50 comments

1. DataDrivenDiva

   February 23, 2012 at 4:25 PM

   # 1

   After 16 years in NYC Pub­lic Schools, I am a com­bi­na­tion of both these. I am Insanely Numb. I am always “in the wrong” and must do and re-do the same work over and over again. I have been called “lazy” and a “waste of funds” to my face, by my prin­ci­pal. YET, when the big shots in suits appear, guess whose class­room they are in? You see, I am still too pro­fes­sional to pur­posely look bad in front of the super­in­ten­dent. I wish I could quit. I would do it in a minute.

   Reply
2. I Teach in Philly

   February 23, 2012 at 5:03 PM

   # 2

   Thanks to a good com­bi­na­tion of numb­ness and insan­ity, I’ve become a lot like my stu­dents:
   – I say “fuck” a lot (ok — not when the kids are around)
   – I have a bad atti­tude
   – I do the least amount of paper­work pos­si­ble. Last year I real­ized that the crap they make us put in our Data Binders will never be looked at.
   – I’m angry and occa­sion­ally sullen
   – I dis­re­spect author­ity (like the clowns who do our district’s walk-throughs)
   – I ques­tion the value of bor­ing, irrel­e­vant lessons (aka Pro­fes­sional Devel­op­ment)
   – I do things my way because I know in my heart it’s best for me and those I care about (stu­dents)
   – I live for the week­end and being out with my friends
   – I know even­tu­ally I’ll get caught but ya know, it feels good to be bad.
   – School can­not be over with soon enough. Retire­ment is only … how far away?

   Reply
   • Mamatrio

     February 23, 2012 at 8:28 PM

     # 3

     I teach in Philly too and I feel like I could have writ­ten your com­ment. I feel exactly the same way. It appears you are a class­room teacher and I am a spe­cial­ist. 1000 kids in an empow­er­ment school. I 2nd your com­ment! Today I had a melt­down on 33 7th graders destroy­ing my room and all the sup­plies. Tomor­row, I’ll go back and do my best now that I got that out of my sys­tem. I’ll get through because its Friday

     Reply
   • Vickie

     February 24, 2012 at 9:45 AM

     # 4

     Wow — You sound just like my team. You would fit right in.
     Come join me and T in Hawaii!
     At least its warm

     Reply
3. Naughty Librarian

   February 23, 2012 at 5:39 PM

   # 5

   This is my sec­ond year teach­ing — I came into it in my 40’s, so I con­sid­ered myself fairly world savvy. I noticed imme­di­ately that the teach­ers in my dis­trict were exactly as described above and it didn’t take me long to get there, too.

   I have a meet­ing on Mon­day in which they will tell me they are not renew­ing my con­tract. Why? Well, as one prin­ci­pal put it, “The way you wrote the assign­ment assured that your stu­dents would suc­ceed.” Yep. Not jok­ing. I was also accused of using cross-curricular lessons. My biggest fault is that I don’t write proper les­son plans — I only use the dis­trict pre­scribed format.

   I know that I have noth­ing to be ashamed of but it is so hard to go to work each morn­ing — the only thing that gets me through the day is the hugs and smiles from my students.

   I will find another job (although it prob­a­bly won’t be teach­ing.) I will find a way to insure my fam­ily. What frus­trates me is that the prin­ci­pal who didn’t know what text to self con­nec­tions were or what the grades on his report card meant (and sub­se­quently bawled out a high per­form­ing first grader because of it)will be promoted.

   Reply
4. Subina

   February 23, 2012 at 7:20 PM

   # 6

   I taught SPEC ED in a NYC H.S. for 30 yrs and very thank­fully. I am retired; I retired the sec­ond I could. I was def­i­nitely one of the numb ones. They, mean­ing Mayor Doomberg and all other suits, clip­boards and Tweeds (they work out of the old Boss Tweed bldg), are clos­ing 33 schools includ­ing the one in which I worked.Why? Because we can’t teach! Datadrivendiva-love your name and, do we know each other? Maybe. We are The Step­ford Teach­ers. How teach­ers are treated is absolutely despicable.

   Reply
5. maia

   February 23, 2012 at 7:22 PM

   # 7

   i think i fall in the lat­ter cat­e­gory. maybe not in the cat-lady crazy cat­e­gory, or the neg­a­tive nelly cat­e­gory. i fall into the emo­tional roller-coaster crazy cat­e­gory. some­days i’m fly­ing high and lov­ing teach­ing, but those times are short lived. i spend more time in swirling anx­i­ety and anger. *sigh*

   this is my 7th year teach­ing mid­dle school math. i taught in lan­caster, pa for 5 years and now in louisville, ky. believe it or not, lan­caster has a very tiny city, which is where i taught and i LOVED my school and stu­dents and cowork­ers, but HATED the stu­pid­ity of our admin, and the demands, etc. when i got mar­ried and we moved to ky i thought, “it can’t get any worse than where i was.” wrong!

   i’m at a very dif­fi­cult point, now. i can say that i hon­estly love plan­ning my lessons/units and i love teach­ing my stu­dents. but i really am tired of their apa­thy, their low level abuse, their excuses. and i’m tired of being scolded by the admin. for every­thing. i’m tired of the demands on my time that take me away from plan­ning bet­ter lessons or grad­ing w/ infor­ma­tive feed­back. i’m tired of kids doing drugs at school and not being pun­ished. i’m tired of it all.

   and how can that be? this is the career i was meant to be in! i dreamed of! my pas­sion! and i hate it now? i feel like i’m watch­ing part of myself die and no one under­stands. even my clos­est friends who are teach­ers don’t seem to get it — or won’t admit that they get it.

   all i can think of is rud­yard kiplings “if,” as quoted by the band Brand New in their song ‘sow­ing sea­son.” “Is it in you now to watch the things you gave your life to bro­ken, to stoop and build them up with worn out tools?”

