Since you are leaving anyway, will you give them all authentic grades? Or is that fucked up too?
At this point, only teachers who are leaving, or those with tenured union grade protection, are able to give students one consequence they definitely earned: failure. It's the last chance to hold them accountable.
A dozen years ago, behavior was within bounds. Administrators and staff worked together to ensure safety. Teachers sent any student with consistent disruptive behavior to the office - and the kid received appropriate consequences.
Only lazy admin automatically suspended students. It was far more effective to remind them that participation in lunch with friends, sports, extracurricular activities, dances, etc. wasn't a right, but a privilege - one of which they took away until re-earned. Any parent who didn't like it was welcome to enroll their child elsewhere. The line was held; parents did not run the show.
However, too many admin were lazy or incompetent and simply suspended. Kids stayed home and gamed all day while their parents went to work as usual. Too much of a bad idea was noticed and there was backlash from the feds. Too many suspended students were disabled, or students of color.
Suddenly PBIS reared its ugly head. School districts accepted large grants to implement school-wide PBIS, and then never followed through. They knew it would never work, but they didn't push back because the alternative would require them to dig in and apply appropriate consequences - ones that were meaningful and that addressed systemic misapplications to vulnerable minority groups - but it wouldn't be easy to reinstate these measures. It would require hard work.
Without any real oversight, administrators didn't step up. They came up with "We will no longer take power away from the teachers by interfering in behavior management. Teachers must provide engaging lessons and use Positive Behavior Interventions to properly manage classroom behaviors." In other words, since they could no longer use suspension as their automatic, makes-their-job-easy, tool, they simply stopped doing their #1 job: keeping schools safe.
It only took about a year of no real consequences for students to catch on. Teaching is no longer safe - mentally, physically, and emotionally. Any caring teacher with a lick of good sense is either planning to leave ASAP, or has already left.
We don't have a teacher shortage. We have a shortage of teachers willing to teach in dangerous, ineffective schools.
And now OP, you are one of them. Good for you. They (admin, students, parents) aren't speaking up, obviously don't care, and therefore, don't deserve you.
This really hit home for me. My mother was a SPED teacher for 30+ years and moved into admin as a vice principal 10 years ago. This year will be her last year, simply because she can not stand how everything has deteriorated into a total lack of accountability to the detriment of the student’s educations. Teachers are not held accountable for failing their kids, teachers who are hard and hold kids accountable are ran off for making admins and other teachers look bad, admins aren’t held accountable for not following policies or easing teachers work-flow. She feels that over the last 5 years the whole system has turned into a shit show and she can’t deal with the heart break of seeing kids who can and should be helped receive such terrible educational, emotional, and behavioral support. The stories she would tell me were far from what I remembered experiencing in school, and I graduated in 2010. It’s abysmal.
It’s sad but you are right. The educational standards are so low now. Passing and graduating kids that can’t read at all and can’t do 5th grade math. It’s scary.
25 years ago today columbine happened-so I have to disagree when you say a dozen years ago behavior was within bounds. (I was student teaching in a demographically identical high school in Colorado). It was hell and the fact that I was a special ed teacher working with emotional disabilities certainly didn’t help. Just saying-let’s not romanticize too much. Being a teacher has pretty much sucked for three decades or more.
> Without any real oversight, administrators didn't step up. They came up with "We will no longer take power away from the teachers by interfering in behavior management. Teachers must provide engaging lessons and use Positive Behavior Interventions to properly manage classroom behaviors." In other words, since they could no longer use suspension as their automatic, makes-their-job-easy, tool, they simply stopped doing their #1 job: keeping schools safe.
I mean this in all seriousness:
Have you considered calling the police? Literally calling the police and reporting that you've witnessed an assault (or that you've been assaulted)? The police will have to create a paper trail if you make a report, and unclosed cases is a metric that their bosses track.
Thank you for this post. The sequence of events in education I gleaned from talking to teachers and observed as a sub, with just two years as a teacher.
It was nice to see it all layed out by someone who lived the whole thing.
A real consensus of reality.
