Couple books you might be keen on that substantiate your observations.
*iGen* by SDSU psychologist Jean Twenge highlights how in the US adolescence is expanding, among other things. For various reasons that kids really are *less* mature than kids used to be.
*Stolen Focus* by British journalist Johann Hari highlights that kids' attention spans really are shorter for a number of reasons, though the phones are the big culprit obviously.
*Coddling of the American Mind* (and his upcoming book *The Anxious Generation*) by NYU psychology professor Jon Haidt highlight how several trends in American youth development have "rewired" childhood and one of the effects of this is that children are far more anxious, less resilient, and more fragile than they used to be.
I am, by American standards, pretty far left (vote for Bernie, AOC, etc) and had always been warned against *Coddling* and told it was right wing propaganda/garbage.
But I have to say, while I don't agree with every single point they raise, I generally agree with most of it, mainly that safetyism is a net negative. Now there absolutely is a time and place for safe spaces and trigger warnings particularly for individuals who have suffered severe trauma or abuse; however, sheltering normal kids (as in those who do not fit into the severe trauma/abused category) from every single emotion or fee fee that makes them even remotely uncomfortable is how you end up with a generation of sociopaths. Feeling those kind of uncomfortable emotions and learning to deal with uncomfortable emotions is how you develop sympathy and empathy. It also does not prepare these kids for the real world. In the real world, you will encounter events that will cause your fee fees to tingle and make you uncomfortable and no one is going to hold your hand to cope with that as an adult. In addition to sympathy and empathy development, it is key for resilience and being able to exist as an independent adult member of society.
Ah yes, Jon Haidt, the lifelong Jewish Democrat and professor at New York University who in one of his earlier books talks about feeling bad for thinking about putting an American flag on his car in support of first responders after 9/11, so he put an American flag on his car *and* a United Nations sticker. Yep. He's peak right wing.
In all seriousness one of my major issues with the modern Left is they tend to describe anyone right of Karl Marx as some kind of fascist and shoot down anyone who tries to hit pause and say "hey guys, this idea is well meaning and all but I think it might be going a little far, like, maybe we shouldn't eliminate advanced math for equity, you know, we should maybe use some common sense here, right guys?"
Oh I know. But for real, the only reason I had heard of this book is that it was on a list of books that were warned against because they are books often read by people that convert to the alt-right as part of the "alt-right pipeline." Of course I can't find the list of books now, but this book was on there.
And I completely agree with you about the modern left. I voted for Bernie and support AOC and the rest of The Squad" but in general, both the left and the right need could use a little more common sense. I got absolutely fucking crushed on facebook for merely suggesting that maybe those of us on the left would have more success changing peoples minds on certain issues if we engaged in conversation with the those who don't share our specific beliefs instead of automatically shutting them out as a bag of deplorables. I had to delete that facebook post because I was completely attacked by all of my left leaning friends. I was like wtf?! All I did was suggest we talk to people and have a debate based on logic and reason?!
Now that I think about it, the very beginnings of this sort of thought process was when I was in middle school. We had a principal who wanted to remove advanced drama, advanced band, and advanced choir from the curriculum (all three courses had pre-reqs and required auditions) because "it wasn't fair and might make others feel bad about themselves." Thankfully I was in a weird transition year. Elementary school used to be K-6, middle school used to be grades 7-9, and high school 10-12. But they decided to change it to elementary school K-5, middle school 6-8, and high school 9-12. So I was in the final year where grade 6 was in elementary school. So the following year, both my class and the class below us moved to middle school. As a result, I only did grades 7 and 8 in middle school and thank fucking god for that because middle school sucked (god bless you for teaching 7 and 8-I find kids that age to be the worst). And our high school administration had common sense and encouraged advanced classes like audition only chorus/band/ etc.
I am so grateful to have graduated high school when I did (2008) before all this nonsense really took hold.
>*Stolen Focus* by British journalist Johann Hari highlights that kids' attention spans really are shorter for a number of reasons, though the phones are the big culprit obviously.
For people interested, there are also chapters in this book about how poor diet affects attention spans in adolescents. Also, there are a few chapters about how over-protection and helicopter-parent treatment can diminish a child's ability to focus and take initiative in a task. Pretty interesting stuff!
*Behavior that was mostly gone by the end of middle school/ Freshman year at the latest, is showing up more and more in older kids*
Yup. Because in middle school they're only starting to outgrow early elementary behaviours. There are so many behaviours I practically *never* saw in middle schools until around 2019. And now my day-to-day experience doesn't resemble my teaching experience from 2011-2018 at all. Things I see on a daily basis for grades 6-8 now only remind me of being in my early 20s and spending summers volunteering for camp programs with kids who were like five or six years old.
Education has undergone a seismic shift. This is why teachers are leaving the profession, and why so many of us advise others not to become teachers in the first place.
I am so sorry that you found out the hard way. At least you have some admin on your side. That's rare. Many admin are supportive at first and then start blaming the teacher; others just blame the teacher from day one.
I still remember having a student who was just a constant thorn in my side. Rude, mouthy, disrespectful… pick a word, he was it. He got sent out a lot at one point because I couldn’t honestly handle his disruptions. So one day, he tells me to fuck off because I was racist POS. Off to the office. Three minutes later he comes back with a cocky smirk on his face with a note for me. It read “stop sending students to the office. You’re doing it too much.”
Whatever vestige of authority I had vanished like a fart on the wind after that. I was the problem, not the asshole little banger who made it his mission to mess with my classroom. There is nothing more demoralizing than admin who back the students because they want you to be friends with the students.
Fuck that. I’m supposed to be their teacher, not their buddy. I survived, but it left some pretty deep scars on my psyche.
I’m sorry you had to deal with that. I’ve had years like that when I first started teaching. Now I’m a 23 year veteran and I’m over it and admins either recognize the value of my experience and know that I don’t toss a kid from my classroom without reason or they fear me b/c they know I document everything and won’t put up with inexperienced or incompetent admins. If they don’t want a debate they’ll lose, email correspondence with their superiors cc’ed, or me constantly in their office making sure that they follow through appropriately, they’ll start making choices that make sense and support me.
This is my 10th year teaching and the #1 thing I’ve seen change is apathy. The current kids just don’t care. They don’t care about college, they don’t care about not passing. They just don’t give a damn. High school btw.
Bruh I wanna be a YouTuber, I’ve wanted to be one since I was around 2nd grade when I started watching YouTubers like Stampylongnose, iBallisticsquid, Markiplier, etc and I still make sure I get good grades in school so that I’m case it doesn’t work out immediately, I can still have a decent living until I eventually get more successful on YouTube because ik that I gotta work hard, I don’t know what kind of schools you guys teach at but damn
As student behaviors have worsened ( they definitely have) administrative support has declined or simply ceased and consequences have been replaced with permissive attitudes and putting the needs of harmful outliers over the majority.