   Reply
   • Patty

     February 26, 2012 at 5:39 PM

     # 8

     I know how you feel, and I am so so so sorry you feel that way! You are not alone. I con­sider teach­ing my call­ing, but it is get­ting harder and harder to do. I am expe­ri­enc­ing the sys­tem from both sides– par­ent and teacher– and every day I am infu­ri­ated by the stu­pid­ity of admins who have no clue what they’re talk­ing about. I am very sad about my real­iza­tion that I will prob­a­bly NEVER work for a prin­ci­pal who inspires me, or work with a group of like-minded peo­ple who get and love kids. I’m too old to start over, don’t want to be a prin­ci­pal, and am not yet old enough to retire. I’m in north­ern Vir­ginia, where the schools are sup­posed to be good… but we have a for­mer PE teacher for a super­in­ten­dent and a bunch of mean girls on the school board, so lthe schools are not nearly as good as they could be. Hang in there– you are NOT alone!!!

     Reply
     • maia

       February 26, 2012 at 8:29 PM

       # 9

       thanks for the encour­age­ment, patty!

       Reply
6. Brenda

   February 23, 2012 at 8:11 PM

   # 10

   I am not sure where on this spec­trum I fall, but I do know I just took a job at Sub­way mak­ing sand­wiches so I could feed my kids. It is my sec­ond job.

   Reply
7. Missy

   February 23, 2012 at 8:51 PM

   # 11

   I’m numb, yet slip slid­ing straight into insan­ity. I find myself walk­ing the halls and mut­ter­ing — usu­ally about the chil­dren and how they are behav­ing as if they were raised by wolves. I teach juniors and seniors and I have to stop myself from call­ing them ass­holes daily. Every­day I ask for assign­ments and I hear at least 20 “Miss, don’t worry, I got you!” I want to fling the dec­o­ra­tive rocks adorn­ing my lucky bam­boo at their faces.

   I don’t do my admin­is­tra­tive duty any­more after a stu­dent threat­ened to “fuck me up” and she was never sus­pended, given a deten­tion, washed a chalkboard…not nothing.

   I am wish­ing my life away wait­ing for week­ends, vaca­tions, and summers.

   Reply
   • chinateacher

     February 26, 2012 at 8:00 PM

     # 12

     I taught in an inner-city char­ter school in Chicago. One night dur­ing parent-teacher con­fer­ences a stu­dent stole my cell phone, which I had placed in a drawer in my desk IN THE BACK under a bunch of papers with­out being seen by any­one. So this kid had to have gone through my entire desk look­ing for any­thing to steal. He was caught (rat­ted out by another stu­dent) and the cell returned but — and here’s the kicker — EVERYONE blamed me! It was clearly MY fault he stole the phone because I had not locked it up. He not only was not pun­ished but I was required to apol­o­gize to him for tempt­ing him! This is absolutely true!

     I quit the next day.

     Reply
8. Valerie

   February 23, 2012 at 9:00 PM

   # 13

   I’m in my 9th year teach­ing his­tory in NYC pub­lic high schools, and read­ing the other com­ments only con­firms my sense that the biggest fac­tor in teacher san­ity is very, very often the admin­is­tra­tion. My experiences:

   School A: Big school, some great kids, also a cache­ment school so it got ev-e-ry-body (just off the boat, just out of prison, etc.). It got crazy pretty often; the school was reg­u­larly men­tioned in the crime blog of a local paper. But I stayed mostly sane, pri­mar­ily due to the under­stand­ing, nur­tur­ing depart­ment AP, who gave both spot-on crit­i­cism and sug­ges­tions for improve­ment, and who pro­tected us from the principal.

   School B: new-ish small school, sim­i­lar range of stu­dents, good AP, but a prob­lem­atic prin­ci­pal. Spent a very stress­ful year there, one night went home and had a freak-out melt­down. Was going insane.

   School C: Where I am now. Slightly bet­ter kids (low-level of screen­ing), but the biggest dif­fer­ence is a prin­ci­pal who I feel respects teach­ers, is approach­able, whom I sat next to the other night at a Diane Rav­itch lec­ture … and I am still over­worked, and there are moments, but I feel sane.

   Lead­ers have enor­mous influ­ence on orga­ni­za­tional cul­ture. I blame and credit admin­is­tra­tors for how I’ve felt teach­ing at dif­fer­ent schools. Tip: don’t talk about the impor­tance of admin­is­tra­tive influ­ence in a job inter­view; I did once, and I don’t think it helped.

   Reply
9. Liza

   February 23, 2012 at 9:20 PM

   # 14

   I’ve been in a Title 1 school, teach­ing third grade, for 5 years. Teach­ing is my pas­sion. I have never had another career, and while I do work 2 jobs (are there teach­ers who don’t?), my other job is teach­ing dance — clearly, teach­ing is my thing. My stu­dents, over the years, have got­ten more and more apa­thetic toward any­thing school related. My prin­ci­pal is very demand­ing, but also very appre­cia­tive of the work we do. It is, how­ever, a sit­u­a­tion where you are either ON the boat 100% or you are thrown over­board into the wait­ing jaws of the HR sharks. Our school won mul­ti­ple awards for achieve­ment about 2 years ago, and since then, the entire pop­u­la­tion sur­round­ing us has attempted to get into our dis­trict. We are a 400 stu­dent school that is now serv­ing 475 stu­dents. Nearly all low income, nearly all sin­gle par­ent, nearly all with a sense of enti­tle­ment so large it blows my mind.

