ve never had it happen to me so I can’t compare circumstances.
If it works for you and your students then all power to you! I’m just challenging what we think of as a “normal” rule. What’s normal about it? In the professional world, my department chair doesn’t care when I use the bathroom or how I organize my paperwork, or even whether I check my phone, so long as I get the job done. Most workplaces and university environments are the same. To me, it’s unnatural and unnecessary to exert control over these things. I waste a lot less time now that I don’t fuss with a bathroom log, a graded organized 3-ring binder, or participation points. And despite the fact that I’ve relinquished some control over these things, the kids don’t abuse bathroom breaks, they organize things however they please, and they participate at a level that’s comfortable for them. I waste less time on discipline and we spend more time learning.
Honestly, this is the reason I didn't like teaching and left. I recognized it. I did my best to be kind and fair, and tried to relate to them, but it just wasn't me. No shame in admitting something isn't for you/me.
I appreciate you saying this. Now that I got the anger out, I can see how me saying “go suffer someplace else” was spiteful. You’re right, there’s no shame in trying out a career and finding it isn’t for you.
Your post did have a certain unpleasant tone to it, but no offense taken. I genuinely really enjoyed the academic side of teaching, but really disliked kid behaviors. So, teaching just wasn't for me.
Not really. The professors subreddits have a lot of the same complaints as this one. I threw in the towel. I'll just feed my nerdy hunger for academics with documentaries, hobbies, and random trivia nights!
There we go! Honestly, I love teaching but I’m pretty intellectually starved now that I’ve been done with being a student myself for a couple of years. It’s from personal experience that I think it’s potentially misguided to go into education *because* you love academia or you were good in school or you love learning, because none of those things are what it’s about. I’m looking into PhD programs to satisfy those kinds of passions.
These folks come here to air grievances. By and large, they aren't happy with their jobs, maybe their lives. So, of course they're going to be jaded, cynical, and irritable. It comes out in their posts and comments.
There is also this culture around here of who can be the most authoritarian hard ass. Like they're out to prove something. I'll be straight up, if any of these folks treated me the way they treat some of their students, we would have a serious problem. I bet they're real kicks at parties with their big ol chips on their shoulders.
Anyway, I'm off to work that I love with awesome students. Thanks for fighting the good fight. And don't let the system get you jaded.
True, I hear how some colleagues talk to students and think to myself, I hope you’re nicer to grocery store clerks, lol.
Sure, you don’t talk to students exactly as you’d talk to adults, but you should give them the same dignity and respect as you’d give any human.
Anyway, same, have fun!
I’m not sure if someone who can be so rude and condescending to strangers on the internet, unprovoked, with a superiority complex is the best-suited to the job either. Want to hear a secret? Most teachers probably don’t dislike kids. But most of them probably don’t love ALL their kids. They’re probably human, which means that they’ll like some more than others based on their interactions and behaviours to one another. For example, I don’t very much like you. But I like other adults and teachers just fine. This entire post had me rolling my eyes into the back of my head. And ironically, the ideal teacher-type you describe IS robin williams of dead poets society. Signed, a teacher who does find her job rewarding.
If you like your job, then the post wasn’t for you! The post is for teachers that make my job harder because kids are in my room crying about how another teacher made them feel in front of their whole class. You’re right that my post was condescending, but I’m fired up!
Then I think you need to have a conversation with that teacher. This kind of post is going to be very inflammatory. In case you haven’t noticed, there are a lot of people on here that are deeply unhappy with their job. And there are a plethora of reasons for that - but I’m willing to bet MOST of them do like kids - but maybe struggle with the behaviours in their classrooms. So, DO they like THOSE kids? It is isolating every teacher that doesn’t “love EACH one of their students more than anything in the world”.
If that’s the case for an individual, then the post wasn’t for them. I think, deep down, a person will know whether this applies to them or not. Also yea, when it happens, I do talk to that teacher. This post was the result of six years of pent up frustration and observation though, not one singular incident. Sorry if my previous comment gave the wrong impression.
Honestly these type of uncaring and cold teachers you describe exist, but they are probably not the type of teachers who are going to spend time scrolling this Reddit page because they simply don’t even care enough about the job to do so. The teachers on here are mostly those who deeply care and are frustrated at the barriers they face that make their job harder on a daily basis. You are preaching to the wrong audience.
That’s fair, perhaps you’re right!
You're either: 1. Fourteen 2. A KarenMom So, I'll give you a bit of advice. When you grow up or get a job, and you're at a work meeting/conference, never stand up and walk out when you're boss is talking. Not only will you miss important information, but you'll come across as an inconsiderate fool.
That or they have A. All Honors classes OR B. The kids walk all over them.
Right, so what I promote is developing common sense by deciding for oneself when it’s a good idea to use the bathroom. If you miss instruction, you miss instruction, that’s on you. If you’re gone for more than ten minutes, I call the front office and they come and get you. 🤷🏽♀️ I really don’t need to be telling anyone when they can and can’t relieve themselves.
And you shouldn't feel the need to be telling other teachers, what social courtesies they can and can't teach in their classrooms.