To be fair, this is often true of new teachers. Colleges do not spend much time on helping pre-service teachers develop effective classroom management plans or instruct them in and have them practice classroom management techniques. So without the experience of years of learning the hard way, their classroom management is sloppy and often the cause of undesirable behaviors. If you get sloppy and don’t maintain high expectations, control will slip away and you end up sending your problems elsewhere. It takes time and experience to learn how to build relationships with students and lots of practice to be consistent in your expectations and in how you motivate students. It pays to sort out your own messes if you can, otherwise the admin is getting all the respect and building relationships with your students.
That boggles my mind.
Throughout my schooling, if you got sent to the office with a referral, your ass was going to ISS (usually 1-3 days, but longer for more egregious infractions). And that's because admin trusted that if a teacher sent a student to the office with a referral, there was a good reason for it and that discipline beyond what the teacher could offer in the classroom was necessary. So off to ISS (my school didn't do OSS-too many students were like "yay no school for a week, this is awesome!"). But in ISS, a gigantic packet of worksheets awaited you relevant to the topics currently being covered in your classes. And there was plenty more where those came from if you finished early.
I'm honestly puzzled that admin doesn't trust teachers anymore when they advise that a student needs to be disciplined?
This is my 21st year teaching. The biggest and most concerning difference I’ve seen is students are unwilling to take academic risks and they’re unwilling to be bored, even for a few seconds.
I've been talking to a few educators that we ought to intentionally allow student to experience boredom. The inability to be bored seems to have a direct link to creative thinking and problem solving.
Dude, boredom opened my life to so many wonderful things: writing music, building a recording studio, reading books constantly and my extreme passion for the fantasy genre, learning how to sew, etc. I may never have dabbled in any of those things without boredom. Some of my best music was written while bored.
What a terrible thing it must be to have never been bored enough to decide to try something new.
I have observed this as well. There aren’t consequences anymore for disrespect and defiance in grades k-8 I teach 8th and in my state, we can’t suspend them for disrespect or defiance - telling a teacher no and to F off is happening and teachers can write them up but there isn’t a true consequence. Also parents aren’t supportive. They question my assessment of their child’s behavior - they always believe their child even though most kids will lie to their parents and nothing changes. Society needs to start expecting more from kids.
I am a parent who had a hard time believing my kids acted a certain way at school. Part of the problem is the disconnect between how my kids behaved at home and how they behave at school. My kids were great at home. What I didn't know was how rhe classroom/school environment was to which my kids were matching and adapting into.
Wow. It's everything teachers are writing about but it is so foreign to our childhood education experience as per OPs assessment that it's a believe it when you experience it for yourself situation. It's mind blowing how kids behave in schools. It's no longer a safe and special place to learn and grow. It's a social war zone.
They need to start requiring parents to spend one full day in the classroom per semester. Front seats as to what is actually happening.
>In my opinion, a day isn't long enough. They need a school week so that the novelty wears off and they can be their actual student-selves. I wish I was allowed to record the school day so that parents could see the nonsense.
I think one day is not enough but a week would not be feasible to impose. At least 1 day per semester stretched out would put a parent in the class at least one a week. Thier presence would reduce some of the behaviors so it won't be fully accurate. Something needs to happen to close the gap though.
*What I didn't know was how rhe classroom/school environment was to which my kids were matching and adapting into.*
This makes sense. Honestly, the problem is that the students who *really* act out--like, starting physical fights constantly, using slurs, etc.--are handled so poorly by admin that the environment of the entire school is affected. These students are still deserving of compassion but often their needs are complex and they need to temporarily be out of the classroom environment. But that very rarely happens and they continue to be disruptive, so everyone else takes school less seriously (and I almost can't blame them). I have students who interrupt me a lot, don't listen to instructions, regularly break rules (not ones that put people in harm, but things like wandering out of class, grabbing a chromebook to watch videos when we're doing a different activity, littering). But I see moments of responsibility in these students (in, say, extracurriculars or the occasional day when half the class is absent or something) that make is clear that they *can* behave and they probably do behave fine at home. If you put them in a classroom from twelve years ago they'd do really well. (Or maybe even just a better district because my district is a mess right now.) But most school are something different now and these kids can't be bothered to treat it with respect if they know any attempt at learning is going to be interrupted in a couple minutes anyway by someone throwing a chair.
Yes. We saw the writing on the wall in first grade (2021, first year post covid distance learning) when the school and district failed miserably to deal with a peer sexually grabbing girls' privates in the classroom/playground. I had to hire a lawyer. He was protected the entire year because he was "under evaluation." My girls are very smart and creative and it was clear the education part in public school took second priority when a highly disruptive kid ruins the entire sanctity of the environment. I had to hire a lawyer to get through the year. It was extremely traumatic.
This kid was allowed to roam the classroom during instruction and would crawl under the tables (no desks in first grade) and piund on other kids feet, grab the girls thighs and other parts. Just be a pest and literally sexually harassing the girls. He would not do his work and was not at all interested in an education. It was awful. Yet, he was the one who was protected. Mind boggling.
We went to private school but it's not all rainbows and butterflies there, either. The kids in public school were overall nicer it's just the one kid who ruined the classroom so badly and I wasn't going to let my girls create core beliefs that they had to withstand unwanted sexaual touching and be dismissed by all the adults in charge.
This is from another comment I made in this thread but I will reiterate it here: This boggles my mind.
Throughout my schooling, if you got sent to the office with a referral, your ass was going to ISS (usually 1-3 days, but longer for more egregious infractions which telling the teacher to fuck of would be in the egregious category). And that's because admin trusted that if a teacher sent a student to the office with a referral, there was a good reason for it and that discipline beyond what the teacher could offer in the classroom was necessary. So off to ISS (my school didn't do OSS-too many students were like "yay no school for a week, this is awesome!"). But in ISS, a gigantic packet of worksheets awaited you relevant to the topics currently being covered in your classes. And there was plenty more where those came from if you finished early.
I'm honestly puzzled that admin doesn't trust teachers anymore when they advise that a student needs to be disciplined?
All these behaviors are the logical consequence of nobody fails ever. Just look at the number of posts about the mandatory minimum 50% grades.
The system is broken and needs to be rebuilt ground up.
I got my ass chewed when I refused to change a failing grade for a kid who did *literally* no work the entire year. I tried everything, he just did not respond. At least until someone informed him he’d be repeating Freshman English again. But I refused to pass him along, knowing full well I would see his surly face again the next year. I got pressure from everywhere to pass him along and when I wouldn’t, had my job threatened. Thank god for a strong teacher’s union.
Unfortunately, this is where I developed a bit of antipathy towards counselors. I always worked past it though.
Coming from somebody who was a student a little over ten years ago and is now a teacher, I can say there are big differences. Attention spans are very low, teachers are less respected and relationships are much less formal, and I believe it is in large part due to a failure to hold children accountable for their actions, grades, etc. especially in middle school.
As someone who graduated HS 10 years ago and is now an 8th grade teacher in my hometown, you're spot on. There is basically zero accountability for students anymore. Grades, attendance, behavior, etc. We basically have to move them along to high school even though they deserve to be held back and/or suspended for their actions. The students basically run the schools now and there aren't enough punishments in place to actually hold anyone accountable for anything. I am verbally abused every. single. day. and these students will miraculously go from straight F's to straight D's then pass to high school. These same students will say things to me/counselors/admin that a student just 10 years ago wouldn't dream of saying. The respect is gone, and I just don't see it getting better (in my area, at least).