   I def­i­nitely feel like I fall into both cat­e­gories. When I’m in my class­room, with my stu­dents, I’m numb. Com­pletely. No feel­ing what­so­ever. I have 3 stu­dents who actu­ally care and work hard, and even they have stopped mak­ing me feel excited about going to work. I have one stu­dent who refuses to do any­thing asked of her, at any time, for any rea­son, and will not respond to any form of pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive dis­ci­pline. Another who is so imma­ture he requires con­stant atten­tion lest he do increas­ingly ridicu­lous things to get EVERYONE’S atten­tion in the entire room. And another who I’m pretty sure is bipo­lar. Hyper and manic one minute, bawl­ing his eyes out the next. Because ALL of my time is devoted to these 3 stu­dents, my oth­ers (besides the three who actu­ally give a crap) have com­pletely stopped car­ing. They know they won’t get the atten­tion or rewards they deserve because I’ll be deal­ing with one of those three at all times. I’ve become numb to every­thing because I know noth­ing I do is going to make a dif­fer­ence in any­thing. I have tried every­thing I know to moti­vate these stu­dents. I’ve even got­ten to the point of ask­ing my aca­d­e­mic coach to come in and observe to see what advice she can give.

   On the other hand, when I’m with other teach­ers, we are all insane. We have sched­uled col­lab­o­ra­tion every Wednes­day and Thurs­day dur­ing our plan­ning, and it has become, with­out fail, two days of com­plete bitch-fest, and zero col­lab­o­ra­tion. We are a small, close staff, and basi­cally all the narcs have been pro­moted to admin jobs, so we are safe to be insane around each other. We eat and drink A LOT, and nearly any time we spend together out­side of school con­sists of those two things. If it were not for each other, I’m pretty sure we would all walk out en masse.

   Reply
10. olliolli

    February 23, 2012 at 10:49 PM

    # 15

    I had a kid inten­tion­ally wait on the other side of my door today until I started to shut it, so he could inten­tion­ally attempt to kick the door into my face. Then, he told me “I deserved it for evi­dently know­ingly clos­ing the door on him com­ing to my class [15 min­utes late].”

    I can rest in peace know­ing my time off will be spent help­ing my father recover from open-heart surgery, study­ing Anatomy and Phys­i­ol­ogy, clean­ing up appre­cia­tive, fee­ble old peo­ple and gen­er­ally not being inten­tion­ally kicked in the face with a solid wood and steel door.

    Reply
11. Vickie

    February 23, 2012 at 11:05 PM

    # 16

    Sadly, I believe I fall in the insane camp.

    After years of doing a bang up job, with evi­dence that my stu­dents (72% free and reduced) where meet­ing state stan­dards test by a con­sis­tant 80% + EVERY year, I got “bro­ken” by being hounded and ver­bally har­rased by a NEW VP who was angry I was smarter that his acronyms and could prove it. He was in my class­room con­stantly typ­ing up disi­pline forms against me that I refused to sign. I was told that Admin, staff, and the rest of the teach­ers didn’t like me and didn’t want to work with me because I am arro­gant and dis­re­spect­ful. I said, “So, you’re arro­gant and dis­re­spect­ful too.” At which point he threat­ened me that I “bet­ter not make any trou­ble” at that days union/admin meet­ing. When I turned in my res­ig­na­tion let­ter to the Prin­ci­pal later that day, he refused to accept it and told me to “hang on”. The VP got fired 2 weeks later for hav­ing an affair, ON CAMPUS, with the stu­pid­est, slut­ti­est excuse for a teacher ever hired, by HIM no less. I am now stuck with this loser ho in my Dept, (I am dept head with all the attend­ing BullSH!t) while he is off doing some other teacher harm I am sure.
    I am actively seek­ing other employ­ment, try­ing des­per­ately to get the state to give me a firm answer on how much longer I need to work to qual­ify for retire­ment ben­e­fits later in life as I can’t just flush 18 years with­out backup.
    I HATE my life now. I HATE going there. I HATE every­thing there, except my stu­dents and my team.

    Reply
    • T

      February 24, 2012 at 4:18 AM

      # 17

      1. Your team loves you too.
      2. You are an AMAZING teacher.
      3. He was a smarmy, two-faced hyp­ocrite.
      4. She is totally a use­less slutbag.

      5. You are a lit­tle bit arro­gant and dis­re­spect­ful but only to those who bring it upon them­selves with their fucktardedness.

      Reply
      • Vickie

        February 24, 2012 at 9:43 AM

        # 18

        Sup­port­ive replies, in any form, from my team keep me going. Thank you T.

        ps. and…thanks for not pounc­ing me for the mis­spell on where for were — LOL!

        Reply
12. Nora

    February 24, 2012 at 5:12 AM

    # 19

    I have returned to teach­ing four times in the past 15 years (mostly high school Eng­lish), each time to teach for a year or two and then quit. Each time, this is fol­lowed by a year of “recov­ery” involv­ing anti­de­pres­sants, ther­apy, and rem­nants of the insan­ity that I started to develop while teaching.

    I am now back in the class­room, but on the com­mu­nity col­lege level. I’ve made it a year and a half this time. I’ve been up since 3:00 this morn­ing, and there is no way that I will get every­thing done for my 9:00 class. (And I’m actu­ally quite good at being effi­cient, except when I see blog posts like this that I feel com­pelled to respond to.)

    Even so, I would not trade this for even a week of teach­ing junior high or high school. Insan­ity (where you really do start hav­ing hal­lu­ci­na­tions and shit, along with panic attacks and unex­plain­able fits of rage) is not a fun ride.

    Reply
13. urban annapurna

    February 24, 2012 at 10:59 AM

    # 20

    i’m in my first year of full-time pub­lic school teach­ing in nyc.

    1. i love work­ing with high school stu­dents — i always have (i believe this auto­mat­i­cally puts me on the far side of the crazy spectrum).

    2. i am shop­ping around for a per­ma­nent school posi­tion where i can at least respect the admin­is­tra­tive team.

    3. i’m not yet con­vinced that #2 exists in reality.

    4. i don’t ever want to leave the class­room. ever. while it’s my first foray in pub­lic edu­ca­tion, i’ve been teach­ing for over a decade in a vari­ety of capacities.