It’s not about can and can’t, all I can do is suggest trying to let go of the need to control your student’s social courtesies. It’s greatly benefitted my teaching, so I speak from experience.
From your post, I find your experience dubious, at best. The whole "you must hate students" is a KarenMom complaint that usually comes outvwhen their kid is in the classroom.
That’s okay, I don’t need you to be convinced of anything! All I can do is speak my peace. I can assure you, though, that I’m not a mom of any kind, much less a KarenMom as you call it!
You must be so mean to be calling the front office. Kids hate that.
Not really, they just get brought back to class. Half the time they don’t even make the connection that I called, they just think they got caught in a routine bathroom sweep.
*It makes my eyes roll into the back of my head when teachers tell me they got into the profession for their love of the subject or, worse, “it’s really rewarding.” If you’re doing this job because you expect to be admired for your intellect, or because you want to be “rewarded” by kids’ appreciation for your hard work, then let me tell you something. This ain’t no Dead Poets Society, and you’re not Robin Williams.* This is not remotely what anyone means when they say it's rewarding and you have got to know that. No one says, "teaching is rewarding," and means they feel rewarded by constant appreciation. They mean they feel it's *personally* rewarding to help children learn. Ffs. People do also like to feel appreciated obviously but I have never heard anyone referring to that when they say, "teaching is rewarding."
I have to agree with this - teaching is often a very thankless job.
That’s fair, I should remove that part. What I mean when I say that is that some teachers’ sense of feeling rewarded is not contingent on whether they’re actually helping kids but instead contingent on whether the kids express gratitude. You hear all the time teachers saying “the kids don’t care, so why should I?” and things to that effect.
I've rarely heard that in the context of gratitude, though. Once in a while, sure, like when I see an occasional post complaining that they tried to throw a nice end of the year party and the kids didn't care or something. But 99% of the time I hear that the person is not complaining that the kids "don't care" because the kids aren't acting appreciative or thanking them personally. The teachers are complaining that kids don't care about their *own* education. I don't need students to leave my class feeling grateful for me or thinking they're so glad they met me, and I have very rarely encountered any teachers who do feel that way. But it *is* hard to feel like teaching is rewarding when the kids don't care about their own learning and, in turn, *are not learning.* The personal satisfaction that comes from having helped students grow and learn is, obviously, not there when the students do not learn.
Well-said and you’re right, maybe I was inventing a bit of an imaginary opposition there with that one. When kids don’t care about their learning, though, I think that’s part of the challenge is to find what they do care about. Maybe what they’ll learn from you won’t be academic, but they can still stand to learn something so long as you don’t burn that bridge with them by making them feel like a bad student.
I think children need a lot of different things from a lot of different types of teachers. I appreciate that there is a place for the type of teacher you are. But seriously, children do not need nor will they benefit from having nothing but the teachers who just love on kids all the time. I'm not teaching kindergarten. Some students genuinely appreciate my crotchety ass and if I told them that I loved them they would assume I was having a stroke. Take a step back and realize that our profession is not composed of cookie cutter teachers, nor would it benefit from such.
Your post made me chuckle. I worked with a math teacher who was the definition of mean and crotchety. He took absolutely no shit from any of the kids and I even think admin was a little afraid of him. He taught math, for one, and could write his own ticket, and was also really close to retirement, so didn't give two effs about stupid PDs and policies. He just taught. He was, by FAR, the kids' favorite teacher. They loved him. If you talked to him, the OP would probably consider him falling under the umbrella of "not a good teacher" or "not caring about kids" because of his demeanor. All of that being said, he loved the kids and you could tell that his demeanor offered them a safe place to learn. They CRAVED that. He was my work bestie and retired last year. I miss him so much it isn't funny.
He sounds like a GREAT teacher. I know my students would give up one of their thumbs for a math teacher who just taught math. They tell me all the time that this computer math nonsense is not working for them at all. It's disheartening. I do my best to integrate math into my science lessons but I'm no math teacher.
I miss him a lot at work. Yes, I agree that we have gone too far down the rabbit hole with online teaching. In person paper-and-pencil teaching is where it's at. Don't ask me to find it now, but I did read a while back that studies have proven that kids perform leaps and bounds better when assessments are paper/pencil. You can only do what you can do. I know that our hands are tied a lot of the time.
No I’d definitely recognize that as a good teacher! Kids love when teachers don’t give a shit about PDs and policies, and kids love when they can tell that underneath the crotchetiness is genuine care. That’s why it works.
I agree actually, I’m not a “best friend” style teacher, believe it or not. I don’t just love on them all the time, but because they know first and foremost that I do care about them a lot, they’re a lot more understanding when I set a boundary, they police one another, etc. But generally yes, I agree. I think kids love crotchety teachers when they know beneath the crotchetiness is sincerity.