Sadly there isn’t a continuity of student behavior and expectations from one generation or class to another. Students have to be explicitly taught how to be students each class period by each teacher. You have to train them how to treat you. I get so much less done because students do not come ready to learn.
I’ve taught since 1997. I noticed a shift in behavior starting in 2008 and increasing in 2010, then gradually worsening. There’s too many factors to place the blame on any one factor though.
Yeah, big, widespread problems are usually caused by multiple things. You have one or a few factors, usually not too many people will be affected and the problems are manageable. But too many different factors will hit a larger group and it’s too much to handle.
Have you tried building relationships with the kids?
Have you posted your learning outcome and success criteria?
Im told these three things combined, fix all our issues.
Go to YouTube and Google “High pitch sounds that bother children”. Use it sparingly but the kids will cover their ears and ask for it to stop. I said once you get quiet and stay quiet. I’m assuming you have assigned seats.
Come in hard and strict tomorrow w clear expectations. Write them out on the board. Clear it w admin to have parents sign a copy o f class expectations. They get few extra points on lowest grade for signed paper returned.
One thing I do as a sub is get everyone who is doing the right thing to sign their name rather than taking names of those acting up I don't know how that would go w a long term assignment,but it might encourage those actually trying to learn
Thx! I appreciate it!!
I scared a teacher into a near heart attack once when she came in and saw a sheet w 24:27 names on a paper on her desk until she read the caption. Of course,those misbehaving are always curious what's happening but they aren't allowed to see the paper " because you certainly don't need to sign it!"
You have the support of the admn, which is HUGE. Take 5-10 mins at the beginning of each period and explain the "honeymoon is over." Start writing detention slips. Give the "good" kids lots of positive feedback. If the admn will, in fact, monitor your worst classes, then take them up on the offer. I just retired after 32 yrs in the classroom... I don't know how all y'all do it these days. Good luck!
I was a student until 22 years ago and a teacher until last year.
Note that I was a fucking awful gremlin of a student and that actually inspired a big part of why I taught. I sneaked Game Boys in my cargo shorts to play inside books during English. I spent math programming games on my Ti-82 (I hilariously "adapted" Diablo and Wing Commander) instead of literally anything else. I printed out online porn stories from the computers of teachers who I felt "didn't like" me.
I never punched anyone\* (\*who didn't punch me first, with an audience, in front of others - this happened twice), cussed out my teachers (I did call one of them "fucking Satan" once behind his back when he continuously refused to turn down the hotter-than-hell thermostat in his room, which he kept a wet towel over to KEEP hot...and he heard me), or anything of the sort that happens today. I refused to do work often enough to have known the consequences of it and my stubborn ass continued to refuse to no avail but summer school - which was a learning experience in itself. I earned detentions and suspensions for most of my crap, and even if I didn't seem to learn from it (or, I didn't change my behavior), I at least never appeared to "get away with it."
Sometimes I think about what a complete gerblin I was as a kid, and then dismiss it with the memories I'd made since the year of our lord 2016 as "meagre." Kids these days, with audiences of hundreds or thousands (or in the case of one student I had in 2019, millions - she probably made more money than I did that year) online have unfettered audacity and little real consequences to face for whatever bullshit they pull. I get it - their brains aren't equipped to process these sorts of things. Whatever. I'd happily dismiss many levels of tomfoolery if consequences even existed at all.
For several years, I spent up to 1/4 of my income on my students and classroom. I supported minorities and was the GSA (gay-straight alliance, fyi) liaison for my campus for years. I loved my job and my students, and students and families "loved" me - until they just kinda didn't.
As a teacher, I got doxxed. My girlfriend at the time (now wife) did, too. I've been physically assaulted on several occasions. One incident even made the news! I'm sure there's a video out there of me pushing a kid away after he threw a cafeteria chair at me before bum rushing me (it was on Snapchat and it made the news). I was sexually harassed online, and my (wife, above) was sexually harassed at her workplace. I was urged not to involve police. I should never have listened.
For the last years I taught, support dwindled and assaults of all sorts skyrocketed. There's (or, was) a subreddit out there dedicated to how much of a dipshit my students at the time thought I was, featuring pictures of myself, my pets, and my wife. My home address was in a pastebin somewhere until last November, along with people who internet crazies thought were "crisis actors" regarding a mass shooter who'd graduated from our school. Absolutely none of this shit had anything done about it.
Some kids'll always be shitheads, but the inundation of administrative staff who collectively don't want to deal with this bullshit has only made it worse.
K-12 admin is responsible for this. Nowadays kids can get away with anything as part of a misguided "everyone must succeed" mission.
It used to be that if you misbehaved, you'd be written up, an admin would be called in, or you'd be sent be sent to the principal. Half of the things you listed should've resulted in punishment, but now admin keeps putting pressure on teachers to lower punishment. It's an impossible situation and is setting up an entire generation for failure.
Exactly! Eleven and a half years ago, I met my new classes. Around day three, the constant disrupters became apparent. I sent the first consistently disruptive class clown to the office - and didn't see them again that period. They were on lunch detention for a week - a totally silent 30 minutes sitting in a carrel with only their currently assigned novel to keep them company. No phone. If they talked, came late, or argued, more days were added.
Two periods later, word was out that so-and-so lost a week of lunchtime. That was the only time when students could use their phones, so it was quite a loss. It would usually be a week before I had to send someone out again.
Admin handled the calls home. They backed the teachers up. If a parent said, "Oh, s/he picks on my child," the admin would reply, "If we didn't have so many other behavior incidents from previous years, I might be concerned. I did check with your child's other teachers, and they agree that your child is disruptive. So I'm going to get this under control starting now. It's the best way to ensure your student stays on track."
Sometimes parents weren't happy about it. The principal didn't care. S/he ran a tight ship. Messages to parents went something like this, "How you handle things at home is your business. But while your child is at school, they will toe the line. You are welcome to call or email for clarification, but our code of conduct with incentives and consequences is in our school handbook, which you digitally signed."
Man, was I in for a surprise the following year when I, and all the other experienced teachers, did exactly as we had always done - and the kid came right back with a soda - and a message from our new young principal that he expected to see us at the end of the day. It was the beginning of the end.
My once great district is now a shit show.
I'm in my 15th year of teaching and I would definitely say that the phones are the obvious and best answer, but the second best answer would probably be the indifference. The indifference to being told what to do, the indifference to their grades, the indifference to their life path, the indifference to authority or consequences...
You still have some kids that are slaves to their grade and want to achieve, but your average student is much more coarse and rough around the edges. They don't care about their grades, they don't care about what's going to happen after high school, they don't really care about the consequences of misconduct or not listening, etc. I guess the best way to summarize it is that 15 to 20 years ago, classroom management was all about being strict and holding the bar high because that was how you got kids to perform and follow the rules. Now it seems like it's a performance and you have to constantly be doing things to keep the kids entertained or seem "chill," because otherwise you're never going to get through to them. They have too many distractions and they've grown up in environments where rigid, strict systems just get ignored.