    5. that being said, the cra­zier part of my brain won­ders (some­times) if i could help stop the demo­niza­tion of teach­ers and the pro­fes­sion as a whole… and then spends hours think­ing about what i’d do if i were in charge.

    6. i spend an inor­di­nate amount of time wor­ry­ing that i will wake up one day and find out that i no longer have a job, no mat­ter how good i am at it.

    Reply
14. LaborLawyer

    February 24, 2012 at 11:41 AM

    # 21

    I’m a retired attor­ney, not a teacher but have always actively sup­ported our pub­lic schools.

    Read­ing Jessica’s and the posters’ com­ments, one won­ders exactly what the prob­lems are and how can we solve the prob­lems? Was teach­ing always this frustrating/stressful? is teach­ing this frustrating/stressful in the afflu­ent sub­urbs or are the prob­lems mostly in the inner-city and working-class neighborhoods?

    My anec­do­tal expe­ri­ences speak­ing to vet­eran teach­ers around the coun­try sug­gests that teach­ing has got­ten much worse over the past 40 years and that the prob­lems are much worse in the inner-city than in the afflu­ent suburbs.

    The teach­ers I’ve spo­ken with usu­ally cite stu­dent behav­ior issues — par­tic­u­larly minor but endemic class­room mis­con­duct that con­stantly dis­rupts instruc­tion and forces teach­ers to spend way to much time/effort on dis­ci­pline — as the main stres­sor. Sec­ondary school teach­ers also fre­quently cite the prob­lem of stu­dents read­ing far below grade level as mak­ing aca­d­e­mic instruc­tion vir­tu­ally impos­si­ble. (Of course, most of these con­ver­sa­tions pre-dated the cur­rent high-stakes-testing/teacher-discharge reforms; pos­si­ble that today these teach­ers would cite that reform as an impor­tant problem.)

    Amaz­ingly, to me at least, when I fol­low school reform debates in the media and on these ed blogs, I see com­plaints but little/no dis­cus­sion regard­ing the prob­lems iden­ti­fied by these vet­eran teach­ers — that is, stu­dent behav­ior and read­ing far below grade level — and I see lit­er­ally no dis­cus­sion regard­ing how school reform should/can focus on solv­ing these problems.

    Instead, the school reform debates focus on high-stakes-testing/teacher-discharge, elim­i­nat­ing tenure, char­ters, cur­riculm reform, and vouch­ers.
    It seems obvi­ous that none of these reforms hold out any hope for improv­ing the stres­sors that are dri­ving our teach­ers numb/insane.

    On the other hand, it seems equally obvi­ous that reforms focused on improv­ing stu­dent behav­ior and read­ing lev­els would go a long way towards recud­ing the stressors.

    Why the dis­con­nect between the debate and what teach­ers are expe­ri­enc­ing? Where are the national teacher unions on these issues? Where are the local school board leaders?

    Reply
    • eb

      February 24, 2012 at 4:58 PM

      # 22

      Teach­ers usu­ally have no say in the cur­ricu­lum or any­thing else so it takes a lot to change pol­icy and given the cur­rent cir­cum­stances most of us dont have the time to fight for change. I am cur­rently in the process of email­ing the ga state super­in­ten­dent and we will see where that goes.

      By the way, i teach at an afflu­ent sub­ur­ban high school. Most of the kids are pretty good but it only takes a few to wreck a class.

      Reply
    • Anonymous

      February 24, 2012 at 5:47 PM

      # 23

      I’m not a teacher either, but I do have a son in KG, and so I fol­low some of these ed blogs too.

      I agree with Labor­Lawyer, how hard can this be? Isn’t there any­thing we can learn from Fin­land? I just received the book Finnish Lessons from Ama­zon, and I’m really look­ing for­ward to read­ing it and find­ing out what they do right.

      Right now, my son is in a pri­vate school because this stuff scares the shit out of me!!

      Reply
      • Miss Friday

        February 24, 2012 at 8:53 PM

        # 24

        Don’t get too com­fort­able, this shit is creep­ing its way into the pri­vate schools too. Why? Because head­mas­ters and assis­tant head­mas­ters are gen­er­ally required to have “edu­ca­tional lead­er­ship” degrees. And pri­vate schools gen­er­ally want to have accred­i­ta­tion from orga­ni­za­tions that spon­sor this anti-educational disease.

        The only sure way of get­ting your child a proper edu­ca­tion is to home school.

        Reply
    • Miss Friday

      February 24, 2012 at 9:02 PM

      # 25

      The rea­son you are not see­ing any dis­cus­sion of sub­stan­tial edu­ca­tional reform is The Cult of the Child™.

      The Cult of the Child™ is the belief that chil­dren can do no wrong. Ever. Chil­dren do not lie, chil­dren are not lazy, chil­dren are never rude, and, most per­ni­cious of all, CHILDREN ARE NEVER, EVER RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR OWN BEHAVIOR.

      The Cult of the Child™ is a per­va­sive reli­gion in the Edu­ca­tion Estab­lish­ment. This means in the last 40 years, teach­ers work­ing in the trenches have been pro­hib­ited from dis­ci­plin­ing their stu­dents. Actions no longer have any sub­stan­tial con­se­quences, just sit through some bor­ing lec­ture and mum­ble so promise to never do it again. Then the Angelic Child can go back to doing any­thing s/he wants.

      Until we as a soci­ety wake up to the fact chil­dren are human beings, and capa­ble of every type of human behav­ior includ­ing all the bad ones, edu­ca­tion is doomed.

      As far as the read­ing prob­lem goes, go check out Core Knowl­edge. They are the only peo­ple in the wilder­ness address­ing the read­ing com­pre­hen­sion prob­lem in this coun­try. And, because they make sense and have sci­ence on their side, they are widely ignored.