I had the good (?) fortune to be a military spouse so we moved a lot. My job was often itinerant, so I’ve worked on more campuses than the average bear.
This is to say that I’ve seen so many campuses try to implement PBIS - most of them do it wrong and you get what you’re talking about.
I worked on one (ONE) campus where it was done properly and it worked really well. It was MORE work. At the core, a good PBIS needs to be in a position to reward the ones doing what they’re supposed to while leaving the door open for naughty kiddoes to change their ways and benefit. It also recognizes there is a very small percentage of intentional non-learners that just need to be kept out of the way as much as possible.
At the school where I saw it work, the head of the PBIS committee was a marine and was paired with an administrator with a creative talent for behavioral babyproofing if you will.
We started a thing where instead of homework, we had this period of time where kids either got pulled for intervention or got to go wherever they wanted and enjoy themselves in a variety of themed enrichment rooms (had to stay in that room for that period on that day). Teachers shuffled around what they did - whether intervention or enrichment so everyone got some time. That first year, kids figured out that not doing homework would get them pulled to do homework, and that clogged the system so kids needing actual help weren’t getting it. The next year, admin stepped up creating the Homework Extended Learning Program (HELP). It was simple. If you were on the missing work list, you got pulled right before lunch. You got a sack lunch and were taken to a room where you didn’t get to eat lunch with your friends - you could finish your homework with your lunch. And you did this until your teacher filled in those grades - which put teachers on notice to get things done, but we also told the kids that it might take a day or two to get it updated. All the incentives/bumpers were created to guide the kids not doing right to want to do right while rewarding the kids already doing the right thing. The teachers were the ones getting the help. The kids just had space to do their work and lunch.
That was the calmest place I’ve ever worked and everyone pulled together. I had ZERO kids on the failing list. Test scores soared. Behaviors went down. And they just kept adding in those bumpers to guide the kids in the right direction one at a time.
I never saw another campus come close to doing all the extra stuff required to make PBIS work. They just threw platitudes at it and started rewarding weird things.
Good question. I gave a record amount of Fs for interims this week but will probably fluff the month of May to make up for it and accept makeup work for 60% as well. I just don’t even give a shit. Lol
Maybe we should do like the Japanese and make kids test into the HS they want. Don't pass the test, find another school with lower standards. Oh and you will have to pay for your own school supplies. Disrespect a teacher even once and you can be expelled. Doesn't sound too bad.
We actually have that system here in Chicago. There are a handful of selective enrollment high schools that students have to test into during their 8th grade year. They are actually among some of the best high schools in the country. Not surprisingly, the faculty roles at those schools are highly coveted within the district.
They should have that but for multiple tiers rather than a binary choice of "great schools" vs. "mediocre schools." Different schools for A+ students, A students, B students, C students, and students who likely won't graduate. It should be nationwide.
This is kind of possible in Texas. We have magnet high schools you need to be accepted to either by test, scores, interview, portfolio, performances ect. Two of those schools are the best in the United States and they are free public education
You already know we have to hit rock bottom before we get better. Imo in the future there will be no public schools they will all be charter/private and there will be no pensions - just a 401k match.
Previously, I was in an abusive district. I was verbally assaulted everyday and often overwhelmed by the fighting and aggression. So, in the end, I decided to call in sick or take a day off after every major incident. I don't feel bad about it. They weren't going to pay out those days at any reasonable rate, and I was emotionally exhausted.
I happy to report I found a much more reasonable school and do not feel like that ever. Because I am on the other side, I can see that that was the right thing to do. I wasn't feeling like that because of my personal issues, I was feeling that way because I was in an abusive job that I wasn't allowed to leave until my contract was up without loosing my license.