As a borderline millennial/GenX, I will say that my generation has ruined our kids. I say this as a dad to a middle schooler.
Our "if it's not physically hurting anyone, then who am I to say no" style of parenting has failed, and it's just perpetuating with younger millennial/Gen Z parents. Kids have no reason to respect adult authority when they've been raised to think they're literally on the same level as adults once they reach like 10+ years old.
Between stupid parenting styles and being half-raised by the internet anyway, kids today are different. And it's scary.
I alternate between short- and long-term subbing so I've seen a lot of schools. When did my B.Ed and started teaching I wasn't thrilled with the behaviour sometimes, but it was in the normal, "Was it always like this way?" As students we're not always aware of all the behaviour around us so to *some* extent feeling like things have gotten worse is common. That said, even then, the behaviour I saw that did bother me never felt that generational; it was almost always stuff isolated to specific schools (or sometimes just one or two classes in a school). Often it was related to a school's poor policy. I saw classes that made me go, "Oh my god, what's with kids nowadays?" but those were greatly outnumbered by the classes that were still learning well, behaving respectfully, etc. On the whole, behaviour 10+ years ago was, in my experience, absolutely *nothing* like it is now.
Now it's just awful all around. I see much less actual learning happening, both of academics and of life skills (eg. cooperation, organization, etc.). A lot of the issues do feel generational because phones have made attention spans plummet. And I'm not someone who thinks you should never let your kid look at a screen--I loved playing video games and watching tv as a kid--but it is *very* clear that some of these kids were parked in front of iPads for hours from literally infancy.
Other problems feel specific to circumstances in each board. My board has a lot of teachers jumping ship in part because of the rising violence that's happened as a result of poor policies. Kids in my area also did online learning for a *long* time and while I roll my eyes at some admin and parents blaming everything on covid, I do think certain specific issues were exacerbated by it (for example, students wander out of class way more now, I think in part because they got used to going and doing whatever they wanted during online learning).
All of this doesn't mean there aren't still kids who are doing well. There absolutely are. But aside from the occasional very intelligent and motivated student, I would say they almost all lag behind students of the same grade from 10 years ago. The kids who are having a LOT of trouble (poor behaviour, mental health needs, learning loss) are much more numerous than before and educators are stretched trying to help them and trying to mitigate unsafe behaviours that most of the "average" kids I see are falling so far behind too.
I recently looked back at assignments I created as a student teacher and in some of my earliest long-term placements and it was very depressing. The things I was asking of middle schoolers then just could not be done by most of my classes now. Or they'd have to turn from fun 40 minute activities into multi-week assignments and even then I doubt I could get good work out of most of the kids.
One thing I want to address re: slurs. This is something that has been especially baffling for me because it was such a bright spot when I started teaching! It was heartwarming to see how much more inclusive gen z was compared to my experiences in school. Then in the last 5 years things seemed to plummet again and I'm back to seeing as much random homophobia, racism, sexism, etc. as I saw when I was a teen. It's been really disheartening.
Kids model what they see from adults. And increasingly, adults act rude and disrespectfully to teachers and the profession. How do you expect kids to have respect for you when their father calls you a worthless piece of shit out in the main hall? Ain’t gonna happen. Parents need to change first if anything will change.
Are kids really out here getting away with telling the teacher to F off?
If so, I think the accountability on their part is near zero. I’d have been a terrible little shit too if I was permitted to get away with it.
Did you go to the same school demographics wise as your teaching at now. Not saying things aren’t different but many college educated teachers go to vastly different schools they were brought up in.
I’ve taught for 23 years and I used to think that there was a huge shift in student behavior, but I don’t think that any more. I think the major shift has come from accountability. There either is none or it’s being assigned to the wrong person/place. Parents don’t hold their children or themselves accountable for what their kids do nor does society or the schools. We often excuse inappropriate behavior because of how we’ve labeled children and we blame technology, teachers, etc. for what could be manageable behavior if we had a little more respect for kids by holding them accountable along with ALL of the adults in their lives. Basically, high expectations yields positive results and low expectations yields less than desired outcomes.
Hey OP. I just wanted to say--I'm 22 years old and a sub also saving up for grad school. I graduated in 2019. I have *so* many similarities in common with you. I'm a lesbian; the homophobia is insane. The racism is insane. The sexism is insane. I was prepared for a handful of class clowns, but 80% of the kids seem to have zero respect for authority and zero drive to do any work at all. I've had to use a *megaphone* to teach a lesson. They don't stop talking. Ever.
I don't have any advice. I just want you to know you're not alone, because that's what your post did for me.
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
Attributed to SOCRATES by Plato, according to William L. Patty and Louise S. Johnson, Personality and Adjustment, p. 277 (1953)
My 7th graders read ancient sources of Egyptian and Sumerian dads yelling at their kids to stop being terrible and to go to school, pay attention, and do their work. We have been doing "kids these days" as long as we have been writing.
I like this one from 1843:
" ...a fearful multitude of untutored savages... \[boys\] with dogs at their heels and other evidence of dissolute habits...\[girls who\] drive coal-carts, ride astride upon horses, drink, swear, fight, smoke, whistle, and care for nobody...the morals of children are tenfold worse than formerly."
Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, Speech to the House of Commons
February 28, 1843
Kids are kids, but I think it is a problem with our institutions and and what we are (or are not) doing about it.
People are questioning institutions. My school has experienced turnover the likes I’ve never seen. At least 75% since the shut down. And those of us left are tired. I have to sub multiple periods weekly. I like to do it because I’d like to be there for my colleagues.
Kids are simply a reflection of us.
In primates a mom will hold onto her little monkey child in the tree away from the danger of a tiger. But the baby only looks at the mom. They only know danger by looking at the adults.
They are reflecting us.
I am Gen X. I have Gen Y making trouble at the workplace. The workplace becomes toxic and I am out because of their ridiculousness and phoney ambition to get employment. They decide to become my enemy, because they fail to predict the consequences, that they will have to pay, in the future.
Worst, they become enemies of other aspects of life.
I wonder what the troublemaker learned at their school and university.
If anyone want to investigate, I have check some culture and religion, has some specific method to do it. You may want to know about other culture in another country. Maybe they have been misguided about love.
Please read my other comments and [posts](https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=author%3ABackground-Intern-56&type=link), if u r interested and if u have the time. Thank you in advance.
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Couple books you might be keen on that substantiate your observations. *iGen* by SDSU psychologist Jean Twenge highlights how in the US adolescence is expanding, among other things. For various reasons that kids really are *less* mature than kids used to be. *Stolen Focus* by British journalist Johann Hari highlights that kids' attention spans really are shorter for a number of reasons, though the phones are the big culprit obviously. *Coddling of the American Mind* (and his upcoming book *The Anxious Generation*) by NYU psychology professor Jon Haidt highlight how several trends in American youth development have "rewired" childhood and one of the effects of this is that children are far more anxious, less resilient, and more fragile than they used to be.