      Reply
      • teachbad

        February 24, 2012 at 9:43 PM

        # 26

        Fri­day speaks the truth. The is part of the Great Social Capit­u­la­tion. Chil­dren and par­ents are off the hook. It’s official.

        Reply
      • LaborLawyer

        February 25, 2012 at 12:11 PM

        # 27

        Miss Fri­day — Agree that many/most administrators/teachers are reluc­tant to establish/enforce rea­son­able behav­ior stan­dards. Not sure what’s caus­ing this coun­ter­pro­duc­tive and irra­tional approach.

        Prob­a­bly sev­eral fac­tors at work:
        1. Less respect for author­ity in soci­ety in gen­eral (prob­a­bly a mixed bless­ing over­all) result­ing in increased stu­dent mis­be­hav­ior.
        2. Court deci­sions in the 1960s/1970s that many school admin­is­tra­tors, teach­ers, par­ents, and even some lawyers view (largely incor­rectly) as lim­it­ing school offi­cials’ right to establish/enforce rea­son­able behav­ior stan­dards. This, plus the increas­ingly lit­igous nature of soci­ety gen­er­ally, has made school admin­is­tra­tors and school boards overly fear­ful of student/parental law­suits chal­leng­ing dis­ci­pli­nary actions.
        3. The misbehaver-as-victim atti­tude — an unfor­tu­nate over-reaction to overly-conservative/sometimes racist views of the 1940s-1960s. If the teacher/administrator views mis­be­hav­ing Johnny as a vic­tim (i.e., fam­ily poverty, racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, single-parent fam­ily), the teacher/administrator then often jumps to the erro­neous con­clu­sion that it would be morally wrong to dis­ci­pline Johnny for the mis­be­hav­ior and indeed might become furi­ous with fel­low teachers/administrators who argue that Johnny’s longterm self-interest is served by requir­ing Johnny to behave appro­pri­ately.
        4. The special-needs-student-as-victim atti­tude (a sub­set of the misbehaver-as-victim atti­tude) and an over-reaction to legislation/court deci­sions requir­ing schools to accom­mo­date special-needs stu­dents. Teachers/administrators wrongly con­clude that they should not/cannot require special-needs stu­dents to behave appro­pri­ately. Also, admin­is­tra­tors are overly fear­ful that dis­ci­pline of special-needs chil­dren will trig­ger law­suits.
        5. Teacher train­ing pro­grams largely ignore the crit­i­cal issue of class­room man­age­ment — that is, how to most effec­tively respond to minor stu­dent mis­con­duct.
        6. Admin­is­tra­tors — due to a com­bi­na­tion of lazi­ness, igno­rance, or fear of parental com­plaints — rarely estab­lish affir­ma­tive school-wide behavior/discipline poli­cies and instead leave behavior/discipline to the indi­vid­ual teacher. Then, when teacher efforts to establish/enforce rea­son­able behav­ior stan­dards result in insub­or­di­nate stu­dents being referred to the office and/or parental com­plaints, these admin­is­tra­tors often rep­ri­mand the teacher, under­mine the teacher’s efforts, and cave to parental pressure.

        It seems that most of these causes/factors of increased stu­dent mis­be­hav­ior could be effec­tively neu­tral­ized by affir­ma­tive pro­grams adopted by ed schools, school boards, and prin­ci­pals focussing on improv­ing stu­dent behav­ior. Prob­a­bly not rocket sci­ence. And prob­a­bly not expensive.

        Reply
        • Anonymous

          February 25, 2012 at 6:08 PM

          # 28

          I agree with your analy­sis com­pletely. Although I have no idea, out­side start­ing my own school, how to reverse course. I do want to add a cou­ple points:

          1) The vic­tim atti­tude you described is also tied into the self-esteem move­ment. A teacher who makes a child feel bad (and sup­pos­edly low­er­ing s/he self-esteem), even for 10 sec­onds, is con­sid­ered “mean” and “intimidating”.

          2) Even admin­is­tra­tors with school-wide dis­ci­pline poli­cies are fear­ful of par­ents and throw their employ­ees under the bus. One of these admins actu­ally wanted me to send kids to the office rather than keep prob­lems in class. Why? Because in class there were actual con­se­quences (which were always com­men­su­rate with the student’s action), whereas in the office they gave the “never do it again” lec­ture and returned the kid to class.

          3) You are right, an effort to fix stu­dent behav­ior would be cheap mon­e­tar­ily. But it would require a lot of peo­ple to have the courage to stand by their con­vic­tions, endure ridicule/threats, and be backed up by their supe­ri­ors all the way up the chain of com­mand. Now there’s an edu­ca­tional fantasy.

          Reply
          • LaborLawyer

            February 26, 2012 at 4:53 PM

            # 29

            Miss Fri­day and Anonymous –

            Agree that mean­ing­ful reforms re stu­dent behav­ior would have to start at the top. But — why are senior school sys­tem offi­cials, pub­lic offi­cials, and the media so reluc­tant to go after mis­be­hav­ing stu­dents? Few, if any, polit­i­cally pow­er­ful groups would defend mis­be­hav­ing students.

            By con­trast, although teach­ers have long been one of the most beloved (if under­paid) groups in Amer­ica, school offi­cials, pub­lic offi­cials, and the media are eagerly going after teachers.

            And, in many states at least, teach­ers are a rel­a­tively well orga­nized inter­est group with at least some polit­i­cal clout — cer­tainly more polit­i­cal clout than mis­be­hav­ing stu­dents have.

            Why give mis­be­hav­ing stu­dents a pass while going after teach­ers? It just doesn’t make sense.

            My guess is that many/most policy-makers’ per­sonal school expe­ri­ence was in pri­vate schools or afflu­ent sub­ur­ban pub­lic schools. There­fore, when these folk recall their school expe­ri­ences, they have vivid mem­o­ries of a few mediocre teach­ers but few/no mem­o­ries of classes being sig­nif­i­cantly dis­rupted by mis­be­hav­ing students.
          • Miss Friday

            February 26, 2012 at 9:36 PM

            # 30

            Miss Fri­day and Anony­mous are one and the same. She for­got to type her name before post­ing!