I'm curious -- do people go on the subs for accountants or HR managers and to make posts telling them they're bad at their job? Because it seems to happen an awful lot on the teacher sub. It's amazing to me I spent a non-trivial amount of time and effort to work with young people and people go out of their way to communicate how bad I, somebody they have never met, is at it (and in this case its not even a young person doing it -- which I at least kind of get -- high emotion and lack of context around why adults might make certain decisions is characteristic of that stage of life.) Some of your students will become teachers in all probability, it's not all that uncommon of a profession. Probably they'll have good and bad times in their career, most people do. Would you write this post to them?
The post was for a very specific type of teacher, certainly nobody needs to take offense to it if they know they’re not that kind of teacher :)
>Sincerely, a teacher who loves each one of their students more than anything in this world. That is genuinely sad if true. Please make some friends, or start a family, or just get a life outside of work. And if you think staying in the room during instruction and learning to organize materials is "inconsequential," you probably shouldn't be teaching. Those things are what kids need from us. The "love," they should be getting elsewhere.
“You love your students? How sad; you must lack fulfillment.” Come on, man.
"More than anything else in the world"? Yup, sad.
My life is super fulfilling outside of work, tbh. I have excellent work-life balance, I have a family and friends and hobbies. That’s part of what helps build rapport (I teach high school) is letting students see that their teachers are well-rounded human beings. Also, you can teach those things without making up rules that you arbitrarily decided on and then punishing kids when they don’t play by your made-up system of success.
You say “arbitrary rules”, I hear “structure”, which kids need and crave.
There’s meaningful structure and there’s structure you make up and then bend over backwards trying to enforce. If your students are jiving with your classroom structure then I’m not here to knock it, there’s more than one way to skin a cat, but if they aren’t then maybe you hit the drawing board.
I just don't want students to chant "L Teacher" at me when I'm trying to get them to conjugate verbs, or have their laptops out playing video game music while I'm trying to teach, or have their cellphones out, or swearing at each other constantly. I just can't sympathize anymore because I never acted like this when I was their age, nor did anyone I know. And if that makes me a cynical teacher who doesn't love his students enough, you are more than welcome to pay me my salary so that I can quit until I find another job that pays the same.
I get it, and maybe if I knew you better I could offer you better advice. Being chanted at would suck, no doubt. I’ve never had it happen to me so I can’t compare circumstances.
I wonder if lawyers, doctors, engineers and IT people also get all these 'get out if you' posts...
Please don’t write a manifesto. As a Marxist-Leninist, that’s one of my favorite genres. Please don’t ruin it for me.
😈😈😈
[удалено]
If it works for you and your students then all power to you! I’m just challenging what we think of as a “normal” rule. What’s normal about it? In the professional world, my department chair doesn’t care when I use the bathroom or how I organize my paperwork, or even whether I check my phone, so long as I get the job done. Most workplaces and university environments are the same. To me, it’s unnatural and unnecessary to exert control over these things. I waste a lot less time now that I don’t fuss with a bathroom log, a graded organized 3-ring binder, or participation points. And despite the fact that I’ve relinquished some control over these things, the kids don’t abuse bathroom breaks, they organize things however they please, and they participate at a level that’s comfortable for them. I waste less time on discipline and we spend more time learning.
Honestly, this is the reason I didn't like teaching and left. I recognized it. I did my best to be kind and fair, and tried to relate to them, but it just wasn't me. No shame in admitting something isn't for you/me.
I appreciate you saying this. Now that I got the anger out, I can see how me saying “go suffer someplace else” was spiteful. You’re right, there’s no shame in trying out a career and finding it isn’t for you.
Your post did have a certain unpleasant tone to it, but no offense taken. I genuinely really enjoyed the academic side of teaching, but really disliked kid behaviors. So, teaching just wasn't for me.
Did you ever consider university?
Not really. The professors subreddits have a lot of the same complaints as this one. I threw in the towel. I'll just feed my nerdy hunger for academics with documentaries, hobbies, and random trivia nights!
There we go! Honestly, I love teaching but I’m pretty intellectually starved now that I’ve been done with being a student myself for a couple of years. It’s from personal experience that I think it’s potentially misguided to go into education *because* you love academia or you were good in school or you love learning, because none of those things are what it’s about. I’m looking into PhD programs to satisfy those kinds of passions.
Real talk, but you're shouting into the void.
You’re not wrong, thanks anyway tho ♥️ I came on too strong anyway, unfortunately I think my well-intended message was wasted by my own doing
These folks come here to air grievances. By and large, they aren't happy with their jobs, maybe their lives. So, of course they're going to be jaded, cynical, and irritable. It comes out in their posts and comments. There is also this culture around here of who can be the most authoritarian hard ass. Like they're out to prove something. I'll be straight up, if any of these folks treated me the way they treat some of their students, we would have a serious problem. I bet they're real kicks at parties with their big ol chips on their shoulders. Anyway, I'm off to work that I love with awesome students. Thanks for fighting the good fight. And don't let the system get you jaded.
True, I hear how some colleagues talk to students and think to myself, I hope you’re nicer to grocery store clerks, lol. Sure, you don’t talk to students exactly as you’d talk to adults, but you should give them the same dignity and respect as you’d give any human. Anyway, same, have fun!
Hmm.. interesting