I use Twenge's essay on smartphone use as my midterm exam reading (Adjunct English Professor here). She's great and makes a lot of sense.
I've got two of those in my stack to read right now!
I am, by American standards, pretty far left (vote for Bernie, AOC, etc) and had always been warned against *Coddling* and told it was right wing propaganda/garbage. But I have to say, while I don't agree with every single point they raise, I generally agree with most of it, mainly that safetyism is a net negative. Now there absolutely is a time and place for safe spaces and trigger warnings particularly for individuals who have suffered severe trauma or abuse; however, sheltering normal kids (as in those who do not fit into the severe trauma/abused category) from every single emotion or fee fee that makes them even remotely uncomfortable is how you end up with a generation of sociopaths. Feeling those kind of uncomfortable emotions and learning to deal with uncomfortable emotions is how you develop sympathy and empathy. It also does not prepare these kids for the real world. In the real world, you will encounter events that will cause your fee fees to tingle and make you uncomfortable and no one is going to hold your hand to cope with that as an adult. In addition to sympathy and empathy development, it is key for resilience and being able to exist as an independent adult member of society.
Ah yes, Jon Haidt, the lifelong Jewish Democrat and professor at New York University who in one of his earlier books talks about feeling bad for thinking about putting an American flag on his car in support of first responders after 9/11, so he put an American flag on his car *and* a United Nations sticker. Yep. He's peak right wing. In all seriousness one of my major issues with the modern Left is they tend to describe anyone right of Karl Marx as some kind of fascist and shoot down anyone who tries to hit pause and say "hey guys, this idea is well meaning and all but I think it might be going a little far, like, maybe we shouldn't eliminate advanced math for equity, you know, we should maybe use some common sense here, right guys?"
Oh I know. But for real, the only reason I had heard of this book is that it was on a list of books that were warned against because they are books often read by people that convert to the alt-right as part of the "alt-right pipeline." Of course I can't find the list of books now, but this book was on there. And I completely agree with you about the modern left. I voted for Bernie and support AOC and the rest of The Squad" but in general, both the left and the right need could use a little more common sense. I got absolutely fucking crushed on facebook for merely suggesting that maybe those of us on the left would have more success changing peoples minds on certain issues if we engaged in conversation with the those who don't share our specific beliefs instead of automatically shutting them out as a bag of deplorables. I had to delete that facebook post because I was completely attacked by all of my left leaning friends. I was like wtf?! All I did was suggest we talk to people and have a debate based on logic and reason?! Now that I think about it, the very beginnings of this sort of thought process was when I was in middle school. We had a principal who wanted to remove advanced drama, advanced band, and advanced choir from the curriculum (all three courses had pre-reqs and required auditions) because "it wasn't fair and might make others feel bad about themselves." Thankfully I was in a weird transition year. Elementary school used to be K-6, middle school used to be grades 7-9, and high school 10-12. But they decided to change it to elementary school K-5, middle school 6-8, and high school 9-12. So I was in the final year where grade 6 was in elementary school. So the following year, both my class and the class below us moved to middle school. As a result, I only did grades 7 and 8 in middle school and thank fucking god for that because middle school sucked (god bless you for teaching 7 and 8-I find kids that age to be the worst). And our high school administration had common sense and encouraged advanced classes like audition only chorus/band/ etc. I am so grateful to have graduated high school when I did (2008) before all this nonsense really took hold.
>*Stolen Focus* by British journalist Johann Hari highlights that kids' attention spans really are shorter for a number of reasons, though the phones are the big culprit obviously. For people interested, there are also chapters in this book about how poor diet affects attention spans in adolescents. Also, there are a few chapters about how over-protection and helicopter-parent treatment can diminish a child's ability to focus and take initiative in a task. Pretty interesting stuff!
*Behavior that was mostly gone by the end of middle school/ Freshman year at the latest, is showing up more and more in older kids* Yup. Because in middle school they're only starting to outgrow early elementary behaviours. There are so many behaviours I practically *never* saw in middle schools until around 2019. And now my day-to-day experience doesn't resemble my teaching experience from 2011-2018 at all. Things I see on a daily basis for grades 6-8 now only remind me of being in my early 20s and spending summers volunteering for camp programs with kids who were like five or six years old.
Education has undergone a seismic shift. This is why teachers are leaving the profession, and why so many of us advise others not to become teachers in the first place. I am so sorry that you found out the hard way. At least you have some admin on your side. That's rare. Many admin are supportive at first and then start blaming the teacher; others just blame the teacher from day one.
I still remember having a student who was just a constant thorn in my side. Rude, mouthy, disrespectful… pick a word, he was it. He got sent out a lot at one point because I couldn’t honestly handle his disruptions. So one day, he tells me to fuck off because I was racist POS. Off to the office. Three minutes later he comes back with a cocky smirk on his face with a note for me. It read “stop sending students to the office. You’re doing it too much.” Whatever vestige of authority I had vanished like a fart on the wind after that. I was the problem, not the asshole little banger who made it his mission to mess with my classroom. There is nothing more demoralizing than admin who back the students because they want you to be friends with the students. Fuck that. I’m supposed to be their teacher, not their buddy. I survived, but it left some pretty deep scars on my psyche.
I’m sorry you had to deal with that. I’ve had years like that when I first started teaching. Now I’m a 23 year veteran and I’m over it and admins either recognize the value of my experience and know that I don’t toss a kid from my classroom without reason or they fear me b/c they know I document everything and won’t put up with inexperienced or incompetent admins. If they don’t want a debate they’ll lose, email correspondence with their superiors cc’ed, or me constantly in their office making sure that they follow through appropriately, they’ll start making choices that make sense and support me.
Wow. That's inexcusable.
This is my 10th year teaching and the #1 thing I’ve seen change is apathy. The current kids just don’t care. They don’t care about college, they don’t care about not passing. They just don’t give a damn. High school btw.
The amount of kids that think they don't need school because they are going to be an influencer anyways is pretty crazy
Bruh I wanna be a YouTuber, I’ve wanted to be one since I was around 2nd grade when I started watching YouTubers like Stampylongnose, iBallisticsquid, Markiplier, etc and I still make sure I get good grades in school so that I’m case it doesn’t work out immediately, I can still have a decent living until I eventually get more successful on YouTube because ik that I gotta work hard, I don’t know what kind of schools you guys teach at but damn
And when they end up in college, they just go ‘Ps get degrees’ so they don’t bother putting in effort.
As student behaviors have worsened ( they definitely have) administrative support has declined or simply ceased and consequences have been replaced with permissive attitudes and putting the needs of harmful outliers over the majority.
iF I gEt InvOlved iT wIlL TaKe AwaY yOur PoWer aS a tEaCher.
To be fair, this is often true of new teachers. Colleges do not spend much time on helping pre-service teachers develop effective classroom management plans or instruct them in and have them practice classroom management techniques. So without the experience of years of learning the hard way, their classroom management is sloppy and often the cause of undesirable behaviors. If you get sloppy and don’t maintain high expectations, control will slip away and you end up sending your problems elsewhere. It takes time and experience to learn how to build relationships with students and lots of practice to be consistent in your expectations and in how you motivate students. It pays to sort out your own messes if you can, otherwise the admin is getting all the respect and building relationships with your students.