            Why is stu­dent behav­ior unad­dressed? Your orig­i­nal analy­sis basi­cally answered the ques­tion. If you are a “vic­tim” (or have that men­tal­ity), our cul­ture states that you should not/cannot be held respon­si­ble for your behav­ior. There­fore all is forgiven.

            Lead­ers in the Edu­ca­tional Estab­lish­ment basi­cally believe that mis­be­hav­ing chil­dren are vic­tims of their cir­cum­stances (or else are just chil­dren “test­ing” their bound­aries and should be left alone) and there­fore should not be blamed for any­thing they do. But some­one must still be blamed, thus teach­ers are put squarely in the cross hairs lead­ing to tales like the one below of the stolen cellphone.

            [I’ve been think­ing about writ­ing a book sat­i­riz­ing the Edu­ca­tional Estab­lish­ment. Per­haps I should model it after “Alice in Wonderland”]
      • olliolli

        February 25, 2012 at 12:23 PM

        # 31

        Look up “Indigo Child.” It was some of the scari­est crap I ever read. Evi­dently every time your child acts like a dis­re­spect­ful non­com­pli­ant rude ego­ma­niac, it means “they are an Indigo Child ques­tion­ing adult bound­aries with their infi­nite intel­li­gence and super­nat­ural wisdom.”

        Reply
15. eb

    February 24, 2012 at 4:50 PM

    # 32

    Its Fri­day and i am about to down a beer. Spent the last period try­ing to explain ellipse equa­tions and i think i was only talk­ing to myself. You can learn alot by talk­ing to your­self. Yep i am insane.

    Reply
16. Cupcake

    February 24, 2012 at 6:46 PM

    # 33

    If I were not in my mid-40s, I would get the heck out of teach­ing.
    I have my own teens, so the teach­ing sched­ule still helps me out.
    That fact and my con­cern that I could not get a job at my age in a new field are the only things that keep me teaching.

    I’m excel­lent. My state test scores are excel­lent (I teach in an urban school district).

    I love most of the kids.

    But I am FED UP with the insan­ity around me.
    Agen­das for a meet­ing con­sist­ing of 3 teach­ers? Are you freak­ing kid­ding me?
    So I typed up 4. I copied them and I rotate them when I turn them in.
    My les­son plans?
    Same thing.
    And no one has noticed!

    I think my admins don’t notice on pur­pose. I give them bs for their binders AND I give them good scores.

    But still: that it HAS to even be this way. I send my own kids to pri­vate. They love school, the atmosphere–hell, even the lunches–is won­der­ful. No test­ing. Cheer­ful teachers.

    It’s a shame that only afflu­ent kids this expe­ri­ence (my hus­band has a high salary).

    Reply
17. Cupcake

    February 24, 2012 at 7:18 PM

    # 34

    And I should add that my hus­band, with his much higher salary, works less than I do.

    And he has a sec­re­tary, a win­dow office, a view of the city, unlim­ited time for lunch, etc.

    Reply
    • teachbad

      February 24, 2012 at 7:30 PM

      # 35

      I know that hurts.

      Reply
18. TheHorror

    February 25, 2012 at 6:59 AM

    # 36

    I’m doing just fine.

    I turned into the pub­lic school ver­sion of Colonel Kurtz years ago.

    Wait­ing for the day until the HR depart­ment sends some­one upriver to put me out of my misery.

    Reply
19. LAR

    February 25, 2012 at 10:04 AM

    # 37

    Hello. I wrote in a week or so ago — Lost A Reader. I checked today and saw you actu­ally responded to my com­ment, which I appre­ci­ate. I think I under­stand your posi­tion bet­ter now. But your char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of Black peo­ple — kids, par­ents, teach­ers — has been repeat­edly negative/negatively stereo­typ­i­cal, and that still both­ers me. (If you want spe­cific exam­ples, reply to this mes­sage and I will send an email). But it’s debat­able if the atti­tude that implies is really racist. ‘Racist’ is such an inflam­ma­tory word, and I regret using it. Thank you for tak­ing the time to reply.

    I think what’s needed in edu­ca­tion today are social ser­vices resources the school could require par­ents use to address the bad behav­ior of the kids. It’s not fair to the other kids or the teacher to have the bad behav­ior of one dis­rupt class for every­one. Some­one above said chil­dren should be treated like human beings, not angels (para­phras­ing). Yes and no. Chil­dren are human beings, but they are stu­pid human beings. What I mean is at age 6, after a lot of thought, I made the deci­sion that it would be great to ride my bike down the stairs. It was not.

    Chil­dren need guid­ance, sup­port and con­se­quences. Not just pun­ish­ment alone. But I do agree that expect­ing teach­ers to pro­vide the level of guid­ance, sup­port and con­se­quences many stu­dents need is ridiculous.

    Reply
    • teachbad

      February 25, 2012 at 1:39 PM

      # 38

      Thanks for writ­ing back. I’m glad I didn’t lose you com­pletely. Let me just say two things:

      1) I don’t think I have ever, in prob­a­bly 200,000 words on this blog, said any­thing bad about a teacher. Much less so sin­gled out a teacher because of his or her race;

      2) I observe. I write. In my entire teach­ing career I have never once had a white stu­dent. Maybe poor white stu­dents are dif­fi­cult, too. I wouldn’t say I grew up poor, but we were white trash and I know I wasn’t a treat for my teach­ers in school. For my first two years of teach­ing I was the only white per­son in the whole build­ing. This is my neigh­bor­hood school. Lots of messed up kids and parents.