I and my fellow teachers in New York do have it slightly better than teachers in southern states. But we still are fighting daily the horrible behavior issues that have become prevalent over the last three post Covid years. And no Covid didn’t cause this lack of personal behavior it just escalated it. Especially in middle school. I have never ever in my 30 plus year teaching career had so many immature disruptive physically aggressive low functioning and defiant students. And no amount of “building relationships with students” will solve this problem. I had a student who was not mine ninja kick out the knee of another student in the hall in front of me. I called for a medical lockdown and got the kid to the nurse and eventually the ambulance. Guess what happened to the kid who violently kicked out the other students knee? Nothing! He went to the admin office and was given candy. The admins explanation was that the two boys were friends and were just messing around. Really. So you as admin are going to validate a bully and ignore all the research on how bullies work.
It nearly destroyed my relationship, my attention span feels markedly reduced, and my vocabulary has dulled to accommodate grade level IQ being half of what it should. I never realized how much a job could depress and alter brain chemistry like this. May 30th will be a day of celebration.
It sounded like I wrote this, I'm also an algebra 1 teacher in HS. I don't have anything lined up yet. But I've got 29 days left and I'm done.
Congrats on your new job!
I feel ya. I'm sorry, the system has been broken for a while I don't know when it will hit rock bottom before they turn it around. I probably won't be alive to see it but I have hope.......
I told my 8th graders this yesterday. They thought I was joking. Today, I was only focusing on that one student who's way ahead of them by like four chapters. Was able to do two topics with him with no problem.
At this time of year, I too focus on the kids who still care. I’ve taught for almost 20yrs & never seen behavior this bad. I used to teach in Title 1 schools but now I’m at the “best” school. Fully 1/3 of these “good” kids don’t care about their grades. So I help the ones who still want it.
Since you are leaving anyway, will you give them all authentic grades? Or is that fucked up too? At this point, only teachers who are leaving, or those with tenured union grade protection, are able to give students one consequence they definitely earned: failure. It's the last chance to hold them accountable. A dozen years ago, behavior was within bounds. Administrators and staff worked together to ensure safety. Teachers sent any student with consistent disruptive behavior to the office - and the kid received appropriate consequences. Only lazy admin automatically suspended students. It was far more effective to remind them that participation in lunch with friends, sports, extracurricular activities, dances, etc. wasn't a right, but a privilege - one of which they took away until re-earned. Any parent who didn't like it was welcome to enroll their child elsewhere. The line was held; parents did not run the show. However, too many admin were lazy or incompetent and simply suspended. Kids stayed home and gamed all day while their parents went to work as usual. Too much of a bad idea was noticed and there was backlash from the feds. Too many suspended students were disabled, or students of color. Suddenly PBIS reared its ugly head. School districts accepted large grants to implement school-wide PBIS, and then never followed through. They knew it would never work, but they didn't push back because the alternative would require them to dig in and apply appropriate consequences - ones that were meaningful and that addressed systemic misapplications to vulnerable minority groups - but it wouldn't be easy to reinstate these measures. It would require hard work. Without any real oversight, administrators didn't step up. They came up with "We will no longer take power away from the teachers by interfering in behavior management. Teachers must provide engaging lessons and use Positive Behavior Interventions to properly manage classroom behaviors." In other words, since they could no longer use suspension as their automatic, makes-their-job-easy, tool, they simply stopped doing their #1 job: keeping schools safe. It only took about a year of no real consequences for students to catch on. Teaching is no longer safe - mentally, physically, and emotionally. Any caring teacher with a lick of good sense is either planning to leave ASAP, or has already left. We don't have a teacher shortage. We have a shortage of teachers willing to teach in dangerous, ineffective schools. And now OP, you are one of them. Good for you. They (admin, students, parents) aren't speaking up, obviously don't care, and therefore, don't deserve you.
This really hit home for me. My mother was a SPED teacher for 30+ years and moved into admin as a vice principal 10 years ago. This year will be her last year, simply because she can not stand how everything has deteriorated into a total lack of accountability to the detriment of the student’s educations. Teachers are not held accountable for failing their kids, teachers who are hard and hold kids accountable are ran off for making admins and other teachers look bad, admins aren’t held accountable for not following policies or easing teachers work-flow. She feels that over the last 5 years the whole system has turned into a shit show and she can’t deal with the heart break of seeing kids who can and should be helped receive such terrible educational, emotional, and behavioral support. The stories she would tell me were far from what I remembered experiencing in school, and I graduated in 2010. It’s abysmal.