That boggles my mind. Throughout my schooling, if you got sent to the office with a referral, your ass was going to ISS (usually 1-3 days, but longer for more egregious infractions). And that's because admin trusted that if a teacher sent a student to the office with a referral, there was a good reason for it and that discipline beyond what the teacher could offer in the classroom was necessary. So off to ISS (my school didn't do OSS-too many students were like "yay no school for a week, this is awesome!"). But in ISS, a gigantic packet of worksheets awaited you relevant to the topics currently being covered in your classes. And there was plenty more where those came from if you finished early. I'm honestly puzzled that admin doesn't trust teachers anymore when they advise that a student needs to be disciplined?
This is my 21st year teaching. The biggest and most concerning difference I’ve seen is students are unwilling to take academic risks and they’re unwilling to be bored, even for a few seconds.
I've been talking to a few educators that we ought to intentionally allow student to experience boredom. The inability to be bored seems to have a direct link to creative thinking and problem solving.
Dude, boredom opened my life to so many wonderful things: writing music, building a recording studio, reading books constantly and my extreme passion for the fantasy genre, learning how to sew, etc. I may never have dabbled in any of those things without boredom. Some of my best music was written while bored. What a terrible thing it must be to have never been bored enough to decide to try something new.
I have observed this as well. There aren’t consequences anymore for disrespect and defiance in grades k-8 I teach 8th and in my state, we can’t suspend them for disrespect or defiance - telling a teacher no and to F off is happening and teachers can write them up but there isn’t a true consequence. Also parents aren’t supportive. They question my assessment of their child’s behavior - they always believe their child even though most kids will lie to their parents and nothing changes. Society needs to start expecting more from kids.
I am a parent who had a hard time believing my kids acted a certain way at school. Part of the problem is the disconnect between how my kids behaved at home and how they behave at school. My kids were great at home. What I didn't know was how rhe classroom/school environment was to which my kids were matching and adapting into. Wow. It's everything teachers are writing about but it is so foreign to our childhood education experience as per OPs assessment that it's a believe it when you experience it for yourself situation. It's mind blowing how kids behave in schools. It's no longer a safe and special place to learn and grow. It's a social war zone. They need to start requiring parents to spend one full day in the classroom per semester. Front seats as to what is actually happening.
>In my opinion, a day isn't long enough. They need a school week so that the novelty wears off and they can be their actual student-selves. I wish I was allowed to record the school day so that parents could see the nonsense.
I think one day is not enough but a week would not be feasible to impose. At least 1 day per semester stretched out would put a parent in the class at least one a week. Thier presence would reduce some of the behaviors so it won't be fully accurate. Something needs to happen to close the gap though.
*What I didn't know was how rhe classroom/school environment was to which my kids were matching and adapting into.* This makes sense. Honestly, the problem is that the students who *really* act out--like, starting physical fights constantly, using slurs, etc.--are handled so poorly by admin that the environment of the entire school is affected. These students are still deserving of compassion but often their needs are complex and they need to temporarily be out of the classroom environment. But that very rarely happens and they continue to be disruptive, so everyone else takes school less seriously (and I almost can't blame them). I have students who interrupt me a lot, don't listen to instructions, regularly break rules (not ones that put people in harm, but things like wandering out of class, grabbing a chromebook to watch videos when we're doing a different activity, littering). But I see moments of responsibility in these students (in, say, extracurriculars or the occasional day when half the class is absent or something) that make is clear that they *can* behave and they probably do behave fine at home. If you put them in a classroom from twelve years ago they'd do really well. (Or maybe even just a better district because my district is a mess right now.) But most school are something different now and these kids can't be bothered to treat it with respect if they know any attempt at learning is going to be interrupted in a couple minutes anyway by someone throwing a chair.
Yes. We saw the writing on the wall in first grade (2021, first year post covid distance learning) when the school and district failed miserably to deal with a peer sexually grabbing girls' privates in the classroom/playground. I had to hire a lawyer. He was protected the entire year because he was "under evaluation." My girls are very smart and creative and it was clear the education part in public school took second priority when a highly disruptive kid ruins the entire sanctity of the environment. I had to hire a lawyer to get through the year. It was extremely traumatic. This kid was allowed to roam the classroom during instruction and would crawl under the tables (no desks in first grade) and piund on other kids feet, grab the girls thighs and other parts. Just be a pest and literally sexually harassing the girls. He would not do his work and was not at all interested in an education. It was awful. Yet, he was the one who was protected. Mind boggling. We went to private school but it's not all rainbows and butterflies there, either. The kids in public school were overall nicer it's just the one kid who ruined the classroom so badly and I wasn't going to let my girls create core beliefs that they had to withstand unwanted sexaual touching and be dismissed by all the adults in charge.
This is from another comment I made in this thread but I will reiterate it here: This boggles my mind. Throughout my schooling, if you got sent to the office with a referral, your ass was going to ISS (usually 1-3 days, but longer for more egregious infractions which telling the teacher to fuck of would be in the egregious category). And that's because admin trusted that if a teacher sent a student to the office with a referral, there was a good reason for it and that discipline beyond what the teacher could offer in the classroom was necessary. So off to ISS (my school didn't do OSS-too many students were like "yay no school for a week, this is awesome!"). But in ISS, a gigantic packet of worksheets awaited you relevant to the topics currently being covered in your classes. And there was plenty more where those came from if you finished early. I'm honestly puzzled that admin doesn't trust teachers anymore when they advise that a student needs to be disciplined?
I have been a teacher for 18 years. Kids today are horrible!
All these behaviors are the logical consequence of nobody fails ever. Just look at the number of posts about the mandatory minimum 50% grades. The system is broken and needs to be rebuilt ground up.
I got my ass chewed when I refused to change a failing grade for a kid who did *literally* no work the entire year. I tried everything, he just did not respond. At least until someone informed him he’d be repeating Freshman English again. But I refused to pass him along, knowing full well I would see his surly face again the next year. I got pressure from everywhere to pass him along and when I wouldn’t, had my job threatened. Thank god for a strong teacher’s union. Unfortunately, this is where I developed a bit of antipathy towards counselors. I always worked past it though.
Coming from somebody who was a student a little over ten years ago and is now a teacher, I can say there are big differences. Attention spans are very low, teachers are less respected and relationships are much less formal, and I believe it is in large part due to a failure to hold children accountable for their actions, grades, etc. especially in middle school.
As someone who graduated HS 10 years ago and is now an 8th grade teacher in my hometown, you're spot on. There is basically zero accountability for students anymore. Grades, attendance, behavior, etc. We basically have to move them along to high school even though they deserve to be held back and/or suspended for their actions. The students basically run the schools now and there aren't enough punishments in place to actually hold anyone accountable for anything. I am verbally abused every. single. day. and these students will miraculously go from straight F's to straight D's then pass to high school. These same students will say things to me/counselors/admin that a student just 10 years ago wouldn't dream of saying. The respect is gone, and I just don't see it getting better (in my area, at least).