      Three days ago out­side my house I saw the father of one of four kids from my old school. I asked about the kids. He said one was locked up, one had a baby and dropped out, and one had been accepted to the Tech mag­net school. (No report on the fourth.) The very next day the girl who I taught in sec­ond grade, from the class still hang­ing on my fridge, and who was going to the tech school came over to my house. I gave her the biggest hug I could.

      I observe. I write. This is all com­pli­cated and we’re all clumsy.

      I’d love to buy you a cof­fee or a beer some­time if you are in the DC area. Let me know.

      Reply
      • joycemocha

        February 26, 2012 at 3:55 PM

        # 39

        Poor white kids are very sim­i­lar. Scar­ily so. I just found out that one of my kids may be preg­nant in her fresh­man year. Sigh.

        Reply
        • olliolli

          February 27, 2012 at 8:10 PM

          # 40

          I have fresh­man girls that have 2 year old chil­dren. Be even more scared.

          Reply
    • gilda

      February 25, 2012 at 3:16 PM

      # 41

      Lar–
      re this from your post –“I think what’s needed in edu­ca­tion today are social ser­vices resources the school could require par­ents use to address the bad behav­ior of the kids.”–

      Although schools cer­tainly can legally REQUIRE par­ents to do some things, I have NEVER (in a 38 year career) seen dis­trict office admin­is­tra­tors use the due process chan­nels to hold the par­ents account­able for a child’s behav­ior. And if, by some g-l-a-c-i-a-l-l-y slow process, a case actu­ally makes it to a due process hear­ing, the inevitable result is to back off the par­ent and accom­mo­date them, so as not to fur­ther draw neg­a­tive atten­tion. Dis­trict offi­cials return the problem–unsolved–to the home school.

      Reply
      • LAR

        February 26, 2012 at 11:58 AM

        # 42

        Gilda — I def­i­nitely know that that is not what hap­pens today! I just think that in advo­cat­ing for change, that the focus should be applied there. My pro­posal is not so much to try to make par­ents work harder than they want to (I don’t think that is real­is­tic) but to iden­tify chil­dren with behav­ior prob­lems of which par­ents have been noti­fied and are unable or unwill­ing to address. Then the process being along the lines of the child being assigned a social worker/team that can ana­lyze and deter­mine what that child needs (coun­sel­ing? missed learn­ing dis­abil­ity? super­vised deten­tion?) as well as offer will­ing par­ents par­ent­ing classes and sup­port. Not all par­ents will be will­ing. And to an extent, this lets par­ents off the hook from rais­ing their kids. But many aren’t doing that any­way — whether due to time/financial con­straints, lack of knowl­edge or indif­fer­ence. And our cur­rent method of let­ting kids essen­tially raise them­selves along with some help from teach­ers is not working.

        This doesn’t exist yet. But more to the point, edu­ca­tion pol­icy seems to be vari­a­tions of dif­fer­ent stan­dard­ized test­ing mea­sures. Teach­ers have been very vocal about why test­ing mea­sures are inac­cu­rate, don’t achieve the stated goals and are unfair. But beyond say­ing teach­ers should be more involved in the process to pro­duce cur­ricu­lum and deter­mine how to mea­sure teach­ers and stu­dents, I haven’t seen much actu­ally artic­u­lat­ing WHAT exactly should be done. And that answer can’t just be reduc­ing or elim­i­nat­ing stan­dard­ized test­ing, because even before NCLB, the US pub­lic sys­tem had high drop out rates, etc.

        So this is my idea.

        Reply
        • Miss Friday

          February 26, 2012 at 9:25 PM

          # 43

          You’ve got an idea here, but there is one glar­ing ques­tion: What do you (or any­one imple­ment­ing your scheme) do with the chil­dren (and par­ents) who do not respond to their social ser­vices team? Do they get to stay in the class­room and infect every­one else? Are they seg­re­gated and ware­housed? Are they kicked out permanently?

          Reply
          • Anonymous

            February 27, 2012 at 11:38 AM

            # 44

            Miss Fri­day,

            I would be inter­ested to know your thoughts on the pro­pos­als by James Heckman:

            http://www.nber.org/papers/w11142
20. Susan

    February 25, 2012 at 2:47 PM

    # 45

    I think I was crazy to begin with, so all I can do is become numb, which hasn’t hap­pened yet because I am still sub­ject to fits of anger directed towards cen­tral office and admin­is­tra­tors that do not sup­port their staff and are only capa­ble of pro­vid­ing direc­tives that they never fol­lowup on, except when they want to get rid of someone.…

    for the first time in 9 years, I have an Assis­tant Prin­ci­pal that is supportive…I also a great “team” that doesn’t suck up to our prin­ci­pal to achieve recog­ni­tion (even though other teams at our cam­pus have these lit­tle spies amongst them, so one must tread lightly in other areas of the campus)…

    I will say that my bar­tend­ing career has been the best prep for teach­ing and that 6th graders are high in enter­tain­ment value just by their awkwardness…I am also lucky to have been assigned a subject/ grade level that is not state-tested, but believe me, I earned it dur­ing my pre­vi­ous 8 years! Also, the trade-off for this is that there is no cur­ricu­lum, due to change in state stan­dards in 2010 and our instruc­tional mate­ri­als approved by the board STILL haven’t been pro­vided (but no one cares since the sub­ject in my grade level is NOT tested), so I am basi­cally cur­ricu­lum writ­ing every­day until dark because I refuse to take any work home…

    I still feel I make a dif­fer­ence and am pas­sion­ate about try­ing pro­vid­ing these title I minor­ity stu­dents with the same level of edu­ca­tion as the pri­vate school I live across the street from…that alone prob­a­bly qual­i­fies me as crazy…

    Reply
21. Teach1

    February 26, 2012 at 3:46 PM

    # 46

    In read­ing Jessica’s note, I thought per­haps she worked at my school; eerily many sim­i­lar­i­ties. Seven years ago, at the age of 30 some­thing, I entered into the teach­ing world. I have always wanted to be a teacher. My first career was nurs­ing and albeit I loved that job, the desire to teach, pro­pelled me for­ward into my new career. When I entered into the field, the only places hir­ing were char­ter schools or pri­vate schools. When I received calls to inter­view for teach­ing posi­tions at dif­fer­ent char­ter schools, I thought I was “lucky”…seven years later and I think “what the hell am I doing”. I’ve thought about leav­ing the char­ter school that I’m at, but now I think things are just about as crazy in PS as they are in char­ter schools.