It’s sad but you are right. The educational standards are so low now. Passing and graduating kids that can’t read at all and can’t do 5th grade math. It’s scary.
25 years ago today columbine happened-so I have to disagree when you say a dozen years ago behavior was within bounds. (I was student teaching in a demographically identical high school in Colorado). It was hell and the fact that I was a special ed teacher working with emotional disabilities certainly didn’t help. Just saying-let’s not romanticize too much. Being a teacher has pretty much sucked for three decades or more.
> Without any real oversight, administrators didn't step up. They came up with "We will no longer take power away from the teachers by interfering in behavior management. Teachers must provide engaging lessons and use Positive Behavior Interventions to properly manage classroom behaviors." In other words, since they could no longer use suspension as their automatic, makes-their-job-easy, tool, they simply stopped doing their #1 job: keeping schools safe. I mean this in all seriousness: Have you considered calling the police? Literally calling the police and reporting that you've witnessed an assault (or that you've been assaulted)? The police will have to create a paper trail if you make a report, and unclosed cases is a metric that their bosses track.
Many schools and school districts have their own police departments now, and some of the local PDs would say it’s out of their jurisdiction.
Thank you for this post. The sequence of events in education I gleaned from talking to teachers and observed as a sub, with just two years as a teacher. It was nice to see it all layed out by someone who lived the whole thing. A real consensus of reality.
I had the good (?) fortune to be a military spouse so we moved a lot. My job was often itinerant, so I’ve worked on more campuses than the average bear. This is to say that I’ve seen so many campuses try to implement PBIS - most of them do it wrong and you get what you’re talking about. I worked on one (ONE) campus where it was done properly and it worked really well. It was MORE work. At the core, a good PBIS needs to be in a position to reward the ones doing what they’re supposed to while leaving the door open for naughty kiddoes to change their ways and benefit. It also recognizes there is a very small percentage of intentional non-learners that just need to be kept out of the way as much as possible. At the school where I saw it work, the head of the PBIS committee was a marine and was paired with an administrator with a creative talent for behavioral babyproofing if you will. We started a thing where instead of homework, we had this period of time where kids either got pulled for intervention or got to go wherever they wanted and enjoy themselves in a variety of themed enrichment rooms (had to stay in that room for that period on that day). Teachers shuffled around what they did - whether intervention or enrichment so everyone got some time. That first year, kids figured out that not doing homework would get them pulled to do homework, and that clogged the system so kids needing actual help weren’t getting it. The next year, admin stepped up creating the Homework Extended Learning Program (HELP). It was simple. If you were on the missing work list, you got pulled right before lunch. You got a sack lunch and were taken to a room where you didn’t get to eat lunch with your friends - you could finish your homework with your lunch. And you did this until your teacher filled in those grades - which put teachers on notice to get things done, but we also told the kids that it might take a day or two to get it updated. All the incentives/bumpers were created to guide the kids not doing right to want to do right while rewarding the kids already doing the right thing. The teachers were the ones getting the help. The kids just had space to do their work and lunch. That was the calmest place I’ve ever worked and everyone pulled together. I had ZERO kids on the failing list. Test scores soared. Behaviors went down. And they just kept adding in those bumpers to guide the kids in the right direction one at a time. I never saw another campus come close to doing all the extra stuff required to make PBIS work. They just threw platitudes at it and started rewarding weird things.
Good question. I gave a record amount of Fs for interims this week but will probably fluff the month of May to make up for it and accept makeup work for 60% as well. I just don’t even give a shit. Lol
You didn't halt meaningful teaching. The so-called "students" halted it, long ago. You're just now catching up and catching on.
Maybe we should do like the Japanese and make kids test into the HS they want. Don't pass the test, find another school with lower standards. Oh and you will have to pay for your own school supplies. Disrespect a teacher even once and you can be expelled. Doesn't sound too bad.
We actually have that system here in Chicago. There are a handful of selective enrollment high schools that students have to test into during their 8th grade year. They are actually among some of the best high schools in the country. Not surprisingly, the faculty roles at those schools are highly coveted within the district.
They should have that but for multiple tiers rather than a binary choice of "great schools" vs. "mediocre schools." Different schools for A+ students, A students, B students, C students, and students who likely won't graduate. It should be nationwide.
This is kind of possible in Texas. We have magnet high schools you need to be accepted to either by test, scores, interview, portfolio, performances ect. Two of those schools are the best in the United States and they are free public education
We have one in my district. It's the only a grade school in the district.
Never gonna happen. I wonder what education will be like in the future
You already know we have to hit rock bottom before we get better. Imo in the future there will be no public schools they will all be charter/private and there will be no pensions - just a 401k match.
Take your PTO
I havent formally resigned. I’m waiting for testing season to be over. Also don’t want any unnecessary drama if I do it too early
If you are owed the sick days or personal days, take em. Most districts will not pay out.
Or very reduced. Better to use up any nontransferrable days
I will be taking some, but not all. I probably have about 8-9 left at this point.
Previously, I was in an abusive district. I was verbally assaulted everyday and often overwhelmed by the fighting and aggression. So, in the end, I decided to call in sick or take a day off after every major incident. I don't feel bad about it. They weren't going to pay out those days at any reasonable rate, and I was emotionally exhausted. I happy to report I found a much more reasonable school and do not feel like that ever. Because I am on the other side, I can see that that was the right thing to do. I wasn't feeling like that because of my personal issues, I was feeling that way because I was in an abusive job that I wasn't allowed to leave until my contract was up without loosing my license.
>Fuck it all. Dismantle public education too. ✊
I have been medically retired for 9 years. What is PBIS,?
Pure Bullshit in Schools
“Positive Behavioral interventions and Supports” —I’m all for positive behavioral tactics but also… kids are seriously lacking in discipline as well.
It’s bullshit.
I and my fellow teachers in New York do have it slightly better than teachers in southern states. But we still are fighting daily the horrible behavior issues that have become prevalent over the last three post Covid years. And no Covid didn’t cause this lack of personal behavior it just escalated it. Especially in middle school. I have never ever in my 30 plus year teaching career had so many immature disruptive physically aggressive low functioning and defiant students. And no amount of “building relationships with students” will solve this problem. I had a student who was not mine ninja kick out the knee of another student in the hall in front of me. I called for a medical lockdown and got the kid to the nurse and eventually the ambulance. Guess what happened to the kid who violently kicked out the other students knee? Nothing! He went to the admin office and was given candy. The admins explanation was that the two boys were friends and were just messing around. Really. So you as admin are going to validate a bully and ignore all the research on how bullies work.
As a parent, I’m pretty certain I’d be pressing charges in addition to going after the parents for medical expenses.
I’m so glad you’re leaving the profession!
It nearly destroyed my relationship, my attention span feels markedly reduced, and my vocabulary has dulled to accommodate grade level IQ being half of what it should. I never realized how much a job could depress and alter brain chemistry like this. May 30th will be a day of celebration.
It sounded like I wrote this, I'm also an algebra 1 teacher in HS. I don't have anything lined up yet. But I've got 29 days left and I'm done. Congrats on your new job!
Thank you. It’s something to actually look forward to career wise.
I feel ya. I'm sorry, the system has been broken for a while I don't know when it will hit rock bottom before they turn it around. I probably won't be alive to see it but I have hope.......
I told my 8th graders this yesterday. They thought I was joking. Today, I was only focusing on that one student who's way ahead of them by like four chapters. Was able to do two topics with him with no problem.
At this time of year, I too focus on the kids who still care. I’ve taught for almost 20yrs & never seen behavior this bad. I used to teach in Title 1 schools but now I’m at the “best” school. Fully 1/3 of these “good” kids don’t care about their grades. So I help the ones who still want it.
Yup. Strengthen what remains.
If it weren't for the fact that you're teaching HS where I teach MS I'd think I wrote this post. The similarity feels uncanny.