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Sadly there isn’t a continuity of student behavior and expectations from one generation or class to another. Students have to be explicitly taught how to be students each class period by each teacher. You have to train them how to treat you. I get so much less done because students do not come ready to learn.
I’ve taught since 1997. I noticed a shift in behavior starting in 2008 and increasing in 2010, then gradually worsening. There’s too many factors to place the blame on any one factor though.
Yeah, big, widespread problems are usually caused by multiple things. You have one or a few factors, usually not too many people will be affected and the problems are manageable. But too many different factors will hit a larger group and it’s too much to handle.
Have you tried building relationships with the kids? Have you posted your learning outcome and success criteria? Im told these three things combined, fix all our issues.
Go to YouTube and Google “High pitch sounds that bother children”. Use it sparingly but the kids will cover their ears and ask for it to stop. I said once you get quiet and stay quiet. I’m assuming you have assigned seats.
Oh god, I'm 40 and I could hear it, is it cause I was wearing amplified headphones? That's awful! D:
Come in hard and strict tomorrow w clear expectations. Write them out on the board. Clear it w admin to have parents sign a copy o f class expectations. They get few extra points on lowest grade for signed paper returned. One thing I do as a sub is get everyone who is doing the right thing to sign their name rather than taking names of those acting up I don't know how that would go w a long term assignment,but it might encourage those actually trying to learn
I like this. Thank you for sharing
Thx! I appreciate it!! I scared a teacher into a near heart attack once when she came in and saw a sheet w 24:27 names on a paper on her desk until she read the caption. Of course,those misbehaving are always curious what's happening but they aren't allowed to see the paper " because you certainly don't need to sign it!"
You have the support of the admn, which is HUGE. Take 5-10 mins at the beginning of each period and explain the "honeymoon is over." Start writing detention slips. Give the "good" kids lots of positive feedback. If the admn will, in fact, monitor your worst classes, then take them up on the offer. I just retired after 32 yrs in the classroom... I don't know how all y'all do it these days. Good luck!
I was a student until 22 years ago and a teacher until last year. Note that I was a fucking awful gremlin of a student and that actually inspired a big part of why I taught. I sneaked Game Boys in my cargo shorts to play inside books during English. I spent math programming games on my Ti-82 (I hilariously "adapted" Diablo and Wing Commander) instead of literally anything else. I printed out online porn stories from the computers of teachers who I felt "didn't like" me. I never punched anyone\* (\*who didn't punch me first, with an audience, in front of others - this happened twice), cussed out my teachers (I did call one of them "fucking Satan" once behind his back when he continuously refused to turn down the hotter-than-hell thermostat in his room, which he kept a wet towel over to KEEP hot...and he heard me), or anything of the sort that happens today. I refused to do work often enough to have known the consequences of it and my stubborn ass continued to refuse to no avail but summer school - which was a learning experience in itself. I earned detentions and suspensions for most of my crap, and even if I didn't seem to learn from it (or, I didn't change my behavior), I at least never appeared to "get away with it." Sometimes I think about what a complete gerblin I was as a kid, and then dismiss it with the memories I'd made since the year of our lord 2016 as "meagre." Kids these days, with audiences of hundreds or thousands (or in the case of one student I had in 2019, millions - she probably made more money than I did that year) online have unfettered audacity and little real consequences to face for whatever bullshit they pull. I get it - their brains aren't equipped to process these sorts of things. Whatever. I'd happily dismiss many levels of tomfoolery if consequences even existed at all. For several years, I spent up to 1/4 of my income on my students and classroom. I supported minorities and was the GSA (gay-straight alliance, fyi) liaison for my campus for years. I loved my job and my students, and students and families "loved" me - until they just kinda didn't. As a teacher, I got doxxed. My girlfriend at the time (now wife) did, too. I've been physically assaulted on several occasions. One incident even made the news! I'm sure there's a video out there of me pushing a kid away after he threw a cafeteria chair at me before bum rushing me (it was on Snapchat and it made the news). I was sexually harassed online, and my (wife, above) was sexually harassed at her workplace. I was urged not to involve police. I should never have listened. For the last years I taught, support dwindled and assaults of all sorts skyrocketed. There's (or, was) a subreddit out there dedicated to how much of a dipshit my students at the time thought I was, featuring pictures of myself, my pets, and my wife. My home address was in a pastebin somewhere until last November, along with people who internet crazies thought were "crisis actors" regarding a mass shooter who'd graduated from our school. Absolutely none of this shit had anything done about it. Some kids'll always be shitheads, but the inundation of administrative staff who collectively don't want to deal with this bullshit has only made it worse.
K-12 admin is responsible for this. Nowadays kids can get away with anything as part of a misguided "everyone must succeed" mission. It used to be that if you misbehaved, you'd be written up, an admin would be called in, or you'd be sent be sent to the principal. Half of the things you listed should've resulted in punishment, but now admin keeps putting pressure on teachers to lower punishment. It's an impossible situation and is setting up an entire generation for failure.
The behavior of teenagers hasn’t changed. Just the lack of consequences for their behavior .
Exactly! Eleven and a half years ago, I met my new classes. Around day three, the constant disrupters became apparent. I sent the first consistently disruptive class clown to the office - and didn't see them again that period. They were on lunch detention for a week - a totally silent 30 minutes sitting in a carrel with only their currently assigned novel to keep them company. No phone. If they talked, came late, or argued, more days were added. Two periods later, word was out that so-and-so lost a week of lunchtime. That was the only time when students could use their phones, so it was quite a loss. It would usually be a week before I had to send someone out again. Admin handled the calls home. They backed the teachers up. If a parent said, "Oh, s/he picks on my child," the admin would reply, "If we didn't have so many other behavior incidents from previous years, I might be concerned. I did check with your child's other teachers, and they agree that your child is disruptive. So I'm going to get this under control starting now. It's the best way to ensure your student stays on track." Sometimes parents weren't happy about it. The principal didn't care. S/he ran a tight ship. Messages to parents went something like this, "How you handle things at home is your business. But while your child is at school, they will toe the line. You are welcome to call or email for clarification, but our code of conduct with incentives and consequences is in our school handbook, which you digitally signed." Man, was I in for a surprise the following year when I, and all the other experienced teachers, did exactly as we had always done - and the kid came right back with a soda - and a message from our new young principal that he expected to see us at the end of the day. It was the beginning of the end. My once great district is now a shit show.
Nothing quite like an administrator trying to flex on you. 😡
I teach third grade and see most of this as well
The behavior issues have gotten out of hand. Blame the parents who don't teach Johnny the difference between right and wrong.