    I have found that as long as my stu­dents pro­duce great NWEA test scores, my principal/deans LOVE me, but if those scores go down…I must be doing some­thing wrong. We are observed weekly (regard­less of how many years you’ve been there and regard­less of your test scores). We then have to meet with our grade level dean, who then runs her fin­ger down a list of what you didn’t do and what you should have done. Exp:

    your I can state­ments need to be writ­ten in big­ger let­ters and straight across…

    When I came in 15–20-30 min­utes late, you did’t stop and restart your lessons. You need to start from the begin­ning, regard­less of where you are, so that I can check these items off the list.

    You had a child sleep­ing while you were teaching…oh his mom told you that he went to bed at 2 a.m…well he still needs to be engaged in the lesson

    Why are you allow­ing those kids to eat break­fast after school has started?…what? They are hun­gry? You need to call the par­ent and tell them to feed their child and get them here on time…

    Where’s your 10 page les­son plan?

    I only observed 3 forms of for­ma­tive assess­ment. Yes, I know that was in a 30 min­utes span, one concept…but you should have at least 10. How do you know if they really know what you are teaching?

    By doing all these hands on inter­ac­tive group, part­ner activ­i­ties, how do you prove they know what you are teaching..Worksheets are a hard­copy of their knowledge

    I’m not mak­ing this stuff up…it’s crazy! The list could go on, but you get where I’m com­ing from. It’s about results. If at the end of the year my kids make their # goal on the test, I am golden and all neg­a­tive com­ments regard­ing my teach­ing abil­ity are tossed aside and my final eval­u­a­tion comes out perfect.

    So after ALL of that, where do I fall? NUMB…I nod my head, smile, try to give my all and best to my kids and Pray! PRAY like hell that i don’t snap…I’ve not even made it to the 10 year mark and I’m to this point. Kud­dos to those who have been here 10, 20, 30…years.

    Reply
22. AnniLee

    March 1, 2012 at 11:08 AM

    # 47

    I have taught for 35 years and am nei­ther numb or insane. I am a good teacher who loves her job. I look for­ward to it every day and plan to teach another 8 or 9 years. I will be very sad to leave it when the day comes. Teach­ing has been good to me and good for me and the pay and ben­e­fits are decent.

    Reply
23. What? Me Worry?

    March 4, 2012 at 1:55 PM

    # 48

    I need to start by say­ing some­thing about the use of phrases like, “inner-city,” and “free-and-reduced,” to describe schools. While most of us agree that the lat­ter is an indi­ca­tion of low S.E.S, the for­mer con­jurs up all kinds of pic­tures in our heads. I’m going to try to develop a more apt ref­er­ence for schools that have an incred­i­bly large pop­u­la­tion of low S.E.S stu­dents. How about cylce of poverty school or (COP) school if you like? This becomes impor­tant because I teach at a school in a town in Kansas with a pop­u­la­tion of approx. 17,000 peo­ple in it. Now I’m sure that this does not con­jur up the same pic­tures in your mind that “inner-city” does, so let me explain. Our school has a pop­u­la­tion of “free-and-reduced” that holds pretty steady at 90% from year to year. We have about a 2 to 3 split from white to Hispanic/Latino. But the telling stat at our school is that 3/4 of our stu­dents are liv­ing in gen­er­a­tional poverty –a phrase coined by Ruby Payne. In some instances stu­dents that I taught have sons and daugh­ters enrolled at our school, and I haven’t been teach­ing more than 10 years! So please, let’s all agree to refer to these types of schools as some­thing other than “inner-city.” Poverty and its effects knows no geo­graph­i­cal bound­aries so let’s don’t make the mis­take of think­ing that it only exists in large pop­u­lated areas.

    Reply
24. 22 years nebraska

    March 9, 2012 at 3:02 PM

    # 49

    Love the site,

    Numb: I really don’t care. I care just enough to get off my chair and dance around any­time I hear the prin­ci­pal, cur­ricu­lum spe­cial­ist, asst prin­ci­pals, deans, data spe­cial­ist, head teacher, or any other suit walk­ing down the hall.

    I’ve got to the point where it really doesn’t mat­ter any­more. The kids don’t want to learn, don’t have to learn, don’t have to behave. I “teach”, but they just do what­ever they want to do, so most days I don’t think any­one actu­ally lis­tens. I give them their work­sheet, for what good that does, and I walk around like I’m sup­posed to, while they belit­tle me, swear, lis­ten to their Ipods, text, sleep, throw things, eat food, etc.

    Can’t dis­ci­pline them, we must be “wel­com­ing” If you do any­thing remotly “con­trar­ian”, you’re in for a poopfest in the office where they threaten your job etc etc.

    I usu­ally just walk around in a daze.

    NUTS; I actu­ally hum to myself all through class. I’ve caught myself doing this, scares me. I’m like an autis­tic, hum­ming some mantra to keep me sane in the insan­ity all around.

    I hate my job, I hate sun­day nights, hell, I hate sun­day after­noons. I sleep 5 hours at best, I“m a big crab…

    Reply
25. Jim

    March 21, 2012 at 7:52 AM

    # 50

    I am look­ing in from the out­side. I did sub­sti­tute teach­ing for 6 yrs. 5 days a week.
    You guys are great. No ques­tion on that. I would not do your job. God bless.

    Reply

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