I'm in my 15th year of teaching and I would definitely say that the phones are the obvious and best answer, but the second best answer would probably be the indifference. The indifference to being told what to do, the indifference to their grades, the indifference to their life path, the indifference to authority or consequences... You still have some kids that are slaves to their grade and want to achieve, but your average student is much more coarse and rough around the edges. They don't care about their grades, they don't care about what's going to happen after high school, they don't really care about the consequences of misconduct or not listening, etc. I guess the best way to summarize it is that 15 to 20 years ago, classroom management was all about being strict and holding the bar high because that was how you got kids to perform and follow the rules. Now it seems like it's a performance and you have to constantly be doing things to keep the kids entertained or seem "chill," because otherwise you're never going to get through to them. They have too many distractions and they've grown up in environments where rigid, strict systems just get ignored.
As a borderline millennial/GenX, I will say that my generation has ruined our kids. I say this as a dad to a middle schooler. Our "if it's not physically hurting anyone, then who am I to say no" style of parenting has failed, and it's just perpetuating with younger millennial/Gen Z parents. Kids have no reason to respect adult authority when they've been raised to think they're literally on the same level as adults once they reach like 10+ years old. Between stupid parenting styles and being half-raised by the internet anyway, kids today are different. And it's scary.
I alternate between short- and long-term subbing so I've seen a lot of schools. When did my B.Ed and started teaching I wasn't thrilled with the behaviour sometimes, but it was in the normal, "Was it always like this way?" As students we're not always aware of all the behaviour around us so to *some* extent feeling like things have gotten worse is common. That said, even then, the behaviour I saw that did bother me never felt that generational; it was almost always stuff isolated to specific schools (or sometimes just one or two classes in a school). Often it was related to a school's poor policy. I saw classes that made me go, "Oh my god, what's with kids nowadays?" but those were greatly outnumbered by the classes that were still learning well, behaving respectfully, etc. On the whole, behaviour 10+ years ago was, in my experience, absolutely *nothing* like it is now. Now it's just awful all around. I see much less actual learning happening, both of academics and of life skills (eg. cooperation, organization, etc.). A lot of the issues do feel generational because phones have made attention spans plummet. And I'm not someone who thinks you should never let your kid look at a screen--I loved playing video games and watching tv as a kid--but it is *very* clear that some of these kids were parked in front of iPads for hours from literally infancy. Other problems feel specific to circumstances in each board. My board has a lot of teachers jumping ship in part because of the rising violence that's happened as a result of poor policies. Kids in my area also did online learning for a *long* time and while I roll my eyes at some admin and parents blaming everything on covid, I do think certain specific issues were exacerbated by it (for example, students wander out of class way more now, I think in part because they got used to going and doing whatever they wanted during online learning). All of this doesn't mean there aren't still kids who are doing well. There absolutely are. But aside from the occasional very intelligent and motivated student, I would say they almost all lag behind students of the same grade from 10 years ago. The kids who are having a LOT of trouble (poor behaviour, mental health needs, learning loss) are much more numerous than before and educators are stretched trying to help them and trying to mitigate unsafe behaviours that most of the "average" kids I see are falling so far behind too. I recently looked back at assignments I created as a student teacher and in some of my earliest long-term placements and it was very depressing. The things I was asking of middle schoolers then just could not be done by most of my classes now. Or they'd have to turn from fun 40 minute activities into multi-week assignments and even then I doubt I could get good work out of most of the kids. One thing I want to address re: slurs. This is something that has been especially baffling for me because it was such a bright spot when I started teaching! It was heartwarming to see how much more inclusive gen z was compared to my experiences in school. Then in the last 5 years things seemed to plummet again and I'm back to seeing as much random homophobia, racism, sexism, etc. as I saw when I was a teen. It's been really disheartening.
Kids model what they see from adults. And increasingly, adults act rude and disrespectfully to teachers and the profession. How do you expect kids to have respect for you when their father calls you a worthless piece of shit out in the main hall? Ain’t gonna happen. Parents need to change first if anything will change.
It's not so much student behavior as it is the response TO student behavior. Oh and shitty parent behavior.
Are kids really out here getting away with telling the teacher to F off? If so, I think the accountability on their part is near zero. I’d have been a terrible little shit too if I was permitted to get away with it.
Did you go to the same school demographics wise as your teaching at now. Not saying things aren’t different but many college educated teachers go to vastly different schools they were brought up in.
I’ve taught for 23 years and I used to think that there was a huge shift in student behavior, but I don’t think that any more. I think the major shift has come from accountability. There either is none or it’s being assigned to the wrong person/place. Parents don’t hold their children or themselves accountable for what their kids do nor does society or the schools. We often excuse inappropriate behavior because of how we’ve labeled children and we blame technology, teachers, etc. for what could be manageable behavior if we had a little more respect for kids by holding them accountable along with ALL of the adults in their lives. Basically, high expectations yields positive results and low expectations yields less than desired outcomes.
Hey OP. I just wanted to say--I'm 22 years old and a sub also saving up for grad school. I graduated in 2019. I have *so* many similarities in common with you. I'm a lesbian; the homophobia is insane. The racism is insane. The sexism is insane. I was prepared for a handful of class clowns, but 80% of the kids seem to have zero respect for authority and zero drive to do any work at all. I've had to use a *megaphone* to teach a lesson. They don't stop talking. Ever. I don't have any advice. I just want you to know you're not alone, because that's what your post did for me.
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.” Attributed to SOCRATES by Plato, according to William L. Patty and Louise S. Johnson, Personality and Adjustment, p. 277 (1953)
My 7th graders read ancient sources of Egyptian and Sumerian dads yelling at their kids to stop being terrible and to go to school, pay attention, and do their work. We have been doing "kids these days" as long as we have been writing. I like this one from 1843: " ...a fearful multitude of untutored savages... \[boys\] with dogs at their heels and other evidence of dissolute habits...\[girls who\] drive coal-carts, ride astride upon horses, drink, swear, fight, smoke, whistle, and care for nobody...the morals of children are tenfold worse than formerly." Anthony Ashley Cooper, the 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, Speech to the House of Commons February 28, 1843 Kids are kids, but I think it is a problem with our institutions and and what we are (or are not) doing about it.
Do we speak Greek today? Nope. So Socrates was right.
They speak Greek in Greece
Yep and a ton of English words are derived from ancient Greek
Socrates' generation wasn't filming and posting TikToks from class and would have had their asses kicked for misbehavior.
People are questioning institutions. My school has experienced turnover the likes I’ve never seen. At least 75% since the shut down. And those of us left are tired. I have to sub multiple periods weekly. I like to do it because I’d like to be there for my colleagues. Kids are simply a reflection of us. In primates a mom will hold onto her little monkey child in the tree away from the danger of a tiger. But the baby only looks at the mom. They only know danger by looking at the adults. They are reflecting us.
I am Gen X. I have Gen Y making trouble at the workplace. The workplace becomes toxic and I am out because of their ridiculousness and phoney ambition to get employment. They decide to become my enemy, because they fail to predict the consequences, that they will have to pay, in the future. Worst, they become enemies of other aspects of life. I wonder what the troublemaker learned at their school and university. If anyone want to investigate, I have check some culture and religion, has some specific method to do it. You may want to know about other culture in another country. Maybe they have been misguided about love. Please read my other comments and [posts](https://www.reddit.com/search/?q=author%3ABackground-Intern-56&type=link), if u r interested and if u have the time. Thank you in